Building a New Agricultural Value Chain

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Adding a new crop to the farm is complicated enough when markets exist, but imagine trying to build an entire new value chain from scratch. That’s what the team at Stony Creek Colors are trying to do in order to create a market for indigo. The Nature Conservancy’s Renée Vassilos is an investor in the company.

Vassilos… “This is a company coming out of Nashville. A brilliant woman who has started this company, um, actually built the entire demand side of the equation for indigo as a natural dye. And she's been working from seed genetics all the way through the dry leaf extraction technology to introduce a profitable soil health building, rotational crop for farmers.”

Vassilos says the acreage for indigo will likely remain small, but this ambitious undertaking could serve as a model for building other value chains that support sustainable agriculture.

Vassilos.. “Everyone talks about introducing rotations. Well, the reality of that is it is an enormous undertaking because of the post-harvest space. And we saw that what Sarah Bellos was that Stony Creek Colors had developed was in fact, that entire system from the seed genetics all the way through the demand. So drop in replacement for a synthetic indigo dye in factories in China for the jeans that everybody is wearing.”

Learn more at www.stonycreekcolors.com.