[Applause]
not too long ago I was taking a walk in
Newark and as I stopped to watch this
new building being erected I was I was
taken over with a amount of pride that
that were rejuvenating the City of
Newark and and bringing it back to its
once vibrant and welcoming south but at
the same time I was struck but this idea
that we continue to focus on strategies
that are about luring in external inputs
like outside developers or you know blue
white collar corporate jobs and and
that’s keeping us on this treadmill of
dependence rather than building internal
strength by utilizing our local
resources as much as we can and so as I
kept walking and kind of leaving the
downtown core behind me thinking the
City of Newark is so rich in an
incredibly important and yet vastly
underutilized community asset and that’s
are chronically underemployed and if we
can build the conditions that will allow
these basically invisible members of our
community to participate in and benefit
from the city’s revival then we have a
sustainable long-term kind of economy
and I and I think this is such a more
viable way to to address issues of
chronic poverty then let’s say creating
a ton of low wage jobs or or dumping
cash into programs that just treat the
symptoms of poverty without actually
addressing the core causes of it and
tonight I want to tell you the story
about how I started to think about this
kind of stuff by becoming well a farmer
about seven years ago I decided to turn
my focus on to trying to help rekindle
the Newark economy my plan if you could
call it that was to start a business any
business really that was environmentally
friendly and provided living wage jobs
to the chronically underemployed
I wanted to test a model that a
for-profit business could be engaged in
in environmental and human repair and be
profitable at the same time because of
how it did business not in spite of it
so my original crew which was made up
primarily of formerly incarcerated men
and women and I started working in areas
of urban agriculture we built a couple
of community gardens and we experimented
with vertical farming and and somehow we
found ourselves starting a fulfillment
center where we’re making sure areum’s
and decorating tabletop Christmas trees
for sale at Brookstone it was is
exciting to be up and running but almost
immediately we hit an obstacle that I
just did not see coming and that was the
majority of our employees came to work
every day without the skills necessary
to navigate the the workforce the
workplace challenges and
responsibilities and and I think that
was because so many of them were missing
the support systems that so many of us
take for granted systems that provide
things like good education and helpful
and plentiful food and even the
expectation of safety take for example
one of our long time employees James
James always says that at 38 years old
this is his first real job James started
dealing in the streets of Newark around
the age of 12 and and therefore was in
and out of jail for many years and so
despite James is off-the-charts charm
intelligence drive because of his
background it’s unlikely that someone
like James could just jump into the
workforce and thrive no matter how much
money he was making and and a lot of our
early employees most of whom aren’t with
the company anymore and sadly because a
lot of them are back in prison getting
this job wasn’t enough to you know arm
them to take on the challenges that they
faced every day and and I started to see
that a paycheck and
respect was only the very beginning of a
long journey to repair so about a year
into our work we were looking for other
areas of Agriculture to pursue and we
came to learn that one of the earliest
industries in Newark was hard apple
cider newark cider was beloved by the
likes of George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson and and it was so good that in
in great Jersey fashion it was relabeled
as champagne and sold on the black
market as such which I just I just love
that Jersey’s been Jersey forever so
with with this kind of new information
in hand we decided to start the company
all over again but really felt this was
the perfect space for us it was a
business born of place it was an
opportunity to create a lot of jobs and
it was a chance to build a brand that
was kind of really rooted in Jersey
pride but New Jersey law said that we
needed to to do cider production like
wine we needed to be part of a farm
activity on you know an actual
agricultural operation so we started to
look in and around Newark for for a
viable site this may come as a surprise
to a lot of you but there’s not a ton of
farmland available in Newark right now
but we found a hundred and eight acre
farm just about 45 minutes from the city
and although this was a huge step for us
and it was costly and high-risk it
really felt like the kind of place where
we could kind of build our business
around the the notions of of renewal and
healing that we wanted to take on both
for the people involved and the
environment that we all share and to
that end we we decided to manage our
