In this episode, we explore the stagnation that can occur when we only engage with like-minded individuals in the agricultural sector.
Guests:
Trevor Vaughn
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-vaughn-2165a661/
Hunter Buffington
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/hunter-buffington-co/
Hosts:
Alejandro Juárez Crawford
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/alejandro-juarez-crawford
Miriam Plavin-Masterman
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/miriam-plavin-masterman
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Episode Introduction
Our guests, Hunter Buffington and Trevor Vaughn, share their insights on the importance of diverse perspectives and innovative practices in sustainable agriculture. They discuss the challenges farmers face, including navigating government regulations and the need for a paradigm shift in how we approach farming and food systems.
Since the recording of this episode, our guests have announced a name change for their emerging startup from High Plains Farming Initiative (HiFi) to Hiphi- utilizing nature’s golden ratios to globally rebalance ecosystems! This change reflects their expanded mission and vision beyond the High Plains to all of Turtle Island . Their website is forthcoming, but you can find them at Hiphi.earth
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Resources
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For more podcast stories from What If Instead? Podcast with Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman, visit: https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/alejandro-juarez-crawford and https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/miriam-plavin-masterman
Talking To People Who Think Like Us Has Made Us Stagnant | A conversation with Trevor Vaughn and Hunter Buffington | What If Instead? Podcast with Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman
Trevor Vaughn (00:01)
ta ta ta!
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (00:03)
Trev, when you're going through life, do you hear music in your mind? And I don't mean just some song that you like, but do you tend to hear the theme music from the TV show that, you know, if it's a dangerous situation, it's da da da da. Do you hear this in your brain?
Trevor Vaughn (00:24)
hear a lot of music emanating somewhere in my brain. Yeah, but that's, I think mainly because I'm Welsh and in, in order to really get it going, you got to start walking and get a pace.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (00:36)
This is just a note to the Welsh in our audience that this is just Trevor's experience of being Welsh.
Trevor Vaughn (00:42)
This is my experience of being Welsh, but I mean, to having Welsh blood, but it's funny because I have never been to Wales. My last name is Vaughan, which stands is Welsh for little man. and I've got my blood type. Yeah. Lewis and Vaughan. So Welsh on both sides. And I was chatting with a woman once on an airplane and she had done an internship in Wales. And I'd mentioned that I was a singer and blah, blah, blah. And,
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (00:54)
Your blood type is Welsh. Is that what you're saying? Yeah?
Trevor Vaughn (01:11)
Well, no, actually, I didn't mention I was a singer. She I mentioned that I had Welsh blood and she goes, so you sing? And I was like, Yeah, yeah. How do you know that? She said, Well, the Welsh sing wherever they go. When they walk, they sing. And I was like, I was like, I sing as I walk to but like it's, you know, like it's not something that things I think art a lot of things.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (01:27)
Mmm.
Trevor Vaughn (01:41)
come from a place of eminent they emanate the end of my thing.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (01:44)
What do they emanate from? Where's the emanation coming from?
Trevor Vaughn (01:47)
I mean the soul consciousness, you know that
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (01:50)
I think Hunter Buffington knows the answer to this question. No offense, I thought you were going to be asked the answer, Trevor.
Hunter Buffington (01:52)
I don't know.
Trevor Vaughn (01:53)
Yeah.
No, I'm going to pass the buck is what I'm going to do because I don't know exactly where it does end from. I'm just saying the Welsh, I have tapped into some walking song emanation in deep in their history. And I, maybe that's where I get some of my song from. But I learned that from somewhere else.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (02:16)
Yeah, that sounds a little bit Bugs Bunny or something. Hunter, do you hear music in your head when you're walking down the street like Trevor?
Trevor Vaughn (02:18)
Totally.
Hunter Buffington (02:23)
I hear music in my head all the time, but I tend to not vocalize it. And Alejandro, I just want you to know when you were trying to describe Trevor's theme song, when he hears Danger, I definitely have a very different theme song because I go mission impossible. Like I literally in my head, I'm like, okay, if Tom can make this look good as short as he is, we're almost the same height. Just kidding.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (02:53)
You gotta sing it though. Sing what happens to Trevor when the danger approaches.
Hunter Buffington (02:55)
But it, no, but, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, right? You can again, like embrace it. I feel like, I work well together is because I'm like on the jump and he's like, wait, let's be calm. And then we'll work that. And you know, it usually works out well.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (03:02)
Yeah, yeah.
So this is very powerful. You're showing us that Trevor's Danger music is kind of thrilling. You're like getting into it. Because I thought Trevor's Danger music might be more of a schmaltzy love song. Like I was thinking, I give.
Hunter Buffington (03:22)
I mean.
I think it is though, really. I think my danger music is Mission Impossible, but I think hers is like the whole like, hey. You wanna get closer and get dangerous? Never? Yeah? Come on. -huh.
Trevor Vaughn (03:35)
You
Yeah, yeah. I have been pegged and I feel, I feel seen. A little, little exposed. Maybe is the better word.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (03:40)
Trevor, we got you man!
