1KHO 711: A Healthy Society Begins With Healthy People | David Stelzer, Azure Standard

Summary

Podcast Summary: "A Healthy Society Begins With Healthy People"

The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast | Episode 1KHO 711
Guest: David Stelzer, Azure Standard
Release Date: February 15, 2026

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Episode Overview

Host Ginny Yurich sits down with David Stelzer, founder and CEO of Azure Standard, to explore the role of food quality in individual and societal wellness. The discussion covers Azure Standard’s origins in bold organic farming, the critical importance of healthy soil and family farms, overcoming major adversity, and Azure’s mission to inspire healthy and abundant living by reconnecting people to real, nutritious food. The conversation offers hope and practical advice for listeners longing for better food systems and healthier futures.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. The Origins of Azure Standard & Organic Farming

[00:28–17:26]

• Family Farming Roots:
  David credits his father as a visionary who rejected the rising trend of chemical fertilizers in the early 1970s, amidst the so-called "Green Revolution."

• Soil Microbes and True Soil Health:
  David explains how conventional farming depletes crucial soil microbes, while organic methods allow soil to recover:

  "One handful of soil has more microbial life than there are humans on earth. That’s how much life should be in healthy soil." — David Stelzer [04:04]

• A Long Journey Before Azure:
  The family committed to organic practices for 16 years before founding Azure Standard in 1987-88—a leap of faith driven by deep conviction.

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2. Market Realities & The Bob’s Red Mill Story

[07:50–17:01]

• Azure began as the family’s organic grain supplied to Bob’s Red Mill, until a corporate acquisition led Bob’s to pivot towards cheaper, conventional grain.
• David refused to compromise their standards:

  "Bob pivoted...but Dad wouldn't pivot. He refused. And so that's kind of how Azure was born." — David Stelzer [10:40]

• David started delivering organic products directly to people, first as favors, then as a small business.
• The name "Azure Standard" signified both a quality standard and inspiration drawn from history and heraldry:

  "We wanted to create a true standard in the organic space. ... Azure...stands for law and justice and doing the right thing." — David Stelzer [15:35]

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3. Adversity and Resourcefulness

[20:56–33:16]

• The family faced various severe hardships, especially an IRS raid in the 1980s.

  "The IRS raid[ed] our farm and took every piece of farm equipment...levied my dad so he couldn’t make any money whatsoever." — David Stelzer [21:41]

• As a teenager, David left school to work, finding resourceful ways to keep the family farm running—working for free in exchange for equipment use.
• Despite equipment loss, contracts falling through, and even a severe drought, the family persevered:

  "There are a lot of adversities that can either break us or make us stronger." — David Stelzer [21:34]

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4. Azure’s Growth: Drop Locations, Catalog, and Community

[33:16–37:24]

• Azure has grown from a pickup-truck route and 6-page catalog to over 3,000 drop locations nationwide and more than 11,000 products.
• Drop points became central to building community:

  "It turned out there was a food desert...they were asking...hey, would you pick me up some nuts or spices or whatever in Portland and bring it next time?" — David Stelzer [13:51]

• The catalog expanded to serve those with allergies, special diets, and a desire for clean, uncompromised food.

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5. The Core Mission: Reclaiming Health Through Food

[37:19–54:33]

• David shares a powerful personal story:

  "I was that sickly kid nobody thought was even going to live. By changing our diet...I regained my health as a side effect. My grandfather regained his health as well." — David Stelzer [37:40]

• David connects the rise in chronic disease—now 1 in 2 children in the U.S.—to food and environmental chemicals:

  “Kids under 18, 55% have a diagnosed chronic disease, up from just a little over 5% in 1970.” — David Stelzer [39:16]

• He advocates for three foundational pillars of health: quality food, lifestyle (movement, nature), and a positive, purposeful spiritual outlook.
• Azure upholds strict product standards, refusing to carry items with artificial ingredients, refined sugar, preservatives, new controversial coatings (like "Appeal"), or meat from animals given mRNA vaccines.

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6. Food System Reform, Support for Family Farms, and Regeneration

[54:53–57:56]

• Azure's mission now extends to supporting small and family farmers, resisting consolidation in the food industry:

  "Food should never be commoditized. ... We want to create value for quality. Quality is where the value is." — David Stelzer [55:37]

• David explains the importance of regenerative agriculture, going beyond sustainability to restoring soil health and vitality.

