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Could Leather Be the Missing Piece for Regenerative Ranching? with Cate Havstad of Range Revolution
29 Plays33 minutes ago
We’ve spent a lot of time on this show digging into the dire state of modern farming and ranching, and the challenging economics for those trying to build a regenerative future. Our guest today, Cate Havstad, is no stranger to these challenges as a first-generation farmer and rancher. That experience led directly to an innovative solution that could be an important missing piece in this economic puzzle.
As she explains, only about 65 percent of the cattle she sent out to slaughter was actually used, leaving hides and other materials treated as low-value byproducts rather than essential parts of a living system. That waste isn’t just ecological. It’s economic, and it puts real pressure on ranchers trying to do things the right way.
Cate is changing that. As the founder of Range Revolution, she’s building a new market for regenerative hides, turning them into high-quality leather goods while creating an additional revenue stream for ranchers committed to land stewardship. Her work challenges the idea that sustainability and luxury are incompatible, and shows how value-added products can help make regenerative ranching financially viable.
In this episode, we dive into:
• Why hides have been devalued in the modern meat system
• How waste in the supply chain undermines regenerative ranchers
• What it takes to build a leather supply chain aligned with land health
• Why luxury markets can play a role in regenerative economics
• The hidden costs of conventional leather production
• How whole-animal utilization strengthens rural livelihoods
• What a more honest pricing of materials could unlock for agriculture
More about Cate and Range Revolution:
Cate Havstad-Casad is a first-generation farmer/rancher, designer, systems-thinker and agricultural advocate.
At the age of 23 Cate founded Havstad Hat Company and began her career as a designer and maker. She has crafted hats for Post Malone, Shania Twain, Kacey Musgraves among other notable pop-culture icons.
Cate began farming with her husband in 2014, both first generation farmers. Starting on 5 acres of leased land, Cate and her husband now manage 1400 acres of farmland & rangeland at Casad Family Farms in Madras, Oregon. This work on the ranch and in building markets for regenerative meats informed the launch of Range Revolution in 2021; a category-defining regenerative leather goods company which is building 100% of its products out of traceable American cattle hides coming from verifiably regenerative ranches. Range Revolution addresses the 5 million cattle hides that are thrown into the trash each year, rebuilding systems for whole-carcass utilization, increasing margins for processors and producers, and harnessing brand building to tell stories that reconnect citizens to natural fibers and regional supply chains. Range Revolution offers both a collection of finished goods as well as B2B material development.
Cate believes deeply in building businesses that support regional, decentralized systems for agriculture of the middle to thrive, and that human health and ecosystem health are one in the same.
Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song. This episode was edited by Drew O’Doherty.
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Transcript
Economic Struggles of Farms and Carcass Utilization
00:00:02
Speaker
I realized every time we send a steer or a cold cow to slaughter, only about 65% of those carcasses are getting utilized. And when you start to study the economics of this business, why are mid-sized farms and ranches struggling? That 35%, which is deemed waste, is a huge lost opportunity for our sector.
00:00:22
Speaker
If we can raise that to 80% or 85%, that is one piece of this puzzle to make the economic realities of regenerative mid-sized family ranches more viable.
State of Farming and Rural Economies
00:00:34
Speaker
In season two of Agrarian Futures, we're starting with a simple question. How did we get here? Farms are disappearing. Land is getting harder to access. Rural economies are hollowing out.
00:00:46
Speaker
But there are people building better ways forward. Join us as we investigate what's broken in our food system and what it looks like to build something better.
00:01:01
Speaker
When we think about agriculture, we usually think about food, but agriculture was also once the foundation of fashion, providing natural fibers, hides, and dyes that connected what we wore to the landscape and communities that produced them.
00:01:13
Speaker
Over the past century, that relationship has been severed, replaced by petrochemicals, synthetics, and outsourced very opaque supply chains.
Regenerative Leather Supply Chain
00:01:22
Speaker
Today, we're joined by Kate Hapstad-Kassad, a rancher, designer, and co-founder of Range Revolution,
00:01:28
Speaker
a company working to build a regenerative, traceable leather supply chain. In this conversation, we'll talk about what's broken in the leather industry today, from waste to pollution to outsourcing, and what it would look like to rebuild a supply chain rooted in land, transparency, and regeneration. So welcome to the podcast, Kate.
