In this week’s episode, we talk with Will Kornegay about how Ripe Revival is capturing food waste at the farm and providing access through subscriptions and outreach to people in rural food deserts.

An AI generated transcript is available for this episode.

Working on farms and having an entrepreneurial spirit go well together. Add in an interest in building connectivity between people growing food and those eating it and a passion for eastern North Carolina and you have a full picture of Will Kornegay, founder of Ripe Revival & Ripe Revival Market.

What food waste at the farm do they capture?

With a base in Rocky Mount, NC, Will has a network of farmers growing a really wide diversity of crops — bell peppers, cabbage, watermelons, cantaloupe, berries and of course the sweet potatoes that first piqued his interest.

Will says farmers have grown accustomed to planting and caring for crops throughout the year only to harvest a portion — sometimes as little as 50 percent because of some sort of cosmetic issue. That waste on the farm level doesn’t only take a toll on the farmer, but the ripple created on the economic and the environmental sides are hard too.

What is Ripe Revival?

Having worked on a sweet potato farm for several years, Will had a chance to see first-hand how much food waste at the farm could happen. A pepper gets sunburned or a spaghetti squash got scratched a bit and grocery stores know it won’t be sold as people pick the ones that look best. But Will knew the other things all have a great nutrition profile as well as taste.

He set about thinking about various ways that produce could be captured and made into something more attractive. And while he started with high protein gummies made out of the food that would have been wasted. And they have moved on to several more businesses since.

Pivoting during the Pandemic

Will was completing the investments to make those high protein gummies when covid began shutting things down. Suddenly a new product wasn’t as interesting to stores and suddenly the farmers in his area lost contracts with restaurants so they were facing more waste than ever. That’s when Will launch a produce box service. And while we’ve had farmers who previously did this (including avocado farmers and tomato farmers), Will’s ongoing commitment to reducing food waste makes it different.

He not only started doing produce boxes for people who weren’t able to find produce at their local grocery. He’s building that service out to add meat, allow for choices among products and farms and more. And he also got grants to get food to some of the people in greatest need. And he continues to build more programs for the rural poor.

Serving the Community

Finding a win for the farmers and rural poor in the area is a major thrust for Ripe Revival. The team has purchased farm equipment and is working with schools and non-profits to plan and plant gardens and is converting buses to serve as mobile markets bringing produce to the rural food deserts in the area, having a team that teaches about nutrition and cooking and more.

Learn More about Ripe Revival

You can follow along as the business continues to grow by connecting with Ripe Revival online.

• Ripe Revival on LinkedIn
• Ripe Revival on Instagram
• Ripe Revival on Facebook
• RipeRevival.com and RipeRevivalMarket.com

The post Capturing Food Waste at the Farm & Providing Access to More Nutrition appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

This post about a sustainable dairy farm is sponsored by Midwest Dairy. I was compensated for my time, but all wording and opinions are mine.

In the first podcast I posted, background on how my love of discovery about the environmental side of farming led me to spend my entire career in agriculture. And I love learning more. There are always new things to see and do. So when I was invited out to see a dairy farm just an hour from home, I jumped at it. That’s how I ended up spending the day at the Riegel’s Dairy Farm outside of St. Louis with Brian Riegel giving us a tour and talking through everything.

Since I’ve been to several dairy farms in the past, some of the things that excite newcomers are a bit more familiar to me, but there is always something to get excited about. And this definitely proved the case while we were in the maternity barn.

Calf Just Born

We saw a calf that had just been born — mom was still cleaning it up and before long it had gotten up on it’s feet walking!

And then we realized she was getting ready to give birth to a twin! You can see the hooves, below. But quite frankly the cow was so focused on the first calf that she wasn’t trying to push this one out. The new one was born about 20 minutes later I hear, and both are healthy & were up walking around.

Looking at the Dairy Barns

Walking around, it was easy to notice how much the barns are thought through. The maternity barn had areas where the farm team could separate a cow that’s ready to give birth from the others, When a new calf is born, Brian explained, the momma cow can perceive others (cows, people, etc) as a threat to the calf so more privacy is warranted.

Cows that are currently being milked are in another barn nearby, with ready access to the milking parlor. And their day is focused on a good bit of eating and hanging out. We saw cows chilling on beds of sand and a flush of water came through to wash the manure to a lagoon that is monitored and will go back onto the farm’s land to fertilize the crops.

