On a sweltering summer afternoon in Minnesota, Paul Lightfoot clambered into a deep ditch to inspect the root structure of a plant called Kernza.
Mr. Lightfoot is the general manager of Patagonia Provisions, the nascent food business operated by Patagonia, the outdoor apparel retailer from Ventura, Calif. And he believes that Kernza, a type of wheatgrass that can be used for baking and brewing, has the potential to change the food system.
Standing at the bottom of a trench cut into a field of farmland, Mr. Lightfoot traced his fingers along the exposed roots, which stretched more than 10 feet down into the soil, much farther than traditional wheat.
Those roots are what makes Kernza so unusual, allowing it to absorb more carbon dioxide than many crops, and turning it into a theoretical ally in the fight against climate change. And because Kernza is a perennial grain and doesn’t need to be replanted each year, it requires less water and fertilizer than traditional wheat, making it a boon for cost-conscious farmers.
“It’s just a way better way of doing things,” Mr. Lightfoot said. “Humanity isn’t doomed to do things in a way that ruins everything.”
Current production of Kernza is minuscule, with fewer than 4,000 acres planted in the United States, compared with more than 47 million acres of wheat. Just a handful of other companies are making products with the grain. Hardly anyone knows about Kernza.
But Patagonia Provisions is trying to change that. In addition to its main business of selling tinned sardines, mackerel and mussels, it is selling crackers made with Kernza. It has partnered with Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Ore., to make a series of Kernza-based beers. And by enlisting one farm and one grocery store at a time, Mr. Lightfoot is trying to create a market for his eco-friendly wheat alternative, driven by the belief that when done well, running a food business can actually be good for the planet.
“We’re a little bit immaterial to the overall financial story of Patagonia,” Mr. Lightfoot said. (Revenues from Patagonia Provisions are less than $20 million annually.) But if the Kernza trade gets big enough, he believes it could be “material in terms of changing food supply chains.”
Founded by the California rock-climber and blacksmith Yvon Chouinard in 1973, Patagonia got its start making ill-fitting sweaters and shorts and now does more than $1 billion in annual sales of T-shirts, backpacks, rain jackets and more.
Along the way, the company distinguished itself as a pioneer of socially responsible business. It was early to institute on-site child care and offer maternity benefits to working mothers. It worked to rid its supply chain of toxic materials and unsavory labor practices, helping to popularize organic cotton and recycled materials. And for decades it has donated some of its profits to environmental activists.
In 2022, Mr. Chouinard and his family gave away the company and their claim to a multibillion-dollar fortune, committing all its future profits to addressing the climate crisis. (Some critics accused them of dodging taxes with the move.)
Now, if Mr. Chouinard could snap his fingers, he said in an interview, he would make the clothing business disappear and just sell fish, crackers and beer. Fifty years from now, he said, “I could see the food business being bigger than the apparel business.”
But that’s an extremely hopeful take. It’s one thing to get outdoor enthusiasts to pay a premium for a well-made waterproof jacket. It’s an entirely different thing to convince shoppers that an apparel company knows how to make crackers made from wheatgrass. Even fans of the brand aren’t likely to think of it as a food purveyor.
“It’s going to be really, really hard,” said Chris DuBois, executive vice president at Circana, a research firm that tracks the food business, noting that Patagonia is competing against hundreds of other beers and crackers. “These are some of the most competitive aisles in the supermarket.”
Patagonia has already failed — twice — at trying to make a dent with food. Will this time be different?
‘Recipes for the mountains’
Patagonia first started exploring food more than 40 years ago.
In 1984, Mr. Chouinard hired Lorenz Schaller, an expert in ancient grains, to create a division that would sell blends of roasted grain such as tsampa, a Tibetan flour made from barley. The idea was that the packaging would resemble the Celestial Seasonings tea logo but feature “ethnic folklore and recipes for the mountains and travel.”
By the next year, Patagonia was working on selling Japanese rice, Chinese Dragon Claw millet and South American grains. But sourcing exotic grains in bulk was tough, the market was limited, and distribution was a headache. The effort fizzled.
Decades later, Mr. Chouinard tried again. In 2012, he hired Birgit Cameron, who had founded an energy bar company, to start Patagonia Provisions.
With the difficult mandate to create a business that would promote regenerative agriculture, an approach to farming that focuses on improving soil health and biodiversity, and deliver meaningful sales at a company the size of Patagonia, Ms. Cameron set to work. In a matter of years, Patagonia Provisions introduced dozens of products.
In addition to crackers and tinned fish, there were soups, fruit bars and grains. Expansion plans called for the rapid-fire launch of baby food, oils, sauces and more. In 2021, Patagonia introduced its own wine. (The reviews were not kind.)
Before long, the company was making more than 70 items and was racing to introduce more. Some gained distribution in big grocery stores like Whole Foods, but many more failed to catch on. And after several years, only a few of the offerings — mostly the tinned fish, which were cheap, tasty and good for camping trips — were selling much.
The result was a catalog of zombie products with little distribution and minimal brand awareness that were taxing the resources of a small division within a company that still knew almost nothing about food.
By early 2022, Mr. Chouinard had had enough. Ms. Cameron was out. (Ms. Cameron said in a recent interview that her effort “really just needed some additional patient capital, because we were starting completely new supply chains.”)
