New SHI Video: Circles of Sustainability

I’m so happy to share the most recent SHI video, Circles of Sustainability: l’Herbier du Diois produced by SHI Media Director, Terrence Youk! Twenty-five SHI members are heading to l’Herbier this Sunday for the fifth SHI Learning Journey where we will be able to learn first hand about the impressive investments l’Herbier is making in sustainability. I hope you enjoy this 8 minute video highlighting their work.

Recent SHI Blog Posts and Member News

What Does Partnership Actually Mean?

Reflections from the Final Session of the Primary Processing Learning Lab

We use the word “partnership” a lot in the herbal industry. It sounds good. It signals that we care about more than transactions. But what does it actually require: day to day, contract to contract, hard conversation to hard conversation?

That’s what we explored in the third and final session of the SHI Primary Processing Learning Lab, with Ellie Thorne of Blue Sky Botanics and Matt Richards of Organic Herb Trading (OHT). Both companies have built their models around long-term sourcing relationships with smallholder farmers, collectors, and processors. And both were refreshingly honest about what that actually looks like, including the parts that are uncomfortable. Read highlights from the conversation here.

Core Values of SHI

Courage, vulnerability, authenticity, collaboration. SHI members shared what they see as the core values of our work together in the March monthly meeting. “All of these things are words,” Jessie Dean, CEO of Asheville Tea Company said. “But they are representative of the real work and action that is being done.”

Read more here.

Grieving Our Way Through

I’ve attended many of the Presencing Institute virtual offerings. The second session of their spring series, Reclaiming Human Agency: When Love is What Doesn’t Break, was one of the most inspiring and thought provoking that I have attended.

I share some highlights from notes I took during the session in this recent Substack post.

Building Trust: Why Mission Driven Companies Fail

Highlights from Eric Ries’s fireside chat with the Purpose Pledge about how mission drive companies can succeed: build structural integrity, be trustworthy; build something worth protecting and protect it. Read more here.

SHI Member End Cap: Durham, NC

A year ago, David Gordon from evanhealy shared the idea of creating an end cap for SHI member companies with a few others. I love how Genevieve Olive, a broker with Root Down Naturals, took the initiative and, in collaboration with the Durham Coop Market, created this end cap highlighting SHI member companies.

“I wondered what I could do in my daily life to give and sustain the earth. It can be really hard to balance in the sales realm. And so I decided to create an end cap to generate interest in understanding where herbs are from,” - Genevieve Olive

SHI Members and Donors

We have had a number of new SHI members in the past few months who are not included in this list. We will update the logos soon! Thank you to all of our supporters. We could not do this work without you! Contact Ann to find out more about becoming an SHI member.

If you would like to support our work, tax-free donations can be made to our fiscal sponsor, the Sustainable Food Lab here or at the link below.

Thank you in advance for your support!

SHI will be hosting Jane Franch to speak about these issues at the June SHI Member Meeting so that we can do exactly what Dean Weinstein called on the audience to do: take our responsiblity as companies using these tools seriously and engage in conversations about their governance.

Sometimes inefficiency is the point

Weinstein began by speaking about the benefits of AI, demonstrated and promised, and how, in the world of algorithms, optimization is a value. While efficiency is valuable in coding, he explained, “optimization becomes a risk when it is adopted as a world view… Not everything is coding,” he said. When you think about what make life fulfilling, you encounter things that can’t be reduced to o’s and I’s. There are things we can’t measure. Things like love, like how we care for our children.

He had them look around the audience and think about what got them there. “There is nothing technological about this. No short cuts. No query you can send to AI to create that kind of love. Just hard earned human connection…. love forged through long hours of connection…. And love like that will always be the best thing in the world.”

These will always be the most important things, he continued, and they don’t have efficient solutions. “Relationships are supposed to be complex. They are sometimes hard. That’s what makes them worthwhile.”

As with relationships, democracy is complex. It doesn’t lend itself to optimization. “Sometimes democracy is inefficient and sometimes isn’t inefficiency is the point,” he said.

Some (but not all) of the questions to ask

He continued by saying that we can’t let the powerful actors of technology or any powerful actors make decisions about the use of these technologies that will shape our future. “Discovering how these technologies will impact our future is on us.” We need to consider questions such as:

• What responsibilities do companies have for the wellbeing of their employees?

• How do we ensure that the benefits are broadly distributed and the risks are shared?

• Do we need an international agreement on the deployment of AI similar to those forged during the nuclear age?

• And many, many more, he said.

“Even if you don’t feel you have a personal stake in the future of this technology, your stake in democracy itself requires that you take this debate both seriously and personally.”

“We have to take this risk seriously. Technology will reshape our world,” he said. “We can’t let decisions about how that is managed happen in a vacuum. And we have to take an active role in leading…. Do not let this moment happen to you or to us.”

Skills for leading

He then explained why they were uniquely qualified for this.

1. They are the last generation to be educated before AI. This gives them a huge advantage. “They were educated before it’s availability threatened to undermine critical thinking skills and cognitive capabilities. They are the products of an education system that used time tested strategies like reading, writing, talking with other people in person, strategies that instilled empathy, creativity, collaboration, truth seeking, and judgement… You have a sense of what is at stake and the risk of cognitive offloading.”

2. They understand the value of policy and how the rule of law underlies the market. They understand how a strong regulatory environment solves what the bottom line won’t. The government has an ability to balance perspectives and solve for problems as whole.

3. They know how to sit in the muck. They have been trained not to optimize, but to understand there is not a right answer. They know how to do the work of building across differences and finding a shared way forward.

He closed by saying there are tremendous opportunities from technology.