00:01:48
Speaker
Hi, Emma. I'm so glad to be here. Can you start by walking us through what the conventional leather supply chain looks like today and maybe what are the major steps along the supply chain?
Challenges in Global Leather Supply Chains
00:02:00
Speaker
Today, a commodity leather supply chain is extremely globalized and very opaque. When I started digging into this realm, ah kind of couldn't believe what I was learning. Commodity leathers come primarily from New Zealand, Brazil, and a lot of times they are shipped to China to be tanned in China. Some of the big conglomerates that control the vertical integration of the largest aspects of the beef industry do have some tanning going on in Brazil.
00:02:32
Speaker
Not all of those hides are necessarily coming from systems of deforestation, but it's certainly a huge focus because a lot of hides from those systems are from systems of deforestation.
00:02:43
Speaker
So an average globalized you know leather hide might travel 25,000 miles around the globe before it lands in a person's hands as a finished product.
00:02:54
Speaker
Wow. And can you talk about why it goes to China? Is that because that's the cheapest place to do the processing? Yeah, a lot of times it is where there's the cheapest you know tanneries, the least amount of both worker and environmental regulations, as well as that's where a lot of brands are manufacturing. So it's just you know a centralized hub of processing products.
00:03:17
Speaker
and manufacturing in one place at the cheapest possible rate. But I like to say that there's this myth that this globalized supply chain is the most cost-effective one because as many of us are increasingly aware, we're paying the price in a lot of other really, really large ways that are not internalized or accounted for in the supply chain.
Environmental and Social Costs of Global Supply Chains
00:03:38
Speaker
So while the cost per square foot might be lower than a domestic leather.
00:03:44
Speaker
We are doing the economic analysis to prove that landed costs of domestically sourced, domestically processed leathers can be competitive with a globalized leather. And then I hope in the near future, we have a true cost accounting system that actually takes into account what the environmental and social impacts are of those supply chains.
00:04:05
Speaker
So you say a lot of the leather comes from New Zealand or Brazil, i think, especially in the case of Brazil, some of that comes from basically deforestation. So people are going into forested areas, clear cutting, and then basically running cattle for a number of years.
00:04:21
Speaker
That's kind of where that footprint comes from.
Impact on Mid-Sized Ranches Due to Loss of Tanneries
00:04:24
Speaker
Meanwhile, in the US, s you say that over 5 million hides are thrown away every year. Could you talk about what's happening there? Yeah. And this was really the genesis of my involvement and interest in this field. We've just lost the systems of aggregation. So while the industry of beef in particular has consolidated so extremely into the major four packers, you've seen the loss of the midsize abattoirs slaughterhouses, which means you've also lost the systems to aggregate those hides, and then you've lost transport and logistics efforts, and you've lost tanneries.
00:05:02
Speaker
And those are all the things that you need to take a raw salted hide to finish leather state. So currently, the typical rancher is raising cattle, eventually going and selling it maybe on commodities markets or to a finishing operation that is eventually going to a very large-scale slaughterhouse.
00:05:22
Speaker
they process the animal and then they just throw out the hides. Is that correct? Well, if it's made it into some of the biggest packers, if you're a part of the commodity system and you can get your cattle into some of the big four packers, if you're a part of Cargill, JBS, Tyson, they do have systems of aggregation because in their businesses, they understand that a waste stream is a lost economic opportunity. So those hides are generally the ones from the United States that are making it into the leather supply chain.
00:05:53
Speaker
The ones that are not making it into the leather supply chain and that are the ones going to the waste stream are the ones from the family operations, from the midsize processors, and from this middle agriculture.
00:06:04
Speaker
So that's why I became so interested in working to rebuild this side of the American supply chain because we exist in the middle. My husband and I have a farm and a ranch in Central Oregon.
00:06:18
Speaker
We're first generation. We've been building this acre by acre And as we started to scale up our meat business and our operation, i had to become a student of the economics of a meat business. And that was when I realized every time we sent a steer or cold cow to slaughter, only about 65% of those carcasses are getting utilized.
00:06:40
Speaker
And when you start to study the economics of this business, why are midsize farms and ranches struggling? What are the economic pressures and what are the log jams?
00:06:51
Speaker
That 35%, which is deemed waste, is a huge lost opportunity for our sector. While it takes some more effort, more organization, more aggregation points out To pull these hides together, my thesis is that if we can raise that utilization rate from what has been about 65% for midsize ranches like ours and raise that to 80% or 85% carcass utilization, and we can raise you know the economic returns to the ranchers, that is one piece of this puzzle to make the economic realities of regenerative midsize family ranches more viable.
00:07:27
Speaker
That's awesome. The very large scale slaughterhouses, they would aggregate this and then they would potentially send it off to China and then it would get into the large scale kind of leather production. The middle size ranchers that are still are able to process at like mid scale processing facility. Those facilities just don't have the markets or the infrastructure to do anything with the quote unquote waste product.
00:07:51
Speaker
Yeah. And you know midsize can range from slaughterhouses that are doing 150 head a week to slaughterhouses that are doing 700 head a week. You've had Cole Mannix on from the Old Salt Cooperative in Montana. They're perfect example of a very strong regional meat business, but they would not have really a system to get their hides into the leather supply chain without an effort like a range revolution effort.
Sustainable Tanning Methods
00:08:20
Speaker
That's awesome. And could you talk a little bit about the tanning process? I'm very curious to hear kind of how that goes. And I think it's something that a lot of people aren't aware of. So tanning is a tradition that is as old as you know humankind, and there's more primitive ways to tan a hide using bark tannins. There's actually a brain tanning method where they use brains of animals. Essentially what the initial tanning process is, is it's a preservation method where you're stopping the decomposition process of organic material. More commodity styles of processing leathers, tanning leathers. There's a wet blue process, which a chrome tan process, which is more chemical intensive, but it has its attributes and reasons why certain products will need a chrome tan. And then there's a veg tan process, which often is using less chemicals and more natural tannins in the process. So
00:09:23
Speaker
So there's a lot of ways to go about it. And a lot of times your decision making comes down to what is the functionality? What are the finished properties that are needed for whether it's going to become a garment? Is it going to be a shoe? Is it going to be a bag?
00:09:39
Speaker
Those sorts of things are kind of what drive a lot of your decisions in the tanning process. And then, of course, your sustainability ethos and how you look at more natural approaches versus more chemical intensive ones.
00:09:51
Speaker
When we started building our products, we only were going with a vegetable tanned product. methods and it continues to be the core of our collection.
00:10:02
Speaker
This year as we started to work with other brands who required either a water repellency or like a very, very thin leather for garment or the production of boots and shoes, we started to work with chrome tanning that is done in a facility that is certified by the leatherworking group.
00:10:21
Speaker
And that just means that they handle all of their byproducts and chemicals and waters in a very safe way. And for people that aren't familiar with Range Revolution, could you describe maybe some of your end products and the ones that have been most successful that are your biggest sellers?
00:10:40
Speaker
So Range Revolution's product line started with handbags and And small accessories. So the ladies collection, we have hobo bags, very classic tote bags, smaller, more, you know, trendy baguettes.
00:10:59
Speaker
And then we have some more utilitarian pieces, crossbody belt bags, a crossbody sling bag that's kind of more gender neutral. And then we started doing a small amount of travel luggage, wallets, journals, And then this year, we're actually launching our first two pairs of Western boots, a taller classic heritage boot and a little shorty that's more of an urban boot.
00:11:22
Speaker
So that is what constitutes our finished product line. You won the Accelerating Regenerative Pitch Award at the RFSI, I think a few years ago, and you've made a lot of strides securing wholesale orders with luxury brands and improving the logistics. What have you learned about the economics of regenerative leather? And do you think we could reach a point where it is more economically advantageous to be doing the full production in the US versus outsourcing to China and into these globalized supply chains.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah, so you mentioned that was just last fall, actually, that I won the Accelerating Regeneration Award. And RFSI, for anyone who is not familiar, it is the premier investing conference for people in the regenerative agriculture sector. And so it was about 500 people that cross industries from ag tech to you know investors in the space, business builders in the space.
00:12:17
Speaker
And last year we were essentially saying, this is what we're setting our sights on to do. We've learned a lot through the designing of our own finished products. And now we're ready to kind of scale up and build capacities to offer this business to business at a wholesale scale to other brands.
