TLC Todd versations Presents La Grama with Rodrigo Bedoya

hey there everybody thank you so very much for stopping by one more time and hanging out with us here as tlc presents conversations we are thrilled to have you join us once again we are excited about who we've got sitting next to me

over here please everybody give it up for my friend rodrigo doya welcome my friend hi todd how are you very happy to be here thank you i'm happy that you are here i

really appreciate you taking your time out of your busy day down in lima peru uh changing the world for the better and that's what i'm excited to talk about today um you know i'm

was thinking about this all week you know prior to us getting together and i'm just excited about it because one of the things that i love about this platform and something i believe in wholeheartedly is that we need to be talking about these

conversations that are driving positive costs into food and when i think about that and i think about your story um it exemplifies that it's the meaning of that i think what you guys are doing

is so worthy of people's time and energy to understand and to listen and to embrace um which we'll share with everybody in greater detail but i wanted to touch on it beforehand with us because i feel so

passionately about what you guys are doing because it's just it's just right right and i just love that right and i think it's fantastic you know one of the interesting things is is not only have

you built a company now that you know working to change people's lives you're importing product all over the globe uh excuse me exporting product all over the globe but you know you've gone from

your small start to almost 300 employees almost 3 000 jobs created outside of your company but one of the things i find amazing to me that i'm

just so proud of what you guys do is the way you're taking care of your people which is you're leading the charge down there amongst anybody else and so for you guys to be able to do things

like pay people a better wage offer health care offer retirement offer financial assistance and help and guidance paid vacations i mean it's some of the stuff is unheard of in your space

and what impacted me the most is the way that you're working with women inside your organization to uplift them and their families because domestic violence is a big problem there's issues down there

um women are getting an opportunity through your system to understand learn finance learn to take care of their things find ways to get credit to establish a new life and you brother are changing the

community around you in such an impactful way and so i want to throw that on the table first and tell you what an honor it is for you to be taking time out of your day to hang out with us and share your story so welcome one more

time to you thank you though i am very honored to be here i have been following you for for quite a while now so so i am very very happy to be with you here thank you my brother i appreciate it so let's get started i mean i got a lot of questions

and i want to get into this i want to get in the weeds because i think your message needs to go inspire people we need to make changes right we need to be driving positive costs into food i think this is a great lesson on how to do that

so would you just start off and tell me how three guys in college were out inspecting farms and fields and woke up one day and said hey i got an idea so share with us a little bit how

the grandma started so yeah absolutely so so we are we are three co-founders so gino's diego and me so after graduating from from college

just just almost the day after graduation uh i got an interview at a dutch certifier who has their only office in latin

america here in lima peru in fact just one block away from where i'm sitting right now and i was hired to become an organic

inspector and a couple of weeks later they asked me if i had friends with a profile similar to mine which is you had to be an agronomist you had to speak good english and you have

to have the availability to travel all through latin america so i i got a few cvs from from my friends from college

and gino san diego were hired janus was hired a couple of weeks after me and diego was hired like a month or so after that and then we spent we stand spent a couple of years

traveling all to latin america inspecting and auditing farming operations of all sizes and types from

the smallest coffee cup in the jungle of peru to quinoa co-ops in in the highlands indiana's highlands

to um sesame growers but hawaii and meet producers in uruguay all the way to mid-sized fruit companies in the dominican republic

and even even all the way to large multinational companies like dawg so we were inspecting dole farms in in ecuador and central america

but a couple of years after doing that um we wanted to be more connected to the soil to the farm itself to producing

as agronomists and but we had no land and we had no money to buy land and on the other hand small-scale growers are all all over

peru there are there are thousands even millions of small scale growers in our country so that is when we decided to apply and adjust what we have seen

in our travels in our trips and made this model of of um working with small scale growers so what we do is we teach them

we oversee their compliance with standards and regulations we get them certified and then we buy the products we pack them and we export and lately for the

last for the last three years now we also import we also have an american company for our own and a dutch company so we also import and distribute our products in the us and and europe

um so yeah and then um we got into ginger right and we started with ginger

and that story is it's very long but it's very nice well but and you guys are the very first people to import organic ginger in the united states from peru

it is it is we are we are yes so so the story is that we had this idea that we wanted to be connected with farmers and we wanted to export product and we wanted to be in the organic

produce and all that stuff and we were trying to do many different things we thought that that a couple of years meeting all the people in the industry in the organic industry what is

was enough to start selling products and that that wasn't right so we had a company name we had all the legal paperwork we had an address we have but we had nothing we

have just ideas and we invited the guy who was the ceo of the local office of the certifier or or it was the

boss of the boss of our boss so it was three levels up at the but the guy who is is a very good guy he he became kind of our mentor he's a very good friend sure

and he came to see us and he gave us a few pieces of advice very good advice but then he said hey guys i know

the largest organic ginger importer in the world and i have tried to uh to put together somebody to ship ginger

organic ginger from peru to this guy and everybody who's tried has failed i cannot get involved because i am a certifier but i think you are pretty smart guys

you could do it would you like me to introduce to introduce you to my friend i would say yes of course obviously so we started emailing with this guy and he was kind of teaching us

everything we needed to know about ginger by email so we said okay ginger is a tropical root we know we eat it here in peru chinese food is very popular so it must be grown

in the jungle so let's go to the jungle and see where we can find ginger so we went to the jungle we found ginger it was almost wild it

was it was absolutely wild growing in the woods and so we said we can get this certified organic very very easy so we started a little project very very little project

we built extremely little infrastructure to pack and process ginger we got we got five growers certified we started shipping this guy was

teaching us so we ship uh first shipment 180 boxes 30 pound boxes by year and not arriving the best condition he said the hands are too little too many cuts

doing mature you have to fix this and that and that we made corrections we ship another small shipment and then another one and after the fourth one he said you're ready for an ocean container

um we needed to upgrade upgrade the uh the the facility sure which was yeah yeah that facility so a guy came and when we did everything

