Why Food?

What’s an outdoor clothing company doing selling food? A similar question was asked of me in 1968, when we were blacksmithing new tools for mountain climbing and suddenly started selling shorts, shirts and pants. Skepticism seems to rise whenever a company refuses to “stay in its lane.” But as an entrepreneur, I see business opportunities everywhere. As a lover of the outdoors, I see a way to save our home planet and its creatures—including us—from the destructive habits we’ve invented for ourselves.

To me, Patagonia Provisions is more than just another business venture. It’s a matter of human survival.

I’ve been a longtime doom-bat about humanity’s prospects if we continue on the path we’re on now. The planet is in bad shape, and many leaders have given in to cynicism or profiteering. But that does not have to be the way we go. Businesses and society can reject hopelessness and apathy and instead shape a future that can support all of us. We can refuse factory farms, poisoned air and water, and quarterly earnings being the basis of our morals.

No matter what, we still need to eat. In fact, I think the only revolution we’re likely to see is in agriculture, and I want to be a part of it.

In its efforts to maximize efficiency and profit, modern industrial agriculture relies on annual monocrops, toxic herbicides and pesticides, synthetic fertilizer and wasteful water use, all of which are destroying topsoil faster than it can be replaced.

And what about the food we’re eating from this system? Bland feedlot beef inoculated with antibiotics and growth hormones; factory-raised chickens and pale, flavorless eggs; GMO crops soaked with chemicals; fruit selected for size and growth rate over flavor or nutrition. Even if we could figure out how to continue industrial farming and agriculture, we do so at great cost: diminishing returns, millions of small farmers out of work and increasing danger to humans and our ecosystem from toxic chemicals and lower nutritional value.

A study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition demonstrated “reliable declines” in key nutrients found in 43 different fruits and vegetables over the past half century. The same study showed that a person would need to eat eight oranges today to equal the vitamin A our grandparents got from just one. In its review of this and other studies with similar findings, Scientific American states, “The key to healthier produce is healthier soil.”

Big Organic, which started out with good intentions, is now dominated by large companies searching for ways to grow more food and increase profit margins through technology. Sound familiar? If that’s the future, I say good luck trying to make decent wine from hydroponically grown grapes.

It seems to me that our priorities have gotten out of whack.

Fortunately, there is a better path forward. Regenerative organic farming practices produce large crop yields while free-roaming buffalo restore prairie grasslands, one of Earth’s great carbon storage systems. Rope-cultivated mussels produce delicious protein while cleaning the water where they’re grown and boosting biodiversity when cultivated with seaweed. Place-based and selective-harvest fishing techniques can allow us to target truly sustainable fish populations without harming less abundant species. As these examples illustrate, the more we roll up our sleeves and dig into the world of food, the more we discover that the best ways are often the old ways. We must, as the great environmentalist David Brower urged, “turn around and take a step forward.”

With Provisions, we make that turn and step toward a new kind of future. One filled with deeply flavorful, nutritious foods that restore, rather than deplete, our planet. A future with widespread adoption of Regenerative Organic Certification, which ensures that food is produced in ways that build soil health, ensure animal welfare and protect agricultural workers. In short, I’m talking about foods that are a key part of the solution, instead of the problem.

That’s the revolution I want to be a part of. Why is Patagonia making and selling food? The real question, to me, is how could we not? I realize, now more than ever, that the requisites for a thriving business and thriving people are one and the same. Triple bottom line? Food, water, love.