♪ ♪ AMANDA ANDERSON: Hi, my name is Amanda Anderson and for as long as I can remember, my family in rural Minnesota has gotten together for an annual pheasant hunt and reunion.

DOUG OLSEN: Well, I believe it started back when my dad was young.

The family would get together and pheasant hunt and then it grew and just escalated.

(upbeat music) ANDERSON: Dougie is my uncle and a quintessential Minnesota meat eater.

Somehow I ended up a vegetarian, the only one in the family.

Do you have any friends that are vegetarian?

ANNA: No.

- ABIGAIL: No.

ANDERSON: Do you know any vegetarians besides me?

No.

ANDERSON: Would you ever consider not eating meat and eating a plant-based version of venison?

I don't think I could do that.

ANDERSON: Why not?

Because everything I eat has, like, meat.

(upbeat music) ANDERSON: I have to admit, each year we gather together, I do wonder if my meatless lifestyle will ever become more mainstream.

(upbeat music) So I've set out on a quest across Minnesota to see the impacts of alternative meats and changes in farming and more that might surprise my meat eating family.

(upbeat music) Is there a food revolution that's starting right here in Dawson, in Minnesota's heartland?

(upbeat music) TINA MCDUFFIE: Funding for "Local USA" is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation, and by Wyncote Foundation.

Funding for "Compass" is provided by the McKnight Foundation, the Otto Bremer Trust, and by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

(bright music) ANDERSON: Welcome to Dawson, Minnesota, an agricultural town located in rural southwest Minnesota.

Population about 1,500.

Affectionately known as Gnome Town to locals, these gnomes over here represent the founders of Dawson Mills, the company that was the originator of Dawson's signature smell.

BERNICE OELLIEN: The biggest thing for anybody coming in was like, you know, there was a smell.

Well, as one person said, it's kind of like a pig yard, but I don't agree because I try to tell everybody it's the smell of money.

There is a hint of money, but the main smell, it's soybeans.

You see, Dawson, Minnesota has played an important role in soybean processing and in the development of plant-based alternative meat options.

Which, as you may know, are having a moment.

[Reporter] Plant-based meat, or fake meat, as some might call it, is wildly popular.

- It's so good.

But is this plant-based approach really all that new?

Nadia Bernstein is a historian of food technology.

NADIA BERNSTEIN: So vegetarianism and diets that avoid flesh or certain kinds of meat have been around since antiquity.

And there's a lot of reasons for vegetarian diets.

Spiritual, ethical, religious, concerns about health, that have existed through history.

ANDERSON: America's history with plant-based proteins starts around the time of Henry Ford in the early 20th century.

Ford was a vegetarian and a huge backer of soy anything.

Like check out his soy suit.

In the 1940s, Ford's food scientist, Robert Boyer, developed a way to make a fiber spun soy protein product that was initially used for textile fibers, like the suit.

And then to make meat substitutes.

BERNSTEIN: Boyer patented his technology for protein skinning for food.

Another entity that licensed this patent was General Mills.

ANDERSON: At the same time, over in Dawson, four forward thinking business people started talking about the business potential of soybean processing.

They met for coffee in the local cafe and decided.

DAVID CRAIGMILE: Maybe they should look into establishing some kind of a processing plant here.

It was fraught with challenges all the way through.

ANDERSON: The businessmen were convinced that soybeans would take off.

This was the start of Dawson Mills, which would become one of the largest employers in town.

Soon, Dawson became home to a soybean days festival.

This pancake flipping contraption was arguably as hot as the pancakes themselves.

OELLIEN: The grills had eight different plates on them, like a carousel.

The first one would put the batter on and would go around and they would flip 'em as they went.

And it brought in people from all over the state to see this.

ANDERSON: Bernice worked her way into the trade room, where they would buy and sell soybeans.

That's her right there.

So it looks like it's a room full of men and you.

- It was.

(laughs) Dawson Mills also bought the rights from General Mills for protein spinning.

This meant a bigger plant.

Dawson Mills was located in the heart of town and expansion was nearly impossible.

So they headed east, like one and a half miles east.

OELLIEN: This was a sketch of the plans.

ANDERSON: So this would've been 1970s .

.

.

- Seven.

