CSU's The Audit

Intro: Today we’re going to be talking some poop – about, well poop, along with a few other things that don’t often find their way into polite conversation, but according to Jordan Kraft Lambert, the director of ag innovation at CSU’s Spur campus, they really should. 

In fact, Lambert has made it her mission to bring these “icky” topics to the table – figuratively and literally. She’s currently spearheading two efforts – the Poopshot Project and the Offal Party – at Spur, to show those in the ag and entrepreneurial spaces how to see what we often describe as waste products in a whole new light. Today, I’m speaking with Lambert about how poop is actually pretty powerful, and why liver gets such a bad (and largely undeserved) rap. 

Host: All right. So, we're going to dig into a few things today that most people don't typically like to focus on. So, I'm just going to start with the big question. Why poop? 

Jordan Kraft Lambert: Why poop? Poop is beautiful. I think poop is this really wonderful untapped resource, actually. Like if you think about poop for a minute, specifically cow poop. When we think about poop, it's a complex, solid liquid with some really excellent attributes. What's really cool about poop is that it has nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. All our crops need nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to grow. Poop is also full of organic matter, and organic matter can be broken down into smaller carbon chains. And some of those carbon chains can go into our soil and actually improve water-soil holding capacity. That's a really important thing in a very dry place like Colorado and a lot of our sister states like New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma. Another cool thing that organic matter does that comes out of poop is improve cation exchange capacity, which is a very sexy term. But what cation exchange capacity means is how good sand or dirt is at holding on to nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. The higher the cation exchange capacity, the better the soil is at holding that very precious nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. So, manure has those things. It also has a really beautiful and thriving microbiome community. One of the reasons that cows can eat things that humans can't eat is because their stomachs are full of little critters. Microbiota, the flora and fauna that help them break down cellulosic material that humans can't do. Cows have that living in their gut. Humans don't. And when a cow poops, a lot of those microbes go with it. There're some really wonderful microbes that end up in the ground as well. Manure and poop is really powerful because it has all of these components. One of the other things that you can do with those long carbon chains that are in manure is also make it possible to create energy like generate power. So CH4, methane, is natural gas. And we can get that by fracking, but we can also get it from manure. So why poop? Because it's a goldmine of amazing things, and we are only just sort of tapping the surface right now of all of the different things that it can provide for us. 

Host: My gosh, I never thought about poop that way before. I'll never look at it the same again. 

Lambert: Your poop is special. 

Host: That sounds like a book title. 

Lambert: Yeah, it does. It might actually be. 

Host: Well, if not, we are copyrighting it right now. Officially, it's on record. Well, as the name suggests, the Poopshot Project is a bold plan to encourage the use of livestock manure more fully for a multitude of purposes and maximum sustainability. But manure has been used forever as fertilizer. What can possibly come from poop that we have not realized? Or a way that we have not realized it before? 

Lambert: So, Poopshot is a moonshot to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the manure fraction of dairy animal production in Colorado and beyond, while improving soil health because of all the reasons that we just talked about poop being amazing for our soil and improving our dairy producer profitability. One of the things that we do in the Ag Innovation Center at Colorado State University is collect problems from all of the Colorado farmers and ranchers. We have 30,000 of them. Many of them are dairy producers. And one of the big problems that's really facing our dairy producers right now is what do they do with all this manure. How do they put it to its highest and best use? In the '90s, Al Gore was just starting to talk about climate change, but the really hot button topic in the '90s was actually water quality. We wanted to protect WOTUS, the waters of the United States. And that's a really important thing to do. For many of the reasons that manure is fabulous – it's full of nutrients; it's full of microbes. Those things put in the right place, in the right rate, at the right time. Fabulous. Very good thing for agriculture and for ecosystems. Too much of it in the wrong place can be very bad, especially for our waterways. In the '90s, a lot of what regulators required of our dairy producers and beef producers – as well as hog, poultry – was to store the manure in an anaerobic context. So anaerobic means that it has no oxygen, has no access to oxygen. In an anaerobic environment, all of the fun little microbes that got pooped into the poop are having a party. One type of those microbes is called methanogens, and methanogens' job is to make methane when they're in an enclosed anaerobic environment to prevent the manure from ending up in the waters of the United States. The unintended consequence of that is that the methanogens are making a ton of methane. And that really sucks because here our dairy producers were trying to remain in compliance with the laws that we decided to put in place to protect our waterways. And we have now, in asking them to do those things, caused this unintended consequence of creating more CH4. When we talk about the dairy supply chain, like if you think about eating a slice of cheese. A cheese producer/processor, the people that make the cheese, they're getting a lot of pressure from their banks and financial institutions and their consumers right now to decrease their greenhouse gas emissions. For a cheese producer, often 95% or more of their carbon footprint is not inside their plants. It's in their supply chain. And for a cheese producer, the supply chain itself is in many cases comprised of the dairy producers that create the milk that goes into the cheese. And so those dairy producers are, by virtue of the fact that they're managing cows, and cows have these very special microbes in their first stomach that actually intentionally make methane. It's actually a feature of the biological system of cows to create methane. It's a good thing because without those little methanogens that are hanging out in the first stomach of the cow, taking that organic matter and breaking it down, the rumen of the cow would get very acidic and she would get very sick and she wouldn't be able to do what she does. So actually, the methanogen is performing a very important role in the ecosystem of the stomach of the animal by creating CH4. When we're looking at the greenhouse gases that come from a dairy farm, they come from four major areas. About 10% is fossil fuel use. So that's to run your tractors and your loaders and stuff like that. But a third of it comes from burping. That's your enteric emissions that are coming from the methanogens living in the stomach of the animal. The second fraction, another third comes from feed production. And in many cases, that's from creating the fertilizers that we use to fertilize our fields. Most fertilizer today comes from what we call the Haber-Bosch process. The way that Haber-Bosch works is we light a lot of fossil fuels on fire to make the nitrogen fertilizer that then gets put in our crops. So that's about a third of a dairy's environmental greenhouse gas footprint. And then the final third is actually from the manure, because as we discussed earlier, when the cow poops out all of her microbes and we store them in an anaerobic environment like dairy producers were told to do by their regulators, we end up with all the methanogens having more of a party and creating additional CH4. So that's how we end up with some methane coming from our biological systems that allow us to make cheese. The purpose of the Poopshot is to decrease the greenhouse gas emissions associated specifically with the manure aspect of greenhouse gas emissions for dairy farms. 

As well as the feed side. Because it turns out that the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium that's in that manure can be used to replace some of the nitrogen fertilizer that we use through the Haber-Bosch process. Through those two components of the emissions profile of a dairy farm, we can unlock up to 60% of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with those dairy farms. The purpose of the Poopshot is to unlock that 60% of greenhouse gas emissions while improving our soil health and improving our producer profitability because farmers and ranchers all over the place can't keep doing what they're doing if their business is not a profitable business. And right now, manure management is a huge drag, it's a cost center on the dairy farm. The purpose of Poopshot is to bring together technologies to break some of these tradeoffs, to make it possible for us to contain all our manure in a place so it's not contaminating the waters of the United States, but it's also not creating CH4 at the same time. Poopshot is all about bringing to bear technological innovation to meet those three goals: profitability, soil health and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. 

Host: I have to ask then, if manure is such a rich commodity, why aren't more industries already taking advantage of it? It can't just be the ick factor here, right? There's got to be more to it. 

Lambert: A lot of industries do take advantage of manure. But I agree, we can totally do quite a lot more in this space. There's literally like 99 problems associated with why what we call poop takers may not want to use manure from our poop makers, our dairy and our beef producers. Poop takers can include everyone from corn producers to wheat producers, sometimes to energy producers as well that want to get that renewable natural gas that is CH4, that is methane. But the barriers to doing this, there's a list as long as my arm and some of those problems are things like manure when it comes out of a cow is wet, and shipping water is heavy and costly. So de-watering that manure is a kind of technology that our dairy producers need to have access to those technologies. They do have some today. But we're not done yet. We're not done innovating on that yet. So that's one aspect that can be a challenge. Another aspect that's a really big challenge is that manure comes out of a cow in a specific nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium ratio, and that ratio does not match the ratio of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium that corn needs to grow, and it also doesn't match the nutritional profile that alfalfa needs. When manure comes out of the back end of the cow, it doesn't match either of those things. There's some more technological innovation that needs to happen to balance and tune that nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium ratio to be what the poop taker needs, what the crop farmer wants to put on their field. 

Host: When you're talking to these industry folks, these farmers and ranchers about this project, what is their reaction? 

Lambert: You know, I work with a lot of ag-tech founders, that's my role at the Ag Innovation Center. Support ag-tech founders that solve Colorado farmer and rancher problems. And sometimes I talk to ag-tech companies who will say things to me like, "Farmers are so risk averse." And I always sort of prickle at that because farmers take on risk every day. They are professional risk managers. They have to manage; the weather is a huge risk. They basically operate factories that are open to the sky. That's really tough. The market changes a lot. They're price takers, not price makers. They are managing all kinds of risk all the time. It's not that farmers are risk averse. It's that they are maxed out on risk. But that can make it quite challenging for them to adopt new technologies. When I talk to farmers about this particular challenge, some of them are like, "Yeah, it's a problem and we need to solve it. And I'm ready to do it." Mostly because they just slept well and had some coffee. But a lot of other producers are like, "Dude, do I really, one more thing?" Because dairy producers and farmers generally manage really complicated systems. What a farming operation is, is a biological system, and if you change one thing in one area, you can have some unintended consequences that nobody thought of until you implement the thing and pop out on the other side. So sometimes there's fatigue with those dairy producers around trying to implement something new. Which means that I think we need to really work with our ag-tech providers and with the producer from the beginning to be designing solutions that are going to fit well in this complicated system that they're managing and that are going to be at the risk tolerance level that the producer is able to support. 

Host: You know, I mentioned that that idea of the ick factor earlier. There's another effort that you're working on that also can leave people a little squeamish Uh, now, OK is it pronounced aw-ful or oh-ful? 

Lambert: It depends on whether you want to be a cool kid or not. 

Host: I want to be a cool kid. 

Lambert: If you want to be a cool kid, you're going to call it oh-ful. 

Host: Oh. That isn't as much fun. 

Lambert: I like saying aw-ful because I love puns. 

Host: So, when we're talking about offal, what exactly are we talking about? 

Lambert: The precise definition of offal are the organ meats that are edible coming out of an animal after they've been slaughtered. When you and I in the United States go to the grocery store, we're likely to see cuts of meat that we're very familiar with, filet mignon, sirloin steak, even ground beef. In most cases, those are what we call muscle meats. So that's the shoulders of the animal, the ribs of the animal, the hind quarters of the animal, the sirloin – like that very tender back bit on the animal. Those are cuts of meat that most American consumers are most familiar with. The offal are the liver, the kidneys, the heart, the tongue, the stomach. When we're talking about the Offal Party, which is sort of a broader definition of offal, we actually make it include all of the drop. I'm like air quoting right now. The "drop" is an industry term that means everything that drops off the carcass of the animal when you're hanging it in a butcher shop. That would be all of the internal organs, the blood, the fat and the hide as well. Offal in the context of the Offal Party is anything that is not being used by an American consumer. And we're actually really sad that American consumers are kind of actually getting the short end of the stick. Did you know that organ meat is actually the most nutrient dense part of the animal? More than the muscle meat. And the United States is pretty unusual in that we don't have an organ meat-eating culture. Pretty much every other country in the world has a really proud tradition of eating these really nutrient dense organ meats. They'll sometimes preferentially give them to women who are pregnant or menstruating. They celebrate these cuisines as comfort foods, as brain food. Liver in particular is a very rich source of vitamin B12. B12 is a precursor to your neurotransmitters, serotonin and dopamine. Those are the ones that help you sleep and feel happy. So, you're actually biologically, biochemically, it's impossible for you to feel joy if you don't have enough B-12. Liver is like a superhighway to B12. 

Host: If you want to be happy, you have to eat your liver. 

Lambert: It does help. Unfortunately, in the United States, we don't have a great liver-cooking culture. It can be done well; I swear to you. Everybody has a terrible story about their grandmother feeding them liver and onions, and it was terrible. 

Host: Oh yeah. 

Lambert: Bless our grandmothers, we shouldn't have asked them to do that. They weren't good at it. They were good at lots of other things. Let them do those things. One of the things that we do in the Ag Innovation Center is throw parties for problems we're solving. That's what Poopshot is. One of the other party series that we're working on right now is called the Offal Party. And you'd be surprised how many people want to be invited to an offal party. They're just really curious. 

Host: For those who might still be a little confused about what we're talking about, an offal party is literally just that, a party where dishes containing offal or organ meats are served. 

Lambert: One of the things that we're doing with the Offal Party is trying to reintroduce to an American palate the really incredible global ethnic cuisines that can make liver and kidney and especially honey heart carpaccio. You have not lived if you have not had heart jerky, heart carpaccio. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful cuts of meat that I grew up thinking were icky. But that's because I didn't know better. 

Host: So now how do you get people kind of past that? I mean, how do you turn, like, beef spleen into the next Brussels sprout? 

Lambert: Well, first we need to get Brussels sprouts’ publicist because they did an amazing job, whoever that was. Kale, also. One of the things that we do with the Offal Party is make it really easy for people to have organ meats that are prepared really, really well so that they can explore some of those things. For instance, at the Offal Party last year, we partnered with a really great chef at Xatrucho concepts. He's a Honduran chef trained in France. He has these two food traditions that he thinks about quite a lot, and he did an amazing menu for us. We had a mezcal liver mousse; it was amazing. We had tripe in a coconut mondongo broth, which was, it was like calamari. I did not consider myself to be a tripe person until this moment. It was really, really beautiful. One of the things that we try to do at the Offal Party is allow people to explore things and even spit it out if they don't like it. And we actually encourage the audience to congratulate each other when they try something and do spit it out, because that meant that they were brave, and they tried something new. One of the things that really surprised me about the Offal Party last year is that I thought we were going to have people who hated offal and people who loved offal. And that turned out not to be true. Every person except one of the attendees found an organ dish that delighted them, that they thought was really beautiful, that surprised them in some way. So, it's not so much, are you an offal person or are you not an offal person? It's which kind of offal person are you? 

Host: And it's not just food items. 

Lambert: This year's going to be the first year that we have the fashion show. We're super excited because we're partnering with the Design and Merchandising Department at Colorado State University, which has a really impressive fashion program. And that's because of leather. One of the other parts of the drop that's not the muscle meat that we eat is the hide and hide is a precursor to leather. And one of the things that I learned that I did not know, I always thought, you know, a leather jacket is beautiful or a leather couch or a leather interior in a car is beautiful and desirable. But I didn't really understand as a consumer why I was attracted to leather. And in partnering with the Design and Merchandising Department, I've learned all these things about fabrics and materials that I didn't understand before. So leather is special, and no synthetic can touch it in terms of performance, in terms of durability, clean ability and breathability and biodegradability. It's really special because it's the skin of the animal, so it evolved over millennia to be very good at protecting that animal, at making sure that they don't get too hot and wet. It's wicking sweat back out. It's also really cleanable. That's one of the reasons that I love leather upholstery in my car. You just wipe that down if you have baby vomit. It's a high-performance luxury material that can last for a very long time because it's designed to last for the many years of an animal's life. When you have what they call abandoned leather, so when you finally throw it away, if you do, in many cases, it can become an heirloom, it can last many generations sometimes. But when you're ready to abandon that leather, it can go back to the earth. A lot of our synthetic alternatives to leather make microplastics, and that is wreaking all kinds of havoc in a lot of our ecosystem. So, it's really exciting to think about the solution to this durable, breathable, high-performance material having been something that was here the whole time. And I think it's really important because in the United States last year, 4.8 million hides rotted in landfills. That's about 15% of the hide supply in the United States. We actually do a pretty good job of getting those hides to their highest and best use, but we still have 15% that gets wasted. And I think that's really sad. I think there's so much more that we could be doing with those pieces. Because when they're in the landfill and they rot, we're back to creating methane that's not being captured in a way that's good for our planet. 

Host: It sounds like this is just another instance where we have something that's abundant and highly beneficial, and yet people have these hangups when it comes to getting within 20 feet of a plate of liver and onions. As you said, it's an American thing. Why do we have that? Why are we so, why does offal offend us? 

Lambert: Why does offal offend us. I think like any food, in some cases, it's that some folks have a natural aversion to it. There's a real disgust response. My husband will not eat spinach no matter how hard you try. I think spinach is delicious. I think there's some natural variation in what people like and what they don't like. But beyond that, there's a lot of reasons that Americans are not accustomed to offal. And some of it actually has to do with race and class. In the olden days, when you had slaughterhouses and we didn't have refrigeration, so think like the early 1900s kind of a moment, the part of the animal that would go bad quickest was the organ meats. A lot of times those organ meats would be dumped on the market around the slaughter facilities, which were the workers of the slaughter facilities, who are often people of color and were often people in poverty. So, the organ meats became associated with that socioeconomic status. And I think in some ways our disgust with offal may be related to a pursuit of the American dream. Like you're trying really hard to earn a lot of money and have a better life for you and your children. And it's easy to think that the trappings of poverty are something that you want to distance yourself from. And I think it's really interesting because it seems so much to me to be a matter of sociology. I think we have a lot of preconceived notions about what's good food and what isn't. There's a really awesome special on Netflix right now called “Ugly Delicious” by the chef who founded Momofuku. And he's really taking on a lot of these questions about what does it mean to have elevated cuisine and what is considered street food and who gets to decide. I think in the United States, organ meat in particular has some ick factor associated with it, just as sort of relics of the technologies and societal implications that we had at the beginning of the 1900s, and I don't think we should be fettered by that anymore. 

Host: It's kind of interesting because at one point I remember like maybe it was in the '80s when things like that would be considered, like that was rich people food. It was something that like, it was only if you were fancy. 

Lambert: Pâté, yeah. Humans are funny critters, right? Like, I think this is a bit sociological and that's actually one of the reasons that at the Offal Party we also have the Offal Business Plan Competition. What we're trying to do is show people that this is an arbitrage opportunity, something that is very valuable the marketplace doesn't see is valuable. So, we're trying to reveal organ meats and hides to be this arbitrage opportunity. We have beauty entrepreneurs who are using tallow and collagen and keratin. All of those are byproducts. 

Host: All those buzzwords right now. 

Lambert: Right. 20 years ago, nobody would have anticipated that Jennifer Aniston would be the poster child for a multibillion-dollar brand called Vital Proteins. That's collagen that comes from animal byproducts. And that's sexy. So, it's all about who you put there. We also have a really fabulous entrepreneur, Winnie Liu is based out of Boulder, amazing pet treats out of all kinds of organ meats. It's very common for organ meats to end up in patriots and pet food because it's a really great source of nutrition that Americans are like, “no, thank you,” but we'll feed it to our dogs, The dog's winning in that case. It's interesting to see how we can sort of recast some of these organ meats into products that are crave worthy. We have another entrepreneur who's participating in the Offal Business Plan Competition. Patrick Libonate is the CEO of Denver Bone Broth. If you haven't checked out his bone broth, it's next level. It's really amazing. So, he's using bone that would otherwise be thrown away to create that bone broth. 

Host: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today. I appreciate it. 

Lambert: Well, thank you. 

Outro: That was CSU Spur Director of Ag Innovation Jordan Kraft Lambert talking about how products we often allow to go to waste could be an entrepreneurial goldmine. I'm your host, Stacy Nick, and you're listening to CSU's The Audit.