“But if we fail to wrestle with these questions, if we let our technological future be determined by those who only think in terms of could and not should, then we as a society will be left to hope that the giant lizard is peaceful. There is a lot at stake in how we handle this.”

The post AI and Governance appeared first on Sustainable Herbs Initiative.

by Ann Armbrecht, SHI Founder and Director

I am just home from the fifth Sustainable Herbs Initiative Learning Journey, this time to visit l’Herbier du Diois, a supplier and processor of organic medicinal and aromatic plants in the Drôme region of southern France. The Learning Journey was co-organized with Hélène Wostyn, head of sales for l’Herbier.

We have had Learning Journeys in Appalachia, southern Oregon, and Nicaragua. What stays with me is how unique each region is. We have visited wild collectors hauling sacks of black cohosh up steep mountain slopes in eastern Kentucky, small-holder Nicaraguan coffee farmers diversifying their income by growing turmeric and ginger for a global market. We have spent time on the first Regenerative Organic Certified herb farms in southern Oregon to the small fields of thyme, savory, lemon balm, and sage nestled in the hills of southern France, scattered between limestone villages along the Drôme river.

I’m struck by the qualities of each place and the people working with the plants and how those qualities become lost when the plants reach the global market: thyme is known just as thyme, regardless of where and how it is grown. Turmeric is just turmeric.

Giving Place and the Plants a Voice

I started SHI to tell these stories because I believe they matter in the quality of the finished product and that they might help us become more responsible customers. And I began these Learning Journeys because I believed that place matters. The people harvesting the plants matter. These journeys to source are ways to experience that difference and to do it with others also working in this industry, to see what we might collectively do to bring the realness of the source back into an industry that is increasingly disconnected from that source.

As Ben Levine said after the first Learning Journey in Appalachia, “Why do we as an herb industry find ourselves in Las Vegas or right next to Disneyland for our biggest industry events? Sinking into the rolling hills of Appalachia was a welcome contrast. How did being in the woods shape our conversations, our decisions, our connections with one another?”

These journeys are on an entirely different scale than a trade show. Twenty-three people gathering in France or Nicaragua is not 80,000 attendees at Anaheim. It’s not clear what impact that can have, but for now I am trusting the oft-quoted saying by Nobel laureate, Ilya Prigogine, “When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.”

A Different Way of Seeing

For five days, twenty three of us from around the world (Britain, Canada, India, France, Namibia, the Netherlands, Peru, and the United States) immersed ourselves in the work of l’Herbier.

I opened the first evening with a story I have told many times, one told to me by a village priest/shaman in Hedangna, where I lived in the upper Arun Valley of northeastern Nepal about the origin of the differences between humans and the ancestors, which, it turns out, has to do with seeing.

Humans can only see the physical object. Ancestors can “see double”, which, the priest explained, means seeing both the physical object and all that our eyes can’t see that sustains that object. Not seeing the invisible, the story goes, makes humans selfish.

Listening

We had come to l’Herbier, I continued, because, more than any processing facility I have visited, the company is designed within the context of a living system, in general but also in particular: the ecosystem of this valley.

I invited everyone in the circle to spend the week trying to see double, to see the ways this larger frame informed decisions at the processing facility and to be aware of our own ways of seeing and listening and to ask what we need to shift in ourselves to “see double”.

We then went for a solo silent walk on the land to help us each connect with this place in our own way. And then we did a dialogue walk with another person in the group, someone we didn’t know well, each sharing for 10 minutes 2-3 events or experiences in the past few years that have been important to them. These two foundational practices helped us begin the week by listening to the land and to each other, before we speak ourselves.

We then gathered in a circle on the deck of the farmhouse and shared our intentions for the week. This as a way of creating a container for our time together.

Owl Eyes and Eagle Eyes

The next morning, I shared a simple practice from the Wilderness Awareness School: owl eyes and eagle eyes. I showed how to hold fingers up on our peripheral vision and walk in that way. And then to put the finger right in front of your eyes and walk in that way. I then invited everyone to spend 5 minutes or so practicing moving between the two ways of seeing, noticing in particular how each way of seeing makes you feel. This is a simple exercise that begins to encompass what it takes and what it means to “see double”. Back in the circle, people shared how owl eyes shifted them into their hearts and to perceiving the whole whereas eagle eyes sharpened their mind, focusing in on the details. Both ways of seeing are key to the work we are doing.

We then walked to a field of savory above the farmhouse where we stayed. Flora, the farm manager, spoke about farming practices on the farm. Then we did a plant sit, each sitting in silence with a plant. We gathered again and walked silently down a steep path to another field, this one of thyme, where we gathered in a small group to reflect on our experience.

I was with Ramesh Uniyal, from New Delhi, whom I thought was least likely to connect with this part of the Learning Journey. And yet, he shared a story about a researcher who was stuck in his research on higher constituent levels in a particular plant. Finally, when he was about to give up, the researcher was visited in his dreams by the plant he was working on, with the message to harvest it now. The researcher woke up, harvested and tested the leaves, and achieved the results that had been eluding him. My surprise was a good reminder of the many ways I wasn’t seeing double myself.

Organic as a Way of Designing

Later in the afternoon, we gathered upstairs in the impressive new processing center at l’Herbier. Farmers take a huge step in not working with chemicals in their fields, Tijlbert Vink, CEO of l’Herbier, explained. Too often, that investment is then lost in the second step, which is processing. He believed it was important to bring the same attention to this second step, to bring the version of not using chemicals in fields, both to the buildings and to the practices of processing.

