Banking on KC: Cody Jolliff and Jacob Canyon – Sustainable Agriculture in the Heartland
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Kelly Scanlon:
Welcome to Banking on KC. I'm your host, Kelly Scanlon. Thank you for joining us. With us on this episode are Cody Jolliff, the CEO at Powell Gardens and Jacob Canyon, the co-founder of Good Oak.
And they're here today to talk with us about an exciting new center that's open called the Midwest Center for Regenerative Agriculture. Welcome, Cody and Jacob.
Cody Jolliff:
Thank you.
Jacob Canyon:
Hey, thanks for having us.
Kelly Scanlon:
So let's talk about the Midwest Center for Regenerative Agriculture, what is it?
Cody Jolliff:
Yeah, so most folks know Powell Gardens about beautiful curated botanical gardens, but something really unique is we're also getting into the future of agriculture. Our mission is all about the importance of plants in your life, and there's not much more important plants than the ones we eat to feed the nation.
Kelly Scanlon:
That's very true. When you talk about the future of agriculture and that that's what this center is going to be doing, what do you mean by that? What is regenerative agriculture?
Cody Jolliff:
Yeah, I'll let Jacob take that one.
Jacob Canyon:
Regenerative agriculture broadly is farming in a way that improves biodiversity and builds soil. Practically speaking, that's things like agroforestry and rotational grazing, but basically it's mimicking nature so that you can farm in a way that works in the long term. That doesn't just produce a good yield this year or next year, but for generations.
Kelly Scanlon:
Okay. And so you're not planting the same things over and over and stripping all of the minerals out of the soil.
Jacob Canyon:
Exactly.
Kelly Scanlon:
As you say, back to nature, really. So what was the inspiration behind the launch of this center? Where did the idea come from and then importantly, I mean, you're both here? How did the two organizations come together to collaborate in making this happen?
Cody Jolliff:
Yeah, so part of our garden's master plan is to figure out a use for the rest of our land. So Powell Gardens has almost a thousand acres there at the site, and we use around 165 acres of it for the botanical garden. So we have a little bit of space around us all about the importance of plants in your life.
We're also about the Midwest sense of place, and so there's nothing more important to the Midwest than agriculture, though that's something that we wanted to tackle and the future of it. And so Good Oak came to us and started putting this project together. It's about three years in the works now. So before we came up with an announcement, so a lot of groundwork.
Kelly Scanlon:
So tell us about how Good Oaks got involved.
Jacob Canyon:
One of our collaborators and partners, Bob Berkebile, the world renowned architect and environmentalist who is close with a lot of the people on the Powell board and has been involved with Powell for years, was really key in bringing Good Oak to the table and setting up this partnership. Not just with us and Powell, but also with the Audubon Society, Powell Gardens.
To address your question about the inspiration, one part of it is like Cody said, in Powell's 20-year master plan, there was already an ambition to be doing regenerative agriculture on some of that acreage.
I would say another point of inspiration for those curious would be a place called New Forest Farm in Wisconsin, in Viola Wisconsin. That's a chestnut and hazelnut based regenerative ag project by our friend Mark Sheppard, who's a bestselling author on the topic of agroforestry.
And I would say maybe more generally, the inspiration for this is the oak savanna, which is the type of ecosystem that would've covered this part of the Midwest as recently as 300 years ago before we started cutting all the trees down and tilling the ground. So again, it's really about mimicking that natural system that produced all this abundance.
Kelly Scanlon:
You will be replanting some of the native species on this property?
Jacob Canyon:
That's right. So we will be producing seedlings of native food producing trees, so things like pecan, black walnut chestnut, hazelnut, persimmon, pawpaw, plum. There's a whole 30 species list. Elderberry is a big one.
So these are things that are native to this region, which means they do well, they're very robust, but also they make food for people, and that's really the sweet spot for us.
Kelly Scanlon:
What is your plan for everything that you're planting? What's going to happen when you harvest?
Jacob Canyon:
We're going to operate an actual farm business, which is going to have in its early stage, we'll actually be selling mostly tree seedlings because if you plant a pecan, you got to wait 10, 15 years before you have a harvest of pecans.
But there's a big demand for trees themselves. So we'll be growing these types of trees, selling some of them, planting a lot of them on site into agroforestry plantings.
