Lentil Underground (10 page)

“One of the criteria of our product development process is the impact our finished products have on crop rotation on the farm,” Sinclair continued. “If we rely heavily on small grains and ignore legumes, which are important to small grain rotation, we undermine our own business growth by ignoring the long-term requirements of the organic farm. The factor of crop rotation can seem limiting at first, but if you build relationships with people in diverse growing regions, and network with the ecological needs of the farm in mind, then this diversity becomes a business strength.”

Dave couldn't have found a better champion. Sinclair didn't just want to sell soup—she also wanted to help Timeless rejuvenate Montana soils. And this time, they would actually make money. Five months after the inaugural cans of Shari's Bistro soup hit retail shelves, Timeless received its first dividend check.
It was a surprise to the members of the lentil pool, who hadn't expected any compensation for at least a year. Perhaps this was a viable business after all.

One of those happily surprised farmers was Timeless Seeds' own Bud Barta, who had hit his stride after twelve years as an organic grower. Having built up the fertility on his now fully transitioned farm, Bud had seen his yields steadily climb, and he was starting to get a handle on the weeds too. Bud slotted Fair Exchange–bound French Green lentils into the second year of his four-year rotation, following black medic and before two years of small grains. Bud's preference was to plow down all the black medic—or perhaps another green manure like buckwheat or sweet clover—so as to start off the cycle with a nitrogen-gorged bang. But he reserved the option of harvesting it if seed prices were high, or cutting it for hay if his cattle needed the feed.

The truth was, Bud had to be flexible, because, as exciting as it was to get that first check from Fair Exchange, lentils still weren't paying the bills. In order to support his family, the jack-of-all-trades supplemented his farm work with another gig, Barta Built. The multitalented tradesman enjoyed the challenge of constructing energy-efficient homes for his unsuspecting neighbors. Instead of trying to sell green homes to Republicans, Bud described his handiwork as rustic, affordable, and high quality. No one objected. But Bud wasn't the only Timeless collaborator supporting himself with a side job while he hoped for growth. Fair Exchange had good intentions, but the math just didn't add up.

By the spring of 1995, Timeless Seeds had supplied just 15,000 pounds of lentils for Shari's Bistro soup. The premium they
received for their French Greens was tremendous, but the volume wasn't nearly sufficient to support eight families. Without some additional revenue—or at least an evidence-based projection—Timeless and company couldn't stay in business. Unfortunately, health problems were slowing down their champion, Ann Sinclair. The founder of Fair Exchange had to sell her company to deeper-pocketed executives, who changed the brand name, gutted the mission, and eventually shuttered the whole enterprise. Meanwhile, team Timeless had realized they couldn't get by supplying just 15,000 pounds of lentils, so they had entered the belly of the corporate beast as well. With one massive contract.

300,000 POUNDS OF LENTILS

Back at the Anaheim trade show in 1994, a woman had stopped by the Timeless booth and picked up a handful of French Green lentils from the bowl on display. “These are beautiful, just like silk,” the woman gushed, introducing herself as the buyer for “Trader Joe's.” Sounds like a family business out of some little town, Dave thought. So when the buyer told him she wanted at least 300,000 pounds of lentils for her sixty-store chain—for starters—Dave was amazed. And a little dejected. “Sorry, we don't do that,” he told the woman, realizing that he was likely passing up the best deal he'd ever been offered. But what could he do? The buyer wanted cute one-pound bags of lentils with her company's label on them—not the dowdy twenty-five-pound sacks that Timeless was supplying for natural-food store bulk bins. Timeless wasn't set up to do that. At least not yet.

Dave, who was used to begging people to give his lentils a chance, was surprised again when the woman persisted, calling him back six weeks later. She asked the astounded farmer to draw up a proposal for an enterprise expansion. Can't you just price out bags, labels, and transportation costs? she asked, as though she were talking about so many widgets. Dave wasn't honestly sure if he could do all those things. But he couldn't say no twice.

Once again, Timeless dug deep into its underground network to support its growth. Russ Salisbury found a bagging machine lying around in his equipment boneyard, fixed it up, and modified it to measure one-pound increments. A friend of Dave's from Conrad thought he could find some people to run the remodeled machine. A key member of the local AERO chapter, Dave's friend was also on the board of Northern Gateway Enterprises, which was looking for steady employment for their developmentally disabled clients. Northern Gateway had a building, and they fronted the money for a sealing machine to go along with Russ's bagger.