He saw how difficult it was to farm in ways that respect living systems, yet the farmers still did it. And so, it was really important for him to show it was possible to do it in the processing. It wasn’t easy. For example, they spent 600,000 Euros to study whether it was possible to build straw boxes to use for insulation and years getting the necessary permits to be allowed to build in this way. But he was 24, he said. He had a lot of energy to fight.

To him, the idea of organic is not just the herbs, he continued. It is in everything they do with their work from their wage policy (the gap between the lowest and highest wage is 2.6) to building boxes for insulation from straw from the region as a way to support local workers to rewarding employees for biking to work to designing drier boxes to minimize handling of the material and thus reduce chances for microbial contamination to using the warmed air beneath the solar panels in the driers, thus reducing the electricity needed. This last step is still in process. Among other things, it involved buying food-grade roofing since the air touching those panels will be circulating with the herbs. Everywhere we looked, there was intention behind the decision.

This video produced on an earlier trip to l’Herbier provides an overview of the company.

He described how he has set up a structure that creates what he described as a red line around selling the company. The structure can’t block a sale, but it can help slow it down by forcing up to three conversations about whether he really wants that sale. This is a way to protect against when he is older and may change his mind, he said. He doesn’t want to be critical of others who may do things differently and end up selling their company, but he doesn’t want to do that himself. I was struck by the intention needed to put structures in place to protect against our future selves.

Patience is what allows him to do things the right way, he said. And when you do things the right way, they last longer. Also, if you grow more slowly, it isn’t as stressful.

Importance of a Dream Team

A dream team, 5 or 6 others who can imagine what is possible, is key. He had no idea whether they would be able to run the factory on solar power. But he had to try. And having a few others willing to dream with him, to imagine what isn’t yet there, gave him the courage to try.

Right now, his biggest worries are the weather, a few years ago the heat caused fires in the region, and increasing energy costs from the Middle East War. But he added that little projects are always more powerful than big ones. That gives him more hope. He hopes small companies can change the system.

After that, we gathered in a large circle at the end of the day to share our reflections and what stayed with us from the day. Some of the reflections shared: seeing how the values and beliefs are at a cellular level, built into the foundation of the company, not just actions to fill check boxes. That the ethos of the company is not an option, and the brilliance of how it is all put together, their creativity in solving problems and coming up with solutions that meet their vision.

Later, Ton Vink, Tijlbert’s father, spoke about the vision when they founded the company. Their vision was always bigger than just growing herbs. It was about tending the larger ecosystem of health and believing that making relationships between different cultures and agriculture is a way to achieve that health.

Visiting Farmers

The next morning, we had a long drive to some of the farmers who sell herbs to l’Herbier. I organized the rides so that different people are in the vans together with a question as a discussion prompt. We then drove an hour west to the farm of Samuel Garchon, a third-generation farmer growing vegetable seeds, cereals, organic herbs, and walnuts, and raising sheep.

Eighty percent of the farming in this region was organic five years ago, he told us. But now more farmers are going back to conventional farming. We asked why. Too much paperwork, he said. The auditors just check the paperwork and don’t go to the field. He continues farming organically because they have contracts, and they have always been organic. It is in their DNA.

Someone asked about the challenges of organic farming. Without hesitation, he said: weeds, Ecocert (the auditor), and finding labor. “Being a farmer in France every day is a risk,” he said. Gesturing across the land, he said he keeps doing it because of the view. And because he is his own boss.

Another person asked what he would like customers using products from the herbs he grows to know. “We do our best and everyday we take care,” he said. “And we hope you can see this when you see the product.”

In preparing for these farm visits, we had talked about the differences between visiting farms to get to know the farmer as a whole person and visiting them to get information. Later, Ellie Thorne from Blue Sky Botanics mentioned how hard it was not to be extractive in farm visits, especially when we were such a large group. We had considered meeting in smaller groups or doing farmwork as an exchange, but both would likely have been more of an imposition, not less. And so, we settled on these conversations in a circle, trying to be considerate in our questions.

Later, they each told Helene they loved our visits. They appreciated our thoughtful and serious questions and that we seemed to genuinely care.

Manu Jean, the second farmer we visited, shared similar feelings and concerns. His father started farming in 1995, with sheep, wine, and herbs on 40 acres. This year, because of the heat and the lack of rain, he’s had to irrigate already. Normally, he doesn’t irrigate until the end of May or June.

We asked about challenges: finding labor is more and more difficult. The price of gas is increasing. And climate change, he added. His margin is dropping as costs increase.

But he can’t imagine doing anything other than farming organically.

“I love my job,” he said. “I like to be with the sheep, in nature, listening to the sounds of the sheep at 6 am, seeing the herbs grow, smelling them, and the view. And I love the view,” he added, echoing Samuel.

He explained that he works with the moon, following the best time to weed and to harvest. His father worked with the moon as well. He isn’t certified Demeter (biodynamic) because he doesn’t do the preps, and he also can’t do any more paperwork. Thirty-five percent of his time is paperwork, he said, echoing what others shared.

Pine Buds

The next morning, we had a longer drive. Different groups and a different question. We drove high up a ridge in the Ardèche, looking out across the valley. We walked up the ridge where we gathered on rocks. I invited everyone to sit with the land or a plant in stillness.

After gathering in a circle and sharing something from our experience, Max Bouillet, the collector, shared about his work. He collects buds from March to May. In the summer, elder flowers, st john’s wort; in the fall, ash, red vine leaves; in the winter, laurel leaves and rosemary. Three-quarters of his time is spent wild harvesting. One quarter is spent growing herbs. He grows oregano, daisy, wild pansy, and tarragon. Someone asked how he got started. He had a background in agriculture but never thought of becoming a wild collector until he visited a friend years ago who was collecting hawthorne flowers. He liked it and so he began doing it as well.