We'll also be doing multi species rotational grazing. So that's grazing animals in a way that's a little more holistic and natural where they get to move across the landscape. It gives the pasture time to recover so it doesn't get overgrazed.
And we've got sheep and cattle and pigs that'll be on site. So all of those will be harvested. We'll have pastured meat products to sell.
Kelly Scanlon:
In terms of Good Oak, I'm not sure people are really familiar with what Good Oak does. How does working on this project tie into your mission and what Good Oak does?
Jacob Canyon:
Personally, my background is in conservation. I did prairie restoration and woodland restoration in the Kansas City metro before this, but felt like as proud I am of the work that we did. I felt like there were certain limitations, and the fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of the land in the Midwest is farmland.
It occurred to me that we win or lose this fight on the farm. That's really where we want to have our impact in terms of protecting our landscape. So we started this company to do regenerative land management. So that's producing food in a way that also preserves and expands the health of our natural ecosystems.
And from my perspective, those things are convergent goals. They actually support each other in the long run. So we do ecosystem restoration. That means invasive species removal. That means planting native trees and seeding native grasses and things like that. And we do that in a way that happens to produce delicious pastured lamb and natural honey and things like that.
Kelly Scanlon:
So when you get to the point where you're selling these things, will people need to come and buy it direct there on the site, or will you have a way that it can be shipped? How's that going to work?
Jacob Canyon:
Eventually they'll be able to buy it on site, but for now, they'll want to order online and we actually do have meat and honey for sale already. But yeah, they'll want to buy it from our website and then we can arrange for a pickup.
Kelly Scanlon:
When we talk about the collaborative nature of this project, I know Good Oaks involved. Powell Gardens has the site. Who else do you have? I know there are other partners too.
Cody Jolliff:
The ranch will be an Audubon certified ranch. So the Audubon Society is a big partner in that. And the exciting part about a partner like that is the education component and getting it to the people. There's plenty of farming activities go on that just mom and pops farm down the road, but no one knows what's happening there.
And so that's the exciting part for Powell Gardens and for all these partners is that we're at a public institution. Family comes out, they'll be able to see and read about, participate in classes as time goes on, from the public perspective.
But then on a bigger scale, the notoriety of that and being able to come and see an experience. And then also farmers will be able to come and be educated.
Kelly Scanlon:
There are kids these days who think you just buy meat at the grocery store, for example, and to be able to go onto a working farm and really see where things come from, that's really an education.
Cody Jolliff:
It is. My background is in historic sites and museums and before coming to Kansas City area was in Dallas, Fort Worth area in Grapevine, Texas, and managing a historic farm there. It's really funny how many kids may tell you that chocolate milk comes from a brown cow or corn comes from a can or things like that.
So there'll definitely be some history and integrated science history as we go along with the project at Powell as well, so people can learn where things come from.
Kelly Scanlon:
And develop not just an understanding, but a deeper appreciation perhaps for what is on their plate when they sit down for dinner or lunch.
Cody Jolliff:
Oh, sure.
Kelly Scanlon:
Okay. Where are you now? I know it's launched, you've made that announcement, but what does that mean? At what stage are you?
Jacob Canyon:
Right now, we're just getting the farm established, so in the next couple of weeks we will start building fence around some of the property, and we're doing a lot of planning. I think we will have livestock on site within the next couple of months. So we're getting traction, we're getting operations going.
It probably won't be until the summer that we have any kind of public programming available, but we'll definitely announce that and make that available to people. Right now we're building the farm, we're building fence, we're getting things set up. We're fundraising so that we can really have the impact that we want to have.
Kelly Scanlon:
Well, it won't be too... Summer's not too far off. So you've got your work cut out for you there. You have a collaboration with Good Oak, you have a collaboration with the Audubon Society. Any others?
Cody Jolliff:
Yeah, we have Lincoln University coming on board with the project as well and open to others as well.
Jacob Canyon:
That's everyone that's officially involved to the state, yeah.
Kelly Scanlon:
In addition to those partners, how important is the community at large and local business engagement in this partnership? Is there an opportunity for involvement from the general public or from businesses?
