Ali Cox Getting Serious About Sustainable Farming

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California Dreams the Reality of Sustainable Farming

Ali Cox is a farmer through and through and runs Noble West, an agriculture and food ingredient marketing company. Her husband and herself are both farmers. Ali is a fifth generation farmer, both on her mom’s and dad’s side. Her parents grew melons about 15 different varieties,  also asparagus and cherries.  Today they farm almonds and walnuts too. Her roots are strong but she is so aware of the threats that climate change is bringing. Consumers, especially women consumers want to see food become safer and farming become more sustainable. That involves telling stories about the individuals especially the women who farm and care about their products.

Agriculture is a huge business in California. It is an industry worth between $50 to $60 billion. Given the climate crisis and the challenges it brings from the weather, waste and water management, there is a need for farmers like Ali and her clients to lead the way and support each other in their efforts to live and work in harmony with the earth. In the podcast Ali talks about innovative water conservation and up-cycling raw materials so that nothing is wasted. She even talks about efforts to make handbags from grape skins.

3% of all venture capital funding goes to women founded businesses

As head of a women run agency, Ali brings her experience as a business mentor to women trying to grow their farming and food businesses. She says access to funding is abysmal and in the US, approximately  3% of all venture capital funding goes to women founded businesses. This she says is absolutely abhorrent and quite frankly, shocking, because there’s lots of data that proves that women powered and lead farm businesses will be successful.

Matriarchs Looking For More Of The Pie

There are matriarchal powerhouses making successful businesses who are ambitious to grow and want to receive a greater return on their investment for their farming efforts. “When those farmers or businesses say, ‘You know what, I want to keep a bigger piece of the pie, I don’t want to just sell for the commodity price, or I don’t want to just commingle my product with my neighbour who doesn’t take nearly as much effort to do things quite as well as I am,’  they come to me and say ‘I want to create my own brand so that I can keep a little bigger piece of the pie’. Those are the clients that I just bend over backwards to do whatever we can to make them successful.”

Finding Your Voice and The Time To Have An Opinion

Ali used to work in fashion before retuning to her agricultural roots. She did a masterclass given by Anna Wintour, Chief Editor of Vogue magazine and one of her key takeaway points was ‘to have a point of view and have it with conviction’.  “You cannot get one (an opinion) unless you take the time to centre yourself, to really think about it and to write about it, to outline it to to yourself”. Once she set aside time to think and work out what she wanted to do, things started to happen for Ali Cox. “I said I care about agriculture, I care about consumers knowing more about their food, I care about farmers getting a better return on investment and I care about the future of this earth, for my children and for everybody’s kids. Once I really stopped and did that, my whole career and my agency grew by 400%  one year over the next.”

I’m a female founder, and I have phenomenal women that I work with here at our agency Noble West. I am always encouraging women have a point of view. If you are a woman in a meeting or in a boardroom, you’ve got to have a strong point of view. Having that point of view can be tricky for women balancing busy lives though Ali acknowledges. “And that’s a place where I’m running from school drop off to pick up, to what not, and sometimes I just keep blowing through the day. That’s a place where I just think men are typically a little bit more self selfish with the time.”

Confidence Is Different For Women Farmers

“If you’ve lost a big deal, or if you haven’t been invited to a meeting, or if your proposal wasn’t accepted, or face some other challenge, you can lose confidence, nerves come and go.  That is something that is hard for everybody.  You know, farmers have confidence issues. Should I plant this or that, what’s going to be the best for my row crops, for my open land this year?” Ali says she loves it when her clients embrace the uncertainty and hold to their values. “I just love it when women say, you know what, these are the things I believe in, and I’m going to lean into them, and I’m going to tell my story, and I’m going to give it a go, and if it doesn’t work, I’m going to pivot, great.”

Upcycling

Ali Cox says up-cycling  and using every part of the produce is not only good for the environment it is also making farm businesses more profitable.  When you take a piece of produce that would otherwise go to cow silage or may not be harvested at all and you harvest it and use it, that is up-cycling. “It’s basically an imperfect but perfectly edible piece of fruit, and you go and create new uses for it. There’s jams and puddings, and one of our clients, called Sierra Agra, is up-cycling vegetables and produce into juices, extracts, oils, concentrate and purees.  From an environmental standpoint, it’s extraordinary and is a place where farmers can get a bigger return on investment.”

 

Ali Cox’s Go To Music Choice

Lainey Wilson, Shania Twain, Faith Hill and Reba McIntire and Beyoncé especially the album ‘Cowboy Carter’.

 

Angela Mezzetti
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