If a person doesn’t harvest in a sustainable way, he said, that person is the first one to suffer from the unsustainable practices.

Labor is hard. A lot of people are attracted to the job, they come to train, but it takes 3-4 years to make a living out of it, and few stick around that long. The price of herbs hasn’t increased. But he is more efficient, so he can make more money in less time. There is a balance between being efficient and respectful of the plants.

It is very important to have a 3-year contract because it takes time to find a good place to collect, and it is a lot of work if only for one year.

He explained the challenges: harvesters are getting older and harder to find. Climate change: they thought they would have time to harvest, but now the buds are ready sooner. Previously, once in twenty years, there would be weather challenges. Now it is 1 in 3 years. And contamination in part from stricter regulations is a challenge.

We then headed off in two groups to harvest pine buds. As we headed off, he said don’t step on the bilberries. Even if they won’t be harvesting them, we need to respect those who will be. That stayed with me during our entire visit. The unseen future informs our present actions.

We gathered in a circle before climbing back in the cars. Someone shared, “Different people, different plants, and places all over the world, but the same situation.”

Dreaming

On the last afternoon of our week together, we gathered in the garden at l’Herbier where staff ate their lunch. I invited everyone to journal and then share in a small group, then journal and share again. We then gathered in a circle, shared our reflections, and discussed how we can each dream bigger and have more courage. We suggested having accountability buddies to help us stay on track and follow through on what we envision. For starters, I said I would share my dream for SHI with the group in hopes that they, as Jeff Higley, co-founder of Oshala Farm, outlined, could help me make that dream happen.

Something happens on these Learning Journeys that emerges from the place, the plants, and the people, but is difficult to articulate. We slow down, we pay attention differently. We listen more deeply. People are open, curious and committed to taking what we learn into bringing about the changes needed. Maybe it simply comes down to Max’s simple reminder to us: to twenty-three people from eight countries to watch where they put their feet because where we placed them would impact the livelihoods of those coming after us.

The post Seeing Double: SHI France Learning Journey appeared first on Sustainable Herbs Initiative.

By Ann Armbrecht, SHI Founder and Director

We use the word “partnership” a lot in the herbal industry. It sounds good. It signals that we care about more than transactions. But what does it actually require: day to day, contract to contract, hard conversation to hard conversation?

That’s what we explored in the third and final session of the SHI Primary Processing Learning Lab, with Ellie Thorne of Blue Sky Botanics and Matt Richards of Organic Herb Trading (OHT). Both companies have built their models around long-term sourcing relationships with smallholder farmers, collectors, and processors. And both were refreshingly honest about what that actually looks like, including the parts that are uncomfortable.

The recording is available for SHI members. Here I want to pull out some of what I found most useful and most worth sitting with.

The Central Insight: Quality of Relationships, Not Certifications, Is the Foundation

One thread ran through everything Matt and Ellie shared: the health of the supply ecosystem depends on the quality of the relationships within it. Certifications are a useful tool. But they don’t replace trust, presence, and genuine mutual accountability. The strength of a system isn’t defined by its certification level but by the quality of interactions between the people who make it up.

That might sound obvious. But it has real implications for how we spend our time, what we prioritize, and how we think about risk. If relationships are the foundation, then investing in them isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the work.

How They Think About the Supply Ecosystem

Matt laid out how their different roles in sourcing:

• Growers, collectors, and primary processors are where 95% of quality is determined. The soil, the practices, the knowledge, the drying, all of it happens before a trader/buyer ever sees the plant.

• OHT’s role, as he described it, is to represent the collectors, growers, and processors, to advocate for them and for the plants and land that form the basis of everything downstream.

• Blue Sky Botanics sits further along the chain, manufacturing liquid extracts. Ellie described a dual translation role: making the realities of the field legible to brands and customers, and making the needs and expectations of brands legible to suppliers. That translation work, she said, is a huge part of what they do.

• Brands and customers sit at the end. Blue Sky works to translate the complexity on the ground to their customers.

This framing: supply ecosystem rather than supply chain, matters. A chain suggests linear extraction. An ecosystem suggests that the health of each part affects all the others.

What Partnership Actually Requires

Both Ellie and Matt were specific about what they look for in a sourcing partner and in their relationship with each other. Not vague commitments to sustainability but actual practices and orientations:

• Fit and alignment.

There’s a formal layer: questionnaires, payment terms, checking that you’re aligned on basic operating principles. But there’s also something you sense quickly. Do you share the same goals? Are you willing to be honest with each other? How is the fit?

• Attention to power dynamics.

Matt was direct: they aren’t looking to accumulate power or assume they know better than their partners. He’s been in situations where a customer thinks they know best and isn’t willing to hear about the reality on the ground. That dynamic is quite prevalent in the industry, and it’s one they actively work against. There’s a historical dimension to this too. In a supply network where the people carrying the most weight and the most risk are often seen as having the least power, understanding those dynamics and actively working to change them is part of the responsibility that both OHT and Blue Sky Botanics take seriously.

• Time and commitment.

Spot-buying means learning something new every time. Long-term relationships mean you face the same challenges: crop failures, climate volatility, quality issues, economic hardship, together, year after year, and each time this gets a little easier to navigate. The conversations that were uncomfortable the first time become easier each time you have them. That allows you to move more quickly to the nitty gritty of addressing the challenges. That’s not a small thing.

• High mutual expectations.

Partnership doesn’t mean letting things slide. Accountability to meeting high quality standards is key, and that accountability is part of what makes the relationship worth having. The goal is to be raising the bar together.

• An ecological rather than extractive orientation.

Matt used the distinction between cooperation and competition, between contributing to the health of the ecosystem versus extracting from it. A healthy ecosystem, he said, makes the ground more fertile for the next person. That’s the model they’re trying to embody.

