USD Alum Runs Organic Farm, Opens Organic Foods Store

In early 2010, Angela Jackson, '06 M.S., opened a new storefront in downtown Vermillion for her organic foods business, Prairie Sun Organics. There, you'll find everything from farm-fresh organic vegetables and dairy products to a variety of grass-fed organic meats. We recently caught up with Jackson, who explained that the storefront is just the latest component of her thriving business, and ongoing interest in organic foods. She also spoke with us about what it takes to operate an organic farm, and why our health could benefit from choosing a diet rich in organic foods.

How did you get started with the organic foods business?
Prairie Sun Organics incorporated in January 2007. We had very humble beginnings; we started with beef, working with two or three producers, buying their cattle, processing it and putting it under our private label program and selling it to Hy-Vee and Jones’s Food Center here in Vermillion. That wasn’t enough income. So while I was building the program, I went on to get special education in organic inspection and auditing. Even up until today, I’m still doing that. We’re still a company that is growing, and I still have the off-farm job.

In 2009, we added the farm. We started with a five-acre operation where we just had vegetables and chickens, and then we ended up expanding at the end of 2009 to a twenty-acre farm. Subsequently, my other work in organics has also grown—and it’s grown exponentially. Not only has there been growth from a regulatory standpoint, but there’s also been growth in demand for organic goods. In 2010, we decided to open up this storefront so that we could hire employees and have more of a presence in the community.

When we talk about the word “organic” what does that mean to you?
The word “organic” is a word that indicates a system or method of production that is as close to nature as possible. Any food that is pure and unadulterated from nature, before it gets contaminated, is organic. However, if you do something to that plant or organic material to make it inorganic—applying a prohibited substance or using genetically-engineered seeds—then you have something that we consider non organic. So an organic product in its purest sense is something that is pure, unadulterated, totally natural and not tainted by synthetic chemicals or manipulations of its genes.

Why is organic better?
There are three main areas of benefit: environmental, health and economic. Let’s talk about the economic benefits first. Producing an organic product is very labor intensive and requires an immense amount of expertise, but if people know how to do it right, it can be very profitable. Environmentally, it’s much more sustainable than the current way we’re farming. If you see what’s happening around the world, the way we’re strip-farming the land, there’s so much soil erosion and other types of damage being done. Governments around the world are starting to take notice. For example, some places that are seeing success with organic farming, like Thailand, are being designated as “biospheres.” Inside those biospheres, you see a much healthier and more robust ecosystem, and the people who live inside them are much healthier as well. With organics, you’re reducing chemical runoff in the water, you’re reducing pesticide usage. That brings us to the health aspect. There was recently a report published by the CDC that drew a link between neurological disorders like ADHD and pesticide exposure—especially in fruits. There has even been some discussion about recommending that children under eight years of age eat only organic fruits and drink organic milk. People have to realize that we’re killing ourselves with chemically tainted food. We want to educate people about this.

How’s business been so far?
It's been very good, actually. We partnered with the Vermillion Area Chamber of Commerce and had a nice open house. People come in and they’re always thanking me for being here. They come in every week, and they may not buy a lot, but they buy enough because they want me to stay in business. They don’t want me to leave. So they have a commitment to us and to healthy foods.

This last year, I couldn’t believe the number of students who came in. They were so glad we could offer these products, even through the winter, because it’s difficult to get local organic food at that time of year. The farmers’ markets are all closed. We like to think of ourselves as a year-round farmers’ market, so we hold back some of our product so that we can offer it throughout the year. 

In place of pesticides and other chemicals, what does it take to grow organic vegetables effectively?
Thanks to Mother Nature, we have biological controls for these things. So instead of working against Mother Nature, we work with her. We use companion plantings and host plants to attract bugs away from vegetables. We also apply non-toxic things like neem oil that don’t hurt the plants but repel the bad bugs. We sometimes use predatory insects like certain types of wasps that will actually go in and annihilate the pests. For weed control, we’ve only found two things that work: manual weed pulling and a backpack flamer. It’s like a little torch we use to go around and burn the weeds down. The bugs are always going to be a battle, but a healthy soil goes a long way toward growing a healthy plant. That’s your first line of defense.

Let’s talk about pricing—organics can be somewhat more expensive than other options, right?
It’s all over the board. With meat and milk, it can be about 50-100% more. However, we bring a product to market that is not quite that high. We’re about 30-40% over market and we keep our prices low so that middle-income families can afford to buy organic. And those people who haven’t tried organic before get the opportunity to come in and try it. If they like it, they come back. That’s what we’re really hoping to be able to do—bring prices down low enough so that the average family can afford to eat this way.

What are some of your most popular items?
Our organic ground beef is our best selling product. And I have to say that we sell so much of it that we can hardly keep it in stock. It is fantastic. It’s lean, and it tastes good. People who buy it never go back to regular ground beef; it’s that good. You don’t have to lather it up with condiments. It actually has flavor. Our motto is “Capture the Flavor,” because that’s what it’s about. Organic foods taste good. A strawberry tastes like a strawberry. Beef tastes like beef. The milk is rich and creamy. It tastes like food.

I visit Europe fairly often, and you would not believe the difference in the taste of the food over there. Everything has a regional flavor, and once you’ve been over there, when you come back to the United States, everything tastes like cardboard. Over here, we want everything to have a consistent shape, color and flavor. Well, that’s not how food is really made. People have to realize, when they buy our products, like a rib eye, they can be different sizes, thicknesses. It may even taste different from one animal to the next depending on what grasses that animals was on before it was harvested. We preserve that. We don’t try to fix that. We encourage people to recognize that.

Another thing we want people to know is that organic farming was founded on humane treatment of animals. These animals come from the most beautiful ranches in South Dakota. They are given the best of everything. They’re treated with love and respect and they’re happy all the way through. I think when you do that, you have a higher quality product because the animals are treated so well all the way through the system that when they’re processed they’re not full of adrenaline and stress hormones that makes the meat tough and poor tasting.

What are one or two ways your USD experience helped to prepare you for what you’re doing today?
I have to say that Dr. Larry Bright at the School of Education was a major influence. He was my advisor and he helped open my eyes to so many different things. True story: when I had my bachelor’s degree, I was working for a company here in town and one of the things I was constantly being cited for was a lack of leadership skills. I was so frustrated with that fact that I decided I was going to overcome that deficiency. I was going to go to USD and use those lessons and experiences to help me be a better leader. I wanted to be an executive director of a non-profit. So here I am today, an executive director or a quasi-for-profit. I’ve used all of those tools from my experiences at USD. I look back and, for the money I spent, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere else.

Additionally, I recently started by Ph.D. program at USD in political science, with an emphasis in organizational leadership. I want to continue working in environmental policy and regulatory issues.

You have this location here in Vermillion. Where else can we buy Prairie Sun Organics products?
Yes, we have five locations in Sioux Falls, three locations in Sioux City and in Yankton and in Vermillion you can buy products here and at Jones’s.

What are your plans for the future of Prairie Sun Organics?
We are expanding. We’re planning to move our farm, which is currently in Iowa, all the way up to Vermillion, along with our production site. We also want to put a processing center in Vermillion as well. We want to move everything up here—the farm, the production site and processing center—because we want to centralize our operations, from production to distribution. We're working on a new website where people will be able to place orders over web with Visa and Mastercard. Then this winter, we’re looking at weekly delivery services for people who can’t get out of their homes.

Visit the official website of Priairie Sun Organics for more information.