orchards our apple orchards with a form
of Agriculture known as regenerative
agriculture it’s basically a philosophy
that talks about increasing the
biodiversity on the farm
and-and-and and providing nutrients to
the organisms that live in the soil in
short it’s it’s this idea of farming
with nature not against it so after
purchasing the farm
not too long thereafter we came to
discover that our soils really damaged
from years of poor farming practices and
neglect and it was going to take seasons
to to increase the nutrients in the soil
but ignoring the advice of wiser
experienced orchardists we decided to go
ahead and plant 8000 apple trees right
away anyway I just felt like we had to
get our trees in the ground we had to
start making cider and we had to employ
as many people as we could as quickly as
possible unfortunately three years later
we had to face the fact that our trees
were not doing well they were really
struggling and and and many probably
weren’t gonna live it was because we
hadn’t set them up for success we hadn’t
built the conditions that would allow
those trees to thrive so at this point
we had really two choices we could have
pursued a traditional conventional form
of Agriculture which would have been
about bringing in external inputs like
chemicals just to kill whatever it was
that was harming the trees or we could
stick to our regenerative agriculture
beliefs and we’re in regenerative
agriculture the farmer sees things like
disease and predation as signs of a
system out of balance and the goal of
the farmers to bring that system back in
to balance so after weeks of debating
and and and talking to outside experts
and actually listening to a couple of
them this time we decided to stick to
our guns and and and pursue our focus of
regenerative agriculture but that meant
that we had to rip out about 80% of the
trees we had planted three years earlier
that’s that’s over 6,000 trees that our
crew had planted by hand after having
cleared tons of rocks and and and dubbed
the holes to put the trees in and hand
watered and pruned those trees for over
three years and although this was a
devastatingly difficult decision to make
we felt that if our goal was was focused
on the long term health and well-being
of the trees we had to make that
decision and
and for me it was when I started to see
the parallels between a regenerative
agriculture approach and my original
goals in Newark in regenerative
agriculture
it starts with rebuilding what’s in the
ground right those microscopic organisms
that live in the soil and as those
invisible creatures get stronger they
start supporting the other organisms in
the system and the whole system gets
stronger and for us that means we’re
spending the next two years replenishing
the nutrients in the soil where we’re
planting wildflower meadows to attract
beneficial insects and we’re
constructing a system of ponds and
swales too to deal with stormwater
runoff and and soil erosion and this is
all in preparation for welcoming the new
trees that we’re gonna plant to replace
the ones that we took out last last
spring and and it’s this idea of
fostering an internal strength as
opposed to building a farm that’s
dependent on outside inputs so the
interesting thing about this is this
kind of resiliency that comes from from
farming this way it’s kind of resiliency
that will allow our trees to weather the
storms and and deal with future disease
and and predation it’s the same kind of
resiliency that’s necessary on the human
repair side as well every one of us at
the company from me to our newest hire
has to continually work on building the
skills necessary to to meet our daily
challenges but but just like in the
orchards that kind of personal growth
can’t be forced um but we can at least
create the conditions that that make
that kind of growth possible and to that
end we started a on the job soft skills
training program to deal with things
like identity value and emotional
intelligence and conflict resolution and
I think the conflict resolution one’s
really handy these days but it’s this
kind of program
and and a living wage that that provides
our team the personal skills and the
financial tools they need to to
contribute more and not just at work but
more important within their own
communities regenerative agriculture has
taught us that the world is abundant
it’s infinitely complex and it’s it’s so
beautifully interdependent and that the
health of a system is dependent on the
health of all of the members of that
system and this applies in business
building as well if we all think that
the solution to economic struggle is job
creation then we must build and support
businesses that pay a living wage and
and and this is key that they have
central to their mission the
regeneration and the rejuvenation of the
communities in which they reside these
are the kind of businesses that
understand that quarterly returns or
short-term profits aren’t the soil
measures of success these are the kind
of businesses that understand that that
their profits come from the betterment
of community not at its expense you know
