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Eggheads is the go-to podcast for egg industry professionals who are interested in leadership and innovation in the egg world. Host Greg Schonefeld explores the evolving world of modern egg farming, from the latest in cage-free innovations and organic certifications to navigating the economics of large-scale production. Whether you're an egg producer, supplier, or involved in poultry genetics, this show provides the insights and expert discussions you need to thrive in the industry. Crack open the science, strategies, and stories behind the egg industry’s biggest challenges and opportunities.
Sandra Vijn:
Who pays for the advanced welfare and taking care of the environment? Is it the retailer? Is it the producer? Is it the consumer? Is it all of them? It's a good question.
Greg Schonefeld:
Hi, there. Welcome back to Eggheads. I'm your host, Greg Schonefeld. What does it really take to make farming sustainable beyond the labels, the fancy packaging, the buzzwords, and the marketing? What does it really look like in practice? Our guest has spent her career working at the intersection of food, sustainability and business. From growing up on a tulip farm in the Netherlands to working with major agricultural industries, she's been on a mission to rethink how we produce food. Now, she's leading the charge for a company that seeks to reimagine egg farming with transparency, regenerative practices, and a lower carbon footprint.
Sandra Vijn:
I'm Sandra Vijn, and I'm the managing director for Kipster here in the United States.
Greg Schonefeld:
Working at Kipster, Sandra takes a fundamentally different approach to egg production. Oh, and if you're unfamiliar with Kipster, Kipster is a pioneering egg producer known for producing the first carbon-neutral egg. And as you'll learn today, they're a company that doesn't fit today's typical definitions or labels. They prioritize animal welfare, but don't meet the definition of free-range. They use upcycled feed, but don't meet the definition of organic. And they're working to bring transparency to new heights even if it isn't always pretty. Kipster has gained popularity in Europe and is working to make a more sizable crack into the U.S. egg market.
Today, Sandra joins us to talk about what their approach looks like in practice and the challenges of rethinking our food system. Growing up, Sandra experienced firsthand the challenges of farming.
Sandra Vijn:
I did grow up on a really small tulip farm in the Netherlands. And because it was so small, my dad really relied on his four kids, and the neighbors and cousins to help him with the harvest. So, that really gave me an inside experience in touching the soil, agriculture. The whole community in which I grew up was in agriculture, so it really built my interest in production of food, but also other crops. But it also taught me the hard realities of farmers. You're really dependent on a lot of things out of your control, like the weather, or the cows in the field next door that break into your field and eat all your tulip bulbs. So, there is a lot of unexpected and unknown.
Greg Schonefeld:
But that experience also sparked a deep interest in food production and sustainability, specifically when it comes to the environment. Her path took her from the dairy industry, where she worked on sustainability initiatives to reduce methane and improve farming practices, to the World Wildlife Fund, where she explored large-scale solutions for sustainable food systems. But progress was slow and change across the industry often felt frustratingly incremental. Then she met Ruud, the founder of Kipster.
Sandra Vijn:
I was really intrigued by his vision and his story. He showed me that you can produce with lower impacts, but also making it economically viable and doing it in better animal welfare. He was really leading the way by showing that it can work, because many times the arguments that I heard was like, "This is all great, but who's going to pay for it and is it economically feasible?" So, it always stayed in projects and pilots, and Ruud was actually really doing it. So, when he asked if I wanted to join him when he expanded to the U.S., I was very happy to do so two and a half years ago.
Greg Schonefeld:
I understand he grew up on a farm, but then studied the chicken. And that was the beginning of his inspiration. Can you walk us through that?
Sandra Vijn:
So, actually he was a very young farmer. Together with his brother, he had a multi-million company in egg production. He's a third-generation egg producer. And early 30s, he went bankrupt, and had to take a hard financial hit and really took a step back and thought, "Wow, what is the answer here? What did I do wrong? And is there a different poultry system that may work better and what would it look like?"
So, he went on this exploratory journey and he went to an animal welfare workshop. There, he learned about the chickens actually communicating in the egg with the mom and expressing their feelings in different ways. He was just mind blown by having worked with chickens all of his life that he didn't really realize those things and he didn't actually know the chicken, what kind of animal it was, and how they live and what their instincts are.
