I developed and produced Open Source—a new series from sweetgreen—to bring guests along on their journey to 100% transparency in food. To learn where every spice, seasoning, and salad ingredient comes from, who grows it, and how the future of real food looks (and tastes). Along the way I met small farmers who are thinking differently, big farmers challenging the status quo, and the biggest issues facing the food industry today. As part of the program I hosted videos on-camera, produced photo and video shoots on both coasts, and learned more about soil health than I ever thought possible.
David Blume, ginger guru and soil enthusiast, leads the charge at Whiskey Hill Farms in Watsonville, CA. As a studied ecologist, he's an expert on the relationship between organisms and their environments. He's created diverse ecosystems by polycropping (aka planting multiple crops together) to mimic the reality of nature and ultimately benefit the soil.
Did you know that you can get 18% of your daily protein intake from just 100g of chickpeas? Did you also know that to get the best chickpeas in America you have to travel all the way up to Ulm, Montana where Timeless Seeds, a farming movement pioneered by rebel seedsman Dave Oien, is headquartered.
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sweetgreen sourced nearly two million pounds of kale in 2018 (that's a lot of kale caesars). And a lot of that came from Pedersen farms in upstate New York. Family-owned in the Finger Lakes region, Pedersen Farms is our largest east coast kale supplier. On over 600 acres of organic land, head farmer Rick is a true soil man who believes healthy soil is the key to productive yields and epic flavor (#BigDirtEnergy). A Cornell Ag school graduate, Rick Pedersen is a true soil farmer who believes growing healthy soil is the key to productive yields and great flavor.