Ha ha ha ha ha
I think that's a direct quote of something you said, Mim, in one of these episodes about being seen. Mim, what's your theme music? Do you also go through life with the so proper cues going through your head?
Mim Plavin-Masterman (04:03)
I do accept, I watch a lot of Nordic Noir and I have a lot of the like...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (04:09)
Of course you do.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (04:12)
Like with subtitles, it's like a whole vibe. And like that music is uber creepy. So like, instead of the Mission Impossible, like it's just this like sad cello or like violin somewhere where, and it's just like scratching along and I'm like, this is bad, you know? So.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (04:29)
So this is why if I'm like, Mim, you know, your audio codec isn't working, you'll give me this really, you know, long take freaked out look. It's cause you've got the uber creepy Nordic cello in your mind.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (04:40)
Definitely. I don't know Viola. I don't know whatever it is. It's sad and mournful and deep. Yeah, so
Trevor Vaughn (04:45)
It's like...
It's like Debussy gone bad. It's, yes, Debussy gone bad. Sad, sad bad.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (04:51)
Yeah, exactly like Debussy gone, yeah, gone bad.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (04:55)
Bad Debussy. That's gonna be my spoken word name when I bring it back. I'm gonna be Bad Debussy, I think.
Hunter Buffington (05:03)
I just didn't realize I had so much to aspire to until, like, clearly the music in my head really just needs to step it up because...
Trevor Vaughn (05:13)
This is the what -if instead is really all about. It's about upping the amplification and the resonance in the game of what's internally going in the world for us and others.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (05:24)
Yeah, I mean, maybe we just figured everything out. You know, what's personality, what's culture? It's, how are you staging things and which mood music you're hearing? I have to tell you guys something. This is actually a very personal thing for me. When I was a young boy, my father's job was to choose the music for the big soap operas in the US, right? So literally when you would hear that music, you know, da, da, da, da, da, he had picked that music.
Hunter Buffington (05:27)
as well.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (05:54)
And there's a whole longer story. Like we would make all our drawings on script paper, we called it. And as kids, we didn't know that script paper wasn't just a thing, but it was the back of the scripts from Guiding Light and One Life to Live. And then, I don't know if I'm gonna get my dad in trouble now, but our bank teller, I grew up in a time when you would go to a bank and talk to a person, was actually someone who, like she would give us the best banking service you'd ever had in exchange for being able to see that soap opera script.
little bit before it happened. Just saying. Dad, I'm sorry. Yeah.
Trevor Vaughn (06:28)
That is amazing. That is some sweet New York insider information right there. And it's like, I'll scratch your back real quick if you scratch mine with that.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (06:34)
Hahaha!
This is what if instead your source of sweet New York inside information. Go ahead, Trev.
Trevor Vaughn (06:45)
I also realized that the new season of House of the Dragons, or is what's it called? House, is that right? Needs to be.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (06:55)
Yeah, it's like the not Game of Thrones anymore show. Yeah.
Trevor Vaughn (06:58)
100%. It needs to be called Days of our Dragons.
Hunter Buffington (07:03)
What?
Mim Plavin-Masterman (07:03)
How about as the dragon turns? No? As the dragon roars?
Trevor Vaughn (07:07)
as the tree.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (07:08)
That's right, we can get your schmaltzy music going while the dragon is soaring and burning stuff. It could be like, bad Debussy. Yeah, bad Debussy could be the dragon's name.
Trevor Vaughn (07:15)
Yeah, 100 bad WC.
Hunter Buffington (07:19)
want to not mark and sing but run and scream. Right?
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (07:23)
It wants you to run it. I just want to ride Bad Debbie to see the dragon, like through the sky. It's pretty much my new life aspiration. Y 'all.
Trevor Vaughn (07:33)
If we could bring him back to see some of them dragons, I bet he would write some incredible scores. But not from, you'd have to take him back to like the height of Game of Thrones. Not this new stuff, not Days of Our Dragons. Alejandro, it seemed like you were about to go into a new zone. Where are you going?
Mim Plavin-Masterman (07:48)
You
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (07:55)
Yeah, I'm going to up this discussion about the music in our heads, but we're going to focus a little bit on a major crisis that we're facing, right? And the crisis does not involve Bad Debussy the Dragon. In many ways, it's much more insidious than that. Before we do, we're so grateful to be with you here today, Hunter Buffington and Trevor Vaughan.
