From Soil to Sustainability
Pete Vegas, the founder of Sage V Foods, started his career as a farmer and today spends an increasing amount of his time and money helping the regenerative agriculture movement. Our primary focus as an organization is the fund research and help make regenerative agriculture a primary part of any university curriculum.
At Sage V Foods, we strongly believe that regenerative agriculture is one the very few ways that we can actively combat climate change on our planet, starting today. As a member of the broader food and agriculture system we believe it’s our responsibility to do everything in our power to help change the system for the better. We are huge proponents of regenerative agriculture, and through our own research, financial contributions, and time we plan to spread the message to our own community of suppliers and beyond.
Regenerative agriculture is a far reaching term that can be interpreted in a number of ways.
At Sage V Foods, we believe in a fairly narrow definition: cultivation techniques that help pull carbon out of the atmosphere and store it in the soil. Techniques like cover-crops, no-till, crop rotation, and strategic use of adaptive multi-paddock grazing. These techniques all have the shared goal in mind of building up the soil, it’s carbon content and microbiome, which ultimately yield better, healthier soil, decreasing our dependence on chemical fertilizers.
Sage V Foods Suppliers
We currently work with growers of organic and conventional rice in California, Thailand, Cambodia, and Argentina. Each growing region is different and employ a wide variety of rice growing techniques.
It’s our goal to work closely with each supplier and help educate and subsidize specific cultivation techniques that fit their climate and soil.
In California, for example, we are currently subsidizing our growers to grow cover crops in the winder to help build the organic material in the soil and reduce their dependence on expensive fertilizers.
Vegas Family Farm
Concordia Parish, LA
In partnership with Vayda and LSU, we’re creating a demonstration farm on 250 acres of our own farm land with the hopes of conducting scale research and educating the local farming community.
LSU Research Farm
Tensas Parish, LA
Sage V Foods is currently funding a plot at an Louisiana State University research farm to test cover crop blends and other regenerative practices.
Resources and Partners
Pete Vegas has recently presented at various organizations and universities, including Harvard, Cornell, AREDay, and EarthX. One excellent presentation that does an effective job of summarizing our views on Regenerative Agriculture can be found in this VIDEO. Pete’s portion starts around the 30min mark.
More information can be found on our partners websites:
