Building a Sustainable Organic Food System in the US with Sandi Kronick, CEO of Happy Dirt
About this episode:
Sandi Kronick, CEO of Happy Dirt joins us on the podcast. Sandi shares her passion for securing a stable supply of fresh, healthy, organic food, by working with farmers to create a viable business model. Her business believes in sustainable farming and works to improve the industry, making farming a more viable career. Happy Dirt has paid hundreds of regional organic farmers millions of dollars and supported many farmers transitioning into organic vegetables.
Topics Discussed:
How Sandi learned how to create and run a business
How she works to make sustainable farming a more viable career
Her commitment to providing communities with quality, fresh, organic produce
How listening to your intuition can make all the difference in business
Why Sandi believes sustainability, transparency, and safety is so important in food production
About Sandi:
Since founding Happy Dirt (formerly Eastern Carolina Organics) in 2004, with a group of farmers, Sandi Kronick has been one of the leaders working to build a sustainable organic food system in North Carolina and the southeast region of the US.
What started as a small business committed to helping organic tobacco farmers diversify their organic acreage for the future of their farms and rural communities, Happy Dirt has paid hundreds of regional organic farmers millions of dollars and supported many farmers transitioning into organic vegetables.
Sandi received her B.A. in Environmental Studies from Oberlin College, and currently serves as the Agribusiness representative and Chairperson of the Limited Resource and Minority Farmer Committee on the Southern SARE Administrative Council of the USDA. She has given hundreds of workshops about the sustainable food movement; integrity and transparency in the supply chain; as well as on all aspects of the Happy Dirt business model including financing, marketing, employee engagement, and grower-ownership.
Read a raw, unedited transcript of this episode:
Thank you so much for joining us today, Sandy, you are one of the leaders working to build a sustainable organic food system in the southeast region of the U.S. and North Carolina. Share with us more about who you are and what you did before launching happy dirt and how you came up with the idea to launch it.
I actually love this story because it really is quite random, and I always hope it inspires people to, invite the unusual paths because you never know where the lead. So I started this work when I was an undergrad. I participated in a cooperative dining program, which was an option to opt out of the campus dining service. It was really fun and it was student led. And so but it was run the lottery. So after two years of intensive leadership and awesome work, I was no more eligible than anybody else to get into the program because the lottery is a lottery. And so when I didn't get in, I applied for a regional coordinating position, one of the campus wide system projects, and I applied for compost coordinator or local food coordinator. And I would have been happy with anything as long as I didn't have to eat the cafeteria food and happen to get the local food coordination job. So what it meant is that I had a staff which wasn't really staff. I had a team of people who owed me hours every week and I assign them routes to go pick up product from mostly Amish farmers who didn't do any driving or emailing or phone calling. It's really a great challenge of learning the basics of communication and not being bashful. And so it's really a rewarding experience, the biggest challenge for me was, how do I make this incredibly convenient for college students? So I had to make sure that the timing of my offering was beating the large national availability list that they were looking at and offering recipes. So I think that was the year that I really learned how to herd cats and I felt really empowered after that, so I could have gone in many different directions. I was very passionate about transportation planning.
Environmentalism has always been a part of who I am. So I definitely wanted to do some work that I felt like was helping the world. When I moved to North Carolina after undergrad, it was very clear to me that there was a booming farmer's market scene with small farmers, very diversified crops that were fabulous, that doing their own marketing, they would stand behind the booth and tell their stories, bond with their customer in just the most incredibly powerful way. But I knew that when I would go to the grocery store, there was nothing local on the shelves. It's certainly not organic, either. And so I just fished around for a few weeks and landed a job with somebody who within the interview was like, I'm going to write a grant so that you can do the work that you're clearly meant to do because there are a lot of tobacco farmers in the state who need an emerging crop. And so if you can help them sell collards and kale, that's what they need to move forward and that's what the markets needed as well. So that's really the path to launching this. It was always a very publicly minded group. We got a tiny amount of seed funding through the state legislature through a grant. So it was lovely and gentle, actually so interesting.
You learned how to create and run a business through the program in college, and you just took it out of college and turned it into a business which is so fun. And have you always been interested in health and wellness and eating healthy and eating organic foods? Yeah, I actually you're reminding me that it's worth mentioning. I never took a business class in my entire life, either, anything about management, etc. But yeah, wellness and feeling really empowered about making my own decisions. It's always been a core part of who I am. I happened to become a vegetarian when I was 11 years old, I'm not a vegetarian anymore. I think I did that for about 10 years. So right around the time I was working with local farmers, I was more open to eating more meat and things like that. But I've always been really passionate. It's important to me to talk to younger audiences, because I really think it's important for them to know that no matter what they want to do in the world, you have to take good care of yourself or else you can achieve your goals. The best way that anyone could try to make the world a better place is actually just be aware of what helps them feel good, period. That doesn't mean subscribing to any particular eat this or don't eat that, but it's just being curious about, do I feel tired? Do I feel alert? Do I feel grouchy? Or do I feel more open to face the challenges and opportunities of the day?
