Let's Play a Game: Would You Rather...
Anna Hammond of Matriark Foods is on a mission to interrupt the food system for positive change that starts with reframing our own perceptions of what's possible.
Welcome back to The Link, a bi-weekly circularity newsletter making the connection between regenerative farming and you, every other Sunday.
Let’s play a game of Would You Rather for a second:
Would you rather: drink a cup of coffee that was consumed by a small, nocturnal furry mammal, run through its intestinal canal, only to be shat out and fermented with the creature’s poop and then made into coffee, OR a cup of Kopi luwak, the world’s finest luxury coffee there is?
Would you rather be gifted a “hand-me-down” pair of clothing or a vintage wardrobe? What about dinner at a restaurant cooking with food waste OR would you rather eat an 8 course Michelin-starred meal by the former head chef of Noma (here’s looking at you, Matt Orlando)?
OK, I think you get it. Perception is everything. I don’t have to tell you that we live in a “take, make, waste” culture, which is surviving on a linear mode (thanks, industrial revolution) where we all lose. See the trend on TikTok, get the geotargeted product ad on Instagram, buy the thing until another product is targeted to you. Rinse and repeat. In a circular economic model, industries and sectors around the world have the opportunity to stop waste being produced altogether. So if we abandoned the linear model like a bad ex boyfriend and shifted our approach to living in a circular economy, we could: eliminate waste and pollution, regenerate nature, and circulate products and materials at their highest value (Can you give that plastic cup that your $5 cold brew from Starbucks came in as many uses in your life before you throw it into the recycling?). For me, the circular economy is my Pedro Pascal.
Reframing happens around us and to us, all the time. Just ask my therapist :) As a former cook, truffle dealer, forager, and editor, I’ve gotten a catbird seat on how food systems and trends are simultaneously helpful and harmful to one another, depending on where you sit and how you use your voice.
That’s why it really freaked me out when I was reading Project Drawdown’s climate report, the world’s leading resource for climate solutions a few years ago and learned how gnarly the food system is in contributing to global greenhouse gasses. A third of the food raised or prepared (from farm to literal table) ends up in a landfill. Hunger is a condition for nearly 800 million people worldwide and the food we waste contributes 4.4 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere each year—that’s roughly 8 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Food waste is the third largest emitter of greenhouses gasses globally, just behind the United States and China. Makes you look at the leftovers in your fridge a little differently, eh?
So I was pleasantly surprised when I recently came across Matriark Foods, a social impact company dedicated to changing the food system by diverting fresh produce farm surplus and fresh-cut remnants from the landfill, transforming them into delicious pantry staples like pasta sauces and low-sodium vegetable broth. Finally, the kind of circular company that’s making products that are not only solving a huge climate issue, but creating great flavor at the same time! Beyond their retail presence, the company also supplies products to food service companies, from fast casual food chain DIG, to colleges, hospital systems, and more.
I recently sat down with Matriark Foods founder and CEO Anna Hammond to discuss her perspective on food waste, how the average person needs to reframe our own actions in the food system, and how to interrupt big agriculture.
So this newsletter focuses on regenerative farming, circularity, and the big picture around the food system, but why I wanted to interview you is that I imagine it can sometimes be frustrating to be placed into the “upcycled” label—because nothing is upcycled if we think about it differently.
Anna Hammond:Yes, you’ve pretty much nailed that. We’re not doing anything new, we’re doing what people have been doing for thousands of years, except for the last 80 years in the industrial food system. If we were doing it right as a culture, upcycling wouldn’t be a thing, it would just be a part of what we do. We just launched our first retail product and one of the things I’m trying to do is engage more people with circularity, if we refer to it as upcycled, but participating in mitigating climate change by the way that we buy things and think.
I love that mission, especially as a systems thinker myself. What do you think is not clicking for people to understand what circularity is in order to accelerate industrialized countries into it?
I think that circularity needs to be talked about more in ways that people can understand their agency in participating in it so that it’s not just a theoretical “circular economy.” That’s too general, and people don’t understand that our economy isn’t either. At Matriark Foods, we focus our work on supply chain at the manufacturing level because there’s such a huge loss from food waste and all of that produce, off cuts, remnants, and whatever else has used all of that water, labor, the land, transportation, and the manufacturing before it hits the retail shelf. As consumers, people have already absorbed all of that environmental and human cost, so when you throw it out, you’re throwing out more than just say, a farm surplus. I think people don’t understand that.
Industrial agriculture and industrial food manufacturing are abstractions to people and there’s either that or there’s the farmers market and it’s not just about buying local produce, it’s about buying carbon neutral, added value products. I feel like the whole added value gets lost in the fray. I think there also needs to be an understanding of people's habits and brand loyalties play into the problems with our food system. All of these new products, new snacks, etc. what is really taking hold and how is it dominating the shelf? What we need to interrupt is a category like Progresso soup and Ragu tomato sauce and the things that people buy every day in such large quantities—If you could transform those sectors, you could really make change.
Speaking of brand loyalty, consumers often forget (myself included) that we often assert our agency with our wallets and thus, drive the demand of so many things. We’re in a strange time where there’s lots of greenwashing around the term “sustainable” but very little transparency around how a product might actually support in the fight against climate change issues. What do you think are some habits or actions that the average person can implement in their day to day to contribute to a better food system?
The most food waste in this country happens at the home level. We live in a “take, make, waste” culture and part of that has to do with our reliance on convenience. Getting someone who has never cooked to shop to reduce waste is a very long haul. You need to be starting that at kindergarten level and getting the kids to be cooking their meals every day at school. I mean, sure we can change consumer behavior to some extent and we will over time—I’ve been involved in food education for over a decade, but I do think that making it easier for consumers to participate through their purchasing is a lever that is an accelerant that we need simultaneous to education around cooking at home. Honestly at this point, I’d rather see the market flooded with replacements of industrially produced food that is affordable, because then, whatever people are purchasing is contributing and you don’t have to rewire them. I think it will take a generation and it will happen, but I think it’s really interrupting these areas like food manufacturing where we’re quickly going to make a difference.
Fair enough! So since starting the company in 2018, what part of the journey of creating the brand has surprised you the most?
When I started the company, we were focused on making products for food service because that’s where 50% of meals are eaten in this country: from K-12 to higher education, business and industry, hospitals, prisons, homeless shelters, food banks, and restaurants. If you could interrupt procurement in that part of the food system, the impact would be enormous. So we launched into food service right as covid hit, and then food service temporarily stopped existing for two years. We have contracts with Sodexo and Aramark that are just getting started and we’re really starting to see flow there. But the incredible difficulty in getting products to market through food service has blown my mind because it’s very cost sensitive.
What has surprised and delighted me about dipping our toes into retail is just how fun it is to engage with changing someone’s idea about something that is more direct (in retail) than with food service. I am also surprised by how little people know about the food waste challenges that exist, and I’m always wondering, How do we get people to viscerally understand and maintain a sense of urgency? I do think it’s an activist proposition: What are the real interventions that we need to make to get people galvanized? We need more household brands that are doing what we’re doing. We need to become a household brand in order to manifest the change that we strive to do. Until we interrupt big, industrial companies, we’re not gonna get really far really fast.
That makes so much sense. Thanks for taking the time to speak with me!
Matriark Foods tomato sauces and vegetable broth are available at Whole Foods or via their website.
If you have future topics, interesting people, or concepts you’d like to see featured, leave a message in the comments below or drop me a line: Helen@HelenHollyman.com.
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