- 1977.

Obviously, look at those pants.

(Bernice and Amanda laugh) LEE GUNDERSON: And I mean there was a lot of talk about plant-based protein back in those days.

They must have saw this coming and thought it's worth the try.

You know, risk and reward.

ANDERSON: Dawson Mills stuck with it, trying to market the meatless meat.

GUNDERSON: The ham and the chicken was pretty good.

It worked great in salads.

The beef was a little, you know, maybe if you used it, I'm not sure what.

That's his Minnesota nice way of saying people didn't like it.

OELLIEN: And I think, maybe, if we could have exposed people more to how to use it and what was really involved, it would've been better.

But that's hindsight.

You just don't know.

ANDERSON: By May of 1981, Dawson's meatless meat dreams had come to an end.

But what's old is new again.

(upbeat music) [Reporter] If you haven't yet heard of PURIS, you will.

NICOLE ATCHISON: Our company is known for pea protein.

[Reporter] The ag tech company based in Minneapolis was just named by Fast Company as one of the world's most innovative companies of 2021.

- And just like that, the facility in the field has new tenants.

The challenge PURIS sees for the future of food is creating a product that's plant-based, nutritional, and maybe most importantly, tastes good.

ATCHISON: When my parents founded the business back in 1985, my dad said that we were gonna create a plant-based food company.

So his belief was that if people are gonna eat plants, then the plants need to taste good.

And so at a very young age, my brother and I, we really had to pull our weight.

And so we grew up cross pollinating plants to make new varieties.

We did that all the way through college.

My dad, we were from southern Iowa, he planted one of his test plots in Ames in the town I went to school in so that I could still do the crossing that summer.

Definitely a dad power move.

PURIS's special sauce has been the yellow field pea.

MATT KARELS: So this is our splits, receiving and storage.

ANDERSON: You've heard of split pea soup, yeah?

KARELS: And you take that outer shell off and it falls into two pieces, right?

So we call those splits.

And what we receive here in Dawson is cleaned yellow split peas.

Once here, we grind them up into a flour, put it into a solution, and then we do a bunch of separations after that.

But why peas?

KARELS: A pea consists about 20 to 25% protein.

ANDERSON: And that's higher than a lot of other legumes, or?

KARELS: Well soy actually has a higher protein content, but you get the allergens that come along with that.

And another thing about pea protein that makes it a little more attractive is taste and texture.

Our dad really challenged our team to say, you know, if we can make pea protein taste just as good as any other proteins on the market, then we might have something ANDERSON: PURIS coming to town seems to be good news all around.

But Minnesota is really meat and potatoes country.

Remember my family hunting?

With one of the biggest plant protein facilities in their backyard, will Dawsonians and people in the region consider making plant-based eating part of their diets?

That's a question that can only be answered by heading to the one place in town that's serving plant-based burgers.

The Rusty Duck.

Co-owner Tom Beals remembers what it was like when PURIS first moved to town.

TOM BEALS: Tons of contractors.

It would be nuts in here.

Our place was full of steelworkers, electricians, you name it.

They were, yeah.

ANDERSON: Yeah.

Something new was coming to town and to the Rusty Duck menu came something Tom never could have imagined.

CHEF: Oh, we got a veggie burger.

ANDERSON: Veggie burgers!

BEALS: We put it on the menu after PURIS had started here.

I pretty much just decided it was a good business decision to support them and what they were doing and put it on the menu.

And if people wanted it, were asking for it anyway.

ANDERSON: Mm-hmm.

- Then let's roll with it.

(upbeat music) ANDERSON: But despite putting a veggie burger on the menu, Tom hasn't tried one.

He agreed to a taste test, along with Dawson's mayor, Randy Tensen.

Will they be able to tell the difference?

I wonder.

CHEF: Put both burgers on the char boiler, cooked them both exactly the same.

And I put different colored picks in them to be able to tell the difference between the two.

RANDY TENSEN: I'm pretty sure which one is which.

ANDERSON: Interesting.

Just facial expression we have here.

TENSEN: That's a very good tasting burger.

This is the beef.

This is all plant and this one is really good.

ANDERSON: What do you think, Tom?

BEALS: They're both very good.

I think I would guess what one is the beef and what one is the veggie burger, yep.

CHEF: That is the real meat and that's the plant based.

ANDERSON: So you had it right.

CHEF: Yep, and that's the plant based and that's the real meat.

ANDERSON: So you both had it.

BEALS: Yep.

Both had it right.

Yep.

TENSEN: I was expecting it to have a taste that was pretty bland.

BEALS: And I even think the texture is quite amazingly similar.

TENSEN: Oh it is.

BEALS: It's very, I mean.

ANDERSON: So is this the first veggie burger either of you have ever eaten?

- Yep.

- Yep.

- I'm so glad I could be here for this moment.

ANDERSON: Okay, so if taste was the last frontier, does that mean everyone here in Dawson is up for eating plant-based?

It's time for another field trip.

(upbeat music) We're here at Tim's Food Pride and it's a local grocery store in Dawson.

I was curious to see about what types of plant-based foods that they have here.

So we're gonna go back to the dairy section to check it out.

So I see here we have vegan veggie burger, veggie burger, Morningstar.

These are Bocas.

So it looks like those are our options for plant-based protein.

(upbeat music) How have you noticed what people are buying or what people are coming to the grocery store and what they're eating?

How have you noticed, if at all, that change?

Well, I noticed that the ladies that come and shop and have families and young children are buying a lot of produce and not so much as meat.

ANDERSON: You've noticed more of the plant-based burgers being available.

Yes.

Do you think people are eating 'em though?

You know, I don't know.

ANDERSON: This.

This is what we're here to figure out.

Walking through Tim's Food Pride, people know PURIS and people know there are plant-based options now that are out there.

AMBER BOYENS: When we think about an average plate, half of our plates, at least, should be coming from plant-based foods, if not three quarters of our plate.

ANDERSON: Amber Boyens is a local nutritionist and has helped many people in this area navigate dietary change.

But Amber tells me the switch to a plant-based lifestyle is hard for most locals she knows.

BOYENS: Food is so deeply rooted in who we are.

It's rooted in our memories, in our culture, in our traditions, in our family, in our lifestyle.

So when we make changes to food, it can feel very personal.

What do you guys think about trying a hot dog or a hamburger or chicken nuggets that are made from beans or peas?

KID: My dad ate a crocodile before.

Just a little piece.

BOYENS: Plant-based foods in general are so full of flavor, but they're intimidating.

I mean, I find eating crocodile a little more intimidating than plants, but people change their diets for a number of reasons.

Health, budget, ethics, the environment, enjoyment.

Kelli Fernholz is the teacher of this preschool class in Madison, a town next to Dawson, that Amber occasionally comes to talk to.

(upbeat music) KELLI FERNHOLZ: Like fruits and vegetables have always come naturally, but the plant-based protein is the harder part.

ANDERSON: Traditionally, plant-based has meant foods like vegetables, beans, and tofu.

But now companies in this plant-based space, like PURIS, are hoping the term makes consumers think of things like pea protein sausage and soy protein chicken, something that people with busy lifestyles like Kelly can just throw in the microwave.

But Kelli isn't so sure about some of these new alt-meat options.

FERNHOLZ: I just would rather just go with like a real food.

Like I'm just gonna eat the salad.

Real food.

ANDERSON: And depending on an individual's dietary needs, meat alternatives aren't always healthier.

BOYENS: Plant-based doesn't necessarily mean healthy in every aspect of it.

ANDERSON: These plant-based meat alternatives are more about adding variety.

BOYENS: So if we're gonna introduce a plant-based burger, it's still a burger.

And maybe you don't change any other element to the meal, but you change what that burger is made of.

ANDERSON: Or you change what the cookie is made of.

BOYENS: Who's heard of a chickpea before?

Have you eaten chickpeas?

Do you like them?

Yes!

FERNHOLZ: You had 'em in your lunch yesterday.

BOYENS: You did?

- Yeah.

Chickpeas are what we're gonna use today to make our dip.

So we're gonna make chickpeas taste like cookies.

What do you think about that?

Have you ever done that before?

(upbeat music) ANDERSON: They added vanilla, salt, peanut butter, soy milk, maple syrup, chickpeas, and chocolate chips.

That sounds pretty good.

BOYENS: Let's go around and I want all of you to be good listeners and to tell me what was your favorite thing that we tried today?

Oh, and let's start with you, 'cause I know you love to share.

- This.

- You like the dip?

Yeah?

Ella, what was your favorite?

- The dip!

- The dip?

ANDERSON: The dip.

- I don't like chickpeas.

BOYENS: You don't like chickpeas?

But you like the dip, right?

And what's the dip made from?

- Chickpeas.

- Chickpeas!

So sometimes if we don't like a certain food, we might like it if we make it a different way, right?

ANDERSON: But with busy schedules, is there time to make special meals every day?

And our culture has started to reflect that.

Grab and go breakfast, fast food restaurants, drive-throughs, convenience store sushi.

We can see the impact that unhealthy diets can have on our bodies and our planet.

It's not clear if plant-based alternatives are a solution or just perpetuating our busy lifestyle eating habits.

And specifically in Dawson, there's more to the arrival of PURIS than if locals will choose to try an alt-meat diet.

How did you feel when you learned that PURIS was gonna be moving into that building?

BONNIE OLSON: Oh, I thought it was great, 'cause it was standing empty for a while.

And like I said, it brought a lot of jobs to the whole area, not just Dawson, all the way around here.

Do you think that Dawson had the infrastructure to support that many people coming to work in town?

- I think so.

Housing is a problem.

- Yeah.

- Housing's always a problem.

- Everywhere.

- Yeah.

ANDERSON: When PURIS came to town, they had about 100 jobs to fill.

For a small town, that's a lot of new people.

MEGAN LYNCH: I think with the population of Dawson being a little over about 1,500 people, and us needing to employ 100 people here in Dawson, I think we realized that we might of course be drawing from nearby communities.

About 95% of our current workforce is driving within a 50 mile radius of the Dawson plant.

ANDERSON: Megan knows that hiring and retaining staff isn't just about the job.

With her young kids, she also discovered the shortage of childcare providers in town.

LYNCH: We don't want them to have to leave our community or leave PURIS because they can't find childcare.

Tony Aafedt is the athletic director, transportation director, community ed coordinator in the Dawson-Boyd school system.

Subtext here, the school runs on thin employee margins and it hits hard when they lose workers.

TONY AAFEDT: When PURIS opened, it wasn't like this mass influx of people coming in looking for work.

We had several people leave the school to go to work at PURIS.

ANDERSON: Because PURIS pays more than a lot of other businesses in town.

It's been hard, nearly impossible, for Tony to recruit people to work in the daycare at the school.

Yes, childcare falls under Tony's giant umbrella of jobs.

AAFEDT: And here's our new daycare coordinator, I guess we call it, 'cause she's, Nancy's over the preschool and the daycare.

ANDERSON: How long have you been in that position?

NANCY: A week and a half.

- Oh!

Nancy just moved to Minnesota from Florida in the middle of winter.

Welcome, Nancy.

Have you heard people talk about a need for childcare?

NANCY: Oh yes.

I have already been to several meetings and absolutely, I have a waiting list of babies.

That waiting list of babies is gonna bump up our numbers in every other class as well because we have to move kids along to make room.

AAFEDT: I think PURIS is, it's a great thing for our community.

You know, it's definitely pushing us.

ANDERSON: But how much push to provide more services is healthy for communities to grow?

And how much push causes community collapse?

Let's look at the push on the housing market.

Janell Welling is a local realtor.

For her, it's personal.

This is home and she wants to help other people find their place.

But it's hard when the housing options are limited.

JANNELL WELLING: Right now in Dawson, as of today, there are three houses for sale.

ANDERSON: We went to go check out those three houses, on like, the coldest day of the year.

Ooh, it is chilly.

(upbeat music) WELLING: What PURIS did is it brought to the forefront the true need that not only Dawson is having, but all of our communities is having, areas for development of housing.

Infrastructure, putting in the street, putting in the new sewers and gutters.

Who's going to pay for that?

LYNCH: We know it's a problem.

And so how can we help come up with a solution?

What is that gonna look like?

Because it's gonna impact us, you know, being able to hire and retain people.

ANDERSON: And there's another challenge for PURIS.

They need farmers, which are plenty in Minnesota.

The bigger question, do they want to grow the PURIS pea?

LUKE PETERSON: Smell that baby, bud.

- That smells like a sunflower.

Smells like a sunflower, doesn't it?

ANDERSON: Luke Peterson runs an organic grain and livestock operation right in the shadow of PURIS's Dawson Plant.

PETERSON: When PURIS moved into town originally, my first thought was, great, I'm gonna have a processing facility to bring peas to three miles from town.

I think a lot of farmers thought the same.

ANDERSON: I did too with PURIS so close, like right there.

What a great opportunity for farmers in southwest Minnesota to introduce a new crop into their rotation.

(upbeat music) But ultimately, Luke decided growing the PURIS pea would not work for him and he wasn't the only farmer in the area.

In fact, there is not a single farmer in the entire county growing peas for PURIS.

PETERSON: It's hard when you take a specific crop and try to attach a dollar amount to it.

If I did that, I'd be growing corn and soybeans consecutively, year after year.

'Cause that would generate the most revenue per acre.

ANDERSON: Corn and soy.

Let's talk about corn and soy.

I can tell you all about it.

ATCHISON: There's about, you know, 90, 85 to 90 million acres of corn and soy grown in the United States.

There's about one million acres of peas.

PATRICK MILLER: You know, there's huge markets everywhere for corn and soybeans.

There's two spots in every town I can deliver my corn and soybeans almost.

ANDERSON: Farming runs hand in hand with a well established and entrenched system known as the Federal Crop Insurance program.

US farmers mostly grow corn and soybeans because those are the crops that get crop insurance.

The county that Dawson is in, Lac qui Parle County, doesn't have a policy for yellow field peas.

So when PURIS tries to convince farmers to grow the pea here, they have to convince farmers to give up the safety net of crop insurance.

MILLER:It's nothing to spend a half million dollars before anything comes out of the ground just to plant my farm.

ANDERSON:$500,000.

MILLER:If you don't have coverage for that, if you don't have guaranteed coverage through crop insurance, you're never gonna get an operating loan.

ANDERSON: But here's the M. Night Shyamalan twist.

Luke does grow peas, but not to sell to PURIS for its plant proteins.

PETERSON: So after that wheat crop comes up, I'll plant 40 pounds of peas per acre.

I let all of the seed and everything, all of that protein goes back into the soil.

And that's one reason we have such a nice, healthy looking corn crop.

ANDERSON: For Luke, the priority is the environment and the health of his farm.

And he's finding a way to make it work.

PETERSON: So I have a pretty goo percentage of the farm that isn't insured.

I take on a considerable amount of risk by doing that.

But what I'm looking for is the diversity and having that rotation that supports soil health.

So instead of just focusing on the year to year, make it or break it, maybe safe way of looking at agriculture, definitely took a turn towards playing the long game.

(soft upbeat music) ATCHISON: It's hard, like farmin agriculture, it's hard work.

I think everyone's figuring it out and we're trying to make new and better products that can help people say, "Hey, this is just good food."

(soft upbeat music) ANDERSON:Sometimes the system makes change hard.

Even if small farmers like Luke and Patrick and companies like PURIS are all interested in the same thing: how to make a living while also thinking broadly about Earth's finite resources.

(soft upbeat music) And it's not just in Minnesota.

Around the world, people are thinking about what they produce and eat in a different way.

(soft upbeat music) I can't predict the future, but if growth projections of plant-based proteins are accurate, making up 7.7% of the global protein market by 2030, PURIS is gonna need a lot of peas for their alt-meats.

(soft upbeat music) So these choices we've been making here in Minnesota are likely some choices you'll be facing, soon.

MCDUFFIE: Minnesota's Alt-Meat Revolution is part of World's My Home is Here Collection of stories from Rural America.

Visit World on YouTube to see the entire collection, including "Minnesota's Alt-Meat Revolution" shorts.

(funky upbeat music) (soft upbeat music) (soft upbeat music continues) (funky upbeat music) (funky upbeat music continues) Funding for "Local USA" is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation, and by Wyncote Foundation.

Funding for "Compass" is provided by the McKnight Foundation, the Otto Bremer Trust, and by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.