The other day, I stopped by the Atwater Village corner store Wine + Eggs to pick up a gallon of milk and a carton of their namesake huevos. Eighteen dollars later, I walked out with my kitchen staples, wondering how I’d paid so much for such basic ingredients. I shook it off as just another L.A. moment. There’s always a premium on anything in the city of angels, food included, but I’m always down to pay more if it means supporting a local businesses.

The next morning, when I was pouring said milk into my piping hot, just as expensive Nespresso, I realized that I hadn’t taken a moment to check the labels on the milk bottle. It’s a practice I’ve been trying to incorporate into my habits to be a more mindful consumer. Smack dab in the middle of the bottle was a circular seal, one depicting a straw of wheat with the label “Verified Land to Market”. 

A commonly known fact among those looped into the agricultural zeitgeist is that certain labels on fresh foods like eggs, dairy, or produce are vague, insignificant, or worse, misleading. In fact, some are simply marketing ploys meant to influence a well-meaning customer’s decision making. For example, labels like “non-gmo” or “vegetarian fed” are unregulated monikers that ultimately don’t key the consumer into any humane standards or the well-being of the animals or farmers responsible for our food.

Certified Humane, the nationally recognized 501(c) 3 nonprofit certification organization explains what some of these labels really mean: labels like “cage-free” and “free-roaming” are a step in the right direction. But when the actual policy and regulations are further investigated, it turns out that some of the labels are more a form of marketing than markers of quality or any humane standards. In fact, labels like “all-natural” mean, ostensibly, nothing.

What about “land to market,” or “regenerative?” 

I’d heard about farm to table (something I figured applied only to restaurants in coastal cities) but I hadn’t heard of “Land to Market” before, nor had I noticed the seal on any products in my past grocery experiences.

So, I took to Google. As it turns out,  “Land to Market” is a program run by something called the Savory Institute.

Though the name could lead one to believe that the organization is something akin to a culinary school or a location out of the Hunger Games novels, the Savory Institute is actually a “global network” and movement of regenerative farmers and land managers, brand partners, and conscientious consumers who all share a singular mission.

What exactly, I wanted to know, was their mission? Furthermore, and forgive the pun, but where and when did Savory’s roots begin to grow?

“The mission is to facilitate the large-scale regeneration of the world’s grasslands and soils through something called holistic management,” says Allan Savory, the mind behind the farm planning system.  The mission is a self-admittedly audacious and gutsy goal: to “regenerate 1 billion hectares of grassland by 2025” by utilizing the practice of holistic management and regenerative agriculture through a network of dedicated farmers across the world. 

You see, traditional environmentalists fervently believe in the long-held theory that, to restore degrading landscapes, we must reduce the presence of cattle, eat less meat, and allow ecosystems to repair themselves after 10,000 years of overgrazing. This, environmentalists believe, will fix the ruinous ecological crisis called desertification. Desertification affects the arid and semiarid two-thirds of Earth's land surface where soil is especially susceptible to drying out and eroding as the climate warm

s and droughts worsen. The crisis is estimated to be degrading an area the size of Pennsylvania worldwide each year. It ends with soil that has turned to dust.  

Savory, on the other hand, was one of the first to hypothesize what’s now being called the regenerative animal agriculture movement. He believes that the world needs more cows, not fewer. Savory’s idea is that “small incremental change” is a waste of time when it comes to solving our global ecological crises, and that radical change is the way to go when it comes to environmentalism. He says that the key to solving desertification is by reintroducing grazing to the world's grasslands, prairies, and deserts through planned grazing, land planning, financial planning, and ecological monitoring.  This includes something called no-till farming, a practice that Savory says helps to slow erosion and increase water absorption in soil. The idea is, with more grass and better topsoils, we can use biological processes to capture and store the carbon that drives global climate change, something called soil carbon sequestration.

Boiled down, Savory promises that if farmers stop disturbing their soil by avoiding plowing up dirt whenever possible, and instead add cattle to deserts and farms, manage them with obsessive precision, and by extension, eat more meat, our global ecological crises will subside. As a writer for The Sierra Club Magazine wrote, Savory’s vision “offered a remarkable win-win vision: more cattle, more hamburgers to feed a growing population, more profit for stock growers. In the process, the planet gets healthier land that acts as a sink to absorb carbon, and climate change comes to a halt.”