The first pound of lentils that Timeless sent to Trader Joe's split open in the mail. So did the second. But Timeless kept trying, and after four months, they'd fine-tuned a package that could withstand the trip to California.

Of course, by now, the little company's back was up against the wall, as they tried to fulfill Trader Joe's gargantuan order. Dave worked fourteen-hour days, supervising three hired hands from six to nine
A.M.
, moving over to Northern Gateway from nine thirty to three thirty, and then pulling two more shifts at night. But even at that unrelenting pace, Dave knew he and his staff couldn't finish the job alone. So he called on everyone he could think of to help out: the families of Northern Gateway employees, the Timeless Seeds board (who came in and put together a few packages after a meeting), even Tom Hastings's sister. All told, nearly thirty people were involved in the effort in some form or another, and before they knew it, the Timeless crew had ramped up production to 2,400 bags a day. In October of 1994, they loaded up a commercial truck with 30,000 packages of lentils—twice the volume they'd sold thus far to Fair Exchange—as a test run for Trader Joe's. By June of 1995, Timeless had sent 395,000 pounds to the California-based grocery chain.

It was not easy to keep Timeless true to its mission while cranking out so many bags of lentils, but Dave embraced the opportunity to bring economic development to Conrad. If you wanted to give back, he decided, it helped to have something to give. Now that Timeless had a legitimate processing operation, they could offer jobs to this economically challenged community, even if it was just one or two to start. They could support the nonprofit that provided vocational rehabilitation for north-central Montanans with developmental needs. Dave even bought an ad for the high school yearbook in Dutton, which felt particularly apt. Half an hour out of Conrad, the neighboring town was just a few miles south of Dave's grandparents' first homestead.

“I've lived in Conrad almost all my life,” Dave told a bright-eyed intern at AERO, who'd come out to the plant to write an article for the nonprofit's newsletter. “But I didn't become a real part of the community until I started contributing to it economically.” Twenty years after moving home, the Timeless CEO's perspective on change had itself changed. He still didn't believe in business as usual. But he was pretty excited about business as
unusual.
If they could make this legume thing really pencil out, Dave realized, he and his friends could have a much bigger impact.

Even consummate activist Jim Barngrover—who had spent countless hours lobbying the legislature—embraced the possibilities of making a difference through the market. Jim had started a small distribution business, Barnstormer's, to supplement his largely volunteer work for Timeless Seeds. He researched his organic and fair trade products carefully, well aware that economic incentives could easily lead such businesses astray from their lofty goals. Selling product without selling out was no mean feat.
But now that they had nitrogen fixation down, this was Timeless Seeds' next big challenge.

The Trader Joe's deal was particularly tricky, because unlike Fair Exchange, the California-based chain wouldn't pay a premium for organic. They didn't care if the lentils Timeless supplied had been sprayed or not. All the farmers in the lentil pool had certified their acreage—in fact, most of them were members of the same Organic Crop Improvement Association chapter. But 300,000 pounds was more lentils than Timeless could scrounge up from their fellow organic growers, or even from conventional growers in Montana. To fill the Trader Joe's order, they'd had to start buying conventional product from across the border in Saskatchewan.

Back when Dave had first planted them in the eighties, lentils had essentially been organic by definition. Herbicide manufacturers in the grain belt had developed their products for use in wheat and barley fields, and the most common formulations killed all broadleaf plants. As every young farmer converting a family place had to patiently explain to their parents, lentils were a broadleaf. If they used chemicals to kill their weeds, they'd kill their crop too. Moreover, broadleaf herbicides could persist in the soil for up to seven years, so there was no question of spot treating a little patch of thistles during a fallow year. In the early 1980s, planting lentils meant parking the sprayer for good.

Ten years on, when Timeless Seeds landed the Trader Joe's contract, there still weren't many nonorganic lentil fields in Montana. But Saskatchewan was a different story. Since the university at Saskatoon had a dedicated pulse-crop breeder, manufacturers
north of the border had invested in the development of more targeted chemicals that lentils could withstand. These weren't as toxic as the generalist broadleaf herbicides being used in Montana's wheat fields. But they were a far cry from the “solar farm” Dave had in mind.