for the first container 500 boxes we needed to set the temperature for the reefer container and i asked the guy which temperature and he said oh seven degrees celsius

and we shipped and it arrived with quality issues it turns out ginger is a tropical root

and it is affected by chilling injury 77 degrees celsius was too low sure so the guy said hey your product is bad

and it's and and everything our entire life was in that those 500 trainers our our savings our everything everything so if

we if that doesn't work we are done company closed and so i called my dad and said that i have this problem and he said well you get into a plane and you go to the us and you meet your customer and you and

you um solve your problem and i say that i have i have no money even to put to put gasoline on my car i have money for nothing how high am i gonna go to the states i might accept

well what you want to be a businessman businesses work with money so you go out there and get funds to fund your company and start doing business

otherwise shut it down and get a job so my mother-in-law was working at american airlines here in peru boom

she still works there and uh at the time it was she was my girlfriend not not not my wife she's my wife now and um and i got these tickets that are

called stand by tickets right you can get into a plane only if there is some room above an open seat right sure sure yeah exactly very very cheap ticket and i got into a plane i went to the us

and it turned out that the largest importer in the world was a retired guy 17 years old living living in punta gorda florida

and he's he was operating out of a garage and his cooler his cooler was a room smaller than the room where i am sitting

right now and his cooling equipment was a home air conditioner and that guy was the largest company in the world so i said okay we are done here and

and we were already done some numbers we write numbers either either we sell 500 boxes of ginger per month or we close the company

and he said no that's that's piece of cake i'm gonna buy you much more than that so i came back to peru and he and he was he was buying like 500 boxes every

eight to ten weeks and we were we were just bleeding we were going to close the company and and we got accepted

in a program from the swiss government the swiss import promotion program and that is a program that helps small companies to export into europe so fast

forward we got a boot at bill at biofact in germany the largest organic trade show ever and then we learned very quickly that we needed to diversify

so we came back from germany and we started um replicating our our small-scale grower system of ginger in other products

and and the story the rest is history and then and we met we met rick lejeune and we started shipping to the us to do the real to the real guy in ginger right

but by the way this guy in punta gorda we kept shipping him ginger for many many years we owe him a lot so you know it's such a great it's such a great story because not only do you

you bring up your dad and the reality of what a parent says to a child right it's like okay what are you gonna do right it's time so you got that going for you and you were back into a corner and

what i love about your story is is that when you think about startups you think about brands that are just they just you know some of them just get pushed to the wall and it's just like how much do you

really believe how much do you think you can do this right you get tested and i'm thinking you know looking at who you are now what you've become that lesson to me is probably why you're doing some

of the things the way you're doing them today because you had that feeling in your gut of aw this is the defining moment like i'm literally screwed at this point if we can't make this work but you kept pressing forward as opposed to going

backwards dude that's inspiring i love it and to think that you're the first ones that brought you know organic ginger from peru in the united states is a pretty good accomplishment thanks for tuning in today's conversation is

brought to you by the organic center incredible science credibly sourced learn more at organic dash center dot org

we we we exported the first ginger ever from peru peru is a country never never exported ginger before all right okay now now you just taught me something i thought it

was no that's even more impressive so we we created the uh the ginger industry improved i love that yeah i didn't realize that yeah and at that time when we were about

to close the company right i spent thousands of hours sending emails to every i was googling and googling and googling hours of hours of hours

in google and every website i found with the word ginger i would send a message and we were just about to shut down the company

and organically grown company got my message and they sent it to rick lejeune right and nick sent me an email saying

hey i got this message from my friends at ogc i am a ginger importer here in lake california i am interested in knowing you and the greatest relationship ever

started there and and we did and we didn't shut the company down obviously you're sitting here talking to me today you're you know and and you're you're working with almost what close to

300 farmers now impacting just countless amount of lives you know what you guys are probably close to what two thousand acres now that you guys are working with not more i mean it's just a super impressive story plus you guys are

diversified you're doing tumeric you're doing your ginger you've got passion fruit you've got starfruit tamarindo i mean you've got some really cool items that are bouncing around and you know you talked about

working with europe and stuff and i mean you're a global company now right just not coming into the united states you're a global company and i you know in looking and chatting you're in how many countries now

15 at least we export from peru to the us canada china taiwan the netherlands spain france germany switzerland sweden

and the uk and from the netherlands we re-export to other european companies to other european countries excuse me

like denmark like belgium like austria like italy from the netherlands because we have company in the netherlands unbelievable and all from a standby ticket on american airlines

yes i mean think about that i mean because you were because you were facing that wall right it's like how are you you can't you can't swim from lima to florida ain't gonna work right so how are you gonna get there and to have that

opportunity i mean you know i'm a big believer in the path that we walk right and our we don't always know which way the path is going to take us but if we continue walking forward and continue to press on generally no matter what the roadblock

is that path continues to move forward and you're a shining example of that that's such a cool story dude thank you for sharing that it really is it's a very cool story one of the things that um that you guys do that i think is super cool i mean

obviously you guys are in the organic space but you guys are also in the biodynamics space a little bit can you share with everybody just a quick um synopsis of you know what is biodynamic actually mean and then you know how have

you integrated that into your practices and stuff into organics because i think it's really cool well explaining biodynamic is a big challenge complex um

it's a farming system based on the teachings of rudolf steiner and uh it is related with the moon phases and it's related with some

preparations very specific preparations that you have to apply in the form in very specific ways which is a bit

complex to explain but what we did is it is so difficult and so complex that people have to see it with their own eyes to believe and to start practicing

it so what we did is we bought a piece of farm a piece of land that was

absolutely degraded nothing was growing on that soil is right it was dead so we started farming um

biodynamic in that form we started making uh regenerating the soil and and then we started mixing mixing biodynamic with agroforestry which means

combining farming with tourists and and now it has been a very steep learning cure sure it hasn't been easy

no it's not an easy process and and especially because even though we are agronomists we are not farmers ourselves we we we were not raised as farmers

