S7. E13: Rich Hardy: No Blood, No Bones, No Sh*t
“Producing food, wholesome, healthy food is a hell of a lot of work. And this is where we've got massive problems coming, because well, firstly, the average age of farmer in the UK is 59 years. The average age of a farmer in the US is 57 and a half years old. And in Japan, it's 67, that almost nearly retired. Who is going to be producing our food in the next few years.”
– Rich Hardy
Rich Hardy is a former undercover investigator. He spent 20 years doing over 100 assignments in 30 countries. He's been on the podcast before to talk about his time undercover. If you haven't heard that episode, you should go back and listen.
He is back today to talk about his latest adventure.
After a couple of decades of incredibly intense investigative work, and living a double life, Rich decided that he needed a massive change. Instead of campaigning against the horrors of animal agriculture, he and his partner Pru are now campaigning for solutions.
Last year they started Lazy Meadows Farm and became a couple of vegan farmers. I didn't even know that vegan farming was a thing until Rich filled me in on it. And what surprised me even more, was learning that almost all fruit and vegetable farming everywhere isn't vegan.
Please listen and share.
In gratitude,
Elizabeth Novogratz
Learn More About Lazy Meadow Farm
Follow Rich on Instagram
Read Rich’s Book
Transcript:
Rich: [00:00:15] Producing wholesome, healthy food is a hell of a lot of work. This is where we've got massive problems coming because, well, firstly, the average age of a farmer in the UK is 59 years old. The average age of a farmer in the US is 57 and a half years old and in Japan it's 67. They're almost nearly retired. Who is going to be producing our food in the next few years?
Elizabeth: [00:00:50] Hi, I'm Elizabeth Novogratz. This is Species Unite. We have a favor to ask, if you like today's episode and you have a spare minute, could you please rate and review Species Unite on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts? It really helps people to find the show. This conversation is with Rich Hardy. Rich is a former undercover investigator. He spent 20 years doing over 100 assignments in 30 countries. He's been on the podcast before to talk about his time undercover. If you haven't heard that episode, you should go back and listen. He's back this time to talk about his next adventure after a couple of decades of incredibly intense investigative work. Rich decided he needed a whole new life. Instead of campaigning against the horrors of animal agriculture. He and his partner, Pru, are now campaigning for solutions. Last year they became vegan farmers. I didn't even know vegan farming was a thing, and what surprised me even more was that I didn't know that almost all fruit and vegetable farming isn't vegan. Rich, thank you so much for being here today. It's awesome to have you back.
Rich: [00:02:25] Yeah, I'm really, really pleased to be back. I've been a big fan of Species Unite since I came on the show previously. A fair few friends and colleagues have been on the program and I don't get to see them that often these days. So it's nice hearing them through the medium of Species Unite.
Elizabeth: [00:02:46] I love it. I love that. Thank you. So for people who didn't hear you come on the first time, I want to just talk a little bit about your last life because it was a big one and an intense one. Will you give us some background on your life as an undercover investigator?
Rich: [00:03:05] Yeah, so been vegan since childhood or always been involved with campaigning, but got into undercover investigations at the tail end of the 1990s after basically getting really disillusioned with trying to talk to politicians about changing laws of farm animals. One of the things they told me was, you know, show me some real evidence, show me some imagery and that might help your case in terms of getting new laws in place for farm animals. So I ditched all the political talk, got some cameras and went undercover. I thought it would just be something I did for a little while just to make a little bit of a difference. But it turned out that I did it for 20 years, which culminated in finishing just a couple of years ago. Then I was starting to look about what next, what comes next and that brought me to vegan farming.
Elizabeth: [00:03:59] Vegan farming. I have a few questions about this transition, because it's been a couple of years, right, since you've been out of the investigation world because you've been going kind of nonstop for 20 years, assignment after assignment. What did it feel like to just stop after that?
