Episode description

Soy Checkoff: https://www.unitedsoybean.org/

Alexandre Family Farm: https://alexandrefamilyfarm.com/

The Business of Food Newsletter: https://jenniferbarney.substack.com/

Today's episode features Blake Alexandre of Alexandre Family Farm. Blake is based in Crescent City, California on the far north coast of California. He and his wife Stephanie have been dairying there for over 31 years, and has raised five children who have started coming back to the family operation full time. They have been an organic dairy for about 25 of those 31 years, and in 2017 they started selling dairy products under their own brand, which is Alexandre Family Farm. There’s a whole lot more to the story, but he tells it much better than I do. 

This story was put together by my guest co-host for today’s episode, Jennifer Barney. As you might recall from previous episodes, Jennifer is a consumer-packaged goods (CPG) expert who lives in the Central Valley of California and got her start in the food industry 16 years ago when she founded the almond butter brand Barney Butter. She also writes a great weekly newsletter called The Business of Food that you should subscribe to. I’ll leave a link for that in the show notes. 

We covered so much in our conversation, that I thought the best way to share it with you and still come somewhat close to our normal format was to share highlights, so I’ll be popping in throughout today’s episode to narrate around some of the thought-provoking points Blake made about what they’re doing and his views on the future of agriculture. Starting with some backstory on the farm and the business.