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7. Building a Healthier, More Connected Future

[57:17–57:56]

• Azure is dedicated to connecting families to healthy food, supporting farmers, and creating a stronger, healthier, and more resilient society:

  “We are dedicated to the organic principle of cooperating with nature, and we pray others will join us so that we may once again see prosperity in our land.” — David Stelzer [57:43]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "One handful of soil has more microbial life than there are humans on earth. That’s how much life should be in healthy soil."
  — David Stelzer [04:04]

• “I was that sickly kid nobody thought was even going to live. By changing our diet...I regained my health as a side effect.”
  — David Stelzer [37:40]

• "There are a lot of adversities that can either break us or make us stronger."
  — David Stelzer [21:34]

• "Food should never be commoditized. ... We want to create value for quality. Quality is where the value is."
  — David Stelzer [55:37]

• "We want to connect the consumers that care about the food they eat with the farmers that care about the food they grow."
  — David Stelzer [57:18]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Azure’s Organic Roots & Soil Health: [02:26–07:14]
• Losing Bob’s Red Mill as a Market: [09:10–13:41]
• IRS Raid & Family Adversity: [21:34–28:54]
• Resourcefulness After IRS Raid: [30:36–32:19]
• Rise of Drop Locations / Community: [33:11–33:16], [46:45–49:46]
• Personal Miracles through Food: [37:24–43:55]
• Azure’s Standards for Food Purity: [49:46–53:30]
• Supporting Family Farms, Regeneration: [54:53–57:56]
• Closing Inspirational Message: [57:17–57:56]

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Conclusion

This episode deeply illustrates how the fight for healthy living starts with families, soil, food, and a willingness to stand apart from the mainstream for the greater good. David Stelzer’s story reflects perseverance, conviction, and a passion for revitalizing health through honest food, collaboration, and education—inviting all listeners to join in a movement for healthier people and a healthier society.

Visit Azure Standard’s website for more information and resources, or to find/start a drop point in your area.

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[End of summary]

Transcript

[Podcast Sponsor Announcer]

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[Podcast Host 1]

[e-mail] welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast.

[Ginny Urch]

My name is Ginny Urch. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And I got to speak in 2025 at the homestead Festival. It was in the summer and this company, Azure Standard, was one of the sponsors. And then I spoke at a homemaker conference in Waco, Texas at Heritage Homestead later that year in 2025. And I met some of your people there because you sponsored that as well. And we went on a tour in early 2025. Like, we had five stops, David. And you can't do anything unless you have sponsors. Like, you just can't even. You can't even like float it. And so I just was.

[David Seltzer]

So.

[Ginny Urch]

I just think it's so amazing when companies sponsor things and help events happen that bring communities together. And so Davis Seltzer from Azure Standard is here. Welcome. It's an honor to meet you.

[David Seltzer]

Well, thank you. Nice to. Nice to be here and honor to meet you as well.

[Ginny Urch]

So what you're doing is you're helping families to eat better, but you're doing so much more than that, helping families to eat better in a way that is affordable. But then there's so much more going on behind the scenes, including sponsoring these events that wouldn't happen without sponsors. And so you're really just helping on the education side and supporting or supporting modern families. But this is a pretty incredible story. You come from a farming family, but even by the 50s, and I think people maybe wouldn't necessarily know the history. I didn't know the history. Even in the 50s, there's just all sorts of chemical fertilizers being used already. And in the early 1970s, your family decides not to do that anymore. And it really did affect, you know, even you cut it out. And then it really is affecting your crops, especially right at the beginning. Now things do come back later. But it was a big, bold stance to take. And this is sort of the beginnings of what was to come with Azure. Can you talk about those years?