The Role of Trust — and What It Makes Possible

In a real partnership, they both shared, asking for support is a strength, not a weakness. When you’re in an early-stage relationship, admitting you don’t know something or need help can feel like exposure. But in a strong partnership, it’s just how learning happens. “Every day is a school day, but you don’t have to be taught by the same teacher,” Ellie added. The best learning often comes from outside your own echo chamber, from being genuinely open to what your partners know.

That kind of trust also changes how you listen. Ellie and Matt both described listening not as extractive, not just gathering information, but as creating genuine exchange. It requires being fully present, reflecting back what you’ve heard, and moving forward from that point together. Context is everything, she said. Without it, expectations don’t get met and things can get lost in translation.

The Real Challenges — And How They Navigate Them

They weren’t shy about the hard parts:

• Price conversations are the toughest. They hinge on the question of like not being like.

A core challenge that everyone producing and sourcing herbs will recognize: you can have two certified organic products that are not the same thing, and the buyer, looking at a spreadsheet, will compare them by price.

Take ginger. Ginger from a large monocrop farm has a certain type of employment, a certain relationship with the soil, a certain interaction with the surrounding environment. It may meet minimum organic standards, but that’s a floor, not a ceiling. Ginger may also be grown by a smallholder family on a plot in Kerala or Nicaragua, in an agroforestry system, where the farmer is thinking about biodiversity, about the wellbeing of the family, about the ecological context of what they’re growing. The quality is different. The crop is different. The context is entirely different.

On paper, a buyer sees two certified organic gingers. One is cheaper. And a huge part of what both Ellie and Matt do is explain why those two things are not equivalent. Why the price difference reflects a difference in what the product actually is, where it comes from, and who it supports. True transparency, they both said, is what allows you to advocate for that difference. Without visibility through OHT to the growers, understanding what they’re actually doing and why, Blue Sky Botanics can’t have that conversation with customers. The information has to flow both ways for any of it to work.

• Certifications don’t replace relationships.

Certifications are a tool in the box, but nothing replaces being on the ground, knowing the place and the people.

• Important to apply brand sustainability targets to the context.

Every supply network has its own context. Every conversation and sustainability target like reducing carbon emissions needs to be tailored to that context. If your goal is positive impact, Ellie said, you need to frame it in ways that are meaningful to the people you’re asking it of.

• HACCP and food safety standards benefit from dialogue, not just compliance.

Health and safety standards look different in different cultural contexts. The goal isn’t to lower standards, but to understand what risks actually exist and calibrate expectations accordingly, rather than demanding compliance with standards that don’t reflect the actual risk profile.

Practical Tools That Actually Help

• The seasonality calendar and forecast windows.

Both Matt and Ellie talked about the value of tools like a seasonality calendar and seasonal contract windows. This is a way of making customers honor the reality of agricultural time. If you want the ingredient, you need to understand and respect the process that produces it.

• Getting brands into the field.

Both Ellie and Matt described bringing brand representatives on supplier visits as one of the most effective tools they have. Once someone has stood in the field and seen the reality of what they’re asking for, the conversation changes. It is important to frame these visits as educational opportunities for brands, not to enforce compliance.

• Collaborative meetings and shared vision.

Annual alignment meetings, supplier visits, and collaborative customer conversations aren’t just relationship maintenance. They’re how you build the understanding that makes hard conversations possible. Connecting as people, having fun, lacing shared values into how you work.

The Ripple Effects

Their goal is to support smallholder farmers and to make it possible for products from otherwise marginalized farmers to reach markets in Europe. That’s a real and significant thing. Not every company can make those sourcing choices.

I asked, in a commodity-driven market, how many companies are actually interested in this kind of deeper relationship? And what gets in the way? Matt’s answer was honest. People come to OHT for a reason. They aren’t the cheapest option, and customers who find them are usually looking for something more. But cost conversations are a reality, especially as companies grow. Ellie said she’s seeing a genuine increase in companies holding themselves to higher standards, and consumers asking for more visibility and transparency. The challenge is taking those intentions deeper than surface level, past the questionnaire, past the certification, to a real understanding of and commitment to what is happening on the ground. Both the difficulty and the opportunity are real, and they sit alongside each other.

The more connected everyone feels to the supply networks, where things come from, the more they will start to care, Ellie said. When you start to care, you pay attention differently. Your commitment increases and you get that longevity that is so important.

And so the challenge then becomes how to share that understanding with people who haven’t had that experience. How do you help someone care about something they’ve never touched? That’s a significant part of what they are trying to do — not just source well, but bring others along, so that the responsibility and the care get distributed further up the chain toward the brands and consumers who are, in many ways, the ones with the most power to change things.

Action Steps — If You’re Ready to Go Deeper

• Answer the question “Why wouldn’t I just buy the cheapest?” for yourself first, then for your customers. A participant in the Learning Lab described this as an opportunity to start a positive feedback loop. Being able to answer it means you need to learn about your suppliers well enough to advocate for the value they bring.

• Audit your forecasting process. Are you passing demand pressure and uncertainty down the chain — to the people least equipped to absorb it? If so, consider contract windows and volume commitments tied to agricultural timelines.

• Consider visiting your suppliers. Or, if that’s not possible, facilitating a conversation between a brand partner and a grower. The understanding that comes from being present is hard to replicate any other way.

• Reflect on your relationship with certifications. Are you using them as a tool alongside trust and direct knowledge? Or as a substitute for them? There’s a difference and it matters.

• Be honest about power in your supply relationships. Who carries the most risk? Who has the most power to set terms? What would it look like to actively change that?