If you look closely you see cows laying down on sand beds in the background, while a flush of water pushes manure toward the lagoon.

Brian talked about how it’s a circle of sustainability. The manure feeds the crops which feed the cows. That’s part of upcycling but there was a lot more when we got into the various kinds of feed grown or supplied to the cows.

Sustainable Feeds the Riegels Use

Dairy farmers are big on nutrition, making sure the cows are getting a balanced diet that really suits the calf or cow where they are. He talks to us about what cows eat and why.

Brian points out that with the ruminant’s stomach, they need a lot of ruffage. People use various types of feed to cover that, his farm grows corn for silage which offers a lot of fiber and energy for the cows according to the University of Nebraska.  Silage is a way of taking the entire corn plant (leaves, corn cobs, etc), shredding it up to smaller pieces and fermenting it under tarps and tracking its quality. And that fermenting process encourages the growth of good bacteria for the cow’s digestive system.

Brian took a handful of the silage to show us. The smell clearly lets you know immediately it’s fermented! Not many in our group wanted to eat it though!

As we walked around, he showed us some of the other components of feed that he doesn’t produce. And several of them are left over from making things people like, that seems like a core sustainable dairy practice.

One component that grabs the attention of beer drinkers is brewer’s grain! It’s sent to farms wet and was pretty warm to the touch. But being so close to St. Louis, Brian said there is a lot of brewer’s grain readily available and experts point to the benefits of the high protein content it offers a cow’s diet. Love that it gets upcycled rather than trashed — that protein goes back into cows making milk for my high protein yogurts and all. When we talked to the guys about farming connections at a brewery, I forgot to even ask about this!

They also use some of the byproducts from a plant that makes grits, not sure a lot of folks in the Midwest eat grits, but down south, I’m guessing there is plenty to dispose of. Brian said it’s a bit dustier than most hominy but it’s similar. I missed snagging a photo of it though.

The last of the food waste type byproducts Brian showed us that his farm upcycles is cottonseed. Cottonseed provides cows with energy and protein as well as some fiber! Everyone got photos of cottonseed! And it’s my favorite — I mean I have been JPlovesCOTTON on Twitter for more than a decade and started blogging in what became Hundred Percent Cotton! Of course Grounded by the Farm (podcast/website/social media) is sort of a combination of so many of those ideas.

All of this stuff gets mixed together with a big machine that delivers it to the cows throughout the day. And the cows enjoy it!

Lots of Sustainable Dairy Farmers

I’ve seen lots of other farmers who do similar kinds of upcycling and love that frequently different parts of the country have some different things that fit a cow’s needs. For instance, dairy cows in Florida get citrus pulp that’s left over from making orange juice and things! And according, to the info Midwest Dairy gave me, that means up to 306 million pounds of food waste can be captured and used by dairies, keeping it from going to landfills. They have a video that captures some of the other sustainable dairy pieces too.

The post How a Sustainable Dairy Farm Upcycles Things to Produce Great Milk appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

Peppers are a food that spark a lot of passion and nowhere is that more clear than with Bailey Farms. Randy Bailey started the farm in Oxford, NC as a young adult knowing how much he enjoyed the spicy foods a friend’s mom cooked. That was in the 1980s and American food culture has certainly embraced the various Latin foods and the specialty peppers category has grown with grocery stores and farms like the Baileys’. They grow a beautiful range of peppers as you can see in the video tour of their facility.

I first met Randy, Debbie and their young son Ryan on the family’s Bonita Springs, Florida farm that enables them to get multiple growing seasons in a year. My memory is strong because I smelled the poblanos and almost immediately craved a chili relleno! In fact, the memory of that alone made me go to a nearby taqueria the day I was editing this episode of the podcast!

To me it was a physical sensation and while I feel certain it was a natural high, Randy said it was probably the combination of memory and the fragrance of poblanos. While that strikes a note for me and Randy agrees there is nothing bad about a poblano — meat, cheese and a pepper, what’s not to like? He keeps serrano peppers in his pocket frequently just to add a bit of flavor to a burger or whatever.

How Bailey Farms Started Growing Peppers

When they first started, they would grow the 3-4 months the North Carolina farm let them grow. And they wanted to grow so they started contracting with other farmers. Eventually they also bought farms in Florida. The Baileys grow, pack and distribute peppers to get them to retailers and more.