[David Seltzer]

Oh, absolutely. And that, you know, I, that was primarily my dad that actually made that, you know, that Change. But yeah, I mean, in the, in the 50s was the green revolution. That's when everybody's moving over. But it was even well before that that chemicals began to become used more and more. I mean, we've been using chemicals on farm ground for 100 years now easily. And even before that, the ground really wasn't being taken care of the way it should. I mean, we had a lot of fresh farm ground and farmers kept kind of wearing out the ground moving west, letting you know erosion was happening. It was like there was never any tomorrow. And so it's, you know, in, in the 70s when my dad actually made the switch to organic farming, it was right at, he was kind of going the wrong direction compared to the rest of the world. The rest of the world was, you know, getting more and more chemicals, more and more harsher chemicals, you know, from that day to this. I mean, the amount of anhydrous ammonia used on the ground, glyphosate wasn't even invented yet at that point. Now there's untold millions of tons of that being produced and used on farm ground. But you know, dad used to use, when he did maybe 40 or 50 pounds of nitrogen. Now the average farmer in our area uses a hundred plus because the ground doesn't respond as well. You know, it's the, the microbes are wearing out in the soil. It's becoming more and more. You just keep kind of like a drug addict, they keep having to use more. Right. You know, it's not like the same thing. And the ground is similar, but the cool part is the ground also can recover. We have these beautiful things called microbes that live in the soil. They're basically bacteria, protozoa and nematodes and those little creatures. And they are miraculous and amazing. And even though conventional farming is killing them off and the plate counts, or plate counts, the actual number of microbes in a healthy soil, one handful of soil has more life in it, more microbial life than there are humans on earth. That's how much life should be in healthy soil. In the soil on our, a long time organic farm, it's absolutely the case. But some of the plate counts, I mean, I was just reading about one in a strawberry field in California. The plate counts were so low that they, they were saying 300 versus what should be somewhere in around 3 million range. That's in the amount, you know, of soil. Very small amount, like a gram, I think. So, you know, because they've used, you know, the soil becomes just a thing to hold the plant up. They're putting on all these chemicals. And in real soil, those soil microbes make all the nutrients for the plants. That's. And the plants feed the microbes. Microbes don't you know, they can't make energy on their own. They have no mechanism for that. Plants do. They have this thing called photosynthesis that can take light and water and make sugar out of it and which then is converted to produce cellulose and everything else that's needed for life. That's the energy source for all life, including microbial life. So the plants put the sugars into the soil and the microbes in the soil break down the dead plant matter and also the inorganic matter in the soil and make that available to the plant. That's the way nature's done it for, since the world began.

[Ginny Urch]

And so if all of those things aren't, are not happening, it's just such a cascade of problems. I thought it was interesting that you make this decision your dad did in 1971 and then as your standard isn't born until the end of 1987, you talk about like during the week between Christmas And New Year's, 1987-1988 is when you came up with the name. That's a really long time, David, to be faithful to a system. You know, you talked about how these are people started to become healthier. But I mean that's like a 15, 16 year time period.

[David Seltzer]

Well, in all fairness, dad did find some markets. So if you're familiar with the brand, Bob's Red Mill. Back in the day, dad and Bob were friends, they knew each other and, and they were talking, talking about it. And so Bob was going to be the miller and dad was going to be the farmer, see. And they were going to do this, you know, healthy grains thing. Organic and healthy grain. And so Bob, he's about, well he was, he's passed now, but he was about two hours west of here. And dad actually even helped him find his very first millstones. He originally used these stone, great big old fashioned stones that were like from the early 1900s.

[Podcast Host 1]

Yeah.

[David Seltzer]

And it was in a mill just here a little ways from Dewfer. Anyway, dad helped, you know, went and talked to the farmer who owned it. It wasn't on our place, it was on a neighbor's place. And so those were his first stones. And I mean he doesn't use those, you know, in the last 50 years, but that was where he got started.

[Podcast Host 1]

Yeah.

[David Seltzer]