right we have the technical knowledge as agronomists but from the book to reality and to practice it's it's it's it's a big it's a big gap there

so learning to farm to really to farm and producing this in this form we bought it's been a learning cure but now we have proved it works

and now after a few years it's beautiful it's a beautiful beautiful piece of land very productive very diverse and uh so now we are um

another taking our growers to see and to show them if you do that and these practices are beneficial for this or that or that or whatever and we are taking them to the farm to teach

them how we are doing it and how it is working and showing them the results and now we are recruiting a subset because we work with too many growers we cannot

turn all of them into biodynamic all at once and because not all of them would want to do it so we have selected a group of them and we are in the process of of

of getting them certified to have a bigger base of biodynamic product right now it's only product grown in our farm which is biodynamic right

which is probably somewhere between eight to ten percent of all the volume we sell yeah but you know when you think about a positive cost of food right this is the

next step and the whole the lesson in that whole story is you took a piece of junk ground you did what was right you listened to what it needed to do you know you you you read in you know you read the tea

leaves to get it to where it needs to be and it's a beautiful piece of property so you put the time and energy in to create something back to where it needed to be or back where it was however long ago i mean to me i think it's just great i mean i

think it's a positive way to go it's similar to what some of the regenerative agriculture things are talking about these days um you know it's about making that positive change and by making those changes by taking the

steps that you did you know your knowledge base is going to make other parts of your business other parts of your ground even better so i think it's great i mean it's it's a it certainly is a risk too i mean it's not biodynamics

not for the faint of heart and so for you to be able to go do that and to stand behind it and see the results and then start to work with it i think it's fantastic so kudos to you for doing that man i think it's really cool

um one of the things i i love about you guys not only the whole story and the whole nine yards and but you guys have such a high level of integrity when it comes to the issue of organic fraud and

things like that i want to talk about this specifically for a bit because i know it's a it's a touch point for you you guys have a tagline that says organic is not enough can you explain what that means

yeah yeah absolutely yeah i'm glad that you're asking um organic is not enough for us it has two meanings the first meaning is that organic alone

is not taking care of the people and he's not taking care of food safety and in a country like peru taking care of people is especially important

here seven out of 10 pedophilians live in informality informality means means living out of the legal system seven seven out of 10 peruvians that's a

huge number um when you when you are in the in the formal economy and you're hired by a legal company you get a lot of benefits

mandated by law if you are in the informal economy you get cash at the end of the week no social security whatsoever if you

live in the informal economy so no health insurance no retirement pension fund no paid locations no maternity leave

no share of the company's profit by law we have to share a part of our profits with employees so people living in informality does not get that share of the profits um

yeah so 7 out of 10 people are only getting cash at the end of week wow that means they are exploited basically because they are getting very low very very low uh wages and

[Music] so too much organic product is packed and washed and grown by people in the informal economy

so if you only care about the world organic but you are not caring about the people there is a chance that you are being part of this informal

illegal economy and and also food safety real a real organic program a real treat real traceability real food safety right requires

trained people and skilled people yeah informal employees that are getting cash at the end of the

week very low wages are not trained are not skilled right so how are these organic companies guaranteeing real traceability real

organic program real food safety so that is why we say organic is not enough i love on the other hand on the other hand

organic certificates are not enough and why i say that the certification industry in my opinion

have a huge conflict of interest and that perverse incentive because certifiers are paid

by the companies that want to become certified certified so if certifiers are strict demanding compliance strict compliance

of their regulations they lose their customers and that is that is something so difficult to understand for people in the developed world

right because in the us in canada and europe you would not believe that a certifier is willing to close their eyes and and not see what they have to see

because if they see what they have to see they are going to lose the customer right right so but in underdeveloped countries certificates

are a guarantee of nothing wow that's an important statement that's an impactful statement and nobody's willing to say it and and the problem the big problem is is that

retail buyers they are obsessed with ticking the boxes of their compliance systems right so the only thing they want to tick the

box is the paper that says certificate even even if they know that behind the certificate things are not good they are okay because they have a

certificate and they can tick the box and they can put the purchase order the largest the largest retailers in the us

in canada and europe have have these illegal quote-unquote organic ginger on their

shelves and that is a huge elephant in the room that many people know it is there but nobody wants to see and nobody wants to

talk about it talk about it yeah well you know what we're doing it right now and we're putting it out to a global audience so you just threw it down to everybody and i think it's a moment of pause and to me you know

i think it's a moment of positive people need to sit there and go you're 100 right with what you just said that organic certificate is needs to be more it needs to be thought of more organically needs to be thought of more

and what is actually happening and i i think that you're going to find people that listen to this we have a lot of retailers that listen to us i bet there's going to be some head scratching right now some people pulling

paperwork out of a drawer and wondering you know what they're actually doing because you know we're an integrity based business organics is so unique because it's all about integrity right it's your word

that's what it comes down to but but there's a little bit of a sad part here because i i put a ton of effort in telling this

and i tell this to many many many people every time and and many times buyers said you know what

that is your problem that is your country's problem you have to solve it there i have a certificate i have to trust the system and that

certificate is good the certificate is good enough good enough right right yeah no well you know and that's how a lot of things work right i mean you know i said this i was

on a conversation with somebody about immigration right we keep talking about immigration but we don't ever solve anything if we could just solve something everybody could adjust to that solution and it's the same thing there it's you we can't be complacent

about things and i think when it comes to food right something that touches everybody something that can you know hurt people i mean food can help you and food can hurt you all at the same time i think we have to take it a little bit more seriously and if the red flag is

being waived or somebody's making something comment like you've made now and you don't take a moment of pause to wonder you're just as complicit as the people that are cheating trying to get stuff done it's just it's not a way we should be doing things anymore it's

not a positive cost of food it's a negative cost of food right it just it doesn't help anybody i want to get a little bit deeper into this fraud thing because i think you know and i know where you're at with it you know we chat we go back and forth i

