Issue #5: The Cost of Inaction

Dear Corporate America,

Dear Corporate America,

There is something we keep hearing in your meetings that will not leave our heads: “we just don’t know how we can pay for regenerative ag”.

Oh, but you already are.

You are paying for it with your health care bills.

You are paying for it with your children’s mental health.
You are paying for it in Medicare taxes treating a generation of sick Boomers.
You are paying for it when tariffs mean your domestic supply is too expensive.
You are paying for it with an erosion of society, not just of the soil, but of the fabric of life which is woven with community, gratitude, abundance and freedom.

America spends $1.3 TRILLION per year on healthcare due to chronic disease. The World spent only $1 billion on carbon credits to “reverse” climate change in the same year. No wonder your ROI on emissions reductions is tough!

In the U.S, 20-30% of male cattle are lactating - producing dairy quality milk - by the time they die. We pump so much estrogen into them for growth that we change their biology. As the saying goes, you are what you eat.

Please don’t tell me you grumble about taxes. Oh you do?
90% of our nation's health care spending goes to chronic disease.
(apparently food is still not a disease risk factor, according to our own government)

It is a documented truth that when soil collapses, society collapses.
In a fractured geopolitical future, healthy soil = resilient community + strong culture.
Meanwhile, “Make America Healthy Again” is pulling the rug out from family farms…

Does your cost of action look a little better now?

What if we told you that for $8 an animal you could phase out all growth antibiotics from your supply chain? RFK Jr. might even give you a tax break for it.

Or for $15 per acre you could invest in every American farmer you source from, tomorrow? Do that for 15 years and we may never have to rely on imported food ever again.

We understand that your sustainability goals were flawed from the start. But that’s because carbon is such a small piece of the puzzle. Your investors might care about climate change, but your customers care about themselves and their family. Even for those of us with the privilege to buy “sustainable” food, how often are we doing it for the planet vs. the simple fact it’s just better for us?

Let us make this easy. Every one of your customers wants to feel better, have more energy, be healthier, spend less at the doctor, live longer, and be able to play with their grandkids.

Every acre in your supply chain wants to be rich, productive soil and every animal free of stress and liver abscess.

It doesn’t sound like it should be that hard to connect the dots.

So here are some solutions that may help:

1. Seek alternatives to complicated solutions. Your focus on carbon means your incumbent MRV (carbon measurement) providers have million dollar payrolls who argue about how to perfect nature. These people are brilliant and doing amazing work but generating so much information that everyone is facing paralysis by analysis. Did I mention these services are very expensive?

The biggest sponsors at your sustainability events have collectively built programs on less than 5 million acres in a decade. That is under 2% of American farmland. Your “partners” are actually putting your businesses at risk. In 10 years when a record drought wipes out the Corn Belt because the soil was too depleted, will you care about the rigor of your carbon claims then? (disclaimer; I am not seeking to undermine, just provoking a question)

2. Find patient capital. Your addiction to short-term profits is blinding your visibility to the long-term returns of regenerative systems. Leveraging low-cost money provides a chance to have faith in a proven framework.

3. Align teams to the story that matters most to your brand. Your marketing team will understand what generates the most value from consumers. Your sustainability team can set the guardrails. Your procurement team can execute. In every conversation we have, these teams are very siloed today.

4. Invest in out-of-the-box education. Don’t send your leaders to echo chamber conferences with stuffy suits. Send them into the field with jeans and a ballcap to really stretch their minds. Have every member of your team, junior to senior, sit on a tractor in the middle of this country with a list of questions like “run me through your day today”. I know plenty of farmers who would have them.

5. Look towards health, specifically metabolic function. Understanding how to tap into a market that is already 1000x the value of the carbon markets will open up new avenues for value creation.

The world is craving a new story of transparency, trust and health. To Corporate America, ask yourself: don’t you want this too?

If you do, we’re here to help.

Sincerely,
NUTRAX