This all sounds great. So, I thought, where’s the catch? 

Do you remember the viral theory that spread like wildfire across the internet in 2013 that cow farts could save the world? Well, that theory is the brainchild of Allan Savory, a Zimbabwean farmer, scientist and activist. Savory’s method was brought to the forefront of public conversation in a contentious 2013 TED Talk where he posited that “if we took just half of the world’s grasslands we could absorb enough carbon to return the world’s atmosphere to pre-industrial levels.” 

The talk, while celebrated and lauded by some, was deeply critiqued by many others. “For all the intuitive appeal of ‘holistic management,’ Savory’s hypothesis is beset with caveats,” wrote James McWilliams in an article for Slate. These caveats all stem from the only research trial that Savory points to as proof for his method of success. 

There’s one trial that supports Savory ideas: the Charter Grazing Trials. These research trials were undertaken in Rhodesia–a.k.a., Zimbabwe–between 1969 and 1975. According to the Sierra Club, in 1969, the Charter Estate, a London-based company, donated land, funding, and cattle to conduct a seven-year study of Savory's "short-duration grazing" on 6,200 acres in Zimbabwe. Savory stated in 2000 that the Charter Trials, as the experiment was called, was "the only trial ever conducted" about his work and that it "proved what I have always advocated and continue to advocate when livestock are run on any land."

However, from 2000 through 20002, a team of researchers at the University of Arizona performed a “comprehensive review” of Savory’s methods in North America. Most of the land used in the trials was prairie rangelands in Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. Ultimately, the authors of the review contended that Savory’s method “failed to produce the marked improvement in grass cover claimed from its application,” and concluded what mainstream ecologists have been concluding for 40 years: “No grazing system has yet shown the capacity to overcome the long-term effects of overstocking and/or drought on vegetation productivity.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking, because I was thinking it too: all of this science-y, ecological agriculture stuff is boring and I simply don’t understand it. Plus, taking everything into consideration, it sounded like I’d reached my conclusion: “Land-to-Market” is probably just another B.S. label, and “regenerative agriculture” is seemingly just a pipe-dream for well-meaning people. 

At the same time, I knew that there had to be something to the practice and mission.

After all, what do I know? What if things had changed since 2002? What is it really like being a regenerative farmer?

I set out on a mission to find a local farmer who practices regenerative agriculture. I needed to talk to someone who had a deep understanding about both holistic management as well as how the entire process affects the current model of our food system. I had to see for myself if regenerative farming was the real deal or not. 

This is where Chef Mollie Engelhart comes in. Chef Mollie Engelhart is, among many other things, a very busy woman. The chef and farmer actually began her career in the entertainment industry. As an alum of the prestigious CalArts film program, she began her career in the urban A&R department at Sony Music, which led to a slew of other gigs at various labels, such as Epic, Electra, and Virgin. She’s a fascinating woman with a storied life: after her stint behind the scenes in the entertainment industry, Chef Mollie became the talent when she recorded several poetry and spoken word albums and even appeared on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam.

Such a fabled career would seemingly satiate your normal, everyday go-getter and hustler, but Chef Mollie still wasn’t done pivoting. In fact, she still had an unfulfilled dream. With the funds she’d collected from her artistic projects and the fiery passion for healthy food that was sparked through her childhood, Engelhart made her first venture into the food industry when she opened Sage Plant Based Bistro. 

As the executive chef and owner (which now operates three locations throughout LA) and regenerative farm Sow A Heart, I knew that asking her to sit down with me for 30 minutes was a big request, but Engelhart graciously accepted my invitation. My first question, quite appropriately, was a “chicken or the egg” kinda question: was Chef Mollie drawn to cooking through a passion for farming, or was it the other way around?

“Well, I grew up on a farm, so I’ve always loved nature,” she tells me. “I would probably say that I had a love for nature first, and then cooking second. And I’m a good cook because I’m a latchkey kid. My mom’s famous last words were: ‘Mom, what’s for dinner?’ ‘Every man for himself.’” Engelhart’s family farm was more of what she calls an apple orchard. When asked if the farm was regeneratively operated, Engelhart makes an interesting point. The regenerative movement hadn’t yet been sparked, but many small farms have been practicing regenerative farming forever. 