pay attention to what you say and what you write and you know it's an issue um tell me you know you've shared with us a little bit about something we should know which is the certificate thing but can you get a little more specific about

some of the things maybe that you've seen or you know or out there that are concerns that you know obviously that you shared i mean i know there's some people who've had some issues and and you know is the issue working to be

resolved i guess is a better question well i didn't have too many good news about this uh yeah it is it is everybody can see it like like

like these these um facilities uh processing and packing organic ginger are there everybody can go and see them

every time we get buyers visiting from france or germany or the us or whatever we took them there we show them so they can see

and food safety is non-existent traceability is obviously non-existent there is lots and lots of ginger in the floor you cannot tell where it's coming from

um you can see child working there it's obviously a child that shouldn't be working there um you can see that people is not well protected

and um and nobody does nothing about it right it is it is it is even you know my our customers they get

offers a lot of time from these kind of companies and they forward me the offers hey look at this this is so cheap and and these emails

most of the times include photos right and just the photos they are sending in the emails are showing the bad stuff

are showing ginger in the floor no food safety no dressability no nothing people standing there without shoes on the dirt and and you say hey what is

these people thinking about when they send offers with those photos but the buyers use those offers that include those photos

to negotiate better prices right so anybody can go down there to the jungle of peru and and those uh packing and processing facilities are there

so so they are not hiding uh anybody can see it wow you know it's it's it's it's a problem and it's just not a problem in peru it's a problem in a lot

of other places with exactly what you said the way the certification system is set up and how you know it's easy to kind of shuck and jive it a little bit and it's not it's not healthy what can we do i mean you know in a

perfect world if you had your magic wand you could wave right now what does the international community need to do to raise the awareness of what's going on i mean just just let alone you've got kids working in these places you know

you've got exploited workers you've got people doing exactly what you're saying i mean that's got to get people's attention just that alone has got to raise everybody's bar of interest and attention so what can we do as an international community to kind of help

with that that's a very very difficult question um because i've been trying to change this for 15 years now and um

spread the message uh and try to convince these people that they have to change their their behavior i mean i mean price is not everything

so i always say that cheap comes with a hitting cost always absolutely so the price the price these retailers and their buyers are not

willing to pay is being paid by somebody else right somebody is suffering the consequences of that price

that retailers are not willing to pay so um awareness awareness because otherwise the only the only kind of

i don't know if the right word is a solution but at some point this is going to blow up in our faces and some and some investigation reporter is going to go there and he's going to

shoot a film showing all these things and then they are going to put like these or this or this retailer are putting this product on the shelves yeah and they are scamming customers and

then it is going to be a huge bomb exploiting in in in our industries uh um in front of everybody's face so so

if people does not change that behavior of thinking only and exclusively about two things price and certificates if i don't stop doing that what they are

doing is they are they are putting the industry at risk right of a huge um scandal well right but and you know it goes back to what i said earlier this is an integrity driven business so as soon as

you compromise your integrity right you're screwed because you can never get that back i mean integrity is one thing a person truly owns and once you compromise that and business compromises that in this

organic space it's a terrible trajectory i've seen it through my career where people have been caught doing stuff and where are they today they don't exist because they can't come back from that runway but you raise such a great point

that that to drive positive costs into food we have to start asking questions about what does that mean and what does that look like and your point is very valid that you know this is hidden causes things that somewhere somehow is being

affected by these lower prices and things that we're doing and that's not how we're going to uplift this narrative it's not how we're going to feed all these people coming it's not how we're going to change the planet from a climatic standpoint by

decreasing the amount of organics because we lose the integrity you see it with food safety recalls it doesn't matter that it was this guy's product that got recalled the entire industry suffers

right and so we have to come together as an industry and i think the organic community needs to take a moment to pause and say hey wait a minute i want to ask some more questions of people i'm doing business with to make sure that we

are actually doing what we believe in because they do have their corporate mandates they do have the boxes they check off on their desks and the things that they want but just because somebody says it's right doesn't necessarily mean it's right and when you're an integrity

based business i think everybody has an obligation to support each other's integrity to continue to drive the positive narrative yeah yeah yeah yeah for sure and they have the means to

to to do some some checkups for example um most most large companies retail company now demand some specific certification

besides organic certifications right good safety and good agricultural practices and all that stuff and those those certificates they have a code and most of the times that code goes in

the retail pack so let's say the global gap number right so with the global code number if you're a buyer you can go to the global

database it's public and you can get the real certificate the real amount of acres and growers etc and if you

this company is offering me a hundred containers or whatever but their global account certificate is for five acres how are they how are they selling 100

container with five acres right right and then and then with that company name in the case of peru you can go to our to our government website we have our

website from our the equivalent to your american irs right it's our our own authority sunat and you can get there and with the

company name you can find how many legal employees the company has how many companies in the system in the formal system

and and you go and you go to this you go to check up these companies and they have zero none not even one but they but they have a global gap

certificate they have a food safety certificate they have organic certificate but they have zero

legal employees and those two tools the global gap database right our local government website are free or available to everyone all

over the world you just need to spend 10 minutes in your computer checking how many legal employees your supplier has well it's investing in integrity right i mean i think we have

an obligation i think the whole the system look if we don't uplift the system if we don't talk about these gaps in the system and these things we're never going to solve any of these problems

it's just goodbye back to my thought about immigration we can talk about it till we're blue in the face but we need a solution right we just can't keep talking about stuff so i appreciate you

sharing this message and i know that it's something that you've been dealing with for a long time and i have a very strong hunch that the people on the other end of this broadcast are going to listen to this

probably have some open jaws right now going holy what is what do i do i don't know this what what did i what don't i know what do i need to go know now and i hope that we empower people to

take a step back and recognize that you're working to change the system for the better for your country and for the people that are with you right and if we don't all embrace that we're never going to get past this point right we're never going to be uplifting

people and making a difference in the world that we that we can do by coming together on these issues so i appreciate you going out on a limb women sharing that story it's a big story yeah right yeah it's a big story yeah