James that because I thought I was
talking about earlier to me he so
beautifully personifies this idea of an
individual’s growth being so connected
to the growth of those around him
recently we had a reporter who want to
do a story on us and she was interested
in profiling James because he’s he’s
really great at grafting apple trees and
and grafting is a or cheating technique
where you take a branch from a fruit
tree and fuse it to a root stock to
create a tree and um I was sort of
reluctant to ask James if you want to be
in the article I was like I don’t wanna
make a spectacle of him as if he was
like the poster child for the company or
something but I I went ahead and asked
him anyway and James said well if she
didn’t use me in the story how would my
kids know that these are my trees and
the story came out and it profiled James
and his mad grafting skills and sure
enough his six-year-old son little James
asked his dad to read him that
every night for months before he went to
bed and now James is committed to moving
our tree nursery into Newark because he
wants to create a program where he can
teach teens how to graft trees and plant
them in our parks and open spaces
throughout the city and and the way he
put it was these kids would love to have
their name on something like that they
need to have their name on something
like that and he continued to say that
being part of something feeling pride in
their work is the thing that these kids
are missing most and I can give them
that because that’s what I got out of
this and and for me you know I’ve
learned such a valuable lesson from
James both in his in his you know desire
to have his recognition his contribution
recognized and his eagerness to empower
the teens in his own community and it’s
a lesson that I’ve learned from farming
with nature and and I guess farming with
James and and that lesson is that in a
healthy system nothing and no one is
wasted and that applies whether we’re
talking about the biological life in the
soil or we’re talking about the
chronically underemployed in Newark and
Newark
revival must be based on the increasing
vitality of its community members and
and I think for us to do that we must
first recognize that our destinies are
so interconnected and and we have to
embrace an idea that was attributed to
the Australian indigenous activist Lila
Watson if you’ve come here to help me
you’re wasting your time but if you’ve
come because your liberation is bound up
with mine then let us get to work together thank you
not too long ago I was taking a walk in
Newark and as I stopped to watch this
new building being erected I was I was
taken over with a amount of pride that
that were rejuvenating the City of
Newark and and bringing it back to its
once vibrant and welcoming south but at
the same time I was struck but this idea
that we continue to focus on strategies
that are about luring in external inputs
like outside developers or you know blue
white collar corporate jobs and and
that’s keeping us on this treadmill of
dependence rather than building internal
strength by utilizing our local
resources as much as we can and so as I
kept walking and kind of leaving the
downtown core behind me thinking the
City of Newark is so rich in an
incredibly important and yet vastly
underutilized community asset and that’s
are chronically underemployed and if we
can build the conditions that will allow
these basically invisible members of our
community to participate in and benefit
from the city’s revival then we have a
sustainable long-term kind of economy
and I and I think this is such a more
viable way to to address issues of
chronic poverty then let’s say creating
a ton of low wage jobs or or dumping
cash into programs that just treat the
symptoms of poverty without actually
addressing the core causes of it and
tonight I want to tell you the story
about how I started to think about this
kind of stuff by becoming well a farmer
about seven years ago I decided to turn
my focus on to trying to help rekindle
the Newark economy my plan if you could
call it that was to start a business any
business really that was environmentally
friendly and provided living wage jobs
to the chronically underemployed
I wanted to test a model that a
for-profit business could be engaged in
in environmental and human repair and be
profitable at the same time because of
how it did business not in spite of it
so my original crew which was made up
primarily of formerly incarcerated men
and women and I started working in areas
of urban agriculture we built a couple
of community gardens and we experimented
with vertical farming and and somehow we
found ourselves starting a fulfillment
center where we’re making sure areum’s
and decorating tabletop Christmas trees
for sale at Brookstone it was is
exciting to be up and running but almost
immediately we hit an obstacle that I
just did not see coming and that was the
majority of our employees came to work
every day without the skills necessary
to navigate the the workforce the
workplace challenges and
responsibilities and and I think that
was because so many of them were missing
the support systems that so many of us
take for granted systems that provide
things like good education and helpful
and plentiful food and even the
expectation of safety take for example
one of our long time employees James
James always says that at 38 years old
this is his first real job James started
dealing in the streets of Newark around
the age of 12 and and therefore was in
and out of jail for many years and so
despite James is off-the-charts charm
intelligence drive because of his
background it’s unlikely that someone
like James could just jump into the
workforce and thrive no matter how much
money he was making and and a lot of our
early employees most of whom aren’t with
the company anymore and sadly because a
lot of them are back in prison getting
this job wasn’t enough to you know arm
them to take on the challenges that they
faced every day and and I started to see
that a paycheck and
respect was only the very beginning of a
long journey to repair so about a year
into our work we were looking for other
areas of Agriculture to pursue and we
came to learn that one of the earliest
industries in Newark was hard apple
cider newark cider was beloved by the
likes of George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson and and it was so good that in
in great Jersey fashion it was relabeled
as champagne and sold on the black
market as such which I just I just love
that Jersey’s been Jersey forever so
with with this kind of new information
in hand we decided to start the company
all over again but really felt this was
the perfect space for us it was a
business born of place it was an
opportunity to create a lot of jobs and
it was a chance to build a brand that
was kind of really rooted in Jersey
pride but New Jersey law said that we
needed to to do cider production like
wine we needed to be part of a farm
activity on you know an actual
agricultural operation so we started to
look in and around Newark for for a
viable site this may come as a surprise
to a lot of you but there’s not a ton of
farmland available in Newark right now
but we found a hundred and eight acre
farm just about 45 minutes from the city
and although this was a huge step for us
and it was costly and high-risk it
really felt like the kind of place where
we could kind of build our business
around the the notions of of renewal and
healing that we wanted to take on both
for the people involved and the
environment that we all share and to
that end we we decided to manage our
orchards our apple orchards with a form
of Agriculture known as regenerative
agriculture it’s basically a philosophy
that talks about increasing the
biodiversity on the farm
and-and-and and providing nutrients to
the organisms that live in the soil in
short it’s it’s this idea of farming
with nature not against it so after
purchasing the farm
not too long thereafter we came to
discover that our soils really damaged
from years of poor farming practices and
neglect and it was going to take seasons
to to increase the nutrients in the soil
but ignoring the advice of wiser
experienced orchardists we decided to go
ahead and plant 8000 apple trees right
away anyway I just felt like we had to
get our trees in the ground we had to
start making cider and we had to employ
as many people as we could as quickly as
possible unfortunately three years later
we had to face the fact that our trees
were not doing well they were really
struggling and and and many probably
weren’t gonna live it was because we
hadn’t set them up for success we hadn’t
built the conditions that would allow
those trees to thrive so at this point
we had really two choices we could have
pursued a traditional conventional form
of Agriculture which would have been
about bringing in external inputs like
chemicals just to kill whatever it was
that was harming the trees or we could
stick to our regenerative agriculture
beliefs and we’re in regenerative
agriculture the farmer sees things like
disease and predation as signs of a
system out of balance and the goal of
the farmers to bring that system back in
to balance so after weeks of debating
and and and talking to outside experts
and actually listening to a couple of
them this time we decided to stick to
our guns and and and pursue our focus of
regenerative agriculture but that meant
that we had to rip out about 80% of the
trees we had planted three years earlier
that’s that’s over 6,000 trees that our
crew had planted by hand after having
cleared tons of rocks and and and dubbed
the holes to put the trees in and hand
watered and pruned those trees for over
three years and although this was a
devastatingly difficult decision to make
we felt that if our goal was was focused
on the long term health and well-being
of the trees we had to make that
decision and
and for me it was when I started to see
the parallels between a regenerative
agriculture approach and my original
goals in Newark in regenerative
agriculture
it starts with rebuilding what’s in the
ground right those microscopic organisms
that live in the soil and as those
invisible creatures get stronger they
start supporting the other organisms in
the system and the whole system gets
stronger and for us that means we’re
spending the next two years replenishing
the nutrients in the soil where we’re
planting wildflower meadows to attract
beneficial insects and we’re
constructing a system of ponds and
swales too to deal with stormwater
runoff and and soil erosion and this is
all in preparation for welcoming the new
trees that we’re gonna plant to replace
the ones that we took out last last
spring and and it’s this idea of
fostering an internal strength as
opposed to building a farm that’s
dependent on outside inputs so the
interesting thing about this is this
kind of resiliency that comes from from
farming this way it’s kind of resiliency
that will allow our trees to weather the
storms and and deal with future disease
and and predation it’s the same kind of
resiliency that’s necessary on the human
repair side as well every one of us at
the company from me to our newest hire
has to continually work on building the
skills necessary to to meet our daily
challenges but but just like in the
orchards that kind of personal growth
can’t be forced um but we can at least
create the conditions that that make
that kind of growth possible and to that
end we started a on the job soft skills
training program to deal with things
like identity value and emotional
intelligence and conflict resolution and
I think the conflict resolution one’s
really handy these days but it’s this
kind of program
and and a living wage that that provides
our team the personal skills and the
financial tools they need to to
contribute more and not just at work but
more important within their own
communities regenerative agriculture has
taught us that the world is abundant
it’s infinitely complex and it’s it’s so
beautifully interdependent and that the
health of a system is dependent on the
health of all of the members of that
system and this applies in business
building as well if we all think that
the solution to economic struggle is job
creation then we must build and support
businesses that pay a living wage and
and and this is key that they have
central to their mission the
regeneration and the rejuvenation of the
communities in which they reside these
are the kind of businesses that
understand that quarterly returns or
short-term profits aren’t the soil
measures of success these are the kind
of businesses that understand that that
their profits come from the betterment
of community not at its expense you know
James that because I thought I was
talking about earlier to me he so
beautifully personifies this idea of an
individual’s growth being so connected
to the growth of those around him
recently we had a reporter who want to
do a story on us and she was interested
in profiling James because he’s he’s
really great at grafting apple trees and
and grafting is a or cheating technique
where you take a branch from a fruit
tree and fuse it to a root stock to
create a tree and um I was sort of
reluctant to ask James if you want to be
in the article I was like I don’t wanna
make a spectacle of him as if he was
like the poster child for the company or
something but I I went ahead and asked
him anyway and James said well if she
didn’t use me in the story how would my
kids know that these are my trees and
the story came out and it profiled James
and his mad grafting skills and sure
enough his six-year-old son little James
asked his dad to read him that
every night for months before he went to
bed and now James is committed to moving
our tree nursery into Newark because he
wants to create a program where he can
teach teens how to graft trees and plant
them in our parks and open spaces
throughout the city and and the way he
put it was these kids would love to have
their name on something like that they
need to have their name on something
like that and he continued to say that
being part of something feeling pride in
their work is the thing that these kids
are missing most and I can give them
that because that’s what I got out of
this and and for me you know I’ve
learned such a valuable lesson from
James both in his in his you know desire
to have his recognition his contribution
recognized and his eagerness to empower
the teens in his own community and it’s
a lesson that I’ve learned from farming
with nature and and I guess farming with
James and and that lesson is that in a
healthy system nothing and no one is
wasted and that applies whether we’re
talking about the biological life in the
soil or we’re talking about the
chronically underemployed in Newark and
Newark
revival must be based on the increasing
vitality of its community members and
and I think for us to do that we must
first recognize that our destinies are
so interconnected and and we have to
embrace an idea that was attributed to
the Australian indigenous activist Lila
Watson if you’ve come here to help me
you’re wasting your time but if you’ve
come because your liberation is bound up
with mine then let us get to work together thank you
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