It's so true, and with all the technology coming at us today, taking care of ourselves. And to your point, eating healthy just makes us feel better.
Absolutely. So true, and I love that you say, stay curious.
You have given hundreds of workshops about the sustainable food movement and integrity and transparency in the supply chain. Can you share with us why that is so important?
Yeah. We have a huge population that does care about feeling a certain degree of trust with things that they put in their body or with things that they spend money on. So for some people, it has nothing to do with personal wellness and has to do with being a conscious consumer in terms of dollars. So there is a way that we can actually bridge all of these things together and empower people to, make great choices that are good for you or good for the kind of community that you want to be a part of and that are helping other people further down the line. But we really can't do that if we don't see some degree of transparency or, labeling within the marketplace. And so it can be very overwhelming. It's overwhelming for me, and I live and breathe this every day for decades. There are ways that you should know what to look for and whatnot to look for. And it's all based on your own values, like everyone has to make their own choices. And I think it's important that people have choice. And that's the thing we're trying to improve upon is if you don't have choice or if you don't know that you have choice, then you are participating, but it's probably something that's continuing to work against you. As a company, we're trying to help other companies. We're B to B. We try to help other companies achieve their values by making it easier. We're the broker of that relationship and it's a privilege. It's an intense responsibility. There's a lot of cleaning up that sometimes needs to happen in the middle. But nonetheless, if we can make it more convenient for an industry to be able to execute their values and hand those options and opportunities onto their customer, then our customers happier and more successful, their customers happier and more loyal. And we get to continue to do the good work that we want to do and supporting farmers.
That's so true, and I think consumers and customers can always learn something new. During COVID, we started cooking so much more and you can make an incredible meal, sometimes saving money with really good produce I can't agree more. Yeah. And sometimes you think, Oh, I might not be able to do that unless I go to a restaurant. And we learned that now we like our food at home. Yeah. Just as much. And it's been a really fun thing because it forced us to slow down, our busy life. Exactly. Slow down where we had a little bit more time. Yeah. And it really is an important way to spend time together or spend time by yourself. You know, there's nothing better than putting on some music and shopping all the things. And I've I discovered I really love to clean up while I'm cooking now. And you know, there's certain things that are just become a part of your nature. What I really loved about that process of people discovering or rediscovering cooking is also the challenge that can come when you're working with something that you're not familiar with.
Psychologically, humans, when we are in a supermarket, we are the biggest creatures of habit. We look at exactly the same things and we ignore all the same things. ]The positive thing is that it led people to be a little bit more curious in the kitchen and find new things that they might like that they would not normally have experimented with before. And generally, that leads you to a lot more healthy options as well, like the things that you're more comfortable with. Unfortunately, in society tend to be the things that might not be as nutrient dense or, have all the same vitamins or freshness properties. So I hope that's a trend that sticks that we spend more time in the kitchen, we spend more time slowing down, connecting with our food. There's actually some scientific data that shows that things are healthier when we're actually eating in a more mindful process.
My husband started to cook dinner because was a nice stress relief. And then my daughter and I were bored around the house. We started to do Sunday brunches and so we would start looking at different recipes and to your point, using different foods because I'm sure if you look at all the tracking from the grocery stores that you're right, we are buying a lot of the same things. But on a Saturday night, my daughter and I would put on music and prep for the next day, and then it would all be prepped for the morning and, put on music and, it just became a wonderful thing. Yeah, it's a good point. Actually, it's it's such an important antidote to stress is that bonding time and that plan, you know, you think about it in advance. What are we going to make? And then you're there in the moment and you're like, Well, we're really going to live this up. And I do wonder, you know, as a mom, as a woman, as a healer, I want to participate and thinking through these things like, why do we need to wait till there's desperate times to give ourselves these things that are truly yes, know? Or why do we even consider it to be a treat? Why am I even calling it a treat? But it's entirely likely that your daughter's going to remember that forever. And when she thinks of COVID and all these other really scary and hard things that were happening, there's this one light that was shining or probably many others. But you know, so I do kind of wonder, like, why don't we figure out how to maintain things that are delicious? And I don't just mean tasty, but that are really good for us when things are at other cruising altitude. So yeah, and when you're giving me food for thought.