The SHI Primary Processing Learning Lab was designed for farmers, wild harvesters, primary processors, ingredient suppliers, and wholesale traders. We’ll be announcing future programs soon.

The post What Does Partnership Actually Mean? appeared first on Sustainable Herbs Initiative.

I recently listened to the fireside chat with Eric Ries, author of Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad… and How Great Companies Stay Great, offered by the Purpose Pledge about why so many mission driven companies fail.

Some highlights from the conversation for me:

• An ethos of caring for people and customers (and I would add planet) is against the fundamental nature of business. And so a company needs structural integrity, what Ries called a ‘governance fortress,’ that allows it to resist the corruption of capitalism. He defined corruption as any way you are making money without creating value.

• Purpose driven companies hands down outperform those that aren’t. There is so much evidence for the ways they do better, he said.

• The mechanism for their success is that they are trustworthy. Being trustworthy is the most underrated quality in business. Stockpile trust, he said.

• Build something worth protecting. And protect it. You protect it, he said, by figuring out the vectors of attack, get support of the board, and figure out the right relationship with your investors.

• He redefined profit as the maximization of human flourishing.

• People say business is so hard. The reason it is so hard, he tells people, is because no one trusts you.

• He outlined what to do:

  • Define your mission: what slice of human flourishing are you focusing on, something that your heart resonates with. Your purpose: to maximize human flourishing by doing what you do. This is the pre-condition for unlocking your super power, which makes business easier.

  • Define your ethos of principled decision making. You build trust by following those principals.

  • Figure it out. When conflicts arise from following your principles, dig in and figure it out. Digging in creates the breakthroughs needed to go further.

The post Building Trust: Eric Ries on the Purpose Pledge appeared first on Sustainable Herbs Initiative.

by Ann Armbrecht, SHI Founder and Director

We turned off the main road in the late afternoon, heading deeper into the Anza Borrego Desert in southern California. And drove along a sandy road to a spot Tyler Wauters had discovered several years ago when he first came to this desert. We were coming from the chaos of Expo West, the natural products trade show that brings 60,000 people from around the world to Anaheim, California, to spend three nights in the desert for the first Sustainable Herbs Initiative (SHI) Wilderness Immersion.

Our intention was to spend our time listening deeply to the land and the plants and to allow that experience guide our work at SHI. I first learned to sit and have a conversation with plants as a student of herbal medicine. Sharing these journeys can feel quite private, not relevant to leadership or decision making.

Yet a few weeks after our time in the desert, I heard Nipum Metha, founder of ServiceSpace, speak in a session for the Presencing Institute about inner coherence — attuning ourselves deeply enough to let the more-than-human world speak through us. “We need to do less, to be more, and have deeper trust in coherence,” he said.

I recognized immediately what we had experienced in the desert.

Listening to Plants

Our home for the next few days was a flat valley ringed by rocky hills. We turned off the cars and were met by the deep stillness of this place. I had imagined a desert as only sand, but desert plants spread across the valley: cholla cactus, with sharp thorns that caught the morning and evening light so the plants looked like they were glowing. Ocotillo, an amazing Dr. Seuss tree I’d never heard of or seen: long spiky branches rising from the base, deep red flowers blooming on the end. Agave. Desert lavender, so much wilder than the lavender I know. So many plants spread across the valley floor, growing in sand, abundant but not crowded. There was space, stillness, sky, wind, which when it came could be fierce enough to blow away our tents, so we added stones to the stakes to keep them secure.

We had a loose structure that guided our days. Each day was structured around a plant sit. For these, we would walk into the desert, find a plant or a series of plants, and ask: “What is it you would like to tell me? What is important for me to know?”

Then we would just listen. For some of us that meant drawing or singing or moving. Or it could just be sitting quietly and observing the plant. After some time, we would come back and share what we heard.

What the Land Said

Ben Nahar grew up in this kind of landscape. And so on our first plant sit, he walked straight across the valley floor, toward an ocotillo forest against the hills on the far side of the valley. I wanted to follow, but I’d never been to the desert before and was too afraid of snakes and scorpions and spiders and whatever else might be hiding in the sand. So I stayed closer to the sandy road.

I often sit with plants and ask them for guidance. But this landscape was so foreign to me that it was hard to find my way in. I first stood next to ocotillo, nothing. Maybe it was the wrong plant, I thought. So I tried another. Still silent. Maybe I was doing it wrong, I thought, so I asked a different question. Still silent. I shared my gratitude. I shared my hesitation. But mostly I could only hear my doubts and questions.

I finally tried to set my questions aside and just notice what was here – the wind, the sun, the sand, the sky, the vibrancy in this land that I always imagined to be empty. Letting in the amazing gift of three days in the desert sitting with others who also believe that the path forward for our work together begins with listening to voices that aren’t our own.

Finding the Thread

That evening around the fire, I passed around archetype cards, each of us drawing one in answer to a question we held. My question was how to find my way back to connecting with plants and how that can guide me in leading SHI. I drew The Thread: a person’s arm emerges from darkness holding a deep red cord that reaches toward a rainbow in the sky.

“The path,” Kim Krans, the creator of the deck writes. “Life is a tangle. So much happens simultaneously and circuitously, leaving us grappling for meaning and direction in a network of distractions. When we connect to the energy of The Thread… our whole being responds to its tug. We remember who we are and what we came into this world to do.”