We just want to introduce listeners to our incredible guests. You already know them by the music in their head. And then we're going to get into a discussion as we go forward.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (08:35)
So this is actually a first for what if instead, what if instead we have two guests? So here we are, instead of just one. But I'm going to start with Hunter just because we're going to pretend it's like a Brady Bunch thing and she's right next to me. So she is, I hope I get this all right. And if I leave something out, Hunter, please tell me. So she is an industrial hemp policy expert and a supply chain expert. And she works in the emerging hemp industry. And she's been working in this industry for about 10 or 11 years. Now, if I did my math right.
with a background in sustainable development. She works to apply open systems to create sort of sustainable processes, climate action plans in Fort Collins and in Colorado more broadly. And so she's really at this interesting intersection of food systems, of agriculture, of new industries, of climate, and kind of all of it. And then she also works with regulators. She works with policymakers. She works with farmers. She works with agriculture producers, businesses to figure out how to help the hemp industry.
help it domestically, help it globally, and really create ways to drive profit without really destroying the earth. How do we build a profitable, sustainable community and give everybody a great livelihood? And she does this as part of her job as the Director of Agriculture Policy Solutions. So that's Hunter. And then we get to Trevor. And he is the co -founder of the High Plains Farming Initiative, which is really focusing on agricultural innovations, again, around farming. So.
working in this really nice space around meeting agriculture plus innovation plus small business plus tech plus all of it. And what's really interesting about Trevor too is that he's working on this piece of incorporating waste systems so that they're no longer waste systems. How do they become these products that help farmers? How do you basically put them back into the economy in different ways? And so you're doing a bunch of different things, including minimizing waste.
And for those of you who listen to our episode with Andy Ayuku, he talks about some of the same stuff like this in Ghana that he's working on with minimizing waste and repurposing things like coconut husks and things like that. But particularly, if I get this right, Trevor, you're working with mycology, which is mushrooms. Okay, good. Okay. Okay. Mushrooms. And really trying to restore the degraded soil using mushrooms and just generally improving plant nutrition. So.
That's Trevor and Hunter, and we're very excited to have them both with us.
Hunter Buffington (11:02)
Thanks. Excited.
Trevor Vaughn (11:03)
We're happy, thrilled to be here. That was beautifully done and got me really excited. I'm like, yeah, we are doing that. I sound good too.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (11:03)
It's such a...
Hunter Buffington (11:09)
Yeah, I still am great. Thanks, man.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (11:10)
You guys are great! It was pretty easy to write this. You guys are doing amazing stuff. So...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (11:15)
Ha ha!
Trevor Vaughn (11:17)
Thank you.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (11:18)
Mim, can you just take two minutes and say nice things about me? No, this is What If Instead, the podcast, and we're on a mission here to make creating solutions and experiments of your own, even in the face of the most pressing and insoluble problems, as normal as watching videos on your phone. Welcome to What If Instead. And we always start with the question, which is, when you do this work, when each of you...
Hunter Buffington (11:26)
to it. Thanks.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (11:46)
And let's start with you Hunter and then go to you Trevor. When you do the work of enabling folks to ask that question, what if instead it worked this way, who are the people that you're most interested, that you're trying to serve, you're working to serve? It could be animals too, if you prefer to serve animals, but who are the creatures that you are most committed to serving?
Hunter Buffington (12:11)
Wow, so it's funny because I think of my role as a connector. So it's hard to consider one group as the primary focus because when I'm communicating with farmers, right?
They are the first folks to take risks, climate systems, and any kind of actual change. And they're incredibly creative, the folks that influence them the most, right? The people they meet at the cafe on Sunday afternoons. But the legislators consider them their constituents. They want to represent them. And everybody, not everybody, but there is a collective understanding that without farmers, we
don't have food. And so connecting legislators with. Yeah. No farmers, no food, clothes become questionable.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (13:02)
Wait, wait, can you break that idea down for our audiences for a second? So no farmers, no food. Okay, just taking a minute with that. And no legislators, what's the issue there? Go on.
Hunter Buffington (13:14)
I mean, there's so many where to start, but the reality is they want to at least be seen representing their constituents.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (13:18)
Hahaha.
Hunter Buffington (13:25)
And this is farm bill season and I call it farm bill season because it usually lasts for 18 months. It's going to last much longer for us this time, but it kicks off this entire focus on, well, we need to hear from farmers. And they do that for 18 months out of a five year cycle, it feels like.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (13:35)
Mmm.
Mmm.
Hunter Buffington (13:44)
And so it's really that connection rather than focusing just on one group. It's trying to help them understand that I can be a conduit for conversation. And it's not always easy conversation, right? But that's what I try to do.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (14:02)
That in itself is so powerful that you're not serving kind of one segment as the business folks like to call it, but instead you're being a bridge builder and a conduit between these groups to convene conversations that can be difficult. Now I did hear you say that farm bill season may be unusually long. This time, would love to pick up on that and the reasons. Would love to think about
why these conversations are difficult and really zero in on this idea of legislators and others who are hearing from and potentially even listening to farmers. Can you take a second with that and then hand it off to our dear Trevor Vaughn, because I want to hear about the 90 different constituencies that Trev serves to.
Hunter Buffington (14:55)
Absolutely. And one thing that when I was connecting the far right to the legislators, I left out.
the group that's in the middle that I also work with and that's regulators because most of the time we have legislation that's made, right? And then it's the regulators, typically legislation is made at federal levels or at high state level, but then it's the regulators that actually have to do the enforcement, right? And so they're very much left out of these conversations between those that they enforce on and the people who tell them what to.
