061: Regenerative Farming with Jennifer Maynard

Regenerative farming: what is it and why does it matter? Our special guest today will explain all! Joining us is Jennifer Maynard, who has 20+ years of experience in biotech and pharmaceutical specialty medicine. But she believes in food as medicine first and foremost, which led her to found Greater Greens and Nutrition for Longevity. The first is a regenerative organic farm and the latter is a company focused on bringing nutritionally-tailored meals to the masses.

Today on Awesome Health we’re talking about some of the issues around commercially-grown products, the risk of malnutrition, and how important food is in its natural state to support all of us in living long, strong and overall healthy lives.

We begin with Jennifer’s background story; she grew up in a remote part of Alaska before her family moved to southern California to be closer to the rest of their family. After their move, Jennifer’s uncle was diagnosed with HIV and she was by his side through his illness. Ultimately, he would lose his battle and his loss would have a long-lasting impact on her.

As she watched him suffer, she felt hopeless: something she didn’t want other people to feel. So she majored pre-med microbiology in college, with a focus on biotech. From there she committed herself to specialty medicine, especially areas like hematology, oncology, and ophthalmology.

Her career accelerated and she soon found herself in executive roles, and that’s when she began to get a broader view of the industry. She could see these fields were making strides in treating acute illnesses but data told her they were going backwards in terms of chronic illnesses. She’s always been committed to living a healthy lifestyle, but she also knows how hard it is to do so in the US. There’s a lot of misinformation out there and she wanted to change that..

Jennifer goes on to explain why she quit her job, and focused on farming and making healthy food more accessible to everyone.

We also dive into sustainable and environmentally-friendly farming, what a holobiome is and why it matters plus how soil may actually help relieve stress. There’s so much fascinating information on this show; Jennifer really shares her insights and knowledge so join us to hear it all on episode 61 of Awesome Health!

Episode Resources:

• Nutrition for Longevity Website: https://nutritionforlongevity.com/
• Nutrition for Longevity on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nutritionforlongevity/
• Nutrition for Longevity on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nflongevity/
• The Longevity Diet by Valter Longo

Read The Episode Transcript:

Wade Lightheart: Good morning. Good afternoon. And good evening. It's Wade T Lightheart from BiOptimizers with another episode of the Awesome Health Podcast. We're going to talk about a topic today that I think is so critical, so important, especially at this massive time of uncertainty. And that is regenerative farming. Today we're going to talk about some of the issues around commercially grown products, the risk of malnutrition especially during this period of global isolation and how important it is to restore your food to its natural state, to support living long, living strong and overall health. Our special guest today is Jennifer Maynard, and she has worked in biotech and pharmaceutical specialty medicine areas for over 20 years. And you're going, wait a minute. What is someone in biotech doing in farming? Well, we're going to tell you what's going to happen and share with you. After putting a couple 20 years of in changing people's lives and modern medicine, she thought her experience, would better focused on food as medicine.

Wade Lightheart: Let medicine be your food and food, be your medicine. So guess what she did. She switched gears and found it greater greens, a regenerative organic farm as the first step to bringing this movement front and center to help focus on the root of our health challenges. And of course, we're a big fan of looking at the root causes in living long, living strong, living, healthy living the biologically optimized ways. Now she is also co-founded nutrition for longevity. I've farmed a fork, no kidding company that focuses on bringing nutritionally tailored meals to the masses direct from their farm. How cool is that? And she's also an author and she has nutrition for longevity, a team that creates delicious dishes that are tasty as they are nutritious. So whether you're a vegan or a pescatarian, you can get meal plans that provide three meals a day and take no longer than 30 minutes to prepare. And the food arrives in sustainable, compostable packaging. Wow, Jennifer, welcome to the show.

Jennifer Maynard: Thanks for having me.

Wade Lightheart: You've got a lot of things go here. Let's get a little bit of background. How does someone that's inside the biotech and pharmaceutical industry end up running a farm? This is a good stuff. And I think two things, one, I'm curious about how that story happens. So maybe give us a little background of how you got into that then in why the switch. Second thing is super commendable that you've made such a pivot. Obviously to get into the biotech fields is not easy. This is hard, this is a tough field to make that kind of pivot. Well, how did that happen?

Jennifer Maynard: I like to think that I kind of went full circle. I grew up and was raised in a farmstead in Alaska. So in a really small remote fishing village and we pretty much raised all of our own,animals, food, everything, ind of lived with nature for nature. Then we moved to Southern California and obviously that was a huge shift from the remote area of Alaska. A lot of our family lived in Southern California. We have a very large family. So we just decided we're gonna move. We're gonna be closer to family. We were within a few blocks of our relatives,  very tight family.

Jennifer Maynard: And in the eighties, my uncle actually was diagnosed with HIV and then eventually lost his battle with AIDS. And I was young and very involved in his care taking and kind of seeing how his decline affected him and that there was really no standard of medicine for that type of specialty illness or specialty medicine area. And I really felt like he suffered more than he should have and that there was a lot we couldn't do, and I felt really hopeless and I'm not one to usually feel hopeless. I usually want to be able to do something about it. I really fell in love with science. What can I do to make sure this doesn't happen to someone else I love and be really informed and educated so I can help make decisions. I was premed microbiology focusing in that area in biotech right when I was in college, very first company MGN, GN tech all of them were really starting to come to the surface.

Jennifer Maynard: And I thought, maybe this is the solution to modern medicine and solving modern illnesses like this. So I moved into that field and I worked in specialty medicine and in hematology, oncology, ophthalmology and I was really passionate about it. And I saw a major progress if you look at where we were in the eighties with HIV and AIDS and where we are today, I just think there's certain illnesses that modern medicine is really essential for and making good progress. But as I moved up into an executive level over the 20 years you get a broader sense of the industry and how we're affecting overall human health. And that's where I felt like you can't really ignore that. At least in my opinion of what I see from the data that we're taking steps backwards when it comes to chronic illness.

Jennifer Maynard: So maybe acute illness we're making strides forward, maybe some of these really specialty areas, we're making incredible progress. But if you look at 80% of it, we're really not affecting it in the way we could. And I've always lived very myself with healthy food active lifestyle. I've always been very active and athlete in college. And I thought, I'm living this, but so many people are not, and it's hard and it shouldn't be hard. It shouldn't be hard to eat healthy, but in the US it's extremely hard. There's so much misinformation out there. And then farming, which I'm really passionate about. I've always almost my whole life growing my own food. I thought, why should this not be accessible to more people? And why is our food model is so broken? And so what I decided to do is to quit my job completely.

Jennifer Maynard: And me and my husband, we moved, we were living in Switzerland and we moved back to the US and bought a farm. And the first year my husband and I completely started the farm from scratch. It was just the two of us. It was an incredible journey. It was therapeutic. It was inspiring even for us and a lot of hard work. And so it gave us this completely different appreciation. It's not that we haven't farmed, but obviously we scaled it a lot, a lot larger. And I think the one key thing with farming is no matter how much you research it and how much you've done it every year as a new learning experience, any farmer will tell you that you have new challenges every year, especially as an organic farmer. But to go through that was just incredible.

Jennifer Maynard: And then we said, okay, step two, how do we create a supply chain that can get that to the masses? So it really was a complete, like complete flip back to actually where I believe I came from, which was that more holistic way of living with nature and for nature, and then finding ways to do that for the rest of the population and really provide better education. So people would know where's their food coming from? Why is it important to grow food in a certain way? How is our current modern farming practices being really destructive, not just for food, but the environment and what can we do to bring that whole industry forward? So that's been a big passion of mine is to be part of moving that industry for the farming industry, but also the healthcare industry.

Jennifer Maynard: Both of those are not sustainable longterm. If you look environmentally farming is an issue also financially sustainably, it's an issue. Farmers are one of the highest suicide rate professions in the world. Most people don't know that, it's actually the number one suicide profession, and most farms are severely in debt. So the whole model is not working. It's not working for the farmers, it's not working for our food model. And then if you look on the healthcare side, you know, with the baby boomer population shifting, we will bankrupt our healthcare system if we don't make dramatic changes. So I just felt like we need to start putting our money where our mouth is and start really taking more aggressive actions towards that. So I did a big change, but I haven't looked back and I'm really excited with the momentum we're building and what we've kind of created.

Wade Lightheart: It's an, it's an incredible journey from Alaska to Southern California, to Switzerland, to New Jersey. I couldn't really think of a much more diverse way to live life and then to be in tech and food. You mentioned something that was really important. I think this is something there's an opportunity that's happening obviously with the crisis that's going on in the world and all the uncertainty and the shift in technology, which is displacing workers and creating all these kinds of radical shifts. I'm from a small town in Canada. And what I've noticed is a trend of young and middle aged people moving to rural areas and starting farms. And they're buying these old farm that they can get for dirt cheap and land his teeth. And people like gave up farming 50 years ago, but here's this really great land and they're coming in and there's this, I would say this Renaissance in fascination about what it's like to get your hands into dirt, putting things up, seeing things grow, seeing the challenges that you talk about an organic garden, all of a sudden the blight comes, or you didn't get enough water or too much water.

Wade Lightheart: There's not enough sun, or that you didn't have the right minerals in the soil or all those, all these different things that you're doing, it's like a constant riddle that's evolving all the time. I would like you to explain for people, because I think there's a lot of people at that crossroads where they're like, Hey, you know what, maybe that's living in a condo cooped up under these conditions is not the way to live. Maybe there's something thanks to technology. We can live rurally and not really suffer from disconnection or lack of professional opportunities. What was that like for you? Like how did you make the decision to make that transition? Like at what point did you step in what came up for you? Was there a fear? Was there excitement and then all of a sudden you let go of it all. And then you're was like, I got my overhauls on and I got my hat on. I got the old farmer tan, I got my hands on the dirt. The bugs are biting me. What am I doing?

Jennifer Maynard: I think me and my husband, my family talked about it for a while, but we really decided we wanted to fast track it and do it. And I'm one of those people. Once I decide on something, it's kind of, there's not a whole lot of convincing me otherwise. There was like a month time where I just said, this is it. We're going to really scope it out and have this plan. I will say the day I quit my job was a very nerve wracking day, walking away from a 20 year career with a plan to become a farmer. Every single person I know, except for one , said, you're out of your mind what are you doing? You've built this career super successful. But I knew it's what I wanted to do.

Jennifer Maynard: And I didn't care. And I had one person that I really value as a mentor. And he said, if everyone's saying, you're crazy, you're doing the right thing. So keep going. And luckily I listened to that voice a little bit more cause yeah, we literally packed up. It's not that we didn't plan it out, but we packed up within a month. We moved, we had already purchased the farm actually from Switzerland. We came once or twice, but we knew it's what we wanted to do. And we had researched it actually for a long time cause we also had integrated aquaponics and some different things like that do take a lot of planning behind them. I would say after that point, there was no more fear and you know, it's always the feeling if are we going to have enough money?

Jennifer Maynard: Is it going to stretch? Are we going to be able to build this business? I really knew it was going to happen and it was going to move forward. So after that, I would say it was just a matter of laying it out, making sure we hit our timelines, that we did the things that we wanted to achieve. So we could create not just a farm, it was never about a farm, but that we could create a food model that then could be scaled because our mission is not just to have our farm in New Jersey. We're scaling now to other farms across the US and that's where again, I thought I could bring a lot to the industry cause I was a supply chain person. I spent a lot of time in logistics and operations on scaling and repeatability and farming is really complicated.

Jennifer Maynard: Every geography you move to, is totally different. The crops are different, but there are enough commonalities that you can create a model that can be scaled. That's what we've been focusing on. It's not just about growing super biodiverse. We have a very bio diverse farm, so it's a lot of different crops. So it even adds to the complexity, but there's that, then creating this completely replicable model that we can move into these other regions and even documenting it into procedures and things like that. It was a big change, but I would say I absolutely loved it. It brought me back to my roots. It got me outside. I'm in the office more now, cause I'm running the meal kit side of the business, the overall business. And I hate that part of it. I want to be back on the farm.

Jennifer Maynard: It's my happy place. Like I, I go there, I still caretake the bees and do a few things that I haven't quite trained everyone else how to do yet. But that's what I love, the connection to nature and seeing things transform when you plant a seed in the ground and you see a live plant less than a month later. It's really rewarding. And you know, when the US was starting, 98% of the population was farmers back in the 1820s. And then now less than 1% are farmers. So we're very disconnected from our food. I loved that experience of getting reconnected and I think that's what draws lot of people. It's a fascinating process and there's so much going on behind it that just connecting with it is incredible.

Wade Lightheart: Yeah, totally amazing. You brought up a couple of things in that I think would be worth touching base on before we get into some of the books stuff and some intricacies of the farming business. And that is, you talked about Aquaponics and biodiversity. Now, can you share with our listeners what aquaponics is and maybe why this is perhaps one of the most fascinating areas of the farming industry?

Jennifer Maynard: Yes. So I, again, part of my background is, I am fascinated with technology and I do think it's important. And I feel like it's part of why organic farming hasn't moved forward faster with more momentum is there's been not a lot of innovation in that space. And I think there needs to be to make it more scalable than it is today. Innovation in a good way, though, it shouldn't be damaging biodiversity. It shouldn't be destroying the soil microbiome and things like that. But we do need to find ways that we can produce good quantities, good quality food for people across the globe. And part of the reason aquaponics was interesting to me is, I do think indoor farming does need to be invested in because we don't know what the future food's going to look like. Are we really going to run out of soil in 60 seasons?

Jennifer Maynard: Like they're predicting because we've damaged our soil too much. My farm shouldn't have a problem cause we're building our organic matter back, but a lot of farms will and you see it even in New Jersey, a lot of the farms are having to shift to crops that need less and less nutrients. So New Jersey is big on corn, but if you look at a lot of the regions are so depleted now. Now they've moved to soybeans which are even lower maintenance. And so they're having to literally shift to completely different crops that are the only things their soil can sustain. So you're seeing it even around, like we're seeing it around us. So it's a real issue. And if you look at areas like Dubai, you know, we're discussing things in other regions as well. They can't grow food in a lot of their deserts, but they have a huge growing population.

Jennifer Maynard: So how do you sustain that with sustainable agriculture? So we did a lot of work looking at, okay, what is the most sustainable indoor agriculture that you could do? And I was really fascinated with aquaponics because it creates this small ecosystem within a greenhouse. You can do it outside as well, but it's really beneficial inside and what it is, is you're growing a fish and the waste that the fish creates is actually feeding the plants. And then you have also denitrifying bacteria in there that break down that ammonia to something that can be absorbed by the plants cause direct ammonia would burn the plants. And so you have this incredible ecosystem of the fish healthy bacteria that doesn't hurt humans and the plants, which are all thriving together because the plants are then filtering that water and it's going back to the fish.

Jennifer Maynard: So it's from a water use standpoint, it uses only about 1% of water that a conventional farm would use because it recirculates it. And you're creating fish. We don't sell the fish as a crop, our pescatarian meals are not with our own fish, but it is a renewable resource in itself that it can also feed people in certain areas. And then for us, the focus is on the plants, if you look at it like a lot of vitamins, they're not as bioavailable for the body. And so you need to have supplements and vitamins that are bioavailable and they're higher quality. And then you can absorb that as in your human body. And you can do that with a lot of fruits and vegetables, more so than a lot of the pills that you buy that are difficult to absorb.

Jennifer Maynard: So plants are similar. If you look at a hydroponic system, they're almost overdosing the plants because they're not only able to absorb a certain amount of these synthetic chemicals, whereas aquaponics, it's a much more available nutrient that they're getting from the fish waste. So you see incredible growth. You see really low disease rates. We produce a huge amount of micro greens, herbs, lettuce greens, tomatoes in our greenhouse, much more than you would outside on a conventional farm. And we can do that year round in New Jersey, which is a nice supplement. Obviously you can have some rough weather. So we're investing in that. It's a small, if you look at the overall size of our farm, it's a very small portion of the farm, but the output is massive. And that's one thing that we are looking at. And we're trying to also bring that industry forward and even looking at areas that it can even bring more value like New Jersey, if you want your round produce, you do need solutions like that.

Jennifer Maynard: Obviously in places like Dubai, parts of Africa, it's even more valuable because they really can't grow much of anything outside in a lot of these regions. So I thought it was a really important part. It's something that I feel is important to move agriculture forward. The majority of the farm is a bio-diverse regenerative farms. So we're using all practices to rebuild the soil and the soil microbiome. The US on average used to have 11% soil organic matter in our soil, which is part of what builds up those nutrients. It's like a sponge and it holds in water. So every 1% of solar organic matter, you can hold about 170,000 gallons, more water per acre. So if you think about areas of California areas of drought, we could solve a lot of our food problems by just building up our soil organic matter, and it takes time, but it's not unsurmountable amounts of time.

Jennifer Maynard: Every year, you can build up about one to 1.5%. So organic matter if you use optimal practices to do that. And then if you look at the carbon store portion of it, which is the environmental,if you look the meta studies they've done in the unit at the United nations and different organizations, farming is the least costly, most effective way that we can start reversing climate change very quickly. And that's because soil is essentially a huge carbon store. We've lost two thirds of it into the atmosphere. So it again is like a big sponge that we can just pull carbon back into the soil from the atmosphere and start reversing climate change with the right practices. So that's all about building up that organic matter, which builds up soil structure. And it allows that sponge to start holding in water. It allows it to start creating an environment that microorganisms can thrive.

Jennifer Maynard: And then the biodiversity of the farm is really important because plants pass down a portion of their whole biome. They passed out a portion of their whole biome in their seed, which is really important because they can literally pass down hundreds of thousands, millions of years of genetics, essentially of their whole biome in their seed. But the rest of it, they actually are selecting from their environment. And if you have mono crops and you've used a lot of chemicals, you're damaged a lot of that soil microbiome. So the plants have less of that diversity that they can pull, pull in into their system. The whole biome to me is really fascinating, both on the human side and the plant side, because again, it's this holistic view of looking at farming and looking at the plant and looking at the soil and how it all works together. So we focus on that really heavily, both in the aquaponics side of things and the outside,more bio-intensive, egenerative side of farming as well.

Wade Lightheart: So talk about, I've never heard that term before. Holobiome. Can you spell that for us so we can put it in the show?

Jennifer Maynard: H O L O B I O M E.

Wade Lightheart: That's what I thought. I wasn't sure if it was a W or an H. So tell me, tell us about the holobiome. What is the holobiome?

Jennifer Maynard: If you take anything away from this discussion, the holobiome is probably one of the most fascinating things, and it's what has been, even from the beginning for me, it was about the microbiology, and I've always been fascinated with the microbiome, but the whole biome is a concept. A lot of people have never heard before, and I'll start with the plants and then I'll connect it to why it's important for humans. So plants have this holobiome and it's the collective DNA and RNA of not just the plant, but all of the organisms surrounding it.
Jennifer Maynard: So there's an air microbiome, for example. So plants have about a foot around them organisms that are actually in circling that plant. And they're actually communicating with the plant. And then there's five different microbiomes in the itself. The one we focus on the most is the part around the soil microbiome, which is called the rhizosphere microbiome. And that's where the main organisms within that soil microbiome are interacting with the plant. And you have to think of the rhizosphere microbiome as the immune system of a plant. It's communicating with its environment. And literally its microbiome is sending it signals on how to respond to stress that is either coming or already impacting the plant. So for example, if there's a drought condition, it may have organisms that it passed down in their seed that has been through drought before, and they're already communicating the plant. You need to send out, find a root fibers.

Jennifer Maynard: You need to actually send deeper roots down. So you can actually absorb more water and survive this drought because your ancestral plant survived it. And this is how they did it. If you think about that biodiversity than of the soil, microbiome is incredibly important because it's a stress coping mechanism of the plant it's essential to survival, and we're literally killing it with a lot of our modern farming practices. So the whole biome, you got to think of it as this entire network, more than 50% of the cells associated with a plant or non plant cells, similar to the human body. And they're helping it thrive if you allow it to. So if you see you create the right environment, so we have to stop thinking of things as these individual units, but as these complex systems that are communicating in this incredible way, and what a lot of people are surprised about is to find out that that holobiome is actually affecting the plant at a genetic level. It's actually affecting the way it's expressing its DNA.

Wade Lightheart: Would that be similar to human epigenetic risk?

Jennifer Maynard: Exactly. Genetics implants. So it's very similar. And if you look at how plants do it, it's examples like the root fibers that I was talking about that is a way of a plant expressing its genetics in a different way, but also things like the amount of phytonutrients that generates. So phytonutrients are the chemicals that plants are generating to respond to stress usually. And so, for example, maybe it's being attacked by an aphid. It'll produce these chemicals too, create maybe a more bitter flavor that will deter that insect. And a lot of these are associated with pigments. So blueberries, just because it's common, I'm going to give it into an example is really high in anthocyanins. It's what gives it that beautiful blue color. And it's also one of the highest phytonutrients, or it's also associated with it as an antioxidant, but it's incredibly beneficial to the human, even though it's created by the plant as a protective mechanism and bitter foods, even though they're not as common in our diet, we try to incorporate them in our diet because they're extremely healthy for your microbiome and your gut, but we've kind of taken them out of our palette.But there again, a lot of those phytochemicals that are really healthy for your body and they can actually encourage the same stress coping mechanisms in the human body as well, which is why there's all this crazy about phytonutrients and why they're so important in eating the rainbow.

Jennifer Maynard: That's because it's actually promoting those same stress coping mechanisms in the human body as they do in the plants. So the holobiome is really important and that's where we focus so much on trying to create healthy soil and why it's really frightening what's happening with our current farming practices because we're damaging a lot of that soil. We're damaging a lot of the biodiversity and we only understand about 1% of it. So if you look at what we understand about the human holobiome and the human body, you know, the soil equivalent of that is we understand about the big toe worth of what's going on under our feet. And we have to start understanding it more. And before we decimate it, we kind of understand that it's heavily connected to human health as well. So that's where we kind of are focusing so heavily on the regenerative practices, using compost, keeping the ground covered, using hedgerows, anything we can do to build up that biodiversity. We have this incredibly healthy soil that then feeds our plants and creates incredibly healthy plants that then translate over to feeding a healthy human. Iit's extremely fascinating. And I think it's something I would love people to take away and start understanding that things are so much bigger than just the plant and what you look at. There's so much more around the plant that makes up what it is.

Wade Lightheart: I think that you bring up a really good topic. I remember years ago I read a book called The Autobiography of A Yogi and inside that the title of the author Yogananda was meeting with an Indian scientist by the name of JC Bose. And JC Bose had developed a device called the cresocograph and the crescograph actually managed what could measure to amplify the energy systems of a plant. So a plant had feelings, it had a nervous system. It had a response that had a circulatory system just like humans, just at a microscopic level. So we had to amplify this and he could see it. And he did all these experiments which he documented in the book when Yogonanda went to see him. And then years later in California he dealt with the famous Luther Burbank and they developed a friendship.

Wade Lightheart: And what was fascinating about that story, about this holobiome is that Luther Burbank, who is famous for splicing different types of food to make better foods, but he was able to grow a cactus without spines and through talking to the plant over a period of years and convincing it that it didn't need spines and correct it. And he did it and he gave strips of that plant to Yogonanda. And I've actually seen the spinus spineless cactus on the grounds in California. And why I'm saying that is because here is definitive evidence, many like a hundred years ago that people who were integrated in the farming as you get your hands in the soil and you get them, and you're in this, you start to pick up the energy and communication and awareness of plants and their responses, and you get tuned into it.

Wade Lightheart: And we we've lost that. Like you said, 98% way back at the turn of the century, we're on farms and now less than 1%. And now it's industrialized, it's commercial, there's tractors, there's giant sprayers. You're not really connected to it in that. And then here you are telling me that the latest science is telling me that there's this holobiome and it's interacting with their seed and their gender. Like thesea are really radical components and why this information needs to get out to people. Why people wouldn't want to start growing their own gardens and experiencing these things and learning about this, how the heck can anybody learn about all this stuff? Like, how did you get started? Like, how are you in pharmaceutical biotech and all of a sudden you switched over and put your overalls on. And now you're talking about the holobiome like do you think the whole comparative, the tech career kind of give you insight that you can now apply in this area? Or was it something that just came organically from being in that environment?

Jennifer Maynard: I think it's both. I do think I look at things from a very scientific ens, but I think you have to have that creative side to go a little bit beyond that. Like, I'm not one of those people that only believes in what's in a book. And I think that's what I love about the longevity diet. And we can get into that in a minute. Is it started actually with people that already understood it, maybe not all the scientific proof behind it, but they understood what worked inherently passed down generation to generation. And then dr. Valter Longo researched why, and then he proved it with the science. And that's what I like about the holobiome is only understanding this when the human genome project happened and then they realized we have this whole human microbiome.

Jennifer Maynard: And then they realize we have this holobiome, which is mind blowing. A lot of people that we also have about a foot around us if bacteria, like in circling us that are actually making critical decisions of how we gauge other people and interact with even other human beings and other animals and the smells that we like they're literally making decisions. And we're just starting to understand that. So then we started understanding about the human body and a lot of scientists. Well, this is really fascinating how similar our plants, like you said, a hundred years ago already, people were looking at that, but now they have the ability to actually sequence that and look at how much diversity is now associated with that plant that are non plant cells and going. Holy cow, these are impacting all these metabolic pathways.

Jennifer Maynard: These are impacting these genetic expressions. Like this is so much more complex than we ever understood. So for me, it's just fascinating. I'm fascinated by it. It just draws me into it. And then the more you understand it, then where you realize why for us or organic farm is thriving. And we had a lot of farms around us that had massive flooding last year. They had huge amounts of powdery, mildew and different issues. And they were spraying like crazy. I even had one of the conventional farmers come over and go, I wish I had been organic. I spent 10 grand on chemicals and I still lost my whole crop. And you guys are over here, like digging in the soil and all your stuff looks great, but you know, we are building up that resilience in that, that stress resistance.

Jennifer Maynard: And when you start to see it, and also some of our plants are really stronger in flavor. People are like, I haven't tasted something that's flavorful. Your asparagus is amazing, or this is amazing. And it's those phytonutrients. And it's actually having nutrient rich produce that isn't picked early for shipping logistics reasons and gassed at a local location. And, you know, it's not grown using chemical fertilizers, but we're building up the soil to be able to give those nutrients by themselves. So I think part of it was just this fascination with it and wanting to understand it, but then seeing it and going, okay, this makes sense. I want to learn more. I think there's just more available than there was before. I mean, this is a really new field only in the last five years. Did you ever hear holobiome?

Jennifer Maynard: It's only just starting to get researched and there's so much more that's coming. It's just a really incredible field. I think it's important to start making that connection also scientifically cause some people don't believe it until they see it as proven fact. And there's so much debate out there is plant based, eating healthy is this healthy. I think the proof behind it then stops the debate and then we start focusing on the right things. Tat's what I think is important about proving it with science is it stops the debate. Everyone comes on board and then we can actually progress as affirming community as a healthcare community.

Wade Lightheart: Before we get into longevity, I would want to tie up one loose end on this. You're bringing stuff from farm to fork. Cause you were talked about the difference in the flavor and you know, the taste and the nutrient quality and stuff. So how are you doing that now? And maybe what is the expansion plan? Cause obviously you're talking about scaling and stuff. How can you explain that whole process? Why that's important and why that's been successful?

Jennifer Maynard: Yeah, absolutely. So one of my passions, like I said, was to start the farm first. I was always adamant that I wanted to address some of the challenges in the food industry. And one of them is logistics. A lot of my background's in operations and logistics and compliance, and it is a challenge with food. How do you get food ultra fresh to people's doors essentially, or to a farmer's market or whatever at its peak ripeness and not have it already degrading its nutrients too quickly. And it is complicated. And so I thought if I manage the farm and I manage the operation, I cut out the middleman, which is time and money. And so we can make this more affordable and we can do it faster. So we literally, in our planning confirm orders 24 hours before the farm gets their plan.

Jennifer Maynard: They harvest that next morning and we're already getting that meal and shipping it out. So we literally kind of joke that it's like lightning speed, but we made sure all of our logistics were like our warehouse where we do the kitting is only 10 minutes from the farm. And we pick our farms for a very specific reason. We do what we call farming on the fringe. We always are on the outskirts of a major metropolitan area. There's a lot of reasons for that. It's also for soil fertility reasons, we built our cities on top of the most fertile soil. The problem is with urban sprawl, can we just keep pushing the firms out of less and less and less fertile soil? So we're really adamant of where we pick our farms to begin with because even though the soil may not be perfect, we can get it to its optimal and it's already, it's already.

Jennifer Maynard: There's a lot of reasons why we set up our logistics the way we do, but we make sure it's right next to each other. And that we have really clear communications that we can get it there as quickly as possible. Not everything obviously, right. We don't produce grain on our farms. So if we're getting rice, we are buying that from a supplier. We make sure it's also organic and regenerative grown. We specialize in vegetable production, bio-diverse vegetable production. So some of our stuff or coffee or all of what we get from very, very special places that it is grown in the most sustainable ways, but the produce is what we focus on. And that's what you try to get as fresh as possible because you know, most proud is like a tomato in an average grocery store is six weeks old by the time you get it. And it was picked totally green. This used to blow me away.

Jennifer Maynard: We grew up around some farms even in Southern California and we knew them really well. And they'd say if you guys want to make pesticides you can go in and help yourself to the tomatoes that are left in the field and you'd go out there and it's just loaded with red tomatoes. And I was like, what's wrong with all these? So the best, most prime tomatoes are the ones they leave, they leave and they just end up like tilling them in. And we're like filling of our truck and coming from Alaska, you never waste anything. So we're just like, Oh my gosh, this is so much waste. Ubut that's what we wanted to change because obviously if you're not letting a plant get to its right this stage, it's probably not at its best nutrient levels.

Jennifer Maynard: And then obviously once you pick that, it's starting to degrade. So we want it to be as fresh possible, still with its peak nutrients. And people can taste it. You can tell the difference. You know, we have people say, this is like the way it used to taste when my grandma got stuff out of her garden when I was a kid and that's what we want. And I mean, I encourage people. If you can grow your own food, do that first. Don't buy my food. I encourage everyone grow some herbs on your window. So if you can, not just because it's fresh and healthy, but you're connecting with that plan. It's so important to connect with plants. We've lost so much connection to our food just to smell and get your salivary glands going. Like there's a whole pre digestion that happens that we don't even allow to happen anymore.

Jennifer Maynard: And if you look even at the primitive side of humans, we used to be able to really under stress, even select what crops we needed by the smell, by the color cause of the fighter nutrients. So when you're under stress, you actually see a narrow spectrum of color that should attract you to right red and bright blue things like blueberries and acai berries and the things that are super high in phytonutrients. And you know, now we have red food coloring that dyes these heart shaped cookies and we don't even know our bodies don't even know what that is anymore. We really want people to reconnect,smell and taste and, and touch what real produce is. So your body can reconnect and start to learn what it needs again.

Wade Lightheart: Turn on some of those epigenetic components that are lying dormant within our skin, there is an activation as soon as you start growing. So there's some kind of thing that shifts in your awareness and your consciousness, right?
Jennifer Maynard: Yeah, absolutely. Well, they're actually doing studies now that it's not even just about the plants, it's about the soil. They're doing studies of direct soil microbiomes with people with PTSD, that it actually is triggering stress coping mechanisms just because of what's in the soil. It's suggesting everyone eat dirt, but I mean, there is something about getting your hands dirty and having your kids play in the dirt because there is beneficial thing. There's also ones you gotta watch out for, but there's a lot of beneficial organisms in there. And that's, again, this holobiome concept that there's a lot more going on around us than we realize every single second of every single day.

Wade Lightheart: I have a friend who is a very successful theoretical physicist and inventor. And he spent 20 years planting trees. And he said to me, one time he said almost all of my best ideas happen when my hands are in the soil. There's some sort of activation where my hands are in the soil that I get these information components. And he talked about that. Andi've heard this in many of the first nations population talking about, you know, they would refer to the spirits or these connections. And it's just a way of languaging. Something that we can actually experience when we're connected to our food and to our soil. I've experienced it on a small degree to myself. Absolutely. Let's talk about the longevity diet because we're gonna switch gears a little bit.

Wade Lightheart: I see the book in your background there. And I think William or I think it was a professor Oshinsky in the new England journal of medicine about 10 years ago, 12, 13 years ago reported that the disability adjusted life expectancy for humans has now down about 60 years old North American. When that means is that you are going to be with some chronic medical condition or something that compromises your life for the rest of your life. You're on prescriptions, whatever. Andwhat was interesting is he was forced to curtail his other conclusions. And that was that the life expectancy for Americans was actually dropping due to the negative side effects of the industrialization and technological location of society for lack of a better word. I don't even know what's a word. And he had to curtail that. And now over the last few years, we've actually seen a drop, oftentimes the opioid crisis and addiction to drugs and chemicals that are supposed to help us over things are now driving down life expectancy. What have you found and are sharing in your book, The Longevity Diet, and why is that so important in regards to living long, but also the what's called the health span is maybe we can't live longer overall as we've moved there's genetic limits or whatever, but you know, what is the quality of life?

Jennifer Maynard: The book was actually written by dr. Valter Longo. He's a leading scientist in the longevity region, he's who we collaborated with to start nutrition for longevity. I was absolutely fascinated with the research that he did and, and that he started looking at people, like I said, that already seemed to inherently understand and pass it down generation to generation. So he went to these longevity regions like Sardinia in Italy, Calabria in Italy. And he said, okay, what is it about these places that it is making it work? So he researched everything he could about their overall lifestyle, not just the food, but their overall lifestyle. He found from a food standpoint or related to food to really key insights that I think have changed the perspective of longevity dramatically. And then after he found those two things, he dug into it at pretty much the most scientific clinical level that you could to prove why it was working.

Jennifer Maynard: And he really started identifying the longevity genes that were allowing these areas to thrive. So we found two things. He found exact kind of macro ratios and similarities between every single region and how they ate, so their feeding habits. And then he found that they also had fasting habits, every single one of them, that was really something that they built. They pass down either from religious reasons, holidays, whatever they had pass these down. And so he started trying to understand, basically they practice circadian rhythm, intermittent fasting every single day. So their bodies are on this incredible rhythm. And we don't allow them in the US where we're literally have access to food and entertainment 24 seven. So we never letting our bodies have cortisol spike throughout the day. And then it wind down and your melatonin goingup, we don't get into that rhythm.

Jennifer Maynard: So we don't have great sleep. We have a lot of weight gain cause our bodies never have that time that they can decompress and work on cellular regeneration instead of still digesting food and all these other things. We don't let our bodies getting this rhythm. And then they usually a few times a year do a prolonged fast, whether it's a water fast, he's designed a diet that you can still have some level of food. So it's a very controlled simulated prolonged fast as he calls it. And that's where they saw the biggest cellular regeneration. So these places, again may have done it for religious reasons, but they do these prolonged fast, which mainly means beyond three days, which is when your body really goes into deep kurtosis and that's when your cells start to clean themselves up, right?
Jennifer Maynard: If you look at your DNA, it's like a rope and it starts to unravel on the ends the more you beat it up. And we trust me with all our environmental toxins and the way we stress our bodies out, it's unraveling on the ends. And so what happens when we trigger our longevity genes is they go in and they can be fixed. Let's repair it. That can be fixed. We need to just tear it apart and start all over again. And so it does that and it goes through and does the cleanup, and then you see this huge boost in your cellular regeneration. And so that's what prolonged fasting does. And then the food sideI think there's two key things that people need to really understand about the American diet is we're overdosing ourselves on protein. We eat about 50 grams, more protein on average, a day in the US than we actually need.

Jennifer Maynard: And that's recommended even though it's a huge concern for people, am I getting enough protein? And it is important to get good, clean, healthy protein. It's absolutely essential. It's the building block of your DNA, but it's also essential that you're not overdoing it with especially unhealthy meats and then sugar refined sugars. We also eat about 50 grams more a day than we need of sugar. And that's about 58 pounds a year of sugar that we're putting in our bodies. And what's crazy about those two things is both of them trigger an acceleration of your aging. So they actually trigger aging genes. So the fasting and eating certain foods high in nutrients can actually slow down and trigger your anti-aging genes and this cellular repair, but then you have foods that are actually accelerating it. And the thing was sugar is not only is it accelerating these aging genes that we now know for sure scientifically are creating aging and cellular damage, but it also blocksdifferent factors that would help with oxidation.

Jennifer Maynard: So all of your antioxidant type of activity that's happening in your body, you're actually shutting that down. So what he did is looked that they're eating a mainly plant based diet. Only one in 10 Americans are even eating the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables in the US they're eating way more than even that. So probably if one in 10 are eating five to six servings, they're eating closer to 10. So they're getting a lot of fiber. They're getting a lot of natural phytonutrients into their bodies, and then they're practicing intermittent fasting daily and then prolonged fasting. And so what he did is he even took that to a whole other level and said, okay, what is aging in the human body? And what is health span? Because it's not just about living longer, it's about living healthy longer. So he wanted to change that perspective and say, how do we improve our health span, we're living at our prime longer.

Jennifer Maynard: So we're mobile. We have great cognitive ability and he realized these same things were linked to that as well. So a lot of his research started focusing on chronic illness and how can feeding and fasting regimens also impact chronic illness and even the reversal of chronic illness, which is what impacts our health span. It's fascinating. I recommend anyone. And if your listeners are interested, we can also get them the longevity diet book. I don't like to ever use the word diet cause people think it's a short term thing. The book is really about a lifestyle program that you can live your whole life by. And it gives all the pillars of longevity and the different things you can do to support improving your health span or giving yourself the best chance you possibly can.
Wade Lightheart: Let's talk about that. That is a great way to kind of go, we've gone from the farm concepts, but let's talk about an area that I think is really interesting, which is nutrition for longevity. Let's talk about nutrition for longevity and what you're doing to support that for people that want to live long or want to live strong. Or I know that I haven't been eating a proper diet. I don't know anything about farming. I live in the city, I'm 65 years old. I remember back in the day when I was a kid and had a farm, and now I'm here, standing in line at Costco for two hours. What is nutrition for longevity and how are you supporting people in that, in that journey?
Jennifer Maynard: Nutrition for longevity kind of has two focuses. If you look at it just from the outside, it's a meal kit company. So we take that healthy food to grow on the farm. We rated into a way that it's an exact macronutrient level. So every single component and every single meal and every single day, it's very prescriptive. So we give exact calorie ranges, we give exact macros. So every day you're getting that same macro that somebody in Okinawa, Japan would be eating. That was a key part of the diet. That's really important is that you're getting the right amount of protein. You're getting the right amount of carbohydrates. You're getting the right amount of fiber. You're getting the right amount of sugar. It doesn't have refined sugars in it. So it's very void of additives, preservatives, refined sugars. And that was interesting to me. It's also what drove me to make this change. As I lived in Germany for three years in Switzerland for three years, and they don't have a lot of preservatives.

Jennifer Maynard: In fact, it's definitely tighter regulated than here. And there's just different expectations by people that live in those countries, but there's almost no preservatives additives, very little processed food. When you go into a grocery store there. It was actually almost comical, but I also kind of wanted to cry when I first moved to Germany, because you'd go in the grocery store. It's almost all produce fresh items. And then there's very small sections that have small amounts of processed food. And it's growing, they're adopting all the same stuff over there too. Cause it changed immensely over the last 10 years of being in Germany and then in Switzerland. It was amazing how hardly anything had added sugar. Like when you go there and you have ketchup. In the US it's so ubiquitous, you don't realize that there's sugar in everything in your condiments, in your beverages.

Jennifer Maynard: And it's just kind of hidden in there. You don't think about it. So when you go have catch up there, my kids were like, what is this? And I was like ketchup. And they're like, no, it's not. And it's basically tomato paste. There's no sugar whatsoever. It doesn't taste like American ketchup at all. And you realize it's just cause it's two ingredients and here there's an added three or four ingredients or more. And so you start realizing that there's other parts that are already eating this clean way without all the preservatives and the additives. And then when you come back, it's shocking, you taste the chemicals in the food. You can tell the difference and you don't really want to go back once you've been in that kind of an environment. So we wanted to make that more of a standard that could be available to people.

Jennifer Maynard: So it doesn't have all those additives. It's as raw and as little processed as possible. So you get the most of those nutrients and then it's in those exact ratios. So you don't have to think about it. So it's for people that have a busy lifestyle, they either don't have access. Like we have people that write us letters and they say, look, I don't even have access to this food. Even if I did not like if I knew how to cook it, I just don't have this in my area. I don't have kind of fresh produce. And so we kind of solve that problem, but we make it easier for people. So they don't have to do all the planning and the thinking and trying to get the diet. We're launching the whole spectrum in a few weeks just to produce box for people that are like, I got this, I know what kind of macros I need.
Jennifer Maynard: I just want clean food. And then we have our meal kits, which the lunch and breakfast are pretty much ready that dinner you have to prepare, but it's all proportioned for you. And then in about two months, we're launching into ready-made because we've got a lot of people say, I really want to eat like this, but you know, I work 14 or 16 hour days. I want to be able to heat it in my oven and be done. So we're trying to make it as easy as possible. And we're even moving into more of medically tailored areas where we can even cater to certain groups like we launched about a month ago, a type two diabetes or a diabetes friendly meal kit that can support people with diabetes to eat a healthy meal as well. And we're working on some really exciting stuff that we'll launch later this year in other areas of chronic illness that we're trying to have an impact on.
Jennifer Maynard: So it's not just the food for us. I don't feel like I've left healthcare. I feel like I'm just taking a different approach to it. So I still believe, you know, we look at food, people that are really knowledgeable about food. They look at it as prevention, I'm going to eat healthy. So I don't ever age and I'm gonna eat healthy. So I never get this disease. The fact is we have a lot of chronic illness in the US and I think we have to change the discussion. It's not just prevention. We have to make food and intervention as well. It should be treated like your first intervention. If somebody has a chronic illness, first try to treat it with food. It's the lowest cost. And it's in my opinion, one of the most effective and first treat it with that. And then go after the modern medicine, when it's absolutely needed, you know, 80% of chronic illness, they do believe can be adjusted by lifestyle changes.

Jennifer Maynard: It's not just food, there's other things too. And again, those are outlined in the book, active lifestyle is important. Even meditation and trying to reduce the stress in your life and things like that. But food is a key pivotal part of it. And we're so far from where we need to be. It's not just the US but unfortunately, even the longevity regions, when you talk to, you know, multiple generations, it's funny. If you go to like, Nicoya Costa Rica, you meet someone and you're talking to them and they're like, you gotta meet my dad. He'll tell you about all this stuff. And then you meet the dad and then the dad's like, you gotta meet my dad. And so you're literally sitting down with these multi-generations, but they're the most, I think crushing thing is they're all telling you stories about how their children and their children's children won't have that health span.

Jennifer Maynard: Cause they're not adopting these same practices. There's a lot changing. We're trying to be part of the solution, reversing it and bringing that longevity, not only back to the longevity regions, but into the US and even globally, so people can make the right choices and that we can make it easier that I've had a few doctors telling me, you know, when you walk into a grocery store, you have 90% of your physicians are bad decisions. Like we gotta change that. We gotta make it easier that, you know, 10% of your decisions are bad decisions. And you knowingly say, I want that chocolate cake. I don't care. I'm going to eat it anyway, but I know the consequences and I'm doing it because I'm going to splurge and that's okay. Like I tell people it's okay to like spurts.

Jennifer Maynard: Now in that, I'm actually one of those people that believes you kind of got to shock your body every once in a while. Butyou should know that those are the choices you're making. And right now, when 90% are bad choices, and that's kind of all that's in front of you that's kind of rough. And, you know, I'll see people that are overweight or they're struggling with something in the grocery store and I'll see what they're putting on their conveyor belt. And they're trying really hard. You can tell it's low fat, it's fat free. They're working really hard to try to turn things around. I don't think it's a lack of desire, but there's just so much manipulation and misinformation out therethat people just don't know where to go. So we're trying to change that.

Jennifer Maynard: We've trained to also provide a lot of education. So people don't have to buy our food to do this. Like the whole thing's lined out in the longevity diet, even give the book for people that are really interested. It's about really trying to create this movement with changing our food system, changing our health system, looking at food truly as medicine. I mean, you look at how long ago did Hippocrates live. And he understood it all the way back then. We need to actually get back to that, right? Cause that's it. The foundation is food as medicine and we've kind of lost it. I lost focus with that.

Wade Lightheart: Beautifully said, well illustrated and super interesting. Can you share with people where they can reach you, how they get ahold of you, how do they get access to your products or services? Do you have any information channels or things that you're putting out? Please let us know. Cause I know there's going to be a ton of people that are very interested in this.

Jennifer Maynard: Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, you can go to nutritionforlongevity.com. That's our website and you can get more information about it. If you're on the East coast, after things settle a little bit with COVID-19, we even do events on the farm. We were really passionate about educating people and letting them connect with how their food's grown, seeing the aquaponics, seeing the regenerative farms. So if you're on the East coast and you happen to be in the New Jersey area we do book those up pretty quick, but we offer them to the public. We'll start posting schedules once we start events again. This year obviously has been a little bit of a different year. But once we are in a place that we can do that, we'll start doing that again. We share a lot on our social media.

Jennifer Maynard: You can just look up nutrition for longevity will pop up there. We like to share stories about the farm and you know, the progression throughout the year and what it looks like. And then just a lot of nutrition information. We give recipes out, we do cooking demos. So again, we're not just about selling our food. I mean, obviously it's a business, but we're very much about education as well. And the longevity diet book, you know, I can provide you some information to share with your audience, but it's a great resource. It's for somebody that's a science geek like me, it goes all the way into the clinical data. Some people really want to see that and it's exciting, but there's also a really great story behind it. So, you know, it's a little bit like a novel and then a little bit like a scientific journal.

Jennifer Maynard: So it's a great book and it has recipes in it. It's got the full kind of protocol. So you can have the whole gamut. You can go to us if you need everything kind of done for you, and you can do a lot of it yourself, either way. We just want people to thrive. And we do want to see this improvement in health span. And like I said before, I think it's essential. We're going to bankrupt our healthcare system if we don't make major changes and our food and farming system is very broken as well. So we're just trying to do our part to bring that forward and hopefully get more farmers out there and more people doing these practices.

Wade Lightheart: One final question, before we go, how do you see the future of food and how that's going to contribute to humanity? Say 20 years from now, 40 years from now a hundred years from now. What is your vision for the future and what would you like to see happen based on everything that you're doing right now?

Jennifer Maynard: I think there's two things. I think one is and I don't try to push my beliefs on anyone but I do think we will have a lot more plant based eating. Partly because there's more mimicking foods out there. Partly because I just think there's so much more awareness on the environmental effects and even some of the health effects of eating too much meat. I think more of a plant based lifestyle, we talk about reducetarians. My husband, I give the example of my husband when we met, if it didn't have a slab of meat, it was not a meal. So breakfast, lunch, and dinner, every single day had meat and he's reducetarian. So maybe two days a week, he eats meat now. And that's a big change for him. If you look at his environmental impact of that change, it's massive.

Jennifer Maynard: So, you know, 80% of our farmland is focused on producing meat. People say you can't feed the world with organic farming. We absolutely can if we just make some lifestyle changes. So I do think not only will that happen because people will do it by choice. I think it will happen because we have to make it happen. It's just not environmentally sustainable. So I think that's one shift that I would like to see, and it already is happening very quickly. Here's people predicting in 20 years, there will be almost no meat. I don't know that it'll happen, but I think that'll be a trend. I like to tell people to try to flip things around when you go to a restaurant right now, how do you order your food? You order a huge slab of meat.

Jennifer Maynard: And then you order sides, which are usually a tiny bit of vegetables. I just encourage people at a minimum, flip that around your entree should be this gorgeous plating of all these incredible fresh fruits and vegetables. And then a little bit of meat, if you're going to eat meat or fish or you can get that from beans. You can get all the sources of protein you need from plant based sources as well. So I think that's one. I think the other is, and I'm already seeing this momentum and we're really keen on being part of it. And we're trying to actually be a leader in it, is the food as medicine movement and it is happening. And it's going to be much more prominent in the coming years where food will be one of the first interventions. You even see already some insurance companies starting to prescribe fruits and vegetables to the elderly population.

Jennifer Maynard: It's gonna become a common thing and it's going to become ubiquitous, partly because it's the least costly solution environmentally and for our health. And it works. So we're starting to now scientifically prove that that's why this book is so important behind me it's one of the first major efforts to scientifically prove how food can impact disease. We're going to do more of that. We're definitely not slowing down anytime soon. So I think those are the two biggest things I see changing in food. Then obviously how we grow our food is a key component of that. We're seeing a major, like you said, resurgence of people really interested in farming. Like a lot of people on my farm have master's degree. I don't know what everyone's concept of a farmer is, but I can tell by when I told people I was leaving my career to become a farmer, it wasn't seen as the most positive thing. But most of my farm team are young. They're highly educated. They do it because they choose to do it and they love what they do and they're passionate about it. So I think you have this totally different approach to farming. Like we also pay our farmers benefits, and I think things like that are what are changingPeople do that by choice and they get well compensated for it because I think that's important. So I think our food system will also change dramatically of how our food is grown.

Wade Lightheart: What an enlightening interview on the farming practices, Greater Greens, holobiome, why that's so important. So as the founder of Greater Greens and also the founder of Nutrition for Longevity, Jennifer Maynard, you are a gem. Thank you so much for your service to humanity and for taking a little bit of time out of your busy schedule to share with our listeners at BiOptimizers in the Awesome Health Podcast show so that they can hear and find out and go to more. So for folks, if you enjoyed this interview, we only touched the surface. I can tell that Jennifer is a wealth of knowledge check in with her social media sites. All the links and references will be here in the show notes. Go out to the farm, schedule an event, get out there and see what it's like. Get your hands in the dirt, see all these things in action, and you might be surprised you might end up on your own farm one day yourself. So thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate it, Jennifer. Hopefully we'll get to have you back sometime and tell us some more insights from what you're doing in the kind of cutting edge of organic farming.