New Food Order

Regenerative Product Design with Ethan Soloviev

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Episode notes

Food producers have faced plenty of criticism for not doing more to address the negative effects their products and production methods have on the planet and their workforces. But do they actually have the tools they need in order to do better?

Ethan Soloviev is the Chief Innovation Officer at HowGood, a food sustainability rating company. He is also a small-scale farmer in upstate New York. Through his work at HowGood, Ethan helps provide information to some of the world’s biggest food companies about how regenerative their products and ingredients are. HowGood has assessed 33,000 ingredients, chemicals and materials that together have made up over 2 million products.

Ethan believes that by giving producers all the relevant data about the positive and negative impacts of their ingredients, they will naturally design more people and planet friendly products.

In wide-ranging discussion, we cover:

Cultivating a regenerative paradigm
How to provide food producers with the information they need to minimize the negative climate and labor risks of their products
Where regeneration strategy needs to differ when thinking about large vs small producers
Which metrics companies and consumers need to be looking at
The business benefits of regeneration
Ethan’s optimism around ecosystem markets, for example carbon markets
Whether it’s worth trying to fix modern capitalism or if we should take inspiration from more traditional local systems
Why Ethan thinks biotech and plant-based innovations are not enough on their own and why they must be used in conjunction with a new mindset

Show Notes

Chipotle and Kraft Heinz use this start-up to track and prove how green they are: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/06/chipotle-and-kraft-use-start-up-howgood-to-track-how-green-they-are.html
White Leaf Provisions: https://www.whiteleafprovision.com/
Carol Sanford: https://carolsanford.com/
One Planet Business for Biodiversity Coalition: https://op2b.org/
Ecosystem Services Marketplace: https://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/ecosystem-services/
Regen Network: https://www.regen.network/
Nori: https://nori.com/
reNature: https://www.renature.co/
Burlap and Barrel: https://www.burlapandbarrel.com/
Yolele Foods: https://yolele.com/
Perennial Agriculture: https://www.perennial.earth/

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Thank you to Foodshot Global & New Hope Network for sponsoring the series.

And a huge thank you to everyone who helped us bring this podcast to life:

Production: Cam Gray, Cofruition

Audio Editing: Tevin Sudi

Original Music: Rodrigo Barbera

Art: Lola Nankin

Project Management: Patrick Carter