Cody Jolliff:
There definitely is. This is something we're investing in our future and Kansas City is a hub in the Midwest. We've got to be a leader. It's happening for the future. There's really only studies, say about 60 years of topsoil left.
Kelly Scanlon:
Really! That's something I've never read before.
Cody Jolliff:
Dan, the other partner at Good Oak put it great the other day. He said, it's like oil. It's going to be gone. And these are things that take hundreds of years to create. And so from a conservation point, we've got to do something and we want to put Kansas City on the map as saying We're doing something with this project.
Kelly Scanlon:
So how could businesses get involved in that?
Jacob Canyon:
We're a small team. We depend on collaborating with other businesses and other partners. For example, we take truckloads of slightly bruised or damaged produce that grocery stores refuse as supplemental feed for our hogs, for example. Or we work with Missouri Organic Recycling, use their compost and things in our tree nursery.
In particular. I think we would be really excited to talk to anyone who would be interested in purchasing ethical, nutritious meat, because really at the end of the day, for something to be regenerative, it has to be economically viable, and none of this makes sense if we don't sell the product at the end of the day.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yeah, it has to be affordable.
Jacob Canyon:
There's already a handful of restaurants and schools that we have relationships with, but that's a real opportunity to help support this from a business standpoint. And then from the community at large, well, the most direct way to support would be to donate to the farm's construction. So Powell Gardens is a 501-C3 that owns the property, and we can use your help to build fence, to put in watering points for the animals, to fix up the barn, things like that.
And then I think there's other opportunities on the education side for people to get involved, and that helps us, and obviously people get to enjoy that educational piece. We will have educational programming classes, workshops later in the season, and we'll also be doing a BioBlitz at the end of April.
Kelly Scanlon:
What is a BioBlitz?
Jacob Canyon:
It's like a citizen science thing where everyone comes out and takes pictures in a certain area of the plants or the insects or the animals that they see. And then we have naturalists verify that and make sure we know what species that is.
It's just a way to collect a lot of data at once and then track are we actually having the impact on the landscape that we want to have over time.
Kelly Scanlon:
When you talked about the education earlier, Cody, you've mentioned a lot of programs perhaps for families, for children in particular, but is there an educational aspect for working farmers themselves that you're going to be providing?
Cody Jolliff:
Yeah. So the plan is going into '25 that there would be basically residency programs where farmers can come hopefully live on site and learn these processes.
One of the hardest things throughout history is change, right? That's no different or maybe even a little more difficult in agriculture. 150 years ago, they used to have trains that traveled across the country and they had these expos and everyone wore their Sunday best, and they came out.
Just celebrated what 100 years of the Smith-Lever Act, where we put together Farm Extension Program. And that was to get farmers to change their methods. And so it's something that happens in every field. Technology changes, information changes, but the actual change to the product takes time to adopt that and everything.
There's always early adopters, people that are jumping on the bandwagon soon and early, but it will take time and we know that, but it's a conservation minded organization that Powell is, we want to be at the forefront of that.
Kelly Scanlon:
Have you encountered any obstacles yet with this idea? Any challenges?
Jacob Canyon:
I would say if there's pushback, it always looks more or less the same, which is, "Well, all that sounds nice, but how are you going to make any money doing that?"
Our business is a good counter example of how we can, and I think making that more public and showing people how that actually looks on the ground could be fairly convincing.
The truth is, even people who are running industrial farms who are tilling or who are spraying lots of glyphosate, it's not their goal to destroy the soil. They think that that's the only way that it can be done.
So I think if you can show people another way of doing it that has all of these other good outcomes for soil health, for biodiversity, and show them how they can still meet their bottom line, I think that the arguments over at that point.
Kelly Scanlon:
This is a huge project. The scope is very wide, very broad. So looking ahead, what are your long-term goals for the partnership itself? Maybe there's going to be some more things that come out of it. And the impact that it can have on the region's agricultural processes.
Cody Jolliff:
Yeah, I'll let Jacob talk about specifics of it, but as far as Powell Gardens, we want to be one of those thought leaders in plant life for our region.
The really exciting thing is, as far as we know, talking with our colleagues through American Public Garden Association across the United States, this is really the first project like this attached to a botanical garden. So it's pretty exciting. You'll be able to see the beautifully manicured gardens that we're known for, but also what is happening with the rest of the plant world.