Rich: [00:04:17] It was a huge relief firstly, to stop. One of the reasons was that more groups were getting established investigation units, more funding going into it, more training of the next generation investigators. It was sort of an easy decision in the end for me to say, I don't have to do this anymore myself. The movement is really investing in this and we have got a great lot of people coming through to do that work. So I didn't have to do it anymore on that front, but I was really mentally and physically exhausted from doing the work and I needed a change. But you know, once you've been campaigning for so long, it's really challenging moving on to something entirely different. So I have my rescue animals, so my partner and I, and my partner Pru is also a campaigner actually for the Humane League here in the UK. We spend our time looking after rescued animals and alongside that, we were thinking, well, what else can we do? We didn't want to be doing as much sort of work based on showing the problems, which is what we've done a lot of. We wanted to kind of move into more like the solution side of things, encouraging people to embrace vegan food, cut factory farming and big ag out of their lives for good. We both had an interest in growing, you know, small scale vegetable growers just for fun. We thought, well, you know, why not try and set up like market gardeners have a small farm, but do it like completely vegan. When we say vegan for the type of farming that we do, we mean veganically, which is vegan plus organic equals veganic.
Elizabeth: [00:06:08] I think most people think anyone who's growing vegetables is a vegan farmer. Right. I mean, that's like kind of yeah, it seems like that's how it would be. So will talk about why that's not the case?
Rich: [00:06:22] It's not the case.
Elizabeth: [00:06:24] Pretty much like 99% of farms are not vegan, right?
Rich: [00:06:28] Yeah. I mean, so many farms that grow vegetables are well, they're big operations, big horticultural operations. A lot of the inputs that they're using to grow vegetables have an animal aspect to them. So particularly with propagation of plants and adding fertility to the soil, a great deal of that fertility is being added through animal manures, bone, blood, fish, male feathers processed down as mill, shell, cow horns, chicken manure. It’s a pretty big list of byproducts that come from factory farming or the slaughter industry. So the starting point for a lot of our wholesome vegetables has that aspect to it. You know, trying to buck the trend on that is something that's, I would say, not very well established at the moment. But there is a small movement, you know, of sort of vegan farmers out there that are trying to farm on a small scale, like a market garden scale, running community supported agriculture schemes to supply veg and fruit to the local communities based on vegan farming. But to be honest, I've only met a few of them and that's not even in the UK. Those few are spread out across the world. There's a small sort of sharing of knowledge between us, I would say, but there are one or two that have been doing a good while and have learnt a lot from it and can pass on their skills to newbies like me. Hopefully we can start telling a bit of storytelling around it and starting a new conversation.
Elizabeth: [00:08:12] You knew nothing when you started, right?
Rich: [00:08:14] Yeah pretty much, we just did just a little backyard kind of veg growing sort of scheme, like a bit of trial and error. You know, some things grew, some things didn't. But if you're going to upscale that to a small business, then you can't afford for that to happen. We started pretty much from fresh and got loads of books, you know, sort of cut out the pages that had bits about veganic agriculture and started putting them up around ourselves and going out there and finding a site where we could do all this. So that was about a year ago, and we've just sort of finished our first growing season and are now starting to prepare for our second season.
Elizabeth: [00:08:57] And the site is somewhere close to you?
Rich: [00:08:59] Yeah. So we're based in Cornwall, which is like a tiny, tiny little peninsula and the very south west of England. Next stop, New York. So we're right out on the fringe of England. We are growing in a pretty mild climate, but it's by no means a climate where we can grow everything. So we have a good mix of vegetables, salads and fruits that we can grow for about 30 weeks of the year. That's kind of what we base are weekly box scheme deliveries to people on.
Elizabeth: [00:09:33] Take me through the differences between what you're doing and somebody who's not doing a vegan farm.