00:12:32
Speaker
So what we have learned in this past year, you know we had to take some huge leaps of faith. We had to aggregate a full truckload, move a full truckload, commit to a full truckload to really understand our true landed costs doing this at scale. And we took that leap of faith knowing that we had some interested parties, but we did not have contracts signed. you know, what Range Revolution was going to need was maybe like a quarter of that truckload. So we had to go in with a lot of faith that we were going to find committed offtake for the other three-fourths of that truck.
00:13:07
Speaker
And what we learned through this past year is that the landed cost of Range Revolution leathers beats the pricing of globalized, internationally imported leathers that meet the same grade as ours. And this is a big deal because a lot of people, when talking about building regenerative supply chains or regenerative sourcing, they assume that this will come at a price premium, that this is going to be too expensive to scale and find adoption in the industry at a larger scale. And I'm so happy to prove that regenerative sourcing doesn't necessarily have to mean exorbitant prices. because that would limit truly the impact that we can make and the disruption that we can make in the industry at scale.
00:13:59
Speaker
We know this stuff has to be economically competitive. And it was just incredible to see through our analysis. For example, if you're kind of at the mid or luxury sector of, say, handbag design, a lot of those leathers are being imported from Germany or Italy. Today, landed costs of those leathers from Germany and Italy would be a landed cost of about $14.50 or at the higher end, $17 for those imported leathers. Range Revolution is offering a matching luxury grade leather at a landed cost of $6.62.
00:14:38
Speaker
Now, that might change slightly based on somebody's finishing requests, but that just paints the picture for you that this is so viable at a larger scale. Not only does this allow people to tell a story of provenance in their materials, of regenerative sourcing, we can talk about implications of traceability with some new legislation that is coming in Europe, the EUDR.
00:15:02
Speaker
But economically, this is actually a more cost-effective material because of the shortened distance of travel of our hides. So the average range revolution hide might travel 1,500 to 2,000 miles from ranch to finished product.
Rise of Petroleum-based Fibers
00:15:19
Speaker
Whereas, like I said, a globalized leather has a journey of upwards of 20,000 to 25,000 miles around the globe.
00:15:26
Speaker
wow Yeah, I went down ah a rabbit hole a few years ago of looking into kind of natural fibers and it really struck me. I mean, it's so obvious and yet we don't think about it.
00:15:36
Speaker
Even me, someone that like cares a lot about food and thinks about like sourcing my food locally, I'd never really, it had never really sunk in to what extent, like it, it used to be the same for, for your clothing. Basically it was like from cotton, from linen, from wool, depending where you were And your clothes was kind of a reflection of your food shed as well as your food. And that's like something that we've completely forgotten. And that even now with like somewhat vibrant food movement is still talked about very little.
00:16:08
Speaker
Most people don't realize when they wake up in the morning and get dressed to go to the farmer's market to go buy their local food and eat organic food that they're probably cloaking themselves in petroleum. And there's so many reasons why this is the case. And it's also one of the reasons why I'm so excited and determined to be in the sector because here's the statistics. 70% of the fibers today are petroleum-based synthetics.
00:16:34
Speaker
This has been so insidiously woven into our lives. since about the 1980s. And it's been happening at an increasing rate because the oil industry, which is one of the most powerful lobbying industries that exists in the world, has been cognizant that the shift to regenerative energy was imminent.
00:16:56
Speaker
And so the building of refineries specifically for textiles has been one of their main focuses. So polysynthetics, anytime you see a poly derivative in the name of a fiber, there's a lot of different names that they've created to essentially disguise petroleum spun into thread form. So that 70%, you know, what that's equated to is animal fibers now make up 2% or less of our fibers.
00:17:23
Speaker
And then, you know, I forget exactly what the ratio is of cotton and other plant-based natural fibers, but it's just it's just tiny. And petroleum has become the dominant thread. At the same time, we've seen a focus from a venture capital lens and investing in biofabricated new alternative materials. Yeah.