Jacob Canyon:
Our long-term vision for this is that it becomes a hub for regenerative agriculture here in the Midwest, and that means doing that education, bringing in classes and guest speakers and hosting events.
But it also means producing the tree seedlings, the livestock, and the next cohort of farmers themselves that can go out and do this kind of work on their own property.
That oak savanna that I mentioned as this ecosystem that used to be dominant here was about 50 million acres that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico up to Lake Superior. It's a transition from the forests of the East to the prairies of the West.
50 million acres is a lot, and Good Oak, my company, we won't be able to do that ourselves, so we need to be teaching people. We need to be sharing this and getting more people on board. So that's really what we see as the long-term vision.
Kelly Scanlon:
Well, when you talk about that much acreage and yet you say that the farmers really have possession of most of the property or most of the land, how do you reconcile that?
How do you get the best of both worlds where they're being able to do the regenerative agriculture and they have these trees, do they go hand in hand?
Jacob Canyon:
Oh yeah, absolutely. Regenerative agriculture, there's a lot of different practices that can go into it. And depending on your climate and your region, it can look very different. And what people are doing in Costa Rica is very different from what we're doing here.
What we do tries to take into account our specific ecological context, our specific climactic context and say, what's a system that will be sustainable in this region? And again, that's that savanna. So savanna just means a mixture of woodland and grassland. So you've got prairie with strips of trees interspersed.
And so for us it's like how do you turn that into something that actually produces food for people and makes business sense? And the way you do it is you make sure those trees are chestnuts and pecans, and then on the grassland in between them, you graze cattle and sheep that are producing meat. So you're mimicking nature, but doing it in a way that puts production first.
Kelly Scanlon:
Have you had people from around the country, perhaps your cohorts elsewhere, reach out to you as they've gotten wind of what you've been doing and see this as a model for themselves?
Jacob Canyon:
We've gotten some interest from the Land Institute in Salina Kansas, which is also interested in regenerative agriculture. They have a slightly different approach, but I'm a big fan of what they do, and we'd love to get them involved at some point.
There's also the Savanna Institute. There's a lot of buzz about it, but we're trying to pace ourselves and not try to do too much at once, but I think there's a lot of opportunities for collaboration.
Kelly Scanlon:
So for those interested, our listeners who might be interested in learning more about this project, ways they can get involved, I assume you have websites or contact information that you can offer us, so that can happen.
Cody Jolliff:
Yeah, I can go to the powellgardens.org. You can donate there. So if this sounds like something that you want to support the future of your dinner, then go and support that there. And the whole project's outlined on there, as well as linking over to Good Oak.
Jacob Canyon:
Yeah, and that URL is Powellgardens.org/Midwest-Center. You can also go to Good Oak's website. We have information about the project, and at the bottom of the page, there's a sign-up for our newsletter, which is a great way to stay in the loop about what's going on. So that's agoodoak.com.
Kelly Scanlon:
Okay, so a couple of different ways that you can get in touch with our guest today with Jacob and Cody and project information as well on that website.
Thank you both for being here, shedding a little light on what's happening and really in our backyard here in Kansas City. So thank you for all the work you do. Thanks for being with us on this episode as well.
Jacob Canyon:
Of course.
Cody Jolliff:
Yeah. Thank you.
Joe Close:
This is Joe Close, president of Country Club Bank. Thank you to Cody Jolliff and Jacob Canyon for being our guests on this episode of Banking on KC.
They shared the innovative goals of the Midwest Center for Regenerative Agriculture, a partnership focused on sustainable farming practices like agroforestry and rotational grazing.
The center aims to enhance biodiversity, build soil health, and ultimately produce food in harmony with nature, embodying the future of agriculture.
The collaboration between Powell Gardens and Good Oak, along with the support of organizations like the Audubon Society and Lincoln University is a testament to the power of community in driving positive change.
This initiative aligns with Country Club Bank's mission of fostering community values and initiatives that contribute to the sustainable development of our region.
It also underscores the importance of investing in practices that ensure a healthier, more sustainable future for our community and our planet.
Thanks for tuning in this week we're banking on you Kansas City. Country Club Bank, member FDIC.