So, he started engaging with the animal welfare communities and asked them what would an animal welfare good system look like for egg production? At the same time, he also wanted to look at the environmental footprint and found a scientist, who was working on feeding the world with the resources that we already have and freeing up croplands to feed people because the majority of cropland is going to animals right now, but there's a lot of byproducts and waste in the system that animals can eat. So, he was also fascinated by that. So, he brought them all together, and found a marketing entrepreneur, and a renewable energy guy and another farmer. Together, they came up with Kipster. They really designed the house around what the chickens need, and what the environmental impacts would be and also in a most transparent way, so that the consumers can actually see how their food was produced.
Greg Schonefeld:
Can you tell us what sustainability means to you? That's just a word that gets thrown around a lot and I'd like to hear what it means to you. It sounded like you just naturally gravitated to that as you grew your career here in the U.S. It meant something to you and you said it wasn't going fast enough.
Sandra Vijn:
Yeah, that's a good question. I've been thinking about that question for many years and I don't know the answer, but what it means to me is that it's living in balance with what the earth can handle. So, how do you take things from the earth, but give it back at the same time, so not overusing it and also not over harming it. So, don't clear just fast amounts of land if you don't know what impacts that's going to have on the whole ecosystem that support it. The ecosystem provides services like fresh water, soil health, habitat for animals, many things that we don't seem to really appreciate and understand the importance of it.
That's where I'm worried, we are taking, taking, taking, but we have a finite planet. The resources are finite. When is it out of balance? To me, looking at the news every day, it seems very much out of balance right now. We are growing as a population and we become more and more affluent. We want many more things. So, at one point you'll have to look at what can we give, and what are we taking and how do we bring it back together? It's very complicated. There's so many factors, but I do feel we need to speed up because we don't have that much more time.
Greg Schonefeld:
When we talk about sustainability and agriculture, regenerative farming often comes to mind, restoring soil health, improving biodiversity and creating more resilient farming systems. While not a full cycle regenerative farming operation today, Kipster has taken creative steps to reduce waste in our food system, which is part of their equation for creating a carbon-neutral egg.
Sandra Vijn:
I really appreciate the regenerative discussion that is out in the fields in sustainability, but what I still miss in that conversation is the role of circularity. When you look at agriculture right now in the U.S., but also globally, 70% of land is used to feed animals. So, a lot of focus is on growing crops for them, regeneratively growing corn and soy, but then I think we lose sight of the broader picture. Is this the right use of the lands that we have as land is finite? So, maybe there's a better efficient way in taking the byproducts from the food system and a lot of waste that is already in the system. We waste like one third of our food right now. Animals can perfectly turn that into valuable protein for people.
Of course, there will always be grasslands that cannot be cropped, and we shouldn't crop because the soil is not suited for that. You can put dairy animals on there, cows, goat, sheep. And then really feed the animals that remain with the byproducts. And then, of course, you can use the fertilizer to fertilize the fields from the animal manure, but also using more of the animals to feed people. Now, for example, layer hens are not being used to feed people while it's a really good source of protein, in the U.S. that's the case at least. In Europe, they still do consume the hens, but there's much more opportunity to really look at how can we get the most out of the food system right now.
Greg Schonefeld:
On the regenerative front, one thing you mentioned is, there's not the crop farming today, or crop product that would make it fully regenerative. Do you have plans to do that kind of thing in the future?
Sandra Vijn:
Yeah. We would love to get our hands on regeneratively grown ingredients for our chickens and the byproducts of that, the same as organic. Right now, we are not organic because we can't guarantee that our feed ingredients are from organic crops and farms. We would love to partner with people who grow regeneratively, so that we can also say that our ingredients are regenerative. But by now, we're not there yet.
Greg Schonefeld:
Rather than growing crops specifically for feed, Kipster takes a different approach sourcing byproducts from the food system like wheat husks and flour remnants, which would otherwise go to waste. By upcycling these ingredients into safe, nutritious feed for their hens, Kipster reduces reliance on farmland and cuts the carbon footprint of their eggs by 70%. But while Kipster has made major strides in sustainability. The question remains, could regenerative practices play a bigger role in their future?
The other thing you've mentioned is the importance of transparency. Can you talk about what transparency means when it comes to agriculture?