00:17:50
Speaker
And there's a lot to say there. I go to the sustainability and and fashion conferences with an open mind. And there are some biofabricated things that are cool, that are innovative, that I think are part of the solution. But I also think that the way that VC often creates A focus on things that are patentable, you're losing the plot here. If we're truly talking about sustainability, it doesn't just mean, is this plastic free? I'll tell you first things first. A lot of those alternative materials might be, say, part cactus, but then a very large part is petroleum to actually give it the dynamic feel that you need for raw material. So it might be part cactus or it might be part mushroom, but what's the rest of it? Is it petroleum? Yeah. And then and I think there has to be a conversation about return on energy expenditure. So, you know, what does it actually create from an energy stance to biofabricate these new materials?
00:18:48
Speaker
While, on the other hand, we have these massive waste streams of natural fibers. Kate Fletcher, she is from the UK and she is an academic in this realm of sustainable raw materials in fashion. She said this, but the truth is the most radical fibers are the ones that we already have.
00:19:06
Speaker
That is where I stand. Everyone has to pick their lane. i think that there's some cool application of biofabricated stuff, but I was just doing research on the successes and the failures of the biomaterial startups that have been building some alternatives and had some early excitement from brands like Stella McCartney or Allbirds or some of these other brands. They had some early commitments, but they raised, you know,
00:19:34
Speaker
hundreds of millions of dollars to never get past a commercialization scale. When I step back, I compare this to what has happened in the alt protein space, where there has been billions of dollars invested to create a lab-grown meat product that was purported to be more sustainable or more humane. But they have failed to either get to an efficiency that can actually commercialize, and they've also failed to actually find market demand.
00:20:03
Speaker
The consumer is actually not that eager for it.
Challenges with Biofabricated Materials
00:20:08
Speaker
And when I talk to manufacturers who work with some of the biosynthetic or the biofabricated materials, they They're telling us that they do not have longevity.
00:20:18
Speaker
The material might look good for a year or two, but that it breaks down. And because of the way that it is made and it's it's composite, it doesn't have either an end of life ability to then turn it into something else.
00:20:31
Speaker
It just has an expiration date. In comparison, when you look at leather, which has been a byproduct of meat consumption since the start of mankind, it has been a material that we have worked with for shelter, for clothing, for insulation since forever. Leather, if it's processed in a natural way, if it is conditioned, it will outlive you and i So there's sustainability at the level of sourcing, at the ranch level. There's sustainability in the processing. There's sustainability when it comes to longevity of materials. And there's a sustainability when we talk about the return on energy expenditure. So when the lens is so focused on certain metrics, we kind of lose the whole plot of things. And that's what I notice in the fashion space when it comes to materials. Yeah.
00:21:22
Speaker
I went to, which I'm guessing you've probably been to a number of times, like I think it's called the Textile Exchange Conference. Yes. A few years ago and obviously all about or huge focus on like sustainability, quote unquote. But I think out of maybe the 500 or so kind of vendors there and like solutions, there was maybe two initiatives around kind of natural fibers. Like there was some organic cotton and then there was, I think,
00:21:48
Speaker
maybe one about linen or something like that, but like the remaining like 498 were like bamboo or like, you know, recycled materials turned into t-shirts or like, all you know, all these, this kind of other things. And I think part of it is kind of like in the alternative protein space, it's like that type of solution is much more conducive to like spreadsheets and Yes.
00:22:12
Speaker
And investments like you can look at it, you can project it out, you can, you know, everything can be an input and an output. It is inherently much more commoditized than something where you're dealing with regions and place and ranchers and seasons and natural cycles that are inherently not as easily commoditized.
00:22:35
Speaker
Yes, and again, if I just take sort of stock of what of the biofabricated materials are winning, you know, a lot of those entities are five, six, seven years old.
00:22:48
Speaker
With the amount of money invested into it, what is actually proving to be profitable? And I don't actually see any profitable yet.
00:22:59
Speaker
So again, there's been a story, just like the myth that a globalized supply chain is more cost effective. There's a bit of a myth around this version of innovation creating positive results either environmentally, economically, or from a community perspective.