Prickly Pear

And so, the next morning when we went out again for a plant sit, I followed the thread. This time, I left the sandy road and walked deeper into the valley floor toward the ocotillo forest. Asking where to go. Following signs: a stick pointing in a different direction, following the stick, following what caught my attention without overthinking where I was going. And then I came across a prickly pear growing on its own in the sand. It was smaller than the other plants growing nearby: creosote, cholla, ocotillo. All of them near but not too close. The prickly pear seemed on its own. One or two flowers were in bloom, a deep magenta. Several buds, even more lovely than the flower, were almost ready to bloom, the dark purple pink of the petals emerging through the green.

So, I stopped.

To not need to be the center, but to hold the center. I have small thorns to invite respect, but more for a pause. To pause as you enter. Not intended to hurt, like the thorns of cholla. And my flowers so beautiful and abundant. I hold a presence. I hold my place. My flowers just are. I just am, shaped by the soil I’ve grown in, the water I have and haven’t had. The sun and the wind. I don’t need to tell stories about that. I just let my flowers bloom.

Feel into me. Feel into my stillness. What you notice when you come into this valley, that quality of presence. That quality of stillness and aliveness. It’s from all of us, but I especially hold it. Do that in your work. Own it fully.

Who knows how it works or what actually transpires when we sit next to a plant and ask for guidance or insight. But I received what I needed in that conversation. Insights into questions I was asking about how to lead SHI, about what sort of container to hold. Wisdom into how to be.

You all are writing a new language that begins with resonance. It begins with vibration and with bringing together those who sense and respond to vibration.

Trust that. And build. Tend gardens in different ecosystems that arise from and respond to the vibration of that place.

Learning the Language of this Land

Later in the circle we each shared what we learned. Ben spoke of the difference of speaking for the land and speaking from the land, having the land speak through each of us. Others added their own images: the strong flexible spine of ocotillo. Vulnerability that allows others to see and be open. Branches not resisting the wind but singing with it and in the singing, creating something more. Thorns that create boundaries – that say pause, don’t trample what is living.

On the final afternoon, we each sat on our own to listen to the land and let the land inform our work together at SHI. As I sat on a rock in the late afternoon light, I thought about the shift between my two plant sits, and how I found prickly pear because I was able to listen more deeply and to trust where I was led.

I saw that the gift for me from this time in the desert was about learning more deeply what listening for that emerging future means. That leading SHI isn’t about implementing a strategy as much as it is about defining a way of traveling. A practice of following the thread of my intention, and then paying attention, listening, seeing what I notice, trusting that that process will lead me, and in turn the Sustainable Herbs Initiative, where we need to go.

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At the March SHI Monthly meeting, Andy Thornton, Jessie Dean, Zacharia Levine, and I shared key takeaways from our Expo Panel, Intertwined Roots: Building Resilient, Regenerative Supply Networks. After that, six of us who participated in the first SHI Wilderness Immersion in the Anza Borrego desert shared some about our experience.

Below are some themes that emerged.

Showing Up as People First

The panel centered on two questions: how do supplier relationships build resilience, and what has SHI actually changed on the ground? During the meeting, we didn’t repeat what we shared on the panel (available to watch for registered Expo attendees here) and instead reflected on ideas that arose from our preparation and discussion.

Andy opened by saying that SHI is a place where people show up first as people, not in their work roles — where we bring our whole selves. That, he said, creates a different quality of connection.

This makes a difference in concrete ways in terms of new sourcing partnerships, support for Asheville Tea Company during Hurricane Helene, and also in what we each bring to our work: more openness, more honesty, more courage because we are in a community where that is what others do as well.

Zacharia said that SHI sits at the interface between values based relationships and those that are considered more transactional, but it isn’t such a black and white divide. And he suggested that we need to get clearer and crisper at articulating and realizing the return on the investment of the time, energy, and personal capital that it takes to invest in values based relationships within a hyper competitive industry.

SHI Values

Jessie then added to Zacharia’s comments by spelling out the values we embrace at SHI – qualities which I think are central to establishing and maintaining values based relationships.

• Courage – the courage to address challenges as they arise and the courage to name those challenges.

• Openness and vulnerability – “Everyone is so courageous and brave in their willingness to be vulnerable,” Jessie said.

• Authenticity and transparency: If we want authentic relationships with our suppliers, we need to have them with each other.

• Leaning into the kindred spiritedness that we uncover by implementing these values.

• Collaboration – As we document the importance and value of collaboration in product development, sourcing, mapping Scope 3 emissions, we begin to see a strong business case for working in this way, as all of our companies grow together in tandem.

“All of these things are words,” Jessie added. “But they are representative of the real work and action that is being done.”

Into the Desert

A year and a half ago, Tyler Wauters from Banyan Botanicals asked if I was interested in offering Wilderness Immersions for SHI. Yes, I said immediately. And so after Expo, 7 of us headed to the Anza Borrego in southern California where we camped for 3 nights.

Our time in the desert was spacious. We had a loose structure that guided our days, shared meal preparation, a walk or a plant sit with one of us offering the invitation into that plant sit. We’d return, share what we each noticed, then sometimes head out again — a longer walk, a drive to somewhere nearby, equally unhurried, before returning for meal preparation, cleaning, and conversation around the fire.

While Tyler was definitely our guide in being in the desert, we all showed up equally in creating the container of how to spend our time together. The central frame was listening to the land and to the plants. Each day, we would walk into the desert, find a plant or a series of plants and ask: What is it you would like to tell me? Then we would just listen. And then we would come back and share what we heard.

Guido Masé said that one of the most powerful take aways for him was how we all came with different intentions and experiences, but our experiences were deeply resonant and overlapping. To him that reinforced that there is something beyond him as a person, that when we can take the trappings off, we can really feel and hear what the landscape is saying.

The panel asked how we articulate what SHI is. The desert and the plants growing there asked us to listen.