Rich: [00:09:39] Well, one of the first things that we found difficult was actually finding a site that wasn't already connected to animal agriculture in some way, because a lot of farming and market gardeners are renting land from existing agricultural operations. Finding a piece of land that didn't have that attached to it was the sort of first stage. But when we did find that, we then had to plan where we were going to get our materials to cut out all these animal inputs that traditionally people use to grow vegetables in. We're really close to the beach. So we go and harvest seaweed. We've got permission from a local harbor to do that, it's like quite an old technique of laying seaweed and kelp on the land. We do as much sort of salvaging and recycling as possible actually, and it's quite circular. So we also go and get green waste composts. They're like plant materials that people cut down every year from their back gardens. When everything gets a bit too woody and a bit too overgrown, they take it to the local recycling centers and it kind of gets treated there and builds up a kind of compost which we then use to integrate that with the seaweeds. Then we also use like green manures, which are crops that you kind of plant between your vegetables and fruit after, after you've harvested and they build fertility back into the soil, they put nitrogen back in which you've taken. So it's, yeah, we're trying to be as kind of circular as possible in making good of other people's wastes and putting it to use on our farm. So we're not picking up the phone to the local broiler farm saying, yeah, can you dump 50 tonnes of chicken manure onto our land in preparation for us to grow vegetables? That's just something we'd never do.
Elizabeth: [00:11:35] But you're going out and getting the seaweed and getting the kelp. So like everything you do, you guys are doing it on your own, that's a lot of work.
Rich: [00:11:43] Yes. I'll tell you what producing wholesome, healthy food is a hell of a lot of work. This is where we've got massive problems coming because, well, firstly, the average age of a farmer in the UK is 59 years old. The average age of a farmer in the US is 57 and a half years old and in Japan it's 67. They're almost nearly retired. Who is going to be producing our food in the next few years? Because young people, they're not coming through to become farmers. They want to be moving to the city and they're not moving to rural areas. So we have a big food security story coming up about how and where we're going to get our food. Frankly, food has been something we've just not been interested in for so long. I know we're interested as vegans from the animal side of things, but you go back a few steps and there's a lot we should be concerned about, even as vegans, about how food is produced and even vegan food, you know, vegan fast food, highly processed food coming out of big mono crops, monocultures, big fields of wheat, GM wheat, same with soy. These are all ingredients for our kind of vegan junk food that is at risk from a number of issues. They create a great deal of biodiversity loss. They're wracking the soils. So we have really big problems coming up for food and it's something we should really, really be thinking very seriously about. I think personally that we need more small scale local agriculture, you know, community farms, ideally vegan. That's obviously where we're pushing, but that's producing more wholesome food that's going into people's kitchens within just a few miles. We deliver to our customers 3 hours within it being picked. So the same day it's in their kitchen.
Elizabeth: [00:13:46] That's amazing.
Rich: [00:13:47] But that's highly unusual. But that's because we're building a model around like a local community. We're not looking to transport our food out of a ten mile radius. It's small-scale agriculture that is big on protecting local wildlife and big on punching like really healthy food into people's plates.
Elizabeth: [00:14:09] How does it protect wildlife?
Rich: [00:14:11] So the problem that we have with a lot of vegan food like coming out of corn, GM soy is that it's incredibly destructive. There's a lot of chemicals and pesticides still going into that product, unless it's organic. A lot of vegan food isn't organic. As a result of that, it's very destructive from a wildlife perspective. So much wildlife is under threat from pesticides and chemical use globally in producing food, but also we're destroying all the habitat for wildlife. So on our farm, for example, we have really like native, really lovely native hedgerows surrounding our one acre site. They're our biggest allies. Those hedgerows, they're actually our neighbors. All those little birds, all those little voles and mice, all the toads, all the snakes, they're all hopping, slithering, darting out those hedgerows into our plot and into our vegetable beds and that's okay. They're our neighbors. They get their share, but they help us. They really help us. They are taking out slugs and snails and little worms and leather jackets that would otherwise be damaging the crops. There's no such thing as pests on our farm. The only thing that is a pest is when the supermarket truck rolls past, you know, on the little road near us taking food that's come from all over the world, wrapped up in plastic and, you know, coated with this, you know, glossy sheen of chemical residue. It's just the antithesis of what we do. So we embrace all the wildlife. They're our neighbors. I think, you know, if we don't have that wildlife, you know, we're not going to have anything to pollinate our crops, you know?