Sandra Vijn:
So, we find it very important that people understand where their food comes from, how it's made, the story behind it. So, what we do is, we have a visitor center where people can come. It's open daily. People can just walk up and see the windows that peek into the farm, so they can see the chickens. We also have informational boards, so people can learn about the chicken, how old they are when they come to the farm, how old they are when they leave, what happens to them when they leave, what they eat.
The farm is in Indiana, so we know a lot of people wouldn't be able to come. We also have live-streaming from the farm on our YouTube channel, so people can tune in and see the chickens sleep at night, which is really cute. They're all together in the system, sleeping. And then during the day they can see the indoor garden. We have a big indoor garden where they can roam around. We also post about the chickens on our social media, about what happens at the farm and when the chickens move out, when the chickens move in, how old they are.
I think a lot of people don't realize that laying an egg is actually really work. They have to produce an egg every day, and so that takes a lot of toll on their bodies. So, after 90 weeks they actually don't look that pretty. They've lost a lot of feathers, and so they wonder what's going on, but that's part of eating an egg too.
Greg Schonefeld:
That's really interesting because, I guess, for me that gets into the disconnect with farming today. I mean, a stat that we touched on in earlier episodes is that only 2% of the American public today is really connected to farming, where that number used to be maybe 30% a hundred years ago. So, that kind of thing is a surprise. And it really gets into the transparency you're talking about, because I know one thing you shared is, to share the good and the bad. At least in the short term, do you see that as somewhat of a risk, but a necessity?
Sandra Vijn:
It may be a risk, but we feel we have that responsibility to show people the reality, so that they understand where the food comes from. A lot of marketing nowadays is just only half of the story. Of course, most marketing wants to give people a good impression of the food. We believe that a lot of people are interested in honesty, transparency, and understanding how the chickens live. We do get a lot of appreciation for that, so we want to keep doing that, even if it's a risk of turning some people away. But we do tell the whole story and hope people appreciate it.
Greg Schonefeld:
Have you been able to see firsthand, maybe someone sees that and they're surprised or disappointed, but then they continue to go through your facility, and learn and they maybe can come out the other side feeling like, "Wow, I was surprised, but now I understand more. And man, I really feel clear about what it's really like"?
Sandra Vijn:
Yeah. That's the goal that people can choose, do you want to continue eating eggs when you know all of this and how do you want to continue eating eggs? Do you want to choose more mindfully? Yeah, we've seen some people go through that process, including new employees like myself. For me, it was a learning experience too.
Greg Schonefeld:
That's great. No, but that is real transparency. I mean, I almost think of it as establishing a relationship with the consumer. I think of in any relationship, if it's not built on transparency, if you're not working through the difficult issues, you're never going to get where you need to get with the relationship. The thought coming through my mind is that's what you're doing here through transparency with the consumer.
Sandra Vijn:
Yeah.
Greg Schonefeld:
Sustainability and animal welfare often come at a cost, but who actually pays for it and who should pay for it? If a farmer's trying to raise the bar on farming practices, there's obviously a cost associated with that. How can you make it all work from an economic perspective? Kipster's working to keep their eggs competitively priced between conventional and organic options, but balancing their beliefs and affordability isn't always easy.
Sandra Vijn:
So, currently, the retail price is below organic, and pasture-raised, free-range. So, it's higher than conventional and regular cage-free. So, we're in that between range right now at Kroger-owned stores. Of course, before we build and get agreement with partners, we need to get the pricing right, but we are able to bring the egg to market at a competitive price even though we take a lot of steps to look at animal welfare and sustainability. We actually make it work. The feed price is important, the price of building the facility, the animal welfare, but it's all incorporated into the price.
Sometimes I feel like the products that you see in the market don't always incorporate the real price of the product. The externalities that come with food production, like water use, greenhouse gas emissions, land conversion, deforestation, those are currently named and labeled as externalities, which are not always in the price that consumers pay. But then you can think and see who is going to pay that price, because at one point somebody's got to pay for that. Is it the farmer? Is it the future generation who has to pay that price for the cheap products that we have now, or relatively cheap products? We are really trying to incorporate those, internalize it through the carbon offsetting, through the upcycled feed, through really looking at the circularity. And of course, we're not perfect. We are not quite completely internalizing everything, but I do feel that's the way to go for any business right now in resource scarcity that we're facing and the climate crisis.
Greg Schonefeld:
When you're talking about price in terms of farming practices, the question is really who pays for it? I guess, especially when you're saying that, you're referring to the externalities. That's where the big question of who pays for it comes in.
