Future Forward

Seyi (00:01.773)
Hello, hello, hello Reza, how are you? I am good and today we have Kellee James, my very good friend on Future Forward as well. How are you Kellee?

Reza (00:04.601)
Good Seyi how are you doing?

Kellee James (00:14.216)
I'm good. and I go back, you know, several years back to early tech startup days, our early days. Yeah.

Seyi (00:20.641)
Yes, we do. We won't bore people with those stories. If they want to hear those, it's a different podcast, honestly. But we brought Kellee on here today because she is one of my favorite people and her depth of understanding of the topic we're going to cover, which is cities and food, is, in my opinion, unmatched.

And so we're going to just dive right into it. after Reza has welcomed our guest.

Reza (00:58.381)
Yeah, welcome everyone to the Future Forward podcast. Welcome to the regular listeners as well as new listeners. What we do on Future Forward is we talk about cities, sustainable cities and thriving communities. We usually talk about what has led from the past to those types of cities and then strategic foresight about where cities are going. We always touch on

the 21 laws of cities and communities in our episodes to explore where they apply. know, Seyi and I are not experts. We were trying to explore this with others, including you. And this episode is our first episode with a special guest. And we're just so excited because this is one of many experts that we're going to have on so that we can learn and share with you our learning.

So welcome everyone and we're excited to talk to Kellee today.

Seyi (02:01.217)
Yes, we are. are. So today's episode, as we just said, is about cities and food. And why are we even exploring food? Well, I think we all understand fundamentally the intricate relationship between cities and food infrastructure. What we struggle with, and I'll use a quick example here, is tying the food that ends up on our table to really the work

that was done to get it there and where it comes from. And the quick example here is that my kids don't really like beef. never, I'd buy beef from the store and they would really never eat it. And we've started joking that my two boys would be vegetarian, which we're fine with because my wife is close anyway. And then a friend,

whose family have a farm about an hour outside of Austin.

sent me a text one day, hey, we have some really good farm bred, cows that were price cows that were, going to be selling. Do you want in? Like, sure. They probably won't eat it, but sure. So we got some and the kids were with me when he brought the meat and they have become meat lovers. It's

kind of wild and they say it, they go, this is much better than what you used to buy for us.

Seyi (03:50.883)
For an 11 -year -old and a 6 .5 -year -old to say that about the food we get in our stores, we couldn't pass up an opportunity to have this conversation with Kellee.

Kellee James (04:02.598)
Well, I appreciate the invitation to talk with you two I have been a fan. You know, I first saw your announcement of this podcast on LinkedIn and I took, you know, first couple of weeks I didn't tune in and then I tuned in and I was hooked. I think I consumed like the first four episodes, like back to back. was, it was just so good. And it was such a, it's such a nice jumping off point, you know, cities as the focus to talk about all the stuff that we take for granted that really matters that if it went away, life would be

Seyi (04:20.504)
That's awesome.

Reza (04:20.772)
Ha

Kellee James (04:31.744)
impossible or very difficult. So I love the excuse or the device of using cities to talk about energy, water, know, whatever the basic needs of human life. So I view food as one of those foundational pillars. So happy to talk about it.

Seyi (04:49.633)
Yeah, it absolutely is. So before we dive in, Kellee, what got you into this space? What's the story?

Kellee James (04:55.598)
Both of my parents are city folk. My mom was born and raised in the Bronx, my dad out on Long Island. And from the time my parents were, my dad was in the army. So a lot of the military bases are in very pretty rural or semi -rural areas. And so like from the time I could like, I don't know, express, I was always on farms. I just liked them. And I used to ride horses professionally. I worked on a cow calf operation for a little bit.

And I came home my first day of college or my first week in college and I said, my gosh, I finally learned how to drive a tractor. And my parents are like, that's not really what we thought we were sending you to college for, but we're glad you're happy. So, you know, call it an anomaly, but I've always just really been interested in farms and farming, even though I don't farm myself. I took a more economic approach to it. So I was an economics major and I worked with farmers.

Reza (05:36.805)
You

Kellee James (05:53.132)
not just in the US, but in Honduras. So coffee farmers in Central America and have always worked in sort of rural development throughout my career.

Seyi (06:02.957)
That is fantastic. so this whole idea and the goal for today, which we've gone back and forth about, and thank you for putting that work in, is to discuss where cities sit in the web of food production and consumption, and more broadly discuss the implications of food and agriculture on cities. So I guess we can start with.

some background and context here if you don't mind.

Kellee James (06:35.406)
Yeah. I mean, I'll go really broad, really like 30 ,000 foot level, is, this is kind of from a nation state point of view, know, a lot of economies, a lot of countries start out as agrarian and then, you know, cities are the place where really largely because of technology, people are able to live and work together. But what happens to the food production and why do, know, cities is that's the drivers of economic, you know, the economic engine tends to be in cities.

And so in fact, it's been a strategy of governments, a very intentional strategy to encourage people to move to the cities from the country, from rural areas. And a lot of times they've done that by basically subsidizing food. the more, instead of just imagine someone who's driving a plow and with a horse pulling, or before there were even tractors, that takes a lot of labor.

As you get more technology, get tractors, get cedars, get combines, you don't have to have so many people on the farm. So what do you do with that excess population? Well, it can go to the cities where it can do things that are maybe higher value or bring in more money, create more economic, create more revenue, increase your GDP So governments started doing this on purpose. They said, we are gonna, in some cases, hold down the cost of food so it's less expensive for you to live in a city. That has implications for the...

Countryside, of course, if you're food, if you're not getting as much for your crops, that can create some distortions, but it's what we've, almost all countries have done, including in the US. There's a famous quote by one of the secretaries of agriculture, his name was Earl Butz, and he was secretary of ag under Nixon and then Ford. And he said, look, our official policy is get big or get out. Like we don't want the small scale. We need economies of scale. The unit economics are much better if you've got a 5 ,000 acre farm than a 50 acre farm.

So we're gonna gear our policies intentionally so that if you're not big, you're gonna struggle. We want big farms, we want mechanized farms. We want you to get off the farm and go somewhere else if you can't get big. So it's just one very stark example of what we did in this country to encourage the growth of cities.

Seyi (08:53.397)
which has consequently hidden the true cost of food, if I'm hearing you correctly.

Kellee James (09:00.726)
Yeah, it's interesting because I, again, as an economist, I like to talk in terms of externalities and externalities is just a cost or a benefit that's not usually captured. Like we don't think about it. So for example, all right, I'll give one that since we're, in the through part of a pandemic, if I, if the two of us, if two of us on this call get vaccinated, then if Reza and I get vaccinated, Seyi, you benefit from that.

because now you're protected. That's an externality that we've created by most of us getting vaccines and then other people benefit, but it's not really captured in the cost of vaccination. Or likewise, there's a cost. If Reza and I choose not to get vaccinated, you are bearing the cost of us not protecting ourselves. So externalities are those things that kind of, they're generated positive or negative from the collective actions of others. So with food and farming, for example,

Seyi (09:40.215)
Mmm.

Kellee James (09:58.874)
all right. So I get a big, you know, I get big, I grow my farm, but what are some of the things that are created as a result of that, that maybe are not captured? you know, unemployment in rural areas, for example, or the fact that to be efficient with fewer people, I need to use a lot of fertilizer, that fertilizer, nitrogen fertilizer runs off into the nearest river, goes downstream and kills all the fish. now.

Seyi (10:12.45)
you

Kellee James (10:25.59)
I can't fish anymore. So those are examples of externalities created by the activities of, let's say farming, the way that we farm today. A positive externality is cheaper food. We benefit, I'm not paying the cost of those fish being killed, but I get a box of cereal or a loaf of bread at a lower cost than if those things did not happen.

Seyi (10:25.891)
Hmm.

Seyi (10:52.191)
It's I can't but think of the The fact that we are experiencing more of those costs those externalities today especially and I hope you you shed more light on this I don't think that go big or Go bust framing for the size of farms

I don't think it's working, is it?

Kellee James (11:23.434)
Yeah, you know, it depends. On one hand, I tend to think a lot of the like, let's just talk food insecurity. It's not due to any like, bad farming practices. probably in fact, there's probably less of it because we do have like modern farming and modern and also just as importantly, modern food distribution and food storage and processing and whatnot. Some of it is just because like we live in a world where, you know, people, there's a lot of working poor, for example, it's

Seyi (11:31.489)
Yeah.

Kellee James (11:51.886)
It's impossible to feed people. Like we've kind of dug ourselves into a hole. There's a phrase in Ag that like we feed the world and it's been used as both a point of pride, but also an excuse that saying like the system is fine. Like we feed the world cheaply. Like what more do you want? And sometimes I say, well, we shouldn't have, mean, if you're trying to feed someone sustainably who's making, you know, $7 an hour, $10 an hour, $11 an hour, that's just an impossible. You cannot do it. The numbers just don't, the math doesn't math.

So as the young folks would say, so, you know, some of it, think, look, the advantages, we have a system that distributes food very efficiently, for the most part, fairly safely. I mean, there's still, you could argue that, you know, there's every, I mean, there's recalls. How often during a year do you hear about a recall due to salmonella or something like that? So it's not perfect by any means, but it's generally safe.

It generally is by the single measure of dollars spent per calories, you know, efficient, but we are increasingly seeing an environmental footprint. So I mentioned that example of the fertilizer running off into the river wasn't a made up one. The Gulf every year, there's a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that's largely caused by runoff from fertilizer. So if you're an oyster farmer or oyster, you know, or fishermen, you

can't make a living as easily because of the farmer in Iowa has applied fertilizer that has run off, washed off into the watershed. I also think, you know, we've lost a lot of small and medium farms that it's very hard to make a living farming. Most farmers have a second job off farm now, even the big ones. They can't afford health insurance. These are all little, mini, you know, even the big farms are like mini small businesses. And we all know that health insurance is a major cost.

Seyi (13:36.279)
Really?

Kellee James (13:44.686)
So it's kind of a system that is in some parts, in some ways is breaking down in small and large ways, but we may not feel it sitting in cities where I just, you know, I go in and I get, you know, I get my lettuce or I get my, you know, my groceries every week and I don't have to think about it. Or I go to a restaurant. That's another thing, by the way, we eat about 50 % of our calories post pandemic. We've reverted back to pre pandemic. We eat about 50 % of our calories are consumed outside the home. it's.

grocery stores, then it's restaurants, it's school, it's hospital systems, that sort of thing.

Seyi (14:12.813)
Wow.

Reza (14:21.893)
So Kellee, guess the thing that I have a question about, I think two questions. One is some of this just doesn't sound very sustainable, like big farms and the trade -offs that come with it. Are there better ways of farming that are more sustainable that still get you the type of outcomes of being able to have enough food supply?

Kellee James (14:50.582)
Yeah, I think so. think so. First of all, there was an article, gosh, I want to say about seven or eight years ago that Wired magazine did. It's a really good article. Maybe I can put it in the show notes after, but it was called Big, Smart and Green, which basically said you can do it all. You can be big and produce food at scale because we have to produce food at scale.

Reza (15:05.509)
Yeah.

Kellee James (15:14.414)
I say in my family, I have every type of person. I have people that can afford to pay top dollar for premium, grass -fed, sustainably raised beef, let's say. And I have people who are on Snap, who rely on government benefits. And you have to serve like that entire population. So I think that Wired article called Big Smart and Green, I thought was really good. I thought it was, it's a really good example of how you can do.

You can apply water in ways that are using technology that are like almost like using a scalpel, know to precision instrument versus just my gosh, I'm gonna you like water everything and just hope for the best You can apply fertilizer in really smart ways and fertilizer costs money So you think the farmer was incentivized for example not to over apply fertilizer and not to apply it when it's about to rain So it washes all away

But the reality is we have some things that like work against that. So for example, for you to get crop insurance, you have to do certain techniques and practices and the crop insurance often doesn't acknowledge the environmental factors on the ground. it's like, well, you know, so there's some things like built into the system that discourage that type of green, you know, kind of smart green technology or practices. I myself, you know, one of the ways I've,

Seyi (16:22.999)
Wow.

Kellee James (16:37.868)
been engaged in ag is working on organic agriculture. So organic is a system of production where you don't apply chemical pesticides or chemical fertilizers. You can apply fertilizers. have to be, you know, they have to be, for example, animal manure to get nitrogen in, or you have to use crop rotation. So if you plant corn, which depletes nitrogen out of the soil, your next crop has to be something like a legume, like a soybean or alfalfa or can be something like alfalfa that puts nitrogen back in the soil.

So it's a very labor intensive way of farming compared to the like, let's just spray a bunch of chemicals and keep it moving. These are all small. these are all, you know, farmers that do no till that don't turn up the soil and so that it doesn't like wash away and wash down the river. These are labor intensive. So.

you know, it also requires people to come back to the farm maybe and the hope is they can make a living back at the farm because you can get a bit of a higher premium if you grow organic, for example. So like all kinds of incentives have to align, but I do look, have to believe it can be done. I'm an optimist at heart and it's being done. It just needs to be done at more of a scale because it needs to become the norm rather than like some.

Seyi (17:49.026)
Yeah.

Kellee James (17:51.662)
crazy farmer whose neighbors all talk about him or her doing these weird practices. Instead, it needs to become like just that's how it is.

Seyi (17:55.331)
Which brings us to sort of this bland rural versus urban land point, which I'm sure you'll make shortly. But Reza, you're about to ask your second question.

Reza (17:58.265)
Yeah, interesting. Yeah.

Reza (18:12.889)
Yeah, I think that was my next question was, I don't know much about agriculture, but there could be a simplistic notion in my head, like why can't we grow things at scale in cities with urban farming? Yeah, so I guess that's my question.

Kellee James (18:36.974)
Yeah, I think urban farming is really interesting. I did look, do a little research to see like how much it varies a lot by country. But there's some research that says right now we're producing five to 10 % of our calories on a global scale in urban or like semi -urban areas. And then some studies I saw as high as 20 % and it really depends on the crop. Like if you were just looking at like say soybeans, very little is gonna be grown in urban areas, but lettuces.

Reza (19:06.885)
Mm

Kellee James (19:07.034)
or some other fruits, some other types of fruits and vegetables, it would be a higher percentage. I think there's like a lot of promise there. I really do. I think the idea of growing food close to where it's consumed could save a lot of energy. If there's space that could be filled in, like rooftops, for example, there's a lot of greenhouse farming already.

And depending on the country, like, you the Netherlands is famous for its greenhouses and whatnot. There's a lot of potential there. The thing that has to be overcome, I think, again, is economics. And that might be, we might be able to bridge that gap with technology. So for example, I just did a little background research and looked like in major urban areas, let's take Chicago or Austin, where you are, you're looking at like a square foot. You get a lot of money per square foot for urban real estate.

you know, upwards of $270 in Austin, 219 in Chicago, or like San Francisco, $700 per square foot. Contrast that with rural land, where you're talking like, if we were to do the conversion, mostly we talk about it per acre, but if you were to do the conversion, it's like 50 cents, you know, per square foot. So you're trying to overcome what nature provides for free, again, like these externalities and ecosystem services.

So in the urban environment, you've got to reproduce, well, you've got to have space to do it. And you can get very efficient with some technologies and whatnot, but you still have to have some space somewhere to grow things. Mother nature provides something for free, which is the sun and rain. If you're doing this like indoors in a greenhouse, you've got to reproduce that, and that's an energy cost. Or the big one is soil.

We're used to thinking of these things as just gifts that are free. is a cost to those. you can't, soil has a value and we can deplete soil just like you can deplete water resources or energy resources. But you're at least starting from, know, here's what the, you know, certain parts of the U S have very fertile soil, just kind of on their own. So you've got to, you're not starting from, you're starting, you're having to recreate that in an urban environment and that costs money. So that's why it's, it's harder, I think, to grow in an urban environment. And then the other thing is.

Kellee James (21:28.152)
costs of labor. So again, rightly or wrongly, things cost less in rural areas or you can overcome some of this with highly mechanized techniques for harvesting, but the robotics technology is still catching up. You can still, I love following on Twitter, the Farm Workers United Labor Union Twitter account. You should watch these farm, it is skilled labor.

to be able to go through a field and in a split second choose, you know, this strawberry is good and this one's not. And they work so quickly. I mean, they're just, it's amazing. They have developed an eye for what should be picked and what should be left alone. Or if you ever get to go to a meat packing plant, brutally hard labor, very difficult. And the speed at which these men and women move is incredible.

Seyi (21:55.575)
Mm -hmm.

Kellee James (22:22.038)
And so we haven't, don't, it's still very labor intensive and labor is, even when the price is depressed artificially or otherwise, it costs a lot of money. So those are things that have to be addressed before urban ad can really find its footing, I think.

Seyi (22:40.611)
So thanks so much for that, Kellee. I did some sort of digging along those lines and I'll throw out some stats. We like to throw these out. And it says here that the urban farming market was valued at $213 billion in 2020. And it's growing at about 2 .8 % compound annual growth rate.

to support your point about it starting to increase in its contribution to how we eat. But I can see already from the reference that there was a University of Michigan study, I think it was in 2013 or so, that suggests on average urban agriculture emits 0 .42 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents per serving.

which is six times higher than conventionally grown produce. And this applies, I think the nuance there, which some of the research still has to clarify is that this applies to specifically grown crops. So as a whole, it's probably better, but they picked like tomatoes, I think was the study. And as you can imagine,

Kellee James (23:43.118)
So interesting.

Seyi (24:08.235)
you're starting to maybe bias the study a little bit when what you're doing is just picking one specific crop that doesn't represent the full spectrum of what needs to be consumed in terms of energy or landmass and things of that nature. But I found it interesting that it's growing, but almost equally there's this reluctance.

Kellee James (24:24.632)
Yeah.

Seyi (24:36.925)
One of the things, reluctance to build on it, one of the things Reza has sort of clued me in on is, I'm the let's build or do more. And Reza is like, can we just start by fixing what we have? And so, yeah. Exactly, and so.

Kellee James (24:55.42)
Yeah. What a good idea. Right. Right. We should start there. Yeah, I get it.

Seyi (25:04.323)
I touch on that because it does sound like we're moving towards urban farming when there a ton of things we can do on the rural farming front that might, I'd suggest, start to get us to where we're trying to go. Reza, I think it's time for the laws now. We have like two laws of our 21 laws that apply here.

Reza (25:23.907)
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So let me touch on the two laws that apply to this. And then I have a question that came out of this. So the first one is urban food systems impact sustainability. And what we say here is the way cities produce, distribute, consume, and dispose of food has significant implications for sustainability. So the better you do it, the more sustainable the city is.

And then the second one is mixed land use enhances urban vitality. So cities with a mix of residential, commercial, and recreational land uses tend to be more vibrant, walkable, and economically resilient. You can say that urban farming can play a part in that as in community gardens and things like that. Probably not at scale, but definitely a way to bring city dwellers closer to nature and their understanding of the world and the systems that they live in.

Seyi (26:22.701)
Yeah.

Reza (26:23.523)
So in reading those, there was a question that formed in my mind, Kellee, we talked about it right before the show started, which is I sense this, there's this divide between urban and rural areas. there's this, we see it in ideological differences. We see it, just friction between what's happening in the rural areas and urban areas. And I feel that city dwellers don't quite understand

the challenges of being in rural areas. And I'm curious about your thoughts of like, you know, overcoming that or addressing that. So that again, my contention is, you know, you don't have to make urban farming replace rural farming. You can make rural farming better. And I think if city dwellers understand farming and agriculture better, maybe we move in that direction because policymakers are primarily

you know, in urban areas. mean, some of them come from rural areas, but they're not sort of in that mindset as much. I don't know. Just curious.

Kellee James (27:25.187)
Yeah.

Kellee James (27:30.38)
Yeah, I mean, I think it's such an important question because, you you have to be, you look around and you just get really concerned that there's, there is this divide that seems to be growing. And so first of all, I want to just say, I think urban food production has a lot of value. mean, like you said, the community, the civic engagement, you know, the learning opportunities, I think it does address some food security concerns. the other thing is you can still build a really good business with an urban food.

you know, production, was looking at, there's a group in Baltimore that is growing indigo. So not as a natural dye for things like blue jeans and whatnot. And they are building a really nice business. It doesn't have to feed the world. Maybe it provides employment for 20 people, you know, in income and whatnot. So I just think there's a lot of food for, if you take away the lens of unless you do it at scale and feed the world, it's not worthwhile.

then there's a ton of opportunities and a ton of businesses to be built and communities to work together. So that's one. I think the urban world, I've seen frustration on both sides. Like it's true that now we have, so if you're a farmer, you're like, man, what does it mean? Like some TikToker has said that they don't like my production practices and now.

Seyi (28:48.311)
Hahaha

Kellee James (28:49.422)
Like, really? Like they've never had the consumer as boss. Like we're well into the age of information. And now all of a sudden things that we never even thought to ask about are like easily available. It's all like someone wants to me every bit of human knowledge I carry around in my pocket, every bit of human knowledge like ever on my phone. And so now, know, it's like, well, I saw a TikTok on farming practices. therefore I understand what should happen on farm and I'm going to make my wishes known. And farmers were like, what?

Reza (29:05.849)
Yeah.

Kellee James (29:18.38)
I don't think so. You have no idea what goes on in the farm. So there's frustration there. There's also, I think, a frustration, just to kind of food and energy are very tied. Like half of our corn crop goes to ethanol, goes to energy. I found out another interesting one that might see what you think about this. You know, it used to be, whenever we, windmills, when we do wind turbines, they come to the end of their life. And what happens to those composite blades, those substances?

Well, they cut them up and they bury them where out in rural areas. And then I've talked to a lot of rural dwellers who are really tired of trash from what they view as city folk ending up in their communities where they don't really know how to deal with it. So there's like this frustration on that side. On the urban side, it's like, well, you we care about these things. Like we want to know how our animals are treated and how farm workers are treated. And like now we're asking questions that we never asked before.

And we are your customer, so why would you not try to understand these concerns or address these concerns? They're valid concerns, blah, blah, blah. So on both sides, there is both frustration and sometimes not the best behavior, and then also some valid concerns as well that just simply we don't talk enough to seriously address those concerns. There are a few groups that are

that are trying, but it's slow work. I do like sometimes, like instead of just talking or having another conference, there's some organizations like one's called the Black Food Security Network that's trying to do it all. It's sourcing from farms in areas and it's bringing that food into cities, distributing it through a network of historically Black churches. And so it's trying to address food insecurity, urban -rural divide, distribution, all in one.

These are seeds that are planted that just need, I if I had the ability, I would just direct money to these and resources and publicity to these networks all day long because I think what they're doing is phenomenal and I think is a big part of the answer.

Seyi (31:26.263)
That is fantastic. I'll touch on two quick things tied to what you just said. It's kind of fascinating. We're seeing a lot more as we research these episodes of these community led initiatives going through religious institutions. It's fascinating. And I know Reza has a mailbag about this, but it's come up again in the

Kellee James (31:46.498)
Hmm.

Seyi (31:55.683)
in the point you just made. then the second part is tying back to the reason why you enjoyed the podcast. About 70 % of the water used in the US is used to in agriculture. And so we go right back to it. It's the energy nexus, the water food energy nexus.

Kellee James (32:17.516)
Yeah.

Seyi (32:25.311)
it's cities and infrastructure required to keep them going. to the urban rural divide, I actually think there's almost like this industry silo issue that we also need to pay a little bit more attention to. Cause if each one of those industries thought about the systems, not just the industry.

we'd come up with solutions, especially if we involve the communities and the people who live there. It almost feels like you need these broad, but silo -breaking conversations to be had to determine what actions we should take to make things more sustainable. really, really good point you make about better and...

Kellee James (32:59.788)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Seyi (33:21.217)
more conversations across ecosystems.

Kellee James (33:22.89)
Yeah, it's that like old story of like three blind men that stumble across an elephant and each one like feels like this one feels the tail and then this one feels the trunk and then it feels a little bit. Nobody's looking at the whole animal. It's very hard because that's not our most of our jobs, right? Like my job is to think about like this one thing all day long and I'm very good at it, but it doesn't mean it means I don't know enough about my impacts on others.

Seyi (33:32.012)
Yeah.

Seyi (33:36.235)
Yeah, yeah.

Seyi (33:42.093)
Yeah.

Seyi (33:51.469)
So true. I think the next sort of conversation which we started to have is around the value of urban food production. So you touched on it that we shouldn't only think about urban food production from the perspective of building and providing food at scale, which if we go back to...

how things used to be and I'm sounding like an old person now. We were more local in our food production. And if you have any additional comments about urban food production and the value it still has, I'd love you to share.

Kellee James (34:34.146)
Yeah. I mean, I think the thing I like about decentralizing food production is that I think it does build resilience. And I'll take another example from an industry I knew nothing about until there was a crisis, which was the hurricane that hit Puerto Rico a few years ago. And I discovered that nearly all of the saline supply for hospitals for the entire US was produced in one location in Puerto Rico. And so...

Seyi (35:02.039)
Mm.

Kellee James (35:03.17)
But I can imagine, right, somebody, some business -minded person, some accountant was like, aha, the unit economics for this critical thing that you can't charge much for is, you you probably make a penny, you know, with that on. So you got to consolidate it and put it all in one place and then do it at scale so you get the unit economics makes sense, which was great and made the numbers work until a hurricane came along and destroyed the plant.

Seyi (35:10.605)
Mm.

Kellee James (35:28.334)
Or like there was a baby food, infant powder crisis, if you recall about two years ago where it turns out that most of our infant formula is produced in only a couple of factories. And if one goes offline, you're in real trouble. So like that's the cost right there is it looks better on a balance sheet, but it makes you really vulnerable to some, type of disruption in the supply chain. And that's what a lot of our food system looks like. Like 80 % of our meat comes from four different companies, like, know, Cargill,

Seyi (35:32.408)
Yeah.

Kellee James (35:57.73)
JBS, know, Tysons. But we get cheaper food out of it. Like, so do you want, what do you do if you break that up and make, decentralize and make things, you know, a little bit quote, air quote, you know, economically inefficient, but you gain resilience. I mean, does the resilience help the single parent who's trying to feed their kids? How do you address that when, you know, they're trying to make ends meet? On the other hand, you know, you make the system.

more resilient to like shocks or something like that. So I think it's just like, it's important to be honest about the benefit we have from this. There's a reason the system exists the way it is today. Somebody's benefiting, right? Like we wouldn't have it if there weren't some benefit to it, but there's a cost to it. And who bears that cost is often hidden or, you we don't think about that person or those people and whatnot. So, sorry, what was the question? I'm like on a soapbox, on a rant.

Seyi (36:54.207)
No, this is great. It was just the idea about urban food production and how do we need to, and I think the resilience point you make is fantastic because we always, again, systems, it is, resilience is lost with centralization, period. We know that. And so as much as we can,

Kellee James (36:56.142)
Hmm.

Kellee James (37:02.071)
Yeah.

Seyi (37:23.235)
find or have experiences like the farm that's in Temple, Texas that provides and I wasn't, our family wasn't the only family that got beef from that cow. It was maybe 20 families. So it's, it's thinking like that. Yes, it was still the rural town about an hour away from Austin, but I'm not getting it from.

the meat factory that Cargill owns in Illinois. And that I think is the balance we need to shift things into.

Kellee James (37:57.27)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kellee James (38:03.342)
And I also think what happens is the system, you get laws that advantage the cargills and then they're able to lobby. is where the human, this is what we do, right? Then we get lobby, then you lobby for laws that will keep other folks out and not enable them to compete. And I think it's important to like to go after those and rethink them where possible. I also think, like I said, I love the small,

Seyi (38:19.128)
Hmm.

Kellee James (38:32.054)
I like the idea of an ecosystem of food production where there is room for the super predators, like the really big organizations, the midsize and the small. So to me, to have a healthy ecosystem, you can't have an ecosystem that has all super predators, that's not imbalanced or no predators at all. You have to have each type of production and you have to have that different types of production will be appealing to different types of consumers.

You just have to make sure all of them, percentage of all of them can be healthy and have healthy businesses. So, and by the way, like, you know, I love the example of being able to buy a side of beef or a cow, but for example, I live in a home where I have a second freezer. Like, what do you do when you don't have, you're in an apartment where sometimes the electricity goes out?

You gotta be able to buy your food in small doses. You can't stock up in store. that's, you know, it means you don't have the same options available to you that someone who has that second freezer has and reliable power has.

Seyi (39:25.987)
Yeah. Yeah.

Reza (39:37.039)
Mm

Seyi (39:37.281)
Yeah, which then brings us right back to the, I guess, the beginning, which is that we do need, and if there's a theme that is emerging from what you've just shared with us as we round out this, it's that better understanding of how our food is produced, where it comes from, the true cost of food, because

it will cost you not just the additional that it cost us to buy from the farmer, but the ongoing cost of storing and energy usage that we have the freezer to put into, which are costs someone living in a high rise doesn't want to bear, honestly. But how can we still ensure they get organic good, well, organic good food from farmers that are

rightly compensated for the work they've put in. Yeah. Please.

Kellee James (40:39.436)
Yeah. I want to add one other thing, which is time, which is, you know, time. I saw it's so interesting that during the pandemic, I saw all sorts of things bubbling up, you know, because we had these breaks in supply chains and like the great toilet paper crisis. My husband calls them French toast emergencies. Whenever there's a storm or something, all the milk, eggs and bread gone. So he's like, wow, people must be making a lot of French toast right now. I don't know what's happening. So.

Seyi (40:56.163)
Thanks.

Seyi (41:02.019)
Mmm.

Hahaha

Kellee James (41:08.782)
So, you know, that's the other thing is time. You know, I look at, there's a big debate about ultra processed foods right now, which I find fascinating. You know, I don't think anyone can argue that we should be adding more flaming hot Cheetos to our diets, but, but you know, I like the fact that I can buy a loaf of bread and it doesn't, like if I buy it from the Amish market, it molds in 48 hours. If I have not eaten that bread, it's molded.

If I buy the loaf of bread from the grocery store, I can sit it on my counter for like two weeks and it's fine. I don't know what that says about the nutritional content, but I do know that that's important in terms of food waste and able to use the food that we have those options available. And then the other thing is I love our local community garden. Do you know how many times I've let produce rot on the counter because I just haven't had time to cook it?

Seyi (42:01.675)
Hmm.

Kellee James (42:02.156)
And if you're working two jobs, that's, know, I feel very fortunate that in theory I should be able to cook all this. My husband, you know, we have some flexibility in our jobs, but like, what if you're working two jobs and you're, you know, shoot, you know, I had to take on an extra shift. And so I think the other thing about food is it's all a trade -off for time or, you know, and I've seen like these interesting ideas where like we can do community buying groups.

It's this sort of civic engagement that I'm all in favor. One of the reasons I want everyone to make more money is so that we have more time to like engage on these levels instead of just simply trying to survive. Cause so many things are possible if we just had, if we just all weren't so exhausted from just trying to like, you know, live.

Seyi (42:46.039)
Yeah, so well said. You bring it back to community, which is Reza's favorite topic.

Reza (42:46.725)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. I actually want to sort of suggest to our listeners three things. One is when you shop for food, think about where it comes from. So take a little time to think about that and see if you could research it, like whether it's your vegetables or your meat or what have you. Two is see if there's a community garden in your neighborhood or your area and just go take a look at it. You don't have to go and get a plot.

Kellee James (42:53.825)
Yeah.

Reza (43:21.327)
but just go take a look at it and see what it's about so that you're aware that it exists. And the third call to action is try to find a farm and find a way of going there just to see what a farm is about. I've been to a farm. It was a very interesting experience. It was very different than being in a city. It was eye -opening. I've been to a community garden. I don't want the garden, but I know it exists and it's near the pool where I swim and I sort of peek over over there and I see people in there and I'm...

I'm gratified that people do it. So those are my suggestions.

Seyi (43:55.629)
Fantastic Reza, yeah. They are. And we wrap it up here and I know we could go on for a long time. Kellee, you have such depth of knowledge about this space. How should anyone, if you want people to reach out, how should they get in touch with you to learn more?

Kellee James (43:57.748)
standing suggestions.

Kellee James (44:19.89)
my goodness. I'm so bad at this part of things, but I think LinkedIn is a good way. it's kellee .james at gmail .com. can email me or my LinkedIn profile and I will absolutely respond.

Seyi (44:36.127)
awesome fantastic thank you so much for spending time with us Reza any comments and mailbag

Reza (44:44.825)
Yeah, I have a mailbag this week that I want to share from one of our listeners, one of our dedicated listeners, my friend Alpeche. And he asked if we would like to explore on a future episode about religion and communities. And it sort of touches on what Kellee said earlier about how that Black Food Network brings food all the way into those churches to

help those folks and so that church is sort of a part of the community and vitalizes the community. But his comment was an interesting one, which was there used to be a time in the past when in cities, the tallest structure used to be the religious church or the most prominent structure in a town was the church. that, if you look at the architecture of cities now,

you don't see them, know, our churches are, you know, capitalistic churches, you know? And that shows sort of a change in power structures, like, you know, churches and mosques and synagogues used to be the central part of communities and we seem to have lost that. And so he was curious about us doing an episode of how in cities, whether sort of...

these religious community groups still have a place and how that has shifted over time. As we become more urbanized, it seems we have become less religious or as we become more economically developed, we become less religious. So I thought it was a really good thought and something for us to explore.

Seyi (46:25.891)
Thanks so much for sharing that, Alpesh. And we probably will. It's, as you can imagine, we sit in the US where religion is a fraught topic. So we'll have to handle it. care. But I genuinely think we should, especially as we discover, I think it was on the episode of disasters, one of the community initiatives that helped bring

Reza (46:33.283)
Yeah, it's fraught. It is a fraught topic, so.

Reza (46:48.922)
Mm

Seyi (46:55.043)
people back together that was supposed to last for six months, I believe, that ended up lasting for two years, came out of the church, and it helped to revive the community in that city after the flood. So definitely worth discussing a lot more and we'll figure that out. So thank you for reaching out with that and to the rest of us, please, yeah.

Reza (47:04.441)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kellee James (47:17.42)
And then you can do cities and politics after that for another easy non -controversial. All the easy topics.

Seyi (47:22.448)
Absolutely, yeah.

Reza (47:24.857)
We'll do that just in time for the election. How about that? We'll have a special election episode. Yeah, why not?

Seyi (47:27.498)
Yes!

Seyi (47:33.821)
Yes, yes, no, it's a that will probably not be happening for our listeners. But no, thank you so, so much, Kellee. This has been a delight. I've learned a ton and I hope our listeners have as well. Till next time.

Reza (47:48.313)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kellee James (47:51.754)
It was a real pleasure for me as well. Thank you for inviting me.

Reza (47:54.681)
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks everyone. Rate, review, like and subscribe. Take a minute to share this episode with a friend. And we hope to see you next time.