i really i really hope the the audience are lisans they'll listen yeah they're going to listen i guarantee they're going to listen if not we're going to make sure they listen we're going to keep talking about it because i think it's super important you know i've been around doing this a

long time and you know again i say it integrity is the only thing a person truly owns and it's very important that we maintain that all through the supply chain and we cannot be complacent with it's okay like this or it's okay like that we need to be asking these

questions and we need to make sure that we're doing the right thing because we're serving the consumer we're serving our planet we're serving people food we're taking care of kids we're you know we're doing a lot of really positive things and we should be doing it at the

best of our abilities so again i appreciate i appreciate you sharing that story yeah you guys are also um doing stuff inside with with fair trade

which i'm a fan of fair trade right i think it's you know i think fair trade is a positive cost of food that we need to be talking about and looking at you know we're seeing it here in ag labor we've got companies here in the ag labor space they're doing things

socially more socially conscious they're paying people the right wage you're taking care of them all of a sudden it's like oh but our production is better than the other guys it's like wow right so fair trade reminds me of that a little bit as far as you know upping the

bar raising the bar but trying to really embrace the entire agriculture community around its products so can you change a little or share a little bit how fair trades change your perspective a little bit of what it means to you well

what i have to say is that that there is a bit of confusion with free trade because because there are many fair trade labels and uh

the pioneering label from max haveler in the netherlands they started you know everything in 1988 i think right um

it's the most uh known worldwide in the u.s uh they are fur trade america right um so with that label

we have a small but very very nice fur trade avocados program with a wonderful company called equal exchange in new england in the us

it's a very they are they are the best company ever they are they are fully committed with fair trade equal exchange i mean and uh we have this nice program with them we ship them every year

uh five to six containers that is not too many but five to six containers of fur trade organic avocados from a very small co-op in the north of peru

that are uplifting their quality of lives through with premiums but we also have another label because this uh

this fur trade label the kind of the original one it's it's difficult to comply with because you have to fit perfectly in their definition of a trade and the and

all the growth must be part of the co-op and not all of our growers are members of the same co-op so we have a small program with that label we have another label which is

called a fair for life which is started in starting with a swiss certifier that was bought by a french certifier so it's now a french label

we have we have more programs with another label but all the labels have a little bit of a different narrow

meaning about what is fur so each one of them have their meaning of what is fur so to the equal to be fair trade you have

to comply with this and that to the other label is not exactly the same it's a slightly different um to me being peruvian

uh the most important thing is carrying with people as i said seven out of 10 peruvians live in the informal economy and something something i didn't

say before in the agriculture sector it is more than seven out of ten wow so so these people is completely underprivileged

30 percent of peruvians thirty percent of peruvians are poor five percent of peruvians are extremely poor so

in my opinion nothing more fair than doing everything in our hands to lift these people out of poverty absolutely

and to do that besides next to the fur trade label and next to the to the fur trade premium that goes to a common cost to build something common for the community and

all that stuff to me helping lift these people out of poverty is focusing on health and education so we have we have other programs

in-house besides the fair trade staff that are focused on health and education to help these people and it's to help growers and to help employees

i love it i mean uplifting right positive cost of food making a difference now i mean it's what you guys are always you guys are about and i think it's great you touched on something earlier and i want to just call it out really quick

you brought up a you brought up what i consider kind of an organic pioneer the guy's been around a long time he's you know he's just such a cool cat you talked about rick lejeune

tell me how he's impacted you and your trajectory as a person as a mentor in your relationship because i think rick's certainly worth a call out thanks for tuning in today's toddversation is

brought to you by the organic center incredible science credibly sourced learn more at organicdashcenter.org well rick is the best ever

it's he's the best ever by far rick rick is as you said a pioneer in organic produce and he has taught me

everything i know about it he's a great friend he's the most transparent person i ever met yeah he's so caring

he's a simple guy he's humble he's low profile i've never ever seen him brag about his success his business his connections his knowledge his

influence never ever but he has all of those yeah but he keeps all of those for himself quietly without without bragging about that

stuff and uh he's so transparent he um he shares all his knowledge with me with me all

his wisdom he introduces me with all his friends in the industry with all his customers i know every deal he makes with our ginger

who is buying it how much he's paying um i never ever gone around him he has he received hundreds of offers from

other people offering organic ginger from peru and he has never ever bought a piece of ginger from other companies than us he has been selling our ginger for

14 years now every every single week without exception that is 728 weeks in a row

that's awesome that's a great stat i didn't see that one coming every single week for the last 14 years rick lejeune and his company has been selling our ginger

fully transparently always letting me know who is buying every single way every single box sure sure which prize

he teaches me everything he knows um yeah he's amazing and he's a great guy it is not only him it is the rest of his company too well for sure i mean it's they are very all stars at the top

they are very special you know there there is there is a david weinstein uh david david is a is a produce industry encyclopedia he's unbelievable i used to

when i was when i started in the produce business i used to i spy on the la market i used to follow behind him like a creep i used to follow behind him and watch what he bought and that's how i taught myself how to be

a buyer it's like i followed him and i followed ray haichia who was at mrs gooches and another guy by the name of rick toth those were the three people that i i stocked like a crazy paparazzi and that's how i learned how to buy

produce was from those david is an organic produce encyclopedia and he is he is teaching me everything he knows every time we meet then there is rick's uh partner charlie

k and rick's daughter elana right they are also beautiful people they are they are an amazing company and they are they are so special you know they doesn't even have a website

oh he doesn't i mean he just yeah i know and he's a hell of a good golfer too watch out for that he's a sweet guy that's i'm thank you for sharing because i think he's he's just to your point he's very humble he's very

quiet he's kind of in the background in a lot of ways but he's done so many good things for so many good people and he's uplifted this industry so much i just wanted to give him some love on this broadcast and exactly and there's something funny

there's something funny he is the age of my father i am the age of his children but we get along we get along as if we

