PORTLAND, Ore. — After two years of intensive testing and sampling, Laughing Planet Café is introducing "smart beans" into its seven Oregon restaurants. The new beans, Food Alliance certified and grown in Central Washington using "no-till" farming methods, will replace the current pinto and black beans used in menu items.
Laughing Planet Café collaborated with Truitt Bros., a Salem, Ore., food processor and industry-leading Food Alliance-certified operation, to source and test the new beans, and ensure that the dry pintos have been raised and processed in a sustainable manner. Later this month, Laughing Planet will also partner with Truitt for their black bean supply.
"These beans represent a significant leap forward for bean-kind and a vast improvement over conventional products," said Richard Satnick, Laughing Planet Café’s founder and chief burrito officer. "By using locally produced beans rather than those from the Midwest, we can significantly reduce our restaurant’s environmental footprint. Even more importantly, the beans are grown using farming methods that conserve soil and reduce the need for fossil fuel-powered interventions."
No-till farming is a method of planting seeds directly in the rubble of previous crops, without having to till the soil and disrupt the crucial layer of topsoil known as the rhyzosphere. This soil zone contains billions of organisms per square inch that account for the soil’s productivity and, arguably, the aesthetic and nutritional outcome of plant foods grown in it. By utilizing a no-till method, farmers can actually build healthier soil over time while delivering higher quality products.
"No-till agriculture is one of the more important tools currently available to slow down the loss of our country’s most valuable agricultural commodity – quality soil," said Peter Truitt, president of Truitt Bros. "By working the entire supply chain – farm to café – we can demonstrate that you can produce a superior product while also ensuring that farmland is being protected and enhanced."