So it's kind of a triumvirate, right, as we're working through this process. And we haven't even talked about science and adaptability, right, evolution and how we process new information. And this is one of the things that Trevor and I have really spent a lot of time talking about. We recognize that we can't keep doing the same things the same way that we've been doing. It's just not working. It hasn't been working. And I will just, I'll hazard a guess that
I think most people are deeply unsatisfied or unhappy with the state of our world right now. And so this is something that Trevor and I have talked about. How do we embolden and empower the farmers to...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (16:08)
Mm -hmm.
Hunter Buffington (16:18)
bring their knowledge to the forefront. And then also, how do we connect them with science in a way that's meaningful that we can also utilize to then change our world, increase profits, right? Enjoy social and cultural revolutions from a new perspective. And then, of course, have an opportunity to maybe save the planet because that's a reality, right? And I still work in a world where people will say, I don't believe in climate change, but we have to make changes.
And Trevor and I have had some really great opportunities to talk about, well, what could that look like? And then ironically, Trevor brought some things to the table that I wasn't familiar with and got me excited about mushrooms and mycology in a whole different way.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (17:04)
Right, so you have five stakeholders. You have farmers, regulators, legislators, scientists, and Trevor, right? These are the big five. Trevor and his shrooms, right? Okay, but I just want to repeat something you said, because it's extraordinary. You said, we recognize that we can't keep doing this the same way, so we must empower farmers to bring knowledge to the forefront, knowledge literally from the ground, from...
Trevor Vaughn (17:14)
haha
Hunter Buffington (17:14)
And Trevor.
Trevor Vaughn (17:17)
Yes.
Yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (17:33)
the soil from the facts on the ground, but also connect that to science. I just want to pause because I think that is worth thinking about at this moment in time. And then Trevor, maybe because Mim's going to have a lot of really good questions about to start popping, but maybe Trevor, you could kind of talk about the angle you bring to this, even in terms of what Hunter has just said about
convening that conversation as we recognize that we can't keep doing things the same.
Trevor Vaughn (18:07)
Yeah, thank you. I got really emotional listening to Hunter, you know, and just coming around to this, you know, who are we serving? You know, what is all the different things we do in life to serve in order to love, to heal, to restore? And honestly, you know, I just, it all started with this wild, wacky, circular,
incredible journey. I just wanted to have a vineyard. My family has land in West Texas, which is in Terry County, which is the great capital of Texas. And I and my, my aunt and uncle had bought a beautiful home in Portugal. And I was falling in love with Portuguese wine in Portugal, on the port, Portugal itself, when I found out that the same grapes I was drinking the same varieties were now being grown in Terry County where
my aunt and my mom own, you know, over a thousand acres of land. And it's historically been cotton and peanut land. And, you know, my grandfather's words started to resonate with me, which was take care of that name. His name was Devereux Lewis and my middle name is Devereux, that's his namesake. And that kind of started to haunt me, you know? And so I started to kind of serve that kind of...
small still voice and I started to fall in love with wine grapes. And I really started to serve this dream and nurture this dream of what could happen. And in the process I learned a lot about what's going on in this region of the world. The High Plains of Texas is an important player.
on a global scale. It's the largest contiguous cotton patch in the world. And it is a place of land rich, money poor. And it is a place where these farmers are so stubborn and so brilliant, and they can they farm on large scales. And so small change becomes big change in this region. And these progressive cotton growers started to
become wine grape growers and they realized with the same amount of rain in a good year, they could basically grow a crop 10X what cotton can get on its best year. And that was a disruption that essentially unleashed this other thing that really cooled my heels on the vineyard idea, which is there is a shit load and I'm talking a criminal amount, a global criminal amount of dicamba that's blowing through this area.
as being applied onto these soils. And this, if anyone doesn't know what dicamba is, it's agent orange, y 'all. And this, they upped the toxicity in 2015 because of these dicambit resistant weeds, AKA biological life. And then the problems really started happening in the vineyard and the cupping of the leaves.
And finally, you know, now we have, I don't know, 100, we're sitting three, four years into it. I think there's a $330 million class action suit now between all 57 of these wine grape growers and against Monsanto, VASF. And so it's, and here we are now where the EPA, finally, we can go into this further. Who are we servicing? I am servicing the biological life.
of the High Plains region and I became aware that this region was really sick, you know, on a landscape biological scale and it broke my heart, still breaks my heart. And so out of that pain, out of that real like, holy shit awareness, I started to do stuff that didn't make sense. I started calling scientists, I started calling...
entrepreneurs, I started calling farmers, you know, started, I called Hunter, you know, I started spit. No, I did it. I did it. And, you know, I just, it's that kind of like follow your nose, follow your gut and, and.
Hunter Buffington (22:32)
You called me too.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (22:36)
That really didn't make sense, right? But you did it. Yeah.