Conrad's staunchest organic farmer hadn't intended to get into the business of sourcing and selling chemically fertilized products. But convincing central Montanans to grow organic specialty lentils was slow going, and it occurred to Dave that
conventional
specialty lentils might be the perfect gateway crop. This pitch was simple—here's a niche product that offers a higher return per acre than wheat and doesn't require as much fertilizer. Once Dave had farmers sold on the economic potential of lentils, then he could inform them that their new crop could be grown without
any
chemicals—for an even higher premium.

Of course, the immediate reason Dave needed to buy conventional lentils was to fulfill the Trader Joe's order. Even if that contract wasn't Timeless Seeds' ultimate goal, Dave reasoned, it was a powerful means to that end—probably his best bet of getting more of Montana's farmers out of the commodity trap. That one big deal had made so many things possible. The Conrad processing plant. The first private stock offering. All that equipment from Russ. Had it not been for the lucrative grocery chain opportunity, it was doubtful whether Timeless would have grown their lentil pool to encompass a broader circle of farmers. And without that jump in scale, they wouldn't have been able to offer employment to twelve developmentally disabled baggers.

Dave knew that each piece of his business-cum-movement had to mature apace, in order to keep the whole synergistic system humming along. His heart was on the farm, but he tried to keep his head squarely focused on marketing and infrastructure—to
make sure all those lentils would have someplace to go. And yet, adept as he was at inspiring folks to pitch in to help grow his company, Dave was wary of mobilizing the underground on behalf of the market. In truth, he had some nostalgia for the renewable-energy era of AERO, when everything was so much simpler. Back then, his weekends were spent gathering with like-minded people who shared knowledge and labor for free. Like so many of his fellow do-it-yourselfers, Dave had found it fulfilling to come home from a weekend workshop with the tools to immediately make a difference in his own life. It had been easy then: Make your own heat. Collect your own energy. But now that Dave and his friends had made their solar farms into their living and not just their hobby, they were constantly reminded that the economy around them didn't play by the same rules they did. In the murky, somewhat oxymoronic compromise zone known as “green business,” the line between selling your product and selling your soul could be hard to draw.

In June of 1995 Timeless sent their largest shipment yet to Trader Joe's. As soon as the delivery truck left the Conrad plant, the company's army of packaging staff got right back to work. They never knew when they might get the next call from California, and they wanted to be ready when the truck showed up. But the phone didn't ring. The truck never arrived. Months passed before anyone bothered to tell Dave, but Trader Joe's had dropped the product. Timeless was literally left holding the bag. Thousands of them. Just a few months after what had appeared to be its big break, the company found itself on the verge of bankruptcy.

When the shock abated, Dave began to piece together what had gone wrong. Trader Joe's had asked for ramped-up production in the winter, when their marketing gurus told them people were making lentil soup. Not being farmers, the store's buyers assumed they could instantaneously source some legumes to fill that demand. Once the weather started warming, Trader Joe's customers gave up their soup habit, and the lentils languished on the shelf. So the grocery chain stopped stocking them, figuring they could always pick them up again whenever demand returned. Never mind that this year's crop was already in the ground.

But there had been another problem too, one for which Dave took some responsibility: dental claims. When he'd started calling around Saskatchewan in search of product to fill the Trader Joe's order, Dave had asked for “precleaned” Canadian grade-one lentils, assuming that meant the processor had sorted out all the rocks. Given what a rush he'd been in, Dave hadn't double-checked, and the result was that someone eventually chomped down on Trader Joe's house-brand lentils and broke a tooth on a rock. It turned out that “grade one” meant less than 0.1 percent stones—so theoretically, a pound of French Greens could have ten stones in it and still make the grade! None of the Saskatchewan lentils Timeless sourced were that dirty, but even a single stone in 100,000 pounds was one too many. An embarrassment for Dave (who vowed that Timeless would never again sell lentils they hadn't cleaned themselves), the errant stone had been a liability for his buyer. Since the product didn't seem to be a big hit anyway, Trader Joe's decided not to risk any more phone calls from personal injury lawyers.

The loss of the Trader Joe's contract was devastating. Timeless was committed to purchasing the massive inventory they had asked their farmers to seed, but they had nowhere to sell it. For the
past nine months, the company had poured all their time and energy into one customer. They had tailor-made their operation to fulfill one contract, which was now history. “When the product quit working for them, the lights could've gone out,” Dave admitted. “But we were totally stubborn.”