Yeah. So when you think about cooking, sometimes you think, Oh, it's going to take so much effort and it really doesn't, and it also doesn't take that many ingredients to make something truly amazing,
Yeah, the most delicious is the most simple. Yeah. So interesting.
The Happy Dirt business model includes financing, marketing, employee engagement and grower ownership. Tell us about your business model and why you created it like that.
Yeah, I love talking about this because it was really a happy accident, but I think it's one of the major industry distinguish for us we are in an industry that tends to not be owned by women and tends to have one person in charge. And the farmers are generally especially because they're working with a perishable product. they're dealing with something that's going to rot. And so it is a phrase in our business sell the stuff before. That's what you need to do. And so the farmers have a very weak negotiating position. Our model along was how do we lift up the farmer? How do we give them the security of fair pricing in terms of packaging or labeling or certifications, food safety, I always like to talk about wellness in terms of quality of life? Farming is incredibly hard, incredibly stressful. It's one of the most dangerous jobs in this country. So, if we want to be able to secure a stable supply of fresh food, healthy food, things that we need as consumers, we need to do as a society what we can to make farming a more viable career. The kind of career that one farmer is going to tell their children at the dinner table. I hope if you do well at school and you work hard, you can become a farmer to one day. And when I first came into this business, a lot of the farmers I was working with said, no. I told my kids to go get a nursing job in the city because this is not a good way to live. And there's a lot to unpack there. But that being said, we want to help farmers feel dignity, feel, profitable, feel healthy. But we also we want to give them security we are their partner and we're going to be waking up in the middle of the night worrying about something with them. They're not alone. Farming is incredibly isolating also. So, just being part of a network is resiliency, which I think is incredibly simple, but actually a very powerful thing. It's very well understood that being a part of a network helps people participate and sustain through the hard times. We launched, the whole year. I kept telling everybody, if this pilot experiment works at the end of the year, we're going to want to launch it into a grower owned entity. And so it was just the fabulous luck of being so young and optimistic. and I hired a consultant because I knew I shouldn't be neutral. I should be able to have opinions. And there was a lawyer and a CPA in the room and 13 farmers showed up.and we all left as owners of a company, and I assumed it would be a co-op because I just thought that's what farmers do. They form co-ops when we want them to be a part of an ownership model and the farmers through all of them need you to own this thing. And so I was like, Well, this is really important that the farmers own it because that will always be how we know this company is sustaining itself and commitment to farmers. We cannot go out there and care about the price of lettuce. We have to care about who we're buying the lettuce from, and we have to be able to offer our customers the safety that when they're buying from us, they are fulfilling their desire to really support farmers. So that's our work to do. And if we don't have you and the ownership model it'll be a much harder thing for us to execute as the company grows and evolves. So we came up with hybrid ownership, so myself and one other staff person are part owners in the company. And right now, there are 16 farmers that are part owners in the company as well. And that farmer pool elects a couple of farmers to sit on the board who are engaged in quarterly board meetings and things like that.
So from a governance perspective and a financial perspective, farmers are, soup to nuts engaged in everything we do, which is really fun and also sometimes annoying for them. They just want to wake up and focus on their soil and their crops and their workers But at the end of the day, they also really love knowing that they are participating in something that they believe in and something that they want to be there beyond them or their children. So it's been really rewarding. But it's so true, and I love that you say improving the desire for the profession and to become a farmer because we all have to eat. Exactly.
And this is particularly interesting for me. I'm sitting in California, but my great grandmother came over to the US from Norway and they became farmers in Iowa. And my family owns a farm in Iowa currently. Cool school. So this is really it's very interesting to hear this. And then, you know, you think about how things have always been done. But is there a different way now to do them better? Yeah. And there's many ways that we want to actually be doing things how they were done back then. Mm-Hmm. And, honoring those indigenous traditions and things like that because there was so much inherent wisdom. And unfortunately, we are incredibly disconnected from that. The little tidbits that we have from grandparents or great grandparents or whatever it might be, it's not enough. And so there still is this kind of desperate need to revive those teaching tools and tell more of the stories. With a nod to the folks who really did the work all along, which generally are not people who look like you and me and lift up that we're not reinventing the wheel. We're actually just trying to honor those who came before us and, acknowledging where that that information did come from. Yes.
And I learned that my grandparents, my grandmother, could have gone on to be a nurse. What she always told me she wanted to be. And I always said, At five years old, you know, why didn't you? And then my grandfather could have gone to flight school, but I think they decided that staying on the farm was the best thing for the family at the time.