were um high school brothers yeah yeah he's just a great guy so let me let me ask you kind of a little different question you know talking about what we've just talked about i want to kind of come full circle

around on it since you started the grammar right since you started years ago what do you think's the most surprising thing that you've learned the most surprising thing that i learned

in my 15 years in the organic produce industry i would say it is how small how interconnected

and how globalized the produce world is yeah it's a great so that's a great way of saying that yeah it is amazing because everybody knows each other

um you can be in sweden and talking to the buyer in sweden that works for total produce nordics the nordic office of

total produce and he starts talking to you about a guy in opie oppenheimer that uh is working in the uh toronto office

or the vancouver office of for opi and everybody knows each other and then everybody goes to fruit logistica in germany unfortunately no no more shows for a

while but and then pma and it is like it is a what's the word in english um diverse cosmopolitan um

yeah yeah diverse is a great word yeah and we and it it in reality it's a small group of people feeding the world yeah it really is it's it's it really is

a small group of people and it's and you're right they are very interconnected how we all work together and it's it's surprising when people realize what's involved in getting food to market in the whole nine yards yeah it's

pretty interesting you know agriculture is very and it grows on you right i think a lot of people get in this business they never get out of it right it's because of that communal that family feel um you know if you're dealing with a

commodity that does not have a long shelf life you got to make quick decisions you need people that are on your team that can do the same thing so yeah i agree with you on on that and you're right in the global aspects of produce is pretty amazing

um one of the things that that i know that you did a while back and i just want to touch about a little bit i know you went up to harvard and you attended a little business school but talk a little bit about some of this post-education that

you've done i know harvard is one place you win you got into an entrepreneurial you know kind of a deal just touch on that a little bit and what that meant to you and then and share with us you know some of the other stuff that you've done along those lines because i think it's

great that you continue to to try to grow as a person as and as a leader you know running this company yeah well you know you know there is another organization called endeavor

and therefore is a global organization aimed to lift uh what they call uh high impact entrepreneurs so and they select every year they

select entrepreneurs to get into their into their program i would say right so i was i was selected as an endeavor entrepreneur back in 2017

so with your network you start receiving help from them and network and connections and access to raising money if you want to raise money which is not our case

and they have this also these um academic programs specific tailor made for endeavor entrepreneurs so this program is a harvard program but it's exclusively for the endeavor

entrepreneurs so so i spent 10 days at harvard with endeavor entrepreneurs from all over the world uh from all the industries people working in satellites people working in

companies uh in taxi companies kind kind of uber and i was in organic produce but there are companies in in clothing and e-commerce and

tech companies drone companies uh all kind of different companies so it was an amazing experience because this is people most of them are people

in the tech industry um that are trying to raise millions of dollars and become and eat the world expanding all over the

next amazon yeah so yeah so discussions were around how to scale your business and expand to other markets and raise capital and

and with a very special focus on people because millions alone do nothing without people so there was a very very special people but besides the harvard program i

did a one-year program at columbia university in new york city it was blended so i went there four times uh for a week or a week or so each time and the rest of the time it was

online i was here in peru and that program was very impactful because that program was different that program was what's called uh

entrepreneurship and competitiveness for latin america so it was exclusive for latin american mid-sized companies right and

and the the thesis behind the program is the that most successful entrepreneurs when they're started getting successful in latin america they lose focus

of their core right i know their processes and they start because they are making money they start willing to take advantage of new opportunities that are

everywhere they start to get into new segments and new businesses and new whatever and they forget they forget their their uh

hand of the golden eggs and then and then that hand of the golden egg which is your core business what you know how to do start

star stops producing the golden eggs because you forget about it you stop taking care about it so all the program is about processes

and focusing on your core so in fact at the time we were trying to import organic product into peru not produce

but but uh muesli bars energy bars and sure an oatmeal and whatever package pack package product because we don't have we

don't have the organic offer of of cpgs here in peru so there's an opportunity here people younger people want to eat organic food and we don't have organic food why don't we import right but we

were losing sight of our core our course organic produce uh not importing cpgs into peru right so we got back to our we forget about

all of those ideas we were having of doing about doing different things and taking up advantage of opportunities and started focusing in our core so everything is about focusing in your

core and what you're good at because the thesis is that that process improvement is infinite right so you can become better and

better and better and better non-stop i love it so i can see right so you can see where it really you know obviously it impacted you because you not only to reign in where you're going but i'm sure

they had an influence about feeling good about some of these positive decisions that you're making about impacting people's lives and i want to i want a great segue by the way because that's what i want to talk about

next is how you are impacting them and first i want to just ask you know some of the sustainability type initiatives that you guys are working on and some of the positive things that you're doing whether it's you know maybe touch

quickly on the agroforestry project but also to um i want to get a little bit more specific you know not necessarily sustainability rated but i want to talk a little bit about the healthcare initiatives that you guys are doing as

well because i think it's worthy of time and energy so if you want to throw something out in agroforestry go for it sure sure so so as i said as i said part of re regenerating our our our farm the

farm we bought that grated includes agro43 which means planting trees remember ginger is tropical and it's grown in the rain forest so that was a wild forest

many many years ago and a lot of those acres uh were become farms but without trees trees are gone

so so we are we are part of our regeneration process is incorporating a lot of different types of trees again into into into into the system into the ecosystem

so we did it first with our farm then we got some fur trade money from one of our customers in canada and with that fair trade money we implemented

this other system with a little growers and now that it worked in our farm work in the little group of growers we are expanding it to a larger group of growers we are just right now in the

middle of in the project so buying the trees and selecting the growers and getting the money and all the stuff in part it's going to be funded by a

customer in california that produces shots ginger shots wow so they are going to find part part of the project of doing agroforestry

with some of our growers and uh and the on the other side i wanted to tell you something we have a purpose we have a purpose that we do not mention too much outside

the grammar right because we believe that the translation to english because it is in spanish because we speak spanish here we really i

believe that the translation to english doesn't have the same feeling as in spanish on the one hand but on the other hand and more importantly