Elizabeth: [00:15:59] Right. No, it's awesome. What does it mean to you that you guys are no dig farm?
Rich: [00:16:05] Yeah, so this is maybe a bit more of a newer thing. Well, if veganic wasn’t new enough.
Elizabeth: [00:16:13] If you weren't trying to make it as difficult as possible.
Rich: [00:16:16] Yeah. We're not digging the ground either, which I guess to a lot of people seems what? You're not digging the ground. So we don't plow, we don't turn over. We don't till as you say in the US. We just build up layers of compost mulch with wood chips with green waste, compost with seaweed and we plant into that. We use just hand tools, push seeders, and hose. That's kind of all we really use. We keep our oil consumption down as much as possible too. But yeah, by by not disturbing the soil from digging. You're actually like protecting, you know, everything that makes up the composition of the soil. You know, all the crucial insects that live there. The structure you're not treading on it. You're not like compressing it. Big tractors do that. They really compress the soil and it's really difficult then for the roots of the plants to like get in there and get established and get all those nutrients. So that's how we're doing it and it works.
Elizabeth: [00:17:19] I guess that's more vegan anyway, too, because when you have big trucks and plows and all that, whatever little animals are in there getting run over.
Rich: [00:17:29] Yeah, that's true. I mean, where could you end with this conversation?
Elizabeth: [00:17:33] Yeah, it's true. It's true.
Rich: [00:17:35] I don't want to be freaking everyone out with this by any means. But I'm trying to show that it's possible to grow veganically, you know, to use organic techniques that don't damage the soil, produce healthy food on the same level as bigger farms and use a lot less inputs and a lot less oil as well. I mean, agriculture is run on oil and oil's always running out too. So I think we have to be thinking about this approach to protect our food system in the future. But you know what? One of the best things that I've done is do this, because not only has it really helped me recover from undercover investigative work, it's really helped my mental health. It's a really fit and healthy occupation. Although I'm not completely full time on it, I hope I will be full time on it. It's been groundbreaking, without being groundbreaking.
Elizabeth: [00:18:44] Without digging. Talk me through, what's a day like as a vegan farmer? You guys are 25 weeks a year. That means you're growing 25 weeks a year.
Rich: [00:18:53] Yeah, we're growing 25 weeks a year. But then there's preparation like either side of that and at the end of the season as well. So yeah, we start the season like in mid-February getting our seeds on. Then we start planting around mid-March. We got our first crops coming out, sort of like April, May, and then we're kind of full on right through till like November. Then we start winding things down and then run up to Christmas reapplying some of those, those really good, wholesome composts and seaweeds to the farm to get it ready for the next spring and ready to go again. So a typical day would be, yeah, get down the farm in the summer pretty early seven ish. With a bit of luck I might be able to get a surf in before on my local beach, or if not at the end of the day. But yeah, basically I'm planting, weeding. No, till, no dig actually doesn't create a lot of weeds. Especially one of the good things about no till is you are just working a lot with the plants and not having to like to fight weeds off from around them. Watering obviously with no dig, you're using a lot less water than conventional systems because that mulch soaks up the water so your plants aren't drying out as much and like a lot of horticultural farmers would have problems with. Then a little bit of hoeing and I might put some more plants out. I might prepare some ground for a new bed. I'm not doing things like dawn to dusk. It's hard work, but I'm not like burning the midnight oil.
Elizabeth: [00:20:35] I'm sure your vegetables must taste a lot better.
Rich: [00:20:38] Most people have said our veggies taste brilliant. Yeah, I think they taste really great. I think, you know, any veg that is organic compared to conventional veg is going to have a whole lot more crunch to it. You know, I think the issue is if you can get veg into people's households in a day rather than a few weeks, because a lot of our veg does, you know, it's transported over quite a long period of time because it's coming from all across the world. You are benefiting from fresh, fresh produce. So, yeah, I think it tastes epic. Vegan veg is the best veg.