Tell us about how that conversation between the two of you started and how it turned into a collaboration, would you?
Trevor Vaughn (22:55)
Sure, I mean Hunter and I had a great initial conversation in Washington DC at a national hemp coalition or conference that was happening and I was all fired up about hemp and the potential of it. Hunter, you were working with Santa Fe Farms I think at that point and we were really sitting at a very kind of positive place of like, yeah CBD kind of rose and crashed but like,
hemp is still where it's at, you know, in regards to healing.
Hunter Buffington (23:28)
materials, textiles, right? I mean, all the things, food, so many things. Sorry, got excited. Go ahead, Trevor.
Trevor Vaughn (23:35)
Yeah, yeah. And so I was having a conversation with her boss at the time who has now passed. God bless. Steven Glickman. What was this? Is that? What was the? Yeah. And we were, I was essentially, he and I, I got him fired up about like, that I felt like we needed to lay the foundations of Saqqara. You know, it was like, like, let's not rush this. Like, like, what does it mean to lay the foundations of a temple that will last thousands of years? And.
Hunter Buffington (23:47)
Yep, Steven.
Trevor Vaughn (24:05)
Anyhow, I met Hunter there and she was by far the most impressive person I met in DC. And then years passed and then we picked the ball up really once Hi -Fi had a little bit more solidity and legs to it. Anyhow, Hunter, I'll leave you.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (24:22)
I gotta say, any time Hunter shows up in DC, she's the most impressive person there, which might not be saying that much, but you know.
Hunter Buffington (24:28)
I mean, I surround myself with greatness. So trying to make sure that if the smartest person in the room is there, that I at least shake their hand and get an introduction. And from my perspective, when Trevor called me and he said,
Trevor Vaughn (24:33)
to.
Hunter Buffington (24:46)
what are we gonna do about this? Everybody's talking about it, right? Everyone keeps talking about it, but I don't see anybody really doing things. And I had heard through the grapevine that Trevor had been interested in this project and that it needed some support.
And I said, okay, well, let's have more conversations after our initial meeting in DC. And I just want to say, because Trevor, while hemp brought us together, right? Hemp is not the primary focus of the project that we have together. And what was really exciting for me is that we had just this massive vision. Trevor has no fear. He heard him say that he just started picking up the phone. It's incredible.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (25:30)
It's that Mission Impossible music hunter. It's in his head.
Hunter Buffington (25:32)
But that's why, like, yeah, that's, that's Trevor's no fear, completely willi and say, I don't know ab curious. And that curiou has really helped him to into resources. Right. And vision of, okay, so hemp with my background and su
the vision of, well, why can't we change the world? Right, Trav? Right? If we can't do this, no one can. And I said, well, hell yeah, that's a great reason for us to figure out some way to work together. And the mushrooms came later, but I'm really intrigued and excited about what we've learned about mushrooms, their impact potentially in cleaning the oceans. And...
just the way that they function on our planet. It's one of the oldest biological species that has existed. So Trevor's helping me to have a new found love of mycology and mushrooms. So I just wanted to share that because hemp brought us together, but we're going far beyond that at this point. And that's why I'm so excited about our project.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (26:53)
So can you talk a little bit more about the project? Like as I'm listening to you talk, I'm trying to reconcile all of what you're saying with like the waste streams and the closed loop and all of it. Like I feel like I'm playing, you know, Tetris, but the pieces aren't quite fitting for me. So I'm hoping you can sort of help me figure out how does that all sync up with what you guys are working on.
Trevor Vaughn (27:15)
ugly happy to kind of jump jump in on that. So.
Waste is not what we think it is. And waste is not waste. It is a raw material that should feed into another system. And so on a large landscape level, I was fighting cotton going into wine grapes, because I'm like, hell's bells messing up the potential for us to actually
make a difference where I want to make money with the water that we have, we're a water scarce area. And essentially I changed my tune. I have fallen in love with cotton. I have fallen in love with regeneratively grown beyond organic cotton and how it can go like a love fest right next to hemp, right next to cover crops that cows and sheep and
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (27:56)
Mm.
Trevor Vaughn (28:18)
pigs and chickens can run on. But the thing for me that...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (28:21)
We need a Beyond Organic certification, Trev, I think. I think. This is like stamped Beyond Organic, right? Just saying.
Trevor Vaughn (28:25)
Yeah.