is that without understanding the peruvian context it is not that powerful right so if i tell my purpose openly without people understanding the context it

loses power so our purpose is to deliver quality health and improve people's lives

that translates pretty darn good so so our growers go out of poverty with access to global markets

our employees they have a well-paid job with many social benefits with a special focus on health and education which i'm gonna talk a little bit yeah

and our consumers get the healthiest ever organic produce so our operations or our farming areas are

far away rural areas very far away from the city where i'm sitting right now where there is not much state not much government not much rule of law

and not much access to education to health and that kind of stuff right and also most people living in those areas

are in the informal economy right so what we do is we incorporate all of our people or 280 people into the legal economy all of them have health insurance

all of them have retirement pension funds and all that stuff but beyond that we organize um

medical campaigns medical checkups we bring doctors to our packing house we do blood tests on

year one once a year in integral medical checkups most of many of these guys have never ever seen a doctor ever in their lives

wow women never ever before they had checkups through their through their pregnancies

right so they just got pregnant so later they gave birth sometimes at their houses so our

women they are they have access to this uh healthcare insurance and when they when they get pregnant they have their regular monthly checkups for to see that

the pregnancy is going okay right but besides that they get a paid maternity leave so it's it's three months paid maternity relief for for pregnant women

if people if people get um sick for any reason and they cannot work they get their full salary completely paid

while they recover at home no matter how many days they they don't go to work that's amazing i mean it's you know again it's a positive cost of food you're raising the bar

we have to pay by law we have to pay as a company we have to pay the first i think it's the first 21 days so let's say you get sick and you get really sick and you're not going to work

for three months so as a company we pay the first 21 days and then the insurance is going to pay the rest and you are going to get and you're going to get your full salary

regardless that you are recovering at your house so so we do that and on the education on the education part also many of our employees

they didn't finish high school some of them even didn't finish elementary school so we had programs in which you're an employee in our packing house

in la grande in the rainforest and you want to finish high school we pay tuition we pay we pay to we we pay for tuition we pay for the books and the materials and you have the commitment to go to

school after work and in that and so everything paid by us it is cheap but but they wouldn't pay it by

themselves so everything paid by us and they get their high school diploma some of them their elementary and then the high school it is not mandatory if they want

they can access that and also also we have program for their children so we have uh people doing voluntary work employees

that um the children come to our packing house in the in the afternoon and our employees help them with homework and help help them with studying for exams and all that kind of

stuff so everything everything is connected to health and education because i am the product

of access to health and education yeah so and i and i have seen firsthand i am a witness forehand of how the lack of access

to health and education keeps people in poverty so what drives us our driver of course we want to be a profitable

company we need to make a profit i need to provide for my family and my and my co-founders need to provide for their families for sure we are not heroes we need to make a profit

but our driver is that as we uplift our own lives we have to bring with us all these people that otherwise wouldn't

have access to health and education and and through through health and education we improved their lives i gotta tell you brother that translated

just fine on the other end of this conversation i mean you know which is why i asked you to come on man because these are things that we need to be embracing these are

concepts and ideas that can work and do work and uplift people and make a positive change this is how we're going to win the day so thank you for sharing that thank you for thank you for what you're doing

first and foremost but thank you for raising the bar right and and you've shared a lot today about raising the bar and

even challenge people to raise their own bar and looking deeper at what goes on and i know that you've done so many things for the amount of people that you're working with do you have a particular story i don't want to put you on the spot but do you have a particular

story about somebody that you know you guys have uplifted that you've done something that kind of floors you or just amazes you well we we had a case of some of

somebody that got cancer treatment that otherwise otherwise would have died basically without access to cancer treatment

we have people who build their house for the first time wow that and and we have there there there is a there is a

a medical test for women um i don't know the word in english um but it's a it's a test that they they do with their gene ecologist right gynecologist right

yeah and and many of our of our um women it's it's a test that that people with access to health living in the city right

women are doing that they are having a test every single year of their lives my wife get it every year and many of our women in the in the jungle have gotten that test for the first

light ever for the first time ever in their lives they never ever got that this before just because they have access to being part of the formal economy of

the form of the formal uh legal way of working um the the person with the cancer treatment was was was uh impactful for me

absolutely yeah yeah i know and also the guys who graduated from high school for sure yeah yeah yeah i think that's beautiful man thank you for sharing i didn't mean to put you on the spot a little bit but

i know that there had to be some ones touched your heart a little bit you know you for you to wake up every morning and do what you do you have to be inspired right and i'm a big believer and inspiration i believe that if everybody

in this country would just everybody one time a day would go inspire somebody we'd have a much better vibe in this country today but we don't and i think that you guys live that inspiration every day with what you're doing who inspires you as a person

and who do you look up to is somebody that gives you inspiration well two people ricky rick is one for sure sure

we don't we all we have said about him he's so special yeah and and obviously my father my father is a very very important um um person in my life

uh because he's so wise and then you you you learn to appreciate the the white hair uh

yeah yeah yeah people with white horror are really really wise and uh damn right we are you have no idea i'm like an owl and i'm literally like an owl

and he he's so smart and so sharp and and he has a a speed of thought so so so quick like i could be drowning literally drowning

on a problem that i can solve and then i go and look him looking for his advice and like this

he has the right answer and i said damn why why i am not looking for his advice more often not white hair

at the early days i was calling him on the phone almost every single day and then we started getting successful and never started working out and we

started doing other products or shipping to other markets sure i forgot about calling him for advice but when i do i said hey this guy is so smart so wide so

fast and uh yeah i wish i wish i could have like just a part of his intelligence oh i think you probably do i think you probably do

you know i think you do but that's neat thank you for sharing that with me let's um let's shift gears a little bit let's go have a little bit of fun i'm going to ask you some rapid fire trivia questions let's see what kind of answers i get at him i'll put you really on the spot

right now come on this won't be bad those would be pain who's your favorite band who's your favorite music band big floyd well that was a good answer that was quick there wasn't any hesitation about that