00:23:22
Speaker
If that amount of money had gone into helping ranchers to implement more regenerative practices across hundreds of millions of acres, what would that impact have been, both at a regional level and environmental level? The way that we structure capital is such a component of all of this, whether it's the VC level and what gets funded and what metrics of growth and success they want to see on a spreadsheet, or if it's the brand and how a company is structured, if their metrics of success must equal profit quarter after quarter, it doesn't allow those companies to
00:24:05
Speaker
change a supply chain or go through a period of slower growth in order to make an adjustment or a change, the CEO is bound by those golden handcuffs, which keeps the sustainability teams from actually being able to get anything done. And that is something I hear over and over again at the sustainability conferences like TechSouth Exchange. It's not said during the conference, but it's usually said at the cocktail hour hours after a couple of drinks where people who lead sustainability teams are so frustrated because they do all this research that create all these pathways to implement more regenerative or organic or traceable sourcing. And then once it gets to that next level of decision making, it's squashed because of the way those brands are structured and the stakeholders expecting quarter after quarter increases in profit.
00:24:56
Speaker
Like I can't help but think holistically and like systems wide about this. We have to rethink business organization structure. We have to think about how capital flows. We have to think about truly what ends up on a profit and loss sheet. If we don't actually build an economic model, which recognizes community return, reducing of waste streams, rebuilding of regional supply chains, it won't be valued.
00:25:23
Speaker
And i would say probably also a culture change because when it comes to fashion, I think we've become used to buying a lot all the time and disposing of it.
00:25:33
Speaker
Coming from regenerative systems, like obviously there's a there's a cost to everything. And I think in a more ideal world, we would be buying ah few super high quality products that we would have forever and that we would fix instead of throwing out.
00:25:49
Speaker
That's my jam. I think a lot of people actually, I think the cultural tide is shifting because even the luxury brands are experiencing a loss of consumer loyalty because their quality has gone down. It's no longer that a luxury brand, I won't name any, and but you can think of any of the biggest you know names in luxury fashion. it used to equate to luxury quality, high ah quality tailoring,
00:26:16
Speaker
That has since gone away and you're more paying for the logo and for status. And I think it's really interesting to work in fashion after having worked in food systems for 12 years because fashion has a way of both mirroring and i think directing a cultural narrative around what is aspirational.
00:26:36
Speaker
That is so much of what is fashion. And I think that bringing this conversation and that question of like, what is true luxury in 2025, in this era of increasingly challenging climate changes, of globalized supply chains, of human rights violations within these industries, of ecosystems where the water's not safe to drink, like, What is actually true luxury to us? And what is something that is truly aspirational? Is it that logo? Is it that status? Is it a version of power that has dominated the past three decades? Or is it clean waterways? Is it vibrant rural communities? Is it regenerative sourcing? That, to me, is the conversation to be had in fashion when it comes to redefining aspiration and luxury.
00:27:25
Speaker
And so you work in ranching and now fashion, two very misunderstood spaces. And I think you've touched upon some of them already. But like, so what are some of the biggest misconceptions that you hear that you wish people would understand differently?
00:27:42
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Just that, you know, leather is unsustainable. Like that to me is a big fat lie that has been created by the petroleum industry. That, you know, cattle are the problem. That farmers are stupid. That there's some lack of knowledge or intellect that leads to...
00:28:03
Speaker
environmental degradation, but as you just said, it's actually the economic landscape which has had the foot on the neck of the producer for decades and has led to the outcomes. And just that things are the way they are because of some great intellect.
00:28:19
Speaker
You think that there's great smart people in charge and that's not true. Or that this is impossible or hard to do. i sometimes get frustrated because I'm like, how is it that our tiny team of pretty much three and a half people with a tiny amount of financial resources has been able to do this work and recreate these systems of aggregation to create a traceable, regeneratively sourced American leather supply chain And all of the other brands who are attending these conferences and who are talking the talk have not with all of the resources that they have. It's doable.
00:28:58
Speaker
And as our economic analysis of landed costs exemplify or illuminate, the economics of this are not the barrier.
Call for System-Wide Supply Chain Changes
00:29:07
Speaker
There's not like great intellectual people in charge making great decisions. There's profit-driven industries. There's very powerful oil lobbyists.
00:29:20
Speaker
And there's complacency that lead to systems and outcomes like we have seen across agriculture and in fashion. And change really like whatever that quote is, please help me find it. But that like never discount that a small group of people can make massive change. Like we have made massive disruptive change and have proved that this is economically viable, environmentally sustainable, and no brainer to be implemented.