And then, you know, so the story about, you know, with Azure becoming into being dad was happily, you know, supplying Bob. Bob's primary customer was a company called Fred Meyers, which is a chain store out here, or still is, actually. It's. But Fred Meyer, the original was. He and Bob Moore that started Bob's Red Mill knew each other and he was going to be the retailer. Well, in the. In the early 80s, Fred Meyer retired and his company got sold off to an investment firm, which was the chain of retail stores. And Fred, he was on board with the organic, you know, grains and flowers. But. And it took a couple years for them to realize that. They even noticed that they had this product in their stores. But the investment firm, some bean counter, said, oh, this is, you know, we shouldn't be selling this or expensive organic stuff in our stores. And so he told Bob that, said he wasn't going to buy this stuff. They weren't going to buy this at Fred Meyer anymore unless he could. And they didn't give a rip about the organic standard. And if Bob could do it cheap, way cheaper, then they would consider continuing the brand. So Bob pivoted. He. He started buying the cheapest conventional grain that he could possibly get, put it in his bags. He didn't do anything illegal. He kept. He took the organic name off of it, but everything else looked the same. So a lot of people still thought it was the same product, but it wasn't. It was now conventional product in the same basic bag, minus the word organic on it. But dad wouldn't pivot. He refused. And so that's kind of how Azure was born. Now, we had. And actually when Bob informed us that this had happened, we already had the crop planted for the next year. Oh. And so. So we had a whole crop coming in. We had no market for. Wow. So before Azure started or right before really, I figured that there. There had to be some kind of. Somebody was using this product. Somebody wanted it. Somebody cares about organic. Maybe, maybe it's not Fred Meyer, but somebody does. So I set out to try to find that somebody who was it and when, as you know. So I drove around the northwest here and I was. I was young, I was, you know, late teenager at the time, drove around the countryside trying to find someone to buy our grain. And I kept getting this thing, you know, Bob was buying it by the truckload. But, you know, they would say, oh, yeah, I'd take five bags of grain and four bags of flour and. And I did get some ground. I went to Bob wouldn't do it for us because, you know, he. I think he kind of felt bad about the whole thing. But we ended up getting a guy up in Yakima to grind some flour for us. So we ground some of our grain into flour. So we had wheat, wheat flour, a couple different varieties of wheat. Soft, white, hard, hard wheat. We had a purple wheat at the time. And rye. We did a lot of rye for Bob and around and hey, five bags of this, three bags of that, two bags of this. But I need it like every week. Like I don't have any storage. So eventually I started doing these little routes and I don't know if you're at all familiar with the northwest, but I would go, you know, we're here just about 100 miles east of Portland. And I would go to tri cities, Yakima, Ellensburg, Seattle and down one week. And the next week I'd go like Ben, Eugene, Portland and up in my pickup truck. I didn't, didn't have. Just doing. Using the farm pickup.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah.

[David Seltzer]

And delivered, delivered the grain. And pretty soon two things happened. One is some of these stores and co ops that I originally started delivering to wanted other things. And also though, turns out that there was some. Started out with some people that we knew, friends and family kind of a thing. But there was kind of a food desert in the eastern, especially in like eastern Washington and parts of Oregon. And there wasn't a lot available other than, you know, the quick marts and the super, you know, highly refined food grocery stores. And so they kept, they were asking me, hey, would you pick me up some, you know, nuts or spices or whatever in Portland and bring it next time. And finally it was like that fall of, you know, right before we started Azure that this bright idea came to me that maybe instead of just doing this as a favor, I should. Maybe other people would like this if I put a little margin on it and that maybe other people would want it too and I could actually supplement to help pay my gas for these deliveries.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah.

[David Seltzer]

And so came up. That's when we came up with the bright idea of creating a little catalog. You know, before that I was, you know, I was operating under Stelzer and son's husbandry. We always had. That was our farm name. And then like, well, if we're doing this, it's husbandry. Not half people don't even know what that means. We ended up switching to the name Azure standard because we wanted to create a standard or a higher quality standard. That is, we were still smarting from the change in Bob's and felt like people were not understanding the difference between natural grains and organic grains and what that really meant. We wanted to create a true standard in the organic space. And I feel like that mission took a long time to accomplish. But I feel like it's. And it's not accomplished yet. But I feel like that's been part of our mission all along. And azure is a color of blue and blue and heraldry. I'm kind of a history buff and blue and heraldry always kind of stand. It stands for law and justice and doing the right thing, you know, in the U. S Flag. That's why we have the stars are embedded in a background of blue. You know there's a. A tie of the states are tied together with a lot a just law. That's the theory anyway. And so you know, and I didn't really emblue she a lot and so. So azure is a shade of blue of kind of like the midday sky from a mountaintop. It's kind of a deep light blue. And hence that's how we came up with the name.

[Ginny Urch]

What a story.

[Podcast Host 1]

What a story David.