Elizabeth: [00:21:20] I love your packaging, how it says no blood, no bones, no shit. It's awesome. Does organic farming have blood, bones and shit?
Rich: [00:21:29] Yes. Yeah, quite often it will have.
Elizabeth: [00:21:33] So that's the difference between vegan organic and regular organic.
Rich: [00:21:37] That's the main difference. A lot of organic farming is either supporting animal agriculture in some way, you know, a lot of organic vegetable farms, maybe mixed farms. They may have cows alongside or sheep alongside their horticultural operation. But yeah, I mean, they're quite reliant on animal inputs, the manures, the blood as part of the growing, so yeah those are the inputs that we would we would avoid at any cost.
Elizabeth: [00:22:08] It's really making me wonder if there is a veganic farm that comes here to New York. I mean, there's a lot of CSAs and organic farmers, but I don't know. I've never even thought about whether there is a vegan one?
Rich: [00:22:21] Yeah, I think you may, you may be scratching your head a little bit on that one, but I might be surprised that maybe somewhere up in the Catskills or somewhere like that, all kinds of stuff goes on up there.
Elizabeth: [00:22:33] So just talking to you, it makes me really, really want to switch. So we need a lot more of these.
Rich: [00:22:40] We do need a lot more of these. I think it's doable, but it's like factory farming. You know, it came in post war. Everyone was told if you want to farm animals, this is what you got to do. They didn't really question that. Only now that it's starting to crumble, thank goodness. They're starting to realize there's a whole new world out there and of course, there are some good projects that are helping farmers transition. My good friend Leah over at Mercy for Animals, she's been very involved with the transformation program. They're trying to get broiler chicken farmers into hemp and grains. We've got a few projects like that here as well. But they're like bigger scale projects, quite focused on things like grains, cereals, legumes, whereas I think the smaller scale sort of fruit and veg operations lend themselves a bit better to CSAs. I think one of the good things about COVID was we did have a little bit of a scare around food, didn't we? Because we weren't able to get stuff. Supermarkets were kind of closing their doors a little bit. People were panicking about where they were going to get food.
Rich: [00:23:51] Food wasn't getting onto the shelves because of the distribution and what did they do? Well, they started buying packs of seeds. You know, if they have a little garden space. They were like, I'm going to give this a go. I think when I was talking earlier about like food security, about what's coming around the corner with all these issues around climate, biodiversity, aging, farming, population, etc., you know, people just if they got a little bit of green space, whether it's a balcony on a fifth floor skyscraper or a little backyard space, they tried growing for themselves and they got a lot of benefit out of it. There was quite a lot of good stuff coming from the soil, from that. You know, the type of project that I'm doing is a little extension of that. Not everyone's able to grow everything that they need to to sustain them in their back garden. But they might want to support a vegan farmer like me who's able to do it for them, you know, essentially be their farmer. That's what the type of growing schemes that we're developing are based upon.
Elizabeth: [00:24:55] So after spending 20 years kind of really in every kind of horrible animal agriculture or animal exploitation, you were very focused on what was happening to animals. Were you actually paying much attention to how we were growing our food, the vegetables and fruits? Or has this all kind of come to you since you've been doing this?
Rich: [00:25:15] I definitely learned a lot because essentially what I was doing was infiltration. So I was getting to understand my adversaries, if you like. What made me a better campaigner and a better investigator was not just going into farms to document, it was going into farms to say, how do you do this? Where do you get your money from? Who are your investors? You know, where's your antibiotics coming from? How many of them are you using? Those were all elements that were vital to kind of campaign success further down the line. I think I was definitely aware of a lot of the environmental issues, the migrant labor issues linked to, you know, essentially a slave trade. I've done a little bit more thinking since and I have learned a little bit more as well. I've kind of joined up the dots and I don't want to be fanatical and say, you know, we're all doomed from our food perspective. But I think we do have to be a little bit careful of what's coming on the horizon. I think we do have to think a little bit harder about our health in terms of like very highly processed vegan alternatives. You know, I think if you want to save money, we could not do much better than return to a whole food diet. It's cheap and it's really the best thing you could eat.