00:29:54
Speaker
Cole Mannix and the Old Salt Cooperative, they are proving that creating regionalized meat systems whereby Montanans eat Montana meat is viable.
00:30:05
Speaker
Things don't have to be the way that they have been. We don't have to have crumbling rural economies. We don't have to have food systems in every state in America whereby 98% of the agricultural commodities we create leave the state and 90% of the commodities that we eat eat are imported from other places.
00:30:26
Speaker
It doesn't have to be that way. So sorry, that was my soapbox. I love it. A quote I really like is by David Graeber, the ultimate hidden and truth of the world is that is that it's something that we make and could just as easily make differently.
00:30:43
Speaker
You know, it is like we're trapped in this idea that like companies have to be profit maximizing, that things have to work a certain way. And it's an arbitrary set of rules that we've established and that we could shift or change. Like there's nothing God given about it.
00:31:01
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I love that David Graber quote as well. And I've used that in the past too. It really comes down to our capacity to imagine a different future and then take those steps to actually build it. And of course that takes like bravery and courage. It takes community effort. It takes systems thinking, but i don't know, what else am I going to do with my life?
00:31:23
Speaker
yeah Well, to finish us off, when you think about the future of food and clothing, what gives you hope? Particularly in this moment, it's the brands who we are partnering with this year, which I'm excited to talk about more once their products launch.
00:31:41
Speaker
They are highly respected, i think, beacons in the fashion industry. And so to see their commitment to what we're doing, I think signals like what is that coming conversation in fashion that this is not only a good idea, but it economically makes sense. So that gives me great hope.
00:32:04
Speaker
I just spent a couple of days in Maryland with the Steward team. Steward is an agricultural lender. They are also one of the financial supporters of the Old Salt Cooperative. And I learned from their team, if we were to come back to the economics, because it is what drives everything in our world.
00:32:26
Speaker
I'm also saying this prior to going to RFSI again this year, where a lot of the capital allocators are going to be. And I know a lot of them. And there's a lot of talk. about funding the space. And I'm still waiting to see where the money is really moving. But what was so wonderful in being with the Stewart team is that they have a platform in which a person like you or I can invest as little as $100 into an agricultural community project.
00:32:57
Speaker
And they have a couple thousand people who are using their platform. Some of them invest in projects every time. Some of them shoot projects here or there. Some of them invest a little bit and some of them invest a lot.
00:33:09
Speaker
But this year they're on track to move $70 million dollars to agriculture products, you know, through just a decentralized investment platform. So again, things don't have to rely on a VC model. We don't have to rely on this old version of capital allocation that is in a lot of ways very inefficient and right now isn't actually capitalizing in a very aggressive manner in the way that we need to see it in the regenerative agriculture sector.
00:33:39
Speaker
There is such power in numbers where people like you and I can put our money into projects, into local banks, into institutions. We can move our pension funds from who knows where. Like most people out in the world who have a pension fund, do you know how it's being invested for you? Because you're allowed to know and you're allowed to decide where your pension funds go.
00:34:05
Speaker
All these sorts of things and the people who are working in these spaces really inspire me. And while it feels like far and few between, it's very powerful, very courageous people doing this on regional scales and I think massively disruptive ways that become beacons, which will shine a light on what is possible in these projects, whether it's in Hyde's or it's in meat, or it's in oats, or whatever it is, this can happen all around the country and all around the globe in a regionalized manner.
00:34:38
Speaker
That is an incredible way to to end. Thank you so much, Kate, for this conversation. It was really incredible. And I urge anyone that is interested to also go to your website and order some of your products.
00:34:52
Speaker
I actually got a birthday present from my sister from your website. I got the saddlebag. Oh, thank you. We launched pre-orders for the cowboy boots and they're shipping at the end of October. And then keep an eye out on the website because a bunch of new styles, new colors, new suede are all coming out this winter, which we're really excited about.
00:35:14
Speaker
That's awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you, Emma. Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexander Miller, who also wrote our theme song. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and leave us a comment on your podcast app of choice.
00:35:29
Speaker
As a new podcast, it's crucial for helping us reach more people. You can visit agrarianfuturespod.com to join our email list for a heads up on upcoming episodes and bonus content.