Randy’s dad loved farming although he worked professionally as a chemist. But his passion for agriculture and Randy’s love of the spicy foods a friend’s mom made, led them to specializing in peppers. His best friend growing up had parent’s who immigrated from Mexico and it wasn’t as common in the eastern US.

As the US demographics shifted in the 90s, Bailey Farms grew with it, selling more peppers and a wider range of specialty peppers. More recently, a diverse flavor palate and some of the impacts of social media have fueled more growth.

Fresh Market & Reducing Food Waste

While the Baileys are focused on fresh market peppers — the kind we all buy in the produce section of our local grocery — they also look for innovative ways to reduce food waste.

They have secondary markets that take some of the peppers with stress marks on the fruit and with some of the damaged peppers, they have been making hot sauce. He laughs and points out that is a crowded segment but it is a ways to cook up some of the peppers that would otherwise not be used. They also do some dried peppers with a cooperator.

And at times, when they have more inventory than the market needs, product gets donated to the local food banks, providing residents in need with fresh produce. I actually spent time in a Feeding America site in Florida to cull damaged product a few years ago.

A Range of Specialty Peppers

Randy laughs and says he and Debbie go in phases with how they use peppers at home. Right now they are eating low carb so they stuff a lot of peppers. They do a cheese steak stuffed, cheeseburger stuffed, Mexican stuffed… all kinds of things. They have more than 4,000 recipes on how to use specialty peppers on their website BaileyFarmsInc.com so they always have ideas!

Specialty peppers include a range of flavors and heat and Randy points out the Baileys do a number of sweet peppers as well as the hotter ones.

The Scoville scale was introduced about a hundred years ago to help people understand the spicy heat peppers have. Since the 1980s, lab testing has brought a depth of scientific knowledge to the scale. Jalapeños are 2,000-8,000 units on the scale. Habaneros are 100,000 to 300,000 but there are some hybrids that have lower heat and yet the flavor. The ghost peppers and Carolina Reapers really leave those in the dust.

Peppers is a growing category. Green peppers are high in vitamin c. And the red and yellows are high in vitamin a which is good for eyesight.

And the Baileys are always looking for the next thing. He says they currently have close to 200 varieties/hybrids they are looking at in the field. There is a lot of breeding in peppers — more than ever before. They look for product taste, productivity, flavor and more. He is excited to have a new sweet pepper with habanero background in it. It’s only a single color and the color diversity is so nice. Has a great crunch!

Universities and private companies are really moving things along to develop new peppers faster. For home gardeners, the All-America Selections typically are widely adapted for a variety of growing regions. (One of my favorites to grow at home is the Sweet Sunset.)

Lots of Logistics when Growing Peppers in Multiple States

Having farms in multiple states presents a few challenges Randy says — the biggest come as you transition working from one state to another. He can find his farm work wrapping up at one place, going full steam at another and just beginning in a third location.

They begin harvesting specialty peppers in October on some farms and keep transitioning through late spring. They plant 22 weeks straight at the farm in South Florida to keep harvest rolling in. The supply chain is hard, but mother nature also throws a wrench or two into it now and then. They don’t ever want to find a customer order they can’t meet.

They ship to around 10,000 grocery stores throughout the southeast, northeast and midwest.

Using Integrated Methods to Control Pests

Growing peppers by acres rather than plants presents farmers with some different challenges than home gardeners, Randy says. They do what they can to keep the beneficial insects by planting other things like sunflowers that can attract the damaging pests away from the peppers or can help provide hosts for the good bugs.

There are a lot of diseases, insects and more that will eat plants… Randy points out that even deer can present issues in the field. They try to find the least invasive ways to control all pests and have even gone to trying air cannons and erecting fences!

With all of that, weather and labor are two of the biggest challenges vegetable farmers like Randy face. Weather has always been weather but labor is the worst it has ever been he says.

Some local help works with the Baileys but the seasonality means recruiting workers and sponsoring H2A visas for them. The hand harvesting comes with red tape and costs. The cost of doing that and competing on a global market with farmers in places that don’t pay US wage rates.

If Florida gets cold or a hurricane takes out some of the market, the Baileys import product to cover orders.

Links to Learn More about Specialty Peppers

Video of Bailey Farms peppers on farm, packing and shipping

Scoville scale:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale

Bailey Farms website:  baileyfarmsinc.com

Bailey Farms Instagram

Bailey Farms on Facebook

The post How Americans Love of Spicy Food Gave Specialty Peppers Room to Grow appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.