[Ginny Urch]

Because it really is springing out of a deep need to pivot and almost like a panic spot where you. You already have all of these things planted and then because of Fred, the Fred Meyer and then that trickles down to Bob and then that trickles down to you and out of that came this company.

[Podcast Host 1]

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[Ginny Urch]

And I feel like it happened again. Talking about having to really pivot. You talked about in the seven the late seventies. So this is still before Azure, but how there was a huge drought and that is when you started to get into the grinding of the grains to begin with. So stories like yours always give people hope where you're like, you know, that's some of those things are the worst of the worst to happen. A drought. You know, you have this customer that you know you're working with and then all of a sudden they're, that person's going to go a different direction and you have to be like, well, what are we going to do?

[David Seltzer]

Well, there's a lot of, there are a lot of adversities can either break us or make us stronger.

[Podcast Host 1]

Yeah.

[David Seltzer]

And that was not really the most difficult adversity during that time frame. We also had the IRS raid our farm and take every piece of farm equipment. So just, you know, and levy my dad so that he couldn't make any money whatsoever. That happened in, I think it was 83ish. Wow. And we were still supplying grain to Bob's at the time. That didn't stop Bob. It was later. But the IRS didn't take the grain because they didn't know what to do, didn't know how to sell it. But they took every piece of farm equipment, every car, every vehicle, every tool that was worth packing off.

[Ginny Urch]

Why?

[David Seltzer]

Basically, in so many words, dad had made. And this didn't have anything to do with the farm here. We had another farm place up in Yakima at the time, or my grandparents did. And my dad decided he was going to buy that from my grandmother. And while he was doing it, he developed the property. It was a piece of, you know, it's like 20 acres up in the city limits of Yakima. And he developed it into a mobile home park. And the contract, and this isn't even the law anymore, but at that time, if you bought a, if you did a contract and you bought something on contract, if One of the parties of the contract died within three years, they could void the contract. And it. Because it was done in anticipation of death. Oh, now my grandmother, after dad made the contract, she died three days prior to the three years expiring. So two years 362 days or two years 200 or 362 days after the contract. So you know, all of the attorney, Dad's attorney and everyone said, oh, you know, three days, they'll let that slide. And the state did, the state gave, you know, signed off on it based on the way that the. Because that went into the way the estate was dealt with. And in the irs, of course they wait till almost the statute of limitations is expired, but right before they suddenly decide that they're going to void the contract because it was done in anticipation of death based on it being three days shy of three years. So they said, oh well, because dad developed the mobile home park on the piece of property, says, well, it. Because the contract, the purchase wasn't, was done in anticipation of death, then you couldn't have been doing work on your own property. You were doing it on your mother's property and she didn't withhold. And because you did all this work, she probably paid you a lot of money to do that, which of course he got nothing, he wasn't doing it. But you would have been paid a lot of money because that's a pretty high end job. And she didn't do withholding. So we're going to charge her estate with withholdings for all the wages that, you know, that she should have paid you, that she didn't pay you. And then, you know, and then of course now she died and you're going to inherit it back. So in addition to that, we're going to charge her estate for all the inheritance tax based on the value of the property after all the development was on it. And besides, dad had taken out loans in his own name and they charged and because he put that into her property, they charged him gift tax on the money that he supposedly gave to her because he took the loan out in his name because he thought it was his goodness property. So it was pretty crooked really, if you get right down to it.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah, what a nightmare.

[David Seltzer]

And so dad was saying, hey, well, let's give us a day in court. But with IRS it doesn't work that way. You pay the money first and you sue them for it back. You don't get a day in court. There's no such thing. So, wow.

[Ginny Urch]

So they took everything.

[David Seltzer]

So yeah, they took everything they charged him for, well, $385,000 is what they wanted. But he didn't have, he didn't have it. I mean, the only thing, I mean it was all real estate. It wasn't something you could just like sell instantly. They gave him 20 days to pay. And then when he couldn't pay in 20 days and he wouldn't pay really, he was still trying to say, hey, let's have a, let's have a day in court. This is not right. You're. I never got that money that you're charging the estate tax on. Then they just came and seized all the equipment. So. And they levied his income. So at 100%. Now today the laws have been passed, they can only levy a certain amount of your, your income. But at that time they levied a hundred percent. They seized every dollar in every bank account that he owned that had his Social Security number associated with it. He didn't have a, There wasn't a dollar in his name. He didn't have if he worked they, anything attached to the Social Security number. They took a hundred percent.