Well, I mean, there's a lot of semantics that can be thrown around in regards to this. Some of the best farmers that still are kind of quasi -conventional, you could argue, are more regenerative than a lot of quote unquote organic growers in the country. But it's a complex issue. The thing I wanted to say, Mem, to your point is, like, why is Hi -Fi's vision kind of radical or huge in how we're approaching it? And the framework is the waste streams out of cotton.
are profound, like the cotton burrs themselves. You can some of the top, the best topsoil that, you know, to just put out, you know, gardens or anywhere is that stuff. You know, the cotton stalks that are left in the field and then eventually plowed under in, you know, before the growing season, those could be harvested for biochar and could be used in
fast paralysis or slow paralysis to actually power cotton gins, regenerative cotton gins. And that biochar can be used then to create completely different carbon paradigms within the soil. The farmers can get paid for that by the USDA now for applying it. And in the process, it makes the soils more drought resistant, more
flood resistant, it creates a coral reef of life for the soil. And so, and then you're able to get pyrolygnias acids, wood vinegars out of that process as well, which can be seed, seed stimulants, they can be organic herbicides and pesticides. So from just cotton stalks alone, we have this incredible ability to upcycle on a, on a landscape level on a grand scale.
we can reinvent the power, little power paradigms of how these small farming communities can power their operations industrially. And so then when you get it, you go further, now we go further into the loop of the loops, like is mycology. And so, you know, cotton seed hulls are...
We're going to put it out here. Y 'all, this is some open source information. You're going to throw away, you're going to forgive some pearls here. Cotton seed hulls are creme de la creme, like mint gold for growing mushrooms. Sprint brewers grain, waste stream of the brewing industry, also gold from ecology. And so we can go further. We can take the cotton stocks. We can take...
a percentage of those and then mix them in with the cotton seed hulls and now voila the largest cotton patch in the world has the ability to be the largest mushroom supplier on the effing planet.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (31:28)
Before we go on to the largest mushroom supplier in the f -ing planet and hear what you would add to this Hunter, Trev, just make sure we got the picture for listeners not familiar with cotton growing. So we have cotton stalks, burrs, seed hulls, and then we have wood vinegar. Can you just draw us a little picture of this just for listeners that are unfamiliar? Like really make it a drawing for kids like me who might have grown up in the inner city.
Hunter Buffington (31:33)
you
Trevor Vaughn (31:43)
the seeds themselves. Yeah, wait, wait.
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, so when people think of cotton, they think of the fabric of our lives. They think of the bowls. They think of that white gold. And they think that's...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (32:02)
Hahaha.
Is that the song you have when you're going into danger? Nevermind, go on.
Trevor Vaughn (32:08)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's getting really dangerous here. The touch, the feel of cotton. Yeah, that's it. So creepy. And Mim's covering her face again. She's covering her face.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (32:13)
H -H -H -H -H -H -H -H -H -H -H -H -
it the most. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Names got the Nordic Noir version.
Hunter Buffington (32:19)
Don't do it, come on, you can do it.
Trevor Vaughn (32:23)
Yeah, she's got that sad, the world's smallest, saddest violin playing in the background. Yeah, so here's that.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (32:29)
Right, as the topsoil disappears. No, seriously, can you break this down for us real quick? Just draw us a picture.
Hunter Buffington (32:32)
right? Reminence.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (32:37)
What Hunter?
Hunter Buffington (32:38)
I said, ribulates of topsoil slowly going downhill. Sorry, sorry. It's Mim's fault. I'm going Mim.
Trevor Vaughn (32:41)
You
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (32:42)
to a cello track, right? And then you see like an Ingmar Bergman hero with like a totally stone face. Right. Right. It's the scene at the end of Bergman's Virgin. What Trevor?
Hunter Buffington (32:47)
We quit.
Trevor Vaughn (32:49)
You
Mim Plavin-Masterman (32:49)
I know it's also shot in black and white. It's shot in black and white. It's very slow and yeah.
Trevor Vaughn (32:52)
It must be. In one of those unique frames like the lighthouse. Yeah, like they shot it in a different frame like with the lighthouse. That's how you're getting a totally different POV.
Hunter Buffington (32:52)
Yes. Yes.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (33:04)
Yeah, it's the end of the virgin spring. It was the only way I knew how to live, right? With this very stern farmer. Yeah, go ahead.
Trevor Vaughn (33:12)
That's it. Igmar Bergman's on the phone. So, all right, I'm going to get back to it. All right, so we've got the cotton ball. You've got the white gold there. And then you've got the burrs, the very sharp burrs that are around it. And you got the stalk, and then you got the roots below. And then within the cotton are the seeds and the seed hulls around the seeds. And so it's just in that one thing alone, cotton isn't what you think it is. It's all these other things.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (33:15)
Heheheheh
Trevor Vaughn (33:42)
And, and so, and it's at the backbone of civilization. It really is. It goes right back to like the Delta Nile and, you know, right, right to the heart. And so we can't run from it. Let's let King Cotton be King Cotton. Let, let, let's really put a new crown on the King and let's give the King a new Queen or maybe it's his old Queen.
which is hemp and other things or wine grapes for our region. You know, it's the yes and that goes after that. But as long as cotton is grown with dicamba resistant GMO seeds and pesticides and herbicides that are all delivered by the same big old company trying to make a lot of money, forcing farmers to the edge of the cliff.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (34:20)
Mmm.
Trevor Vaughn (34:39)
the end of the margins. This is why we have the highest, the farmers have the highest suicide rate in the nation. You know, so, yeah, we've got to, as Hunter said earlier, it ain't working y 'all. And how are we going to create new paradigms for these guys to have them be really profitable and to have them be the price.
makers and not the price takers and so Hunter we can get into supply chains and disrupting supply chains.
Hunter Buffington (35:09)
I know, I don't know if you guys, maybe you can't see me, but I'm like bouncing up and down. I'm so excited for, to add to what Trevor just said.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (35:18)
You're going to show us how to make it profitable not just for the big fertilizer companies and pesticide companies, right? But for the farmer. That's where we're going.
Trevor Vaughn (35:18)
Yeah, so.
That's where we're going. That's where we have to go.
Hunter Buffington (35:27)
Yeah, yeah. And to bring manufacturing back domestically, we've outsourced so much of that. But...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (35:28)
What if instead...
Hunter Buffington (35:37)
what I was really getting excited about and Trevor, great job of describing like all of the different aspects of the cotton value chain because that's not just cotton, right? That's how most agriculture systems actually work. And we also, you know, Trevor hinted a little bit about the relationship between hemp and cotton. And that's part of the paradigm that we're really trying to challenge in traditional agriculture.
right, is this idea that you're going to focus on a monocrop at a million acres. I mean, most of our farmers are farming 10 ,000 acres. These are the guys that, you know, make all of the onions in your region, right, or grow, not make them, but grow all the onions. And it's this idea that...
every margin counts in agriculture supply chain. And most folks are not familiar that everything that comes off that cotton that we are familiar with has to be marginalized so that there's a profit opportunity for the farmer. And when you start thinking about that, it really changes the way you think about the soil, right? The way you think about water, the way you think about driving your tractor, right? Or how do you deploy pesticides?
And then there's becomes this crazy shift where if you're putting a lot of pesticides, Dekamba, as Trevor was talking about, it depletes the soil. So then what do you do? You have to then buy fertilizers to add back into the soil and then it rains. And guess what happens to both the pesticides and the fertilizers, right? They go right into our water supply. And we've created this very disturbing cycle of disruption of what is naturally occurring.
right? When we talk about the planet itself and Trevor did a great job thinking about waste. The planet doesn't really have waste, right? Every system utilizes that waste, whether we understand it or not. We think about the microbial and bacterial environment. Many folks would consider that waste, right? Like mites are not sexy, right? Skin mites. You don't want to think about skin dust and how much that's in your mouth. But, you know.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (37:51)
metamite or two yeah
Trevor Vaughn (37:52)
Neither is Black Fly Soldier larvae.
Hunter Buffington (37:56)
But we definitely approve that to feed to animals. And I'm pretty sure we'll be eating it as a protein source pretty soon too. And that's the mentality that needs to shift. And this idea that farmers put profit first, I don't believe that's true in talking with our farmers. But when they're forced to make difficult decisions like that, that they have to choose between what they want to do to keep their families fed, right?
or what they have to do to keep their families fed versus what they want to do for land that's been in their family for generations, right? This is the pressure that they find themselves under. And this is what we're doing.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (38:33)
So this is Trevor going back to the devorals in his mind. So we've got to have enough of a margin to keep it working with all those onions or whatever it is while also thinking about these systems and how we can go forward and back with this land. Am I hearing you right?
Hunter Buffington (38:39)
Thank you.
Yeah, I think that's a great way to talk about it. And, you know, seven generations forward, seven generations backward. That's a really important idea for me that I try to live in my sustainable development experience. Right. Is the knowledge that we have behind us. Are we are we using it? Right. And this goes back to Trevor's conversation and his opening. We have a wealth of information, but.
the application of that information has been really tamped down by the economics, right? We're not balancing our world for ourselves socially. We're not helping the environment. The focus has really been on the economics. And in that focus, I think we've lost a lot of who we are. And farmers are the least risk averse people I have ever met. If your entire livelihood depends on acts of God,
Right? You are just incredibly positive people that are the hardest working folks I've ever known. And many of them are just behind the scenes. Right? How many farmers do you guys know? And that would be a great question for your listeners. Like, do you guys know any farmers? Dairy farmers, right? A lot of people drink a lot of milk. So getting back in touch with the earth and understanding agriculture.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (40:11)
Mmm. Mmm.
Hunter Buffington (40:22)
from a system, right? And I'm a dorky systems girl, so you'll hear me say that. But the nice thing is that a system can be really big, but it can also be very small. And it helps us to think about how do we actually interact with our environment and what is important to us, right? Because it can't always be money, right? The wealthiest countries in the world tend to be the least happy, so.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (40:46)
If we have a future, it's because of dorky systems, girls. I'm just saying. And I'll answer your question about knowing farmers later, but the short version is my father grew up on a farm. And so I growing up literally in what was often referred to by people who didn't want to come there as a bad neighborhood, though I didn't think so, idolized growing up on a farm. But then when I picked sugar snap,
Hunter Buffington (40:51)
I love that. Can you make that into a speaker?