Sandra Vijn:
Who pays for the advanced welfare and taking care of the environment? Is it the retailer? Is it the producer? Is it the consumer? Is it all of them? It's a good question.
Greg Schonefeld:
So, if eggs are brought to market and there's some of these externalities that are hidden costs, and then there's a shelf price of eggs, and then there's these other practices that work to reduce the impact on those externalities, but there's a higher shelf price, how can that all work? I mean, I guess, what role does the consumer play in that? And what do we need to do with the consumer?
Sandra Vijn:
That's also a very good question, because we also understand that our eggs may be more expensive than what people can fit into budgets. But then we are also thinking that people do consume a lot of animal protein at the moment, way more than it's recommended by nutritional guidelines. It's almost double the amount. In our vision and in our point of view, we would recommend that people eat actually less animal protein and less eggs, but buy better products that are better for the environment and animals. And if we use the circularity system that we are using at Kipster, if that could be applied across livestock operations and other food systems globally, then people would still be able to eat 10 to 20 grams of animal protein a day. So, that would be an egg and a glass of milk. So, we're not saying stop eating eggs and stop eating all animal products, but a little bit less would be better for the planet.
Greg Schonefeld:
The organic label is one of the most recognizable certifications in food, but it doesn't always tell the full story. For Kipster, prioritizing sustainability means using upcycled feed, turning food byproducts into high quality nutrition for their hens. But because those ingredients aren't certified organic, neither are Kipster's eggs. Rather than making small changes to just qualify for a label, Kipster's sticking to its core mission, doing what they believe is best for animal welfare in the environment, even if it means forging their own path in the marketplace.
I guess, one thing interesting to me is, I mean, you could take an approach, "Oh, well, we're just going to make the tweaks that get the labels that sell." But you're taking an approach, "We're going to do the things we believe in, and then we've just got to find a way to get people to see what we see."
Sandra Vijn:
Yep. Some will call us crazy, but that's our mission, that's our vision. That's why we exist.
Greg Schonefeld:
Kipster launched in the Netherlands in 2017, where regenerative farming and animal welfare were already part of the conversation, but expanding to the U.S. meant adapting to a different market. Rather than owning their farms, Kipster partnered with MPS Egg Farms in Indiana to operate their system of farming, ensuring their standards while focusing on branding and consumer engagement. But in a country where labels like organic, pasture-raised and cage-free dominate the supermarket shelves, Kipster doesn't fit neatly into any category, making education a key challenge as they carve out their place in the market.
Sandra Vijn:
So, in Europe, especially in the Netherlands, this whole circularity concept has been quite part of the discussions around food systems, agriculture. It was even included in some of the work of the Ministry of Agriculture in the Netherlands. Cages didn't exist anymore in the Netherlands, so people were more used to cage-free specialty eggs and also the whole environmental story. In the U.S. I think it's less a clear story. People don't know yet what to make of us I think, because there's pasture-raised, free-range, organic and then Kipster. So, we are cage-free because our outside area is not big enough to meet free-range. So, we can't call ourselves free-range from the certifications, but we do weigh more than just being cage-free. We have this big indoor garden with skylights, so chickens have daylights the whole day. They have a lot of enrichment. We built fake trees for them, so they can hide. We have packing blocks.
There's a lot of things that we take care of that don't fit any boxes right now that any of the certifications have. So, we're kind of an odd animal that way. So, there's way more education to be done in the U.S. than what we've done in the Netherlands. We are two years old now, but we do... It takes five years to really build a brand and we recently engaged some agencies to help us get the word out on social media, because it is a different culture, it's a different context, and we need to really communicate in the way that Americans resonate with, which is completely different than a Dutch audience.
Greg Schonefeld:
By the way, I have seen pictures of the building online. It's really cool, really distinct. I think unique. If you were just to see a picture of it or drive by it, I don't think you would think it's an agriculture building. It's got a very distinct look. And then the pasture-raised in any of the different categories that allow birds to go outside, this one also has... I mean, I call it a sunroom just based on the picture. I don't know what you call it, but there is a room where it's just open space, but the light can come in from overhead. So, that's a really unique feature. I respect that it's like you've got this system that you believe in.
It sounds like in Europe, Kipster was able to kind of attach itself to an existing story, and then you build the right thing and it really fits in. And here, in the U.S., you've got to create the story yourself almost. Would you go that far to say that that's where you are today?
Sandra Vijn:
That's where we are today. We do this not alone. We have support from animal welfare NGOs, who appreciate what we do. Also, some consumers, who are immediately emailing us like, "Hey, I couldn't find your package on the store on the shelf this week. Where are you?" So, we are starting to build a good foundation of people to help us. Also, we're not perfect yet. So, we work with them to also identify, the animal welfare organizations and environmental NGOs like, "Hey, what can we do better on the feed side, on the animal welfare side?", because it's not an end all. It's still a work in progress. And like I said earlier, we don't have the right key yet to true sustainability.
Greg Schonefeld:
You mentioned it's a five-year journey at least to build a brand. I mean, how do you really get the movement you're looking for here in the U.S.? Is it just a function of time, or just keep doing those things and hope it leads to the right thing? Or is there some kind of magic thing you can do here?
Sandra Vijn:
I don't have that magic bullet yet. It is really building that story, and bringing people along and breaking through the noise. There's a lot of noise on regenerative. Like I said, people need to understand what we do because it's very complex, the whole system that we have. I think it's a little bit of everything. We would love to expand and build out our farm with others to reach more people. Hopefully, that will also be appreciated by those companies who've set carbon goals, who've set animal welfare goals that we can work together to help them. So, there's I think a lot of different ways in which will be doing that going forward.
One of the areas that we're excited about is keep working to improve our feed over the next few years, but also we are going to be working with Hendrix Genetics and Respeggt to implement the in-ovo sexing technology sometime this year to identify the males in the egg. So, that's another thing that we are going to do to meet our commitments to the no-killing of the roosters when they are born. We used to raise them and we raised them in the Netherlands, but here we have not been able to pull that off because there's no infrastructure currently. So, the in-ovo is our second-best option to meet our commitment there. So, those are some other things that we'll be working on going forward.
Greg Schonefeld:
Kipster isn't just rethinking how eggs are produced. They're defying almost every label on American shelves today. Rather than fitting their beliefs into pre-existing labels that occupy a space in consumer's minds and are proven to garner a premium price, they're forging their own path based on their own beliefs when it comes to animal welfare and environmental sustainability. That's not light work.
In our fifth episode, we learned from Jason Jones, the founding president of Vital Farms, that Vital Farms set out to define a new category. He shared that at that time, free-range was known in the marketplace, but they wanted to go beyond it, leading them to develop a standard for what it means to be pasture-raised. As we all know today, pasture-raised has become mainstream and Vital Farms has clearly seen the fruits of their conviction as they've exploded into a brand worth 1.4 billion.
From upcycled feed to carbon-neutral farming, Sandra and her team are proving that a different model is possible, but making changes at scale isn't easy. It requires not only reworking the way farms operate, but also reshaping consumer expectations, navigating regulatory landscapes and convincing major retailers to take a chance on something new. It's a bold approach, but one that could have a lasting impact, not just for eggs, but for the way we think about food systems as a whole.
I want to thank Sandra for sharing the Kipster story and offering her honest insights on sustainability and the challenges of scaling a new model in the egg industry. If you found this conversation valuable, be sure to subscribe to Eggheads for more in-depth discussions on the forces shaping agriculture. Also, if you have thoughts, data, or insights you'd like to share with us, please reach out. We'd love to hear from you. I'm Greg Schonefeld. Thanks for listening to Eggheads. See you next time.
And Sandra, I do have to ask, how do you like your eggs?
Sandra Vijn:
Ha. I knew that you were kind of asked that. I don't eat eggs, but my kids do.
Greg Schonefeld:
Oh.
Sandra Vijn:
So, whenever I go to Indiana to the farm, we don't have the eggs in the area where I live, so I usually bring them back on the plane. And then I do make them for them. But yeah, my daughters eat eggs every day. We have our own little terms, like fluffy pillows, scrambled eggs and flat eggs, sunny side up. So, ever since they were little, they have their own little code words for what egg they want. So, eggs are a big part of our household.
Greg Schonefeld:
Oh, good. And you admitted that you don't eat eggs, so full transparency.
Sandra Vijn:
Full transparency.
Greg Schonefeld:
Yeah. Good.