Mr. Lightfoot, who previously ran an indoor farming company, was brought in to try to make Patagonia Provisions profitable.
He and his team went through the product lineup one item at a time and evaluated each offering on four criteria: Was the quality good? Was it nutritious and tasty? Did it have a positive environmental impact? And was it profitable?
Some items failed on all fronts. Snacks made from breadfruit, a tropical plant, were out; they weren’t selling well, and there were no other breadfruit items in the works. So were all the items with barely any sales. Goodbye to the fruit bars and soups.
Instead, Mr. Lightfoot focused on tinned seafood and crackers made with Kernza.
Seafood is the biggest part of the business, and in some ways, the easiest. Tinned fish is enjoying a renaissance among consumers. And Patagonia Provisions had developed a reliable stable of fish farmers.
What’s more, the sardines, anchovies, mackerel, and mussels it sells all have a good environmental story to tell. Mussels actually clean the ocean, filtering out algae and silt. (Provisions now sells hundreds of thousands of tins of mussels a year, and claims more than 60 percent of the American market.) Sardines, anchovies and mackerel are small fish that are quick to repopulate and in less danger of overfishing, as is the case with larger species like tuna.
More difficult is Mr. Chouinard’s attempt to turn Kernza, the little-known grain with a nutty, earthy flavor and a feel-good environmental story, into a mass-market crop.
‘A novel crop’
On the day Mr. Lightfoot inspected the Kernza fields, he was at A-Frame Farm, a 1,200-acre oasis in the middle of an expanse of industrial agriculture.
All around A-Frame, stretching for hundreds of miles in every direction, were endless rows of soybeans and field corn — the kind of corn used to make ethanol and high-fructose corn syrup, not eat off the cob. These are the biggest cash crops in the United States, and producing them at this scale requires a host of environmentally destructive practices.
The use of chemical pesticides and synthetic fertilizer is rampant. The lack of genetic diversity makes plants more susceptible to diseases and pests. And the soil and groundwater wind up polluted from runoff.
But A-Frame’s 1,200 acres were different. Bees and bugs hummed in the air. Flowers bloomed in the margins between the crops and the grass. There were sunflowers, cattle and barley. And about 15 percent of the land was dedicated to Kernza, which Patagonia was buying for use in its crackers and beer.
Kernza was developed in the 1980s by the Land Institute, an agricultural nonprofit organization in Kansas that promotes the virtues of perennial crops. Looking for an alternative to wheat, its researchers identified intermediate wheatgrass as viable. In the decades since, breeders have worked to improve its yield, taste and texture.
“It is a novel crop, and therefore it poses novel challenges in terms of becoming commercially viable at different scales,” said Rachel Stroer, president of the Land Institute.
More than 70 farms across 15 states now grow Kernza. A group called Perennial Promise Growers Cooperative matches farmers who grow Kernza with companies that want the grain, a list that includes breweries, like Sierra Nevada, and the food giant General Mills, which is using Kernza in some of its cereals.
Still, Patagonia Provisions is the biggest customer. Its crackers and beers are now in thousands of stores, including Kroger, Whole Foods and Sprouts. And one of its beers, the Non-Alcoholic Kernza Golden Brew made by Patagonia Provisions and Deschutes Brewery, won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival.
Kernza is no panacea for the climate crisis. Whatever gains it might produce in terms of carbon sequestration and reduced water and fertilizer usage are minuscule compared with the colossal volumes of planet-warming gasses being pumped into the atmosphere by the relentless burning of fossil fuels. And the yield from an acre of Kernza is still just a fraction of the yield from an acre of wheat.
“The problem with Kernza is that it makes one-third as much grain per acre as wheat, and that means it needs three times as much land to make the same amount of grain,” said Michael Grunwald, author of “We Are Eating the Earth,” a new book that is critical of regenerative agriculture. “That’s environmentally disastrous.”
At this early stage, Patagonia regards Kernza more as an experiment that might help chart a more sustainable future, rather then a cure-all for factory farming. And there are signs that consumers are warming to these kinds of products.
Sales of regenerative agricultural products, which include Kernza, are growing 30 percent annually, according to Circana, which expects the market for the category to reach $11 billion to $16 billion annually by 2032. Big food companies, including PepsiCo, Hormel, Nestle and McDonald’s, have all begun dabbling in regenerative practices.
Against this backdrop, Mr. DuBois said Patagonia had the chance to succeed. But he added that there was a risk for the parent company: If the food wasn’t good, customers might sour on the clothes.
“Their brand equity is incredible,” he said. “They just need to make sure it doesn’t slip with food.”
Still, Mr. Chouinard, who is now 86, sees a path to an entirely new sort of business model. With the right kind of agriculture, he believes there is the possibility — however hard it might be to realize — to actually do some good for the Earth. Even if you use recycled, eco-friendly materials and renewable energy while upholding high labor standards, the best clothes in the world won’t heal nature.
But the right kind of farming practices can improve soil health. The right kinds of plants can absorb carbon dioxide. The right kind of grazing animals can help restore wild lands. The right kinds of seafood can clean the oceans.
“We need a revolution in society, and it’s not going to come from any other way except from agriculture,” Mr. Chouinard said. “People don’t care about how cotton is grown in Turkey, but they really care about their food.”
David Gelles reports on climate change and leads The Times’s Climate Forward newsletter and events series.
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