well no wonder you're in the organic thing all right what's the best no what's the best meal you've ever eaten oh peruvian food is the best the best ever yeah it doesn't suck i'll tell you that much it's pretty good

yeah any any any local peruvian food every time i travel i cannot understand how all you guys not peruvian all over the world can live without our peruvian food

there you go there's there's a chamber of commerce endorsement right there all right now something i know people you know something i know and i don't think people actually you know some people certainly know this you're a big surfer

i know you love to serve so now here i'm going to find out because i'm going to i'm going to ask you know i'll i'll reach out to diego i'll find out the real truth to this question what is the biggest wave you've ever surfed on and

don't tell me like a big fish story bunch of crap what's the biggest wave you've ever surfed on uh not not huge waves probably my biggest waves being an eight foot weight

that's big enough it's taller than you and me maybe maybe ten maybe ten foot well now it's going to ten okay which one is is it eight or ten no but no no more than ten

no no do you have any you know you know yesterday we are um it's wednesday today yes yeah uh on monday

i broke my favorite board my magic board and it was the fifth the fifth time in the ocean of the board oh no i got a pretty a pretty big wave on

monday and uh and i couldn't pass it and it broke just just in in the board and break it in two pieces why is it called your magic board

well you know we we say that every once in a while you'll find the magic board so we surfer we have a quiver so so we have a few different boards for

different waves and then you buy them and you sell them and you until you until once you find the one that is the magical one so this one was imagined

yeah it's it's it's it's from san diego it's the shaper the ship is uh is a san diego it's a brazilian guy living in in san diego for ages and

he he is shaping the surfboards of for the uh champions in the uh world surfing world tour wow i love it well and you know what i love the honesty about the wave because i thought maybe you're going to come out with a 25-footer or just drop something

you know bs on me real quick it's like nah i'm going to check you up on that i love it what's something what's something's on your bucket list what's something that you that you haven't got to do yet you want that you want to go do

i have a little story here because it's something that i've done before but the story is the following when i was inspector as a certifier

i went for one full month 30 days surfing to indonesia a wow and i got the best waves of my life

and being there in lombok in the island of lombok we we we were five friends and after the best wave server

i decided i wanted to go surfing to indonesia every year of those five guys in that trip two of them are still are still going every single year without exception

wow and i said i want to go surfing to indonesia and have these waves every year and the only way to do that is to be my own boss and have my own

company and that is that is when i decided that i was going to start a company it's totally so you can surf

it's it's it's been it's been 16 years from that day wow and i never been back to indonesia okay because you're in the produce business what it doesn't shut down

the produce business shuts down when you go to bed that starts right back up when you wake up in the morning i've never been back and uh yeah because when you're a company owner uh

you work harder and more hours than anybody else absolutely you do there's no good but going back going back is certainly on my back at least i love it i love it i'll go with you i'll go check it out

let's go i'll hang out with you that'd be fun i think that could be a pretty cool trip especially if you can go i couldn't even imagine going someplace for 30 days i don't know if i could i don't know if i would relax or lose my mind or just give up and come back and start working again i don't know i have

to think about that a little bit that's fantastic you know i gotta tell you man i've done a bunch of these i talk to a whole bunch of people all the time um

i just think you're a great dude a great cat fun to talk to i think what you're doing is so impactful um i think it's so necessary that that

your message your vision your your purpose gets talked more about and i hope that we did that today i hope that people recognize the warnings that you that you that you

brought up the points of concern the points of celebration that you brought up about what you're doing to uplift your people and your community uplifting your employees because if you're uplifting a person that works for you you're also uplifting their entire

family and that means that they're uplifting their community and when their community gets uplifted the next community can grow from that and i believe so strongly in how we need to continue lifting up things and i i just

really appreciate you and appreciate just the the genuine nature of coming from your heart and how you guys run your business and why you run the business the way you do and i know that it fuels you i know it frustrates you i

know it's hard being in business is not easy but i know that you're getting fed back so i have one final question i just want to throw at you really quick if you only had

one chance to tell the world about the grandma what would you tell him organic is not enough yeah okay i'll buy that i'd go with that

answer yeah yeah i go with that answer and i think you framed that up so beautifully earlier i i i'm gonna go you know what that's a hell of a good answer i'll take that

yeah i'll take that thank you you know again thank you so much for being here thank you for sharing and open up your heart just you know and just letting everybody know who you are and what you guys are about and i appreciate you

coming on and let me share your story with everybody because it's worthy so thank you it's been an honor to be here with you really thank you brother i appreciate that and uh

i'm coming down get ready i'm coming to lima we're gonna hang out absolutely absolutely we're gonna get the best serve and the best food let's go i'm down i'm hanging with you i'll be there thank you my brother appreciate it

thanks everybody and then we're gonna go to jungle to see a little bit of how those those operations are run i'm all about it i'm you know let's go i'll bring the gopro we'll fill let's do it let's look at it let's keep elevating

the conversation we're never gonna make changes we don't keep talking you know we're never gonna make changes we don't talk about these things and then we find solutions to them right because we can just keep talking in circles and solve nothing we have to stop doing that and

so i appreciate the opportunity offer i'm taking you up on never never know you may hear a knock on your door it's me standing there you never know thank you my brother i appreciate you very much thank you for hanging out with

me i appreciate everybody watching and listening take care and remember go inspire somebody today it's pretty important i know i'm inspired after this

conversation see everybody [Music] hey everybody thanks so much for uh checking out conversations we appreciate you watching the broadcast i hope you

enjoy our guest coming up uh la grande is a very interesting company rodrigo is a very cool dude with a very impactful message so sit back relax and take some notes because i think he's going to blow you

away appreciate you very much don't forget to check us out on our social media channels uh subscribe rate and review the podcast instagram facebook all that stuff we're everywhere let's push this message positive cost of foods is something we need to embrace so

let's keep doing it thanks everybody for hanging out