Extraordinary Health Magazine EH Magazine VOl 34 | Page 56

NON
GMO
Project
VERIFIED
nongmoproject.org
On
the
Road
mykind Organics Herbals
by Jeffrey Brams
Creating the supply chain to launch our new line of mykind
Organics herbals was a massive undertaking. All told, the project
took us four years, and the majority of the time was spent in
two areas: first, building a robust network of organic farms to
grow the many different herbs we wanted to include in our new
line of products, and second, creating a truly organic (Certified
USDA Organic) method for extracting the necessary key active
compounds from these herbs without the use of petroleum
chemicals or GM-derived alcohols. I asked myself at the outset of
the project, “Why is this so hard? After all, these are plant-based
herbal medicinal ingredients that have been used in multiple
cultures for generations, and in some cases, a millennium. And
many of them are used regularly for culinary purposes, not just
medicinal. So, why is it so hard to find organic ingredients?”
What I quickly learned was that almost all medicinal herbs used
in dietary supplements (we generally refer these as “herbal
products”) are actually extracts. The industry-wide method
for creating many herbal extracts is through the use of harsh
chemical solvents, like hexane, which is petroleum-derived,
and ethanol coming from genetically modified corn. Because
these chemicals are not allowed to be used in a Certified Organic
product, demand for Certified Organic herbs was low. Even when
there was demand, as in the case of the culinary herb, Turmeric,
for example, the organic farms grew on a small scale. There just
wasn’t a justification to invest in expanding organic acreage
since there were no methods of organic extraction available.
Dietary supplements only required (and would pay for) cheaper
conventional cultivation.
As a result, we faced a Field Of Dreams problem. We had to
promise farmers around the globe that “if you build it” (supply
for the organic herbs) we will create a new way of extracting the
active compounds that is fully compliant with Certified Organic
standards worldwide. Together, we told them, we will create
something entirely new.
54 Vol 34 • Extraordinary Health ™
Thankfully, we have wonderful, innovative vendors and suppliers
who partnered with us in this journey. They applied their best
experts to the challenges of both building up the network of
organic farms, and creating new, reliable extraction methods that
were fully organic.
Our Farming Partners—First Stop the
Netherlands
Flash forward four years
and here I was, boarding
my flight to Amsterdam
to begin a four-day visit
to one of our farming
networks. My goal was
simple: give our long-
term farming partners
the good news that the Organic Extraction worked (without
sacrificing any of the potency created by conventional methods)
and all of the hard work was finally going to pay-off with the
launch of mykind Organics Herbals. We were finally ready to
launch the first-ever full line of USDA Organic, Non-GMO Project
Verified herbal products—17 unique formulas in all!
I started my farm tour in the small village of Jun (pronounced
like June) in the Netherlands where our young farmer, the third
generation in his family, created an entire village dedicated to
Organic, Biodynamic farming. He had persuaded his neighboring
farms, a pig farm and a dairy farm, to join him in his efforts
and together, they carved out a large tract of land naturally
separated from other neighboring farms by a barrier river. Our
farmer promised to grow organic corn to supplement the feed
of the pigs and cows. In return, he asked for a portion of their
abundant supply of manure to fertilize his fields. On our farm, he
grows healthy, beautiful Organic Echinaecea that we use in our
Elderberry Syrup and Elderberry Gummy. His vision for turning