“That wasn't a thing back then. It was mostly apples, and it wasn't much. My parents weren’t making a bunch of money from their farm. It was apple orchards. There was grass. But 40 years ago, everybody had grass between their apples,” she notes, referencing just one example of what modern, industrialized farms lack today.     

Her upbringing on a farm is what sparked a love of nature in Engelhart, and what eventually catalyzed her fiery passion for good food as well. For Chef Mollie, “good food”– the food she serves at her restaurants and with which she feeds her own family–stems from a system of regenerative farming and holistic management. 

When I bring up Allan Savory and the “Land-to-Market'' label, Engelhart shakes off my reference. “Oh yeah, I don’t really know anything about him.” Her passion for the practices of regenerative agriculture was actually sparked by a TED Talk, but it wasn’t Savory’s.

Rather, in 2013, before Sow A Heart was even a glimmer in Engelhart’s eye, her brother sent her Graeme Sait’s TED Talk. In the talk, Sait largely focuses on soil carbon sequestration. This, he says, would replenish our soils and reverse the impact of the “467 billion tonnes of carbon” that have been released into the atmosphere by soil. 

So, like the go-getter she is, Chef Mollie began the grueling process of finding farmland to open her own regenerative farm.  It took 6 years, 7 loan rejections, and a never-ending surge of drive and resiliency before she found a property that had a home on the land, qualifying it for owner-financing requiring 20% down. “The owner needed a quick sale,” she said, and she jumped on it. 

“I mean, really, what my vision was always like food sovereignty for my family, and being able to grow food,” she tells me. “Healthy, nutrient dense food for the restaurants that were coming from a local place, and that was good for people.” She began to analyze her restaurants’ supply chains to understand the impact of each decision, identifying where there was an opportunity to change her practice to be more local and regenerative.

“All of our food scraps go back to the farm, and either feed animals or become compost. All of the grain from our breweries comes back and feeds our animals.” But, she admits, “not even 10% of our produce in our restaurants come from our farm.” Due to the magnitude of her bustling restaurants, the small farm cannot supply all produce for SAGE, but Engelhaart still commits to serving regeneratively farmed food. 

“When my guests are eating a kale salad, it was picked that same day and you can’t help but taste, feel, and want to know more about why it’s so much better. And not only the taste, but better for your body, your planet and community.”

As a tactile learner, I needed to taste some of the produce from Sow A Heart for myself. I wanted to see if what Chef Mollie said was true: that regeneratively farmed food was “so much better” than, say, what you’d find at your local grocery store or organic vendor at a local farmer’s market. I ordered a large box of produce from Sow A Heart’s website, and three days later, a huge box of vegetables was waiting for me at my doorstep.

What I found in the box was a gorgeous bounty of produce, almost too much to mention. The gigantic, bright green leeks stood out most to me, alongside bundles of dill and spinach and spring greens and broccoli. Next, a plump cabbage caught my eye, which lay alongside a pair of bright red beets. At the bottom of the box, I found a scattering of berries, citrus, cucumbers, and avocados. 

I hurriedly grabbed a leek, the cabbage, a cucumber, an orange, and an avocado. A great chef once told me that one shouldn’t shop for a recipe, rather, they should go to the store without a and instead use whatever produce or meat is freshest at the market, then choose a recipe. I began my mise en place, thinly slicing the leeks and cabbage, before juicing an orange into a vinaigrette with olive oil and dijon mustard. I sliced up a fennel bulb and chopped the cucumbers into bite sized pieces, and threw it all in a bowl and tossed it together. I finished my salad with a handful of big, generous chunks of avocado  and got to eating. 

If I’ve learned anything in my four years in the professional culinary world, it’s that you should always listen to the chef. In this case, Chef Mollie was right; my crunchy salad did taste different. It tasted different not because the vegetables were any better than non-regeneratively farmed ones I’d find at a farmers market, but because I knew that I was supporting a good cause and by extension, a chef with a vision and a plan for keeping our Earth and food systems healthy.