Very interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think these are the same exact things that a lot of people are dealing with today. And it's coupled with how do I maintain this land? Because once farmland gets developed, it's near impossible financially, physically to put it back into farming. Any development it goes into, whether it's commercial, residential, industrial, et cetera. It's literally just not going to be able to go back into farming. There's a pressure, sometimes often a family history pressure of how do I make sure to keep this going at the same time, you're turning down other careers and things like that. Sometimes things that you really want to do. So, you know, we have to be able to talk about this. I mean, it's the most awkward thing ever for my farmers, but I bring up mental health on the regular because I know they're not talking about it in another environment and it really needs to get talked about, and hopefully by talking about it, we're taking the stigma away or building more resiliency.
When you started your business and you say this in the beginning of your company VIDEO, it was said that the business idea was bold, naive and wacky. And look at your company growth and where you are today and your success. What would you say to someone launching and growing a business who might come up against something like this? Continue to hone your own sense of intuition because if you believe in this idea, when you're really grounded, if you believe in this, when you're in a quiet place and you can entertain the challenges inside of your head or talk to other people about it, that's because you're wanting to participate in it. I cared about vegetables for many, many years because that's what I was eating. And. I cared about being able to support farmers because I knew the farmers are good people, and I trust that if they're putting their hands on the soil and they're eating that food, it's less likely to have the chemicals in it that I didn't want in my body [or that I didn't want in the soil, and then I didn't want in the farm workers bodies. So, It was easier for me to make it through the really, really hard days nights mornings middle of the night, because this was something that not only did I believe in, on paper, but I believed in it. Like literally in the sense of I'm doing this for other people like me. Yeah. And we all have bad days, but it's so much easier when you're so passionate about what you do. when you use talents that just come naturally and the things that you want to wake up and think about every day. Yeah, it's been really helpful. That passion has been a renewable energy for me. I don't have to do much in order to be able to take out of that bank. And I know that that's unique and I'm really grateful to be able to operate from that system. Yeah. And you were helping to feed the world. Farmers are an endangered species, farmland is an endangered species. There's so much risk even in one season if we fail a farmer by not moving everything that's edible, everything that's nutritious out of their field within that season, then who knows if they're going to not plant that same thing next year? Who knows if they're going to decide to go back into tobacco or into, you know, corn or something like that, which is not horrible, but we want to keep them growing like dark leafy greens or cruciferous vegetables things with vitamin C, all these different properties that are harder to come by. I asked this question at the end of every episode because I believe bringing joy into our daily lives is so important. Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business. That brings us joy. What is one tip you can leave with us today about how you find and live your joy? I really love this question. The tip that I have is to not be afraid to inspire people. For me, the joy comes from throwing ideas out, helping the team hear of amazing people who work here, the farmers that we work with and the vendors that we work with. They all work in a very specific lane and for us to be able to bring to them inspiration, gratitude. To be able to say I heard from somebody that that corn that they ate was the best thing that they've had in years and be able to pass that back to the farmer. That currency of inspiration and gratitude is an incredible fuel. And so for us to be able to bridge not just transactional, but bridge positive feelings for people is really rewarding. Anyone could do this. I'm no different than anybody else, but to be able to sit in your seat of whatever your job is and make room for spreading inspiration, will help you do a better job and help people who work with you to want to do better as well.
I love that, and the advice to inspire people. You know, we don't always think about it. So saying don't be afraid to inspire people, really great. This month of March is a good time to remind people that especially women in business, often we think that we have to. Get extra tough. And that's OK. There are moments when I have to get extra tough, but it's also really important to lean into my own self trust and self-worth. And a lot of my worth comes from helping to inspire people. There's not actual like dollars and cents currency to that, but I know I know that there's a currency there. And the funny thing is, is that we don't even know where it goes. Just like with our dollars, we don't know when we invest somewhere where it goes. You spend your dollar at the store and who knows how it trickles around. The same thing happens, you know, with something you might tell your daughter and something she might pass on to her teacher and who knows, but it's really important to participate, and unfortunately, you need to have a certain degree of confidence. But that's a muscle that we all need to exercise. It's not like some people, you know, if you're blessed with it, sometimes it means that you actually need to work on the other muscle. Finding that balance of confidence and humility and then spreading the inspiration out is it'll come back a thousand-fold in the business world. It's always worth it. Yeah. And it feels so good. I feel like I could talk to you all afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us today, Sandi. Can you please tell our listeners how and where they can find you? Happy dirt is on the web and on social media. Happy Dirt Produce on Instagram, and we're happy dirt dotcom. And you could find our products and a lot of supermarkets up and down the East Coast.