In episode 12, we welcome Ethan Soloviev, Chief Innovation Officer at HowGood, to Five Lifes to Fifty. Ethan is also an owner of High Falls Farm, and is the author of "Levels of Regenerative Agriculture" and "Regenerative Enterprise: Optimizing for Multi-Capital Abundance."

Ethan is an international expert on regenerative agriculture, regenerative business, and innovation, with experience in 34 countries. He is the founder of the Regenerative Enterprise Institute, an Associate of the Carol Sanford Institute, and a member of the Regenerative Business Alliance. Ethan holds a B.S. from Haverford College and an M.S. in Eco-Social Design from Gaia University.

At HowGood, Ethan's focus is on driving product sustainability and business model innovation for Fortune 500 Retail and CPG companies. HowGood is an independent research company and SaaS data platform with the world's largest database on food product sustainability.

In this Episode 

Shelley: This is the first time we've had a guest from a technology company on the podcast. Could you tell us a bit about what HowGood is and who it serves? [00:33 ] 

Ethan: HowGood, as you mentioned, has the world's largest database on food, product and ingredient sustainability. We're a non-traditional startup in that we're 17 years old right now. So, we've really spent the better part of two decades building out a massive picture of what global supply chains look like and what are the impacts that happen in three key areas: carbon, nature and human rights. From that massive amount of data that we've gathered for 33,000 ingredients, we've built up the capability to, automatically, using AI, calculate the impact of any food ingredient or product in the world. We've built it all into a software platform that is, I think, fun and easy to use and we have six of the ten largest food companies in the world using the platform to understand their impacts and to automate reduction strategies. We have major retailers around the world, from Ahold Delhaize in the USA to Carrefour in the Middle East, and we even have ingredient suppliers like Ingredion and the Kerry Group, who use the platform to understand their impacts and communicate downstream to their consumers. So overall, you can think of HowGood as a social network for impact data on food and agriculture. It’s the place where the industry comes together, whether you're a formulator or a procurement specialist, or someone in marketing and sales or a sustainability team needing to do reporting; everyone comes to us for a single source of sustainability data truth, so that they can coordinate, collaborate, network, engage with suppliers to transform the impacts of their products. [00:41 ] 

Shelley: Thinking about the broader picture, you're bringing all these groups together, what do you think the role technology does play? Because it sounds like you're playing a role already, but what role do you think it plays for these food formulators and food companies? And what is it doing for them to achieve sustainability? [02:27 ] 

Ethan: I'll just tell a little story that is part of how we got to where we're at now to answer that question. This was a number of years ago in San Francisco, it was at a co-lab, a sort of weeklong sprint event and I met somebody from Danone who said, look, I have 1000 product formulators globally at Danone and every day they are innovating and they are renovating new yogurts, new plant based beverages and those people, many of them really care about sustainability, but many of them weren't trained in it. They are food scientists. They are formulators. They are making delicious, beautiful food. But they don't necessarily have the information and the data to create a circular food product or create a regenerative food product. They have a desire to and more and more, we're being asked from a corporate level to improve or to make every new renovation have a lower carbon footprint or even to know the carbon footprint of our products. But I can't send every single one of these formulators through a master's or a PhD in sustainability. How can we help them more quickly? And I said, well, I think we have all the data for that, so if we could use technology to put it at their fingertips, even before going to the bench, that should be able to speed everything up. That was the inception. That was the idea that launched lattice, which is the HowGood software platform, basically to use technology to put the data at everybody's fingertips, in the same way that you would look at the different physical qualities, the different taste qualities of an individual ingredient, the same way you might think about, well, what's the price differential going to be if I swap from this one to that one? Just like, you know, and have information on those factors, we thought, let's just put the carbon footprint, the water footprint, the biodiversity impact, the labor risk, the processing energy use, the animal welfare. Let's just have clear quantitative data in that format right at formulators fingertips. Because I think formulators are at a very potent and powerful place to change the food system, much more so than I think are often given credit to them. What formulators do and how they create products is such a huge, potent spot to change upstream impacts because of where impacts actually come from, which I think we'll talk a bit more about as we go. [02:41 ] 

Neil: I think you've mentioned two very interesting words. One was circular food products and regenerative food products. Could you tell us what those mean? [05:09 ] 

Ethan: If you look at the definition of a circular economy, most of the time for food, they’re pointing to regenerative and regenerative agriculture as one of the main routes to create a circular economy of food. There are aspects of design, there are aspects of packaging, but really most impacts in food happen not in the manufacturing plant, not in the packaging, not in the transportation, but they happen upstream, they happen where food is grown and that's where regenerative agriculture plays a huge role. So, to focus on regeneration, the key concept there is for a long time, at least 100 years, probably 1000, but really the last hundred years, the production of food has had a massive negative impact on the world. Emitted lots of carbon, destroyed soil, deforested landscape, killed different species, poisoned people, poisoned waterways, and in many ways still does. It still does have those deleterious effects. We still have a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. We still have significant loss of species. Food emits 33% of the carbon emissions in the world, the greenhouse gas emissions, but it's responsible for a much larger percentage, like 80% of all freshwater use and a huge percent of the biodiversity loss that's happening is from food and agriculture. So that's, you could call business as usual agriculture or degenerative agriculture. And that's most of what's out there. [05:19 ] 

Ethan: So, there's been some good focus in the last two decades to try to move away from that and towards a sustainable agriculture. A sustainable agriculture would be kind of like a net zero impact, but really, who just wants to sustain? If somebody asks you about your relationship with your sweetheart or your spouse, and they said, how's the relationship? And you said, it's sustainable, is that really what we're going for? Or if you're on your deathbed and somebody says, what impact did you have in this world, in your life? And you said about net zero. That's not really enough, and regeneration steps beyond that. The idea with regeneration is we go to net positive. We're not just doing no harm, we're uplifting people who are growing food, we're enhancing biodiversity, we're capturing carbon in the soil and fighting against climate change. Regeneration generates new potential and doesn't just get us to sort of like a midpoint of sustainability. It's actually possible in food in a way that it isn't in other industries. So, like transportation or buildings, you can reduce harm, you can reduce impact, you can get towards like a zero point, but it's really hard to do positive. Somehow, you got to build the vehicle and drive it around or build the ship and sail it around. You can get to zero, but you can't quite get positive. Food and agriculture is this incredible opportunity where you can do good, you can add more carbon to the soil than you take out, you can have more life in a place, you can have richer, more delicious recipes and meals and food products coming up than was there before. You can heal degraded land while growing food. So that's why I focus on regeneration. That's why HowGood says, let's set spectrums where you can track your progress towards that regenerative impact in the world. [06:47 ] 

Neil: Is there a framework you have for what are the different aspects of regenerative food production and kind of recipes, so to speak? Imagine people who are creating both: The ones who are growing food, I think, is one aspect, but the ones who are using them in recipes, what should they be looking for as indicators for what a regenerative food ingredient would be like? [08:40 ] 

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