Elizabeth: [00:26:45] And you feel so much better.
Rich: [00:26:47] Yeah. Coupled with keeping active and getting out there and being physical and mentally challenged.
Elizabeth: [00:26:55] Yeah. I think too, like, in the way that COVID kind of unveiled a lot of what's happening in factory farms to a lot of people who had never paid any attention to it, I think our food system in general is starting to get, you know, the curtains are getting pulled back.
Rich: [00:27:11] We just had our first human case of bird flu today.
Elizabeth: [00:27:15] I saw that.
Rich: [00:27:17] Yeah.
Elizabeth: [00:27:17] Are people freaking out?
Rich: [00:27:19] Do you know what it's running two or three pages in the newspapers. You know, it's not a lead story. One or two more cases, it might start heading that way. But yeah, we've had these conversations before. You’ve had them probably more than anyone with all your guests. But, you know, these pandemics are links to food and particular animal agriculture. It could be the thing that makes a little vegan farmer like me become a sort of a medium sized farmer in the future.
Elizabeth: [00:27:54] It's true. I hope it doesn't have to happen that way.
Rich: [00:27:59] No, no.
Elizabeth: [00:28:01] I don't know. It feels like whatever you do, Rich, you kind of just go all out at some point.
Rich: [00:28:11] Yeah, exactly.
Elizabeth: [00:28:12] I think you might be a medium sized farmer pretty soon. Also the reason I keep asking about other farms and other farmers is because I seriously think, like, this needs to grow. I mean, we need these.
Rich: [00:28:25] Yeah, we do. We do. I think, I think more and more people, if they see that, you know, farming could provide a livelihood for them, would look to it. Certainly like in the UK, we are seeing some younger entrants coming into market gardening. So, you know, if it can provide a life where you can live comfortably, work hard, stay physically active and fair and have good health. Which I think it can offer all those. Then I think it might be a bit more attractive. The problem is getting hold of land to do it because so much land is in the hands of just a few people. Again, this is another big thing that we, I think, have to try and buck the trend on because yeah. 60% of our food in the UK is produced with subsidies. It's completely artificial. When you break down because of food, you know people, animals, planet, health, environment. I just don't know how we were doing what we're doing. It just doesn't make any sense at all. The way that we do it, because all we're doing is taking, taking, taking. We're taking from the soil. We're taking from the, you know, the margins of the fields, the forests. It's all take, take, take, take. We're not putting it back and we're getting a much bigger planet. There's a lot more of us. Got to have a real radical think on how we're going to do this because it isn't sustainable.
Elizabeth: [00:30:11] No, it's not. Well you're doing your part, I'm glad you are. Next time I'm in the UK, I'd like to come see your farm.
Rich: [00:30:19] Come see the farm, yeah. I'll have a lovely selection of veggies for you to try.
Elizabeth: [00:30:25] I can’t wait and in the meantime, I'm going to find a vegan farmer here who delivers to New York City.
Rich: [00:30:32] I’ll put the word out amongst the few and see if we can find someone.
Elizabeth: [00:30:37] Rich thank you so much. It's really nice to talk to you again. You look happy, you look healthy and you look totally restored.
Rich: [00:30:45] Lovely to talk with you again, Beth. Thanks a million.
Elizabeth: [00:30:56] To learn more about Rich and to learn about vegan farming, go to our website SpeciesUnite.com. We will have links to everything. We are on Facebook and Instagram, @SpeciesUnite and if you have a spare minute and could do us a favor, please rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps people find the show. If you would like to support Species Unite, we would greatly appreciate it. Go to our website, Species Unite.com and click Donate. I'd like to thank everyone at Species Unite, including Gary Knudsen, Caitlin Pierce, Amy Jones, Paul Healey, Santina Polky, Bethany Jones and Anna Connor, who wrote and performed today's music. Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful day.
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