Episode 20
Return to Nature Podcast
In this episode of Return to Nature, Melissa interviews Cole Mannix, the president and co-founder of Old Salt Co-op. As fifth generation of the Mannix family, his love for people, ranching, and land stewardship is deep rooted in Montana. Though his schooling and professional life have taken him many places beyond the ranch, his heart remains devoted to the cause of bringing people together around a love for life and all of its beautiful diversity. One of his mentors described land stewardship as an effort to create “more heartbeats per acre”. Cole thinks that’s a pretty damned good idea and continues to lead Old Salt Co-op’s efforts to build a resilient, regional food system that directs more value back to the land and the people who care for it.
He founded the Old Salt Festival, a food & music celebration of Montana land stewardship hosted on the Mannix Family Ranch in Helmville, MT, bringing together wood-fired cooking, Americana musicians, Montana ranchers, and Western makers to celebrate in high Montana style.
COLE SHARES
- The deep history the Mannix Family shares with their Ranch in Helmville, Montana
- How his time away from the ranch got him interested in the distribution side of the operation
- How the Salt of the Earth Rancher’s Cooperative was started and why it evolved
- The problem with food labels
- The issues with policy change when it comes to agriculture
- How the Old Salt Co-op came to be
- The necessity of making an entirely new system versus just trying to change production of meat
- The importance of broadening our idea of success and wealth
- Why and how producers should have ownership in distribution avenues
- The fallacy of failure when it comes to regenerative ranching and truly healing the soil
- Having an organic mindset even when you have to rely on conventional methods
- How familiarity with the process can build trust for a product
- How labels and certifications can be true but not meaningful
YOU CAN CONNECT WITH COLE THROUGH OLD SALT
Most people think of agriculture, I think, when they just hear the word as production. It’s farming, ranching, but it’s a culture of feeding ourselves. It’s a whole system. And so you can’t just take one little element of a system and make it better. You know, like a really healthy heart will not do you any good if your lungs are shot. Like, all the things have to be working together. And my impression is that most people think, ‘Well it’s just about farmers and ranchers doing better.’ But there’s a lot of farmers and ranchers who are continuing to put regeneratively raised product into a conventional engine and you have to make a new engine.