Mim Plavin-Masterman (40:56)
Yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (41:15)
for a month one summer. boy, did I realize that my romanticization had made it sound far easier than the single hardest thing I've ever done.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (41:29)
So a couple of things I wanted to pick up on what Hunter and what Trevor were saying. So first, I think this point about like we've lost these connections to the land, then we have to rebuild them. We're seeing this across space and time, right? We're seeing this in Australia with return to indigenous fire management. We're seeing this in Spain when they're like finding the old Moorish channels for the Sierra Nevadas to like make sure that the aquifers get replenished while they're distributing the scarce water. Like they're finding ways to reconnect this old knowledge.
And so there's a way in which I think there's a very deep cultural piece that you guys are trying to bring back of like, there are ways people knew how to handle the earth and the land that were not this very sort of Western idea of what it looked like. And so that's a big piece. But then the second piece of that, which is in some ways, I am also a supply chain nerd. So what I find fascinating is that all of the waste and all these products are, they're kind of like reverse logistics.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (42:10)
Mmm.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (42:28)
which is much more complicated to instill because we're very used to, we just push the waste out and somebody else deals with it. And so, or not, right. So like you see it even in like automotive manufacturing, like you send an engine back, sending an engine back with all the parts is way more complicated than putting the engine in the car and sending it off the assembly line. So how do you get these farmers to think about,
Hunter Buffington (42:37)
or not, or, you know, let's have fun in the ocean. Yeah.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (42:58)
this reverse logistics with all of this agricultural not waste that they've been told is waste for so long.
Trevor Vaughn (43:11)
with good funding and a great outreach and education campaign and time to spend with them with boots on the ground. You know, the thing I feel that we have to get to really a hyper local efficiency. And so for there to be...
Hunter Buffington (43:15)
Thank you.
Trevor Vaughn (43:38)
really well integrated co -ops that are able to say, you know, the combine just came out for the cotton and then in a couple months the combine will be out to get the stocks. You know what I mean? And part of, you know, yeah, what you've got to do is you have to pay them today. Actually yesterday. Yeah, let's just start with that. Just pay them.
Hunter Buffington (44:02)
Yeah, I was just gonna say monetize it.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (44:04)
Hmm.
Trevor Vaughn (44:08)
to be like, this is good for the planet and your bottom line and Microsoft is gonna be really happy and they're gonna look great, but we need to pay you now. And they'll be like, awesome. I wish someone would have told me that my whole career. So yeah, make it easy.
Hunter Buffington (44:25)
And make it easy, right, Trevor? And you mentioned this a little bit, but I want to capitalize on this, keeping it local, localizing that system. When we look at carbon credits, and you mentioned this, like the carbon economy, if you go more than 100 miles, and it really doesn't matter where you are in the value chain, the second that you transport anything over 100 miles, the fuel, the rubber, the asphalt,
eats any kind of carbon advantage that you've created.
And for farmers, right, think about how much, when we look at the LCA for farmers, it's the same thing. It's all fuel, right? It's all transportation. And then it's the chemicals. So if we can talk about removing the chemicals, that's great. But we also have to incentivize them by making it easy, keeping it close, and then commoditizing it. And that's the key.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (44:59)
Mmm.
Yeah. Can we drill down on that for a second, Hunter? So in the United States, locally grown is presented as some kind of a premium option, right? wouldn't it be nice if I could have some locally grown vegetables? And what I'm hearing you saying, Dorky Systems Girl is how you've described yourself, right, is we need a system where local is the norm.
where the costs are righted for what it really costs us to drive something hundreds of miles, and where the pesticides and the fertilizers are part of a system that makes sense for the farmer. So if you could imagine for a second, what would the system look like? And if it was any other guests but you two, I would be thinking this is too hard a question.
But what does the system look like where these things are set in their right places?
Hunter Buffington (46:26)
So, and Trevor, you know, jump in. So, but for me, and it's funny when I first started doing sustainable development, everybody called it, you know, circular.
economies and then it became the donut economy and now we're back to circularity right but circularity is phenomenal and it can work at a global level as well on very large scales so when we think about housing or the textile industry that's an appropriate system but when we think about a local food system and we think about our health so if you have allergies you'll hear people say eat local honey right so there's a whole lot of advantages to keeping
your system smaller. You drive processing jobs because you've got local farms that are producing the food. Then you need jobs to get that food to the local market. Then you need the local market where it can actually be for sale. And the beautiful thing is that if you're going to do regenerative agriculture, guess what? You need manure, right? So then you have a relationship with your dairy farms or perhaps your horse farms that drives that need for manure. That creates another margin and
offtake that is an economic driver. So the smaller that that system, the more enclosed that system is in a local level, the more sustainable it
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (47:46)
You
Mim Plavin-Masterman (47:49)
Thank you for tuning into part one. The echo chamber makes us stagnant. Hunter and Trevor are just getting started. To hear part two, click where local is the norm, wherever you get your podcasts.