What the Land Said

Ben Levine said he was struck by how the land moved through us. We can talk about place and plants all day long, he said. But speaking from a place or letting the plant speak through us is where things get really interesting.

Angella Willard mentioned that one of the questions she is bringing home is how do we continue forward with influence while preserving the sacredness that is within the ethos of SHI? “How to preserve what is sacred in a world (and an industry) that is built around bigger and bigger without any stop,” she asked. She wants to help preserve the essence, for SHI to be a full circle, that nourishes itself so that no matter the size, what it is emanating is within the natural laws of life.

Feeding the Soil

Andy talked about the tension of how to create validity in a world that demands outputs. SHI doesn’t rush to claim ownership of outputs because it recognizes the value is in the soil that creates these outputs. There is then an opportunity for SHI members to share where they have created some of those points of value out of what they’ve gained from being part of SHI, even if not an SHI thing because that is a way of demonstrating the value of this work.

“If we believe in an emergent process and that it is important,” Andy said. “We have a responsibility as a collective to feed that back into the soil so that it can grow, that soil.”

Ben added that SHI is a fractal of the industry. The questions we wrestle with in SHI — how to grow while staying true to our values, how to measure the impact of relationship-based work in a world that demands quantifiable metrics — reflect what every company faces. And so, when we are working on SHI challenges, we are also learning about and working on challenges and tensions that every company is working on.

Questions I’m Carrying

At the beginning of our time in the desert, we gathered to each set our intentions for our time together. I shared some of the questions and tensions I am holding as the founder of SHI:

• We have built a solid network of SHI members. How do we better tell the story of what we are doing?

• Who do we need to reach that we aren’t?

• How to get financial stability without compromising our strengths.

One of the most powerful things I took from our experience is the process of walking to the plants, inviting them for guidance, and listening to what was offered. That process, more than any specific steps to take, is the guidance that is staying with me as I explore these questions.

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Stephen Johnson from Fair Source Botanicals and Andy Thorton from Sylvan Ingredient Ecosystem gave a fascinating presentation on their work with the frankincense and myrrh sourcing networks at the January Monthly SHI meeting. Below are a few notes from the discussion.

Core Challenge

Stephen framed the core challenge: three stakeholder groups operating in isolation with little real communication.

1. Scientists prioritize conservation (what’s best for the trees)

2. Harvesters prioritize prosperity (what’s best for their families)

3. Companies prioritize profit (what’s viable for business)

Fair Source is working to address all three concerns while making solutions that are both “good enough” and practical enough to scale across supply chains.

Traceability Gap

Though companies believe their resins are traceable when they can trace it back to the village, but most villages pool resins from different harvest sites. There’s no record of which trees are tapped, making it impossible to assess tree health or understand impacts on specific harvesters and communities.

Stephen demonstrated their ARC GIS mapping work to establish baseline traceability by tracking individual trees.

Key Tensions

Andy identified the key tensions below, tensions that don’t just pertain to the supply networks they discussed:

• Risk vs. Impact vs. Price – What drives company decisions? What gets cut first under pressure?

• Market willingness to pay – How detailed can traceability be given the costs? If different stakeholders benefit, how should costs be shared?

• Homogeneity vs. Traceability – Terroir creates variability, but markets demand homogeneity and consistency.

• Storytelling vs. Data – Do companies actually want the data to back up their stories?

Discussion Themes

• Data security and access versus sovereignty concerns

• Cost-sharing mechanisms for this level of research

• Need for consumer education on two fronts:

  • What traceability actually means, its value, and how rare it actually is for brands to have this level of traceability.

  • Natural variability—what it means and what actually matters and how to balance that with homogeneity.

• Time horizons: Companies struggle to invest long-term. When finances tighten, companies cut these investments first, forcing constant restarts. How do we help companies understand this is about feeding the soil of the industry for long-term resilience?

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by Ann Armbrecht, SHI Founder and Director

During the 2026 SHI Learning Lab, Matt Richards, Global Supply Manager for Organic Herb Trading Company, joined me to speak about the ways being involved in the Sustainable Herbs Initiative has informed his work. Below are some of the highlights he shared.

• Community SHI offers a place to learn to be in a reciprocal exchange with others. It has been invaluable to share his ideas about what is and isn’t working in the herb industry with others who are grappling with and thinking about the same challenges and issues.

• Learning about systems It has been helpful to see the herb industry as a system and to understand different people’s perspective on that system, what they value, what is challenging, depending on their position.

• Friends. A lot of friendship. As Nate Brennan said on the Nicaragua Learning Journey, “SHI brings built in friends and built in responsibilities.”

• Plants as sentient beings Seeing the ways plants have their own existence, not just to be of use to us.

• Honesty It is so valuable to have honest conversations with everybody about how we deal with the challenges we experience.

• Decolonizing supply chains. Understanding the power dynamics and the history of the trade of plants has been invaluable as has understanding our responsibility to do things differently, especially in things like tea.

• Confidence and courage The community and conversations has helped him have confidence in the things he felt before but maybe didn’t fully trust. And this has also given him the courage to be more honest about how things are in the industry and not just go along with business as usual

• Awareness Changing the words he uses. For example, instead of using the word raw materials, something which refers to plants as dry things in a dusty warehouse, he is now trying to talk about them as plants. This subtle shift has started to change the mentality in their business. Or to speak of partners rather than suppliers.

• Shift from Compliance to Connection There is a compliance culture in sourcing, he said. And so this work with SHI has inspired him to think about how we change that so that the goal is to connect with people as you facilitate the movement of plants. That that connection is the goal, not just saying, “Well done or not so well done,” when you visit companies at the source. He now understands that his role is to facilitate the movement of plants, rather than just extract the value at each step.

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