[Ginny Urch]

Unbelievable.

[David Seltzer]

So there we were.

[Ginny Urch]

How old were you?

[David Seltzer]

Oh, I was 16. And so I, yeah, 16 year old. I guess maybe I might have been 17 when they actually seized the equipment. But I, yeah, woke up one morning and there was a knock on the door and this is early morning and I'm kind of coming down the hallway and all the sheriff comes in the living rooms with guns drawn. Four or five IRS agents on both sides of them. They didn't have their guns drawn, but they had their hands on them and surrounding dad. You got, got guns in this house? Dad says, yeah, I have. Dad was never into guns, but he did have a.22 and a deer rifle, you know, and it's like, oh, yeah. So the sheriff grabs his guns, takes his guns and locks him in his car and they serve a, a levy that basically says nothing except the IRS can take anything they want. And, and they said, well, yeah, we're taking all your stuff today.

[Ginny Urch]

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. What an absolute nightmare. Did that like completely shape your view of government?

[David Seltzer]

Well, yeah, I guess in a way. I, it took a few years for me to understand that that was not representative of people in government in general. For whatever reason, they had decided to make an example of dad. It was a lot of, you know, tax protesting going on at the time. We didn't know about it, weren't involved in it in any way, but apparently they decided they were going to make an example out of an easy target. I guess. He was it.

[Podcast Host 1]

Wow.

[Ginny Urch]

But you were able to persevere.

[David Seltzer]

Well, they weren't able to take the farm. They levied the mobile home park. They took 100% of the income there. But the people in the park actually sued the IRS and Dad both because they said that their rent was being taken by the irs. And dad was refusing to pay the utilities. Obviously he couldn't.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah. Because he's not getting any other.

[David Seltzer]

He's not getting the rent. The IRS is getting it. And so. So they sued both of them. Dad for breach of contract, not paying in the IRS for taking all the rent money that should have paid utilities. So the court put a receiver in charge of the mobile home park to pay the bills. And that finally went to trial in 1986.

[Ginny Urch]

So all of this happens in that 15 years before you start.

[David Seltzer]

All that all happened. So I was. The IRS was still. So I actually. I quit school and I went to work to pay to try to support the family because dad couldn't really do much except under the table stuff.

[Podcast Host 1]

Yeah.

[David Seltzer]

And so I went to work full time when I was 17. But I realized pretty fast I didn't have any real skill except for farm agriculture. That's all I'd done. My. It's the only skill I had. So I went to work for. For a farmer that was in the community.

[Podcast Host 1]

Yeah.

[David Seltzer]

And, you know, he was offering to pay me 450 an hour. And I realized pretty fast that I was not going to be able to support the family and pay the property taxes and everything else on 450 an hour. So my first entrepreneurial idea was I went and told the neighbor that I would work for him for free if he would let me use his equipment because we didn't have any equipment to farm with.

[Ginny Urch]

Wow.

[David Seltzer]

So I worked for him for free if he would let me use his equipment nights and weekends when he wasn't using it. So I. So I worked for the neighborhood in the day and worked weekends. And, you know. And dad helped with our farm some, too. But a lot of it. The neighbor didn't want anyone but me to drive the equipment.

[Ginny Urch]

Right.

[David Seltzer]

Because I was the employee. And.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah. What incredible resourcefulness.

[David Seltzer]

Wow. So we continued to grow grain for Bob's using the neighbor's equipment.

[Ginny Urch]

Oh, my gosh. And then Bob didn't even need it.

[David Seltzer]

And then. Yeah. So add insult to injury, right in the middle of this, after we had just done all this, then we lost the contract with Bob's. That whole thing happened that I just told you About a little bit. Oh, wow.

[Ginny Urch]

Plus, there was a drought.

[David Seltzer]

The drought? Yeah. That was in 77. So that was a little bit before the IRS thing.

[Ginny Urch]

My goodness.

[David Seltzer]

But no, this. These are little things.

[Podcast Host 1]

But.

[Ginny Urch]

But today, isn't it wild? You know, isn't it wild how time goes? And it's like, you know, now it's been decades, and here you are, you've come through it. There's over 2600 Azure Drop locations. Started off with your original routes, and now 2600 where people.

[David Seltzer]

Actually, that's a little bit of an old number. We're well over 3,000 now.

[Ginny Urch]

Wow. And people can start their own. I'll make sure. I'll put their link in the show notes.

[David Seltzer]

Absolutely.

[Ginny Urch]

But it's a way to bring people together. And you talked about how your original catalog, I think it said something like it was only six pages.

[David Seltzer]

Well, it was two pieces of paper folded in half and stapled in the middle, so whatever that would be. Yeah. Eight pages, maybe six pages if you don't count the front and back cover. Yeah. Yeah.

[Ginny Urch]

But since then, it has just expanded some seasons.

[Podcast Host 1]

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[Ginny Urch]

Can you tell people about, I mean they can get anything from food items to clothing?

[David Seltzer]

No, Absolutely. So Azure's mission, and this mission has been almost from day one when the Azure name was made. I began to realize what a difference. See if I, if I go back a little bit. Healthy eating and diet and organic farming absolutely revolutionized my life. I was that sickly kid nobody thought was even going to live by changing our diet, which is what kind of led to a lot of this. I regained my health as a side effect. My grandfather regained his health as well through healthy diet almost unintentionally. But he, it was semi intentionally but he was completely, you know, decapacitated. Had to retire at 55 and in when he was around 70 and he changed his diet, he completely regained his health, went back to work, was farming again 18 hours a day with as much spryness as a young man all through diet change. So we were really, really sold on organic food and healthy diets have been really, really sold on that. We know it works. We've seen it over and over again. And so as a, you know, as a mission, that's really what I care about. We see a nation that health has been eroding for the last 50 years really or longer. But especially the last 50 years. I mean I just, I just read some government stats saying that childhood chronic Disease kids under 18, 55% have a diagnosed chronic disease, up from just a little over 5% in 1970. Wow.

[Ginny Urch]

Wow.

[David Seltzer]

So it went from 1 in 21 out of 2 kids in the last 50 years. I'm absolutely 100% convinced that the primary reason is agricultural chemicals and highly processed food. It's diet related. Now there are some environmental chemicals as well, but many of them agriculturally based. But you know, they are spreading. You know they're putting two 4D on the kids football fields now they're putting, you know, roundup around the edges of the school yards and all those kinds of things with, and the kids, you know, the five year and six year olds are playing in that stuff. You know, so you have those environmental factors but you also. Food is the primary environmental factor. That's the big difference.

[Podcast Host 1]

Yeah.

[David Seltzer]

And I am 100 convinced that that's the, you know, the primary, the primary deal. And I know health is not entirely food based. Health is food based. It's also lifestyle based. Diet, exercise, environmental factors. And it also has a emotional, spiritual component to health. If we are positive, if we have spiritual purpose, we live a healthier life than if we do not. So those are three big aspects to health. But obviously Azure space has been in the food side and I feel like that's, you know, that's a very important one of those health factors.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah.

[David Seltzer]

And I think all of those have eroded and they all kind of play into each other. If we're unhealthy because we're eating really crappy, it's hard to think positively as easily. Our minds are not as sharp, we have brain fog, we're not thinking as clearly. And I think that's happening to many, in many cases. And a lot of times they're treating these kind of spiritual illnesses, so to speak, with, with drugs, with chemical substances. And I think that they can also be treated from a health perspective with healthy food and nutrients. And then we begin to think more clearly. So it's Azure's number one core value. And basically this is our mission, is inspire healthy and abundant living. It's worked for us. You know, as I mentioned, I grew up that sickly kid. My wife actually did too. I mean, she had surgeries before she started school. It was all the stuff, you know, all the, all the health challenges. But we, you know, we ate clean from day one when we got married in our household and maybe, you know, very, almost almost overboard clean, very, very carefully, you know, clean diet. And it's not, and I'm saying clean in the sense that, you know, organic food, no agricultural chemicals, no highly reprocessed, no highly refined foods, not, none of those kinds of things, not in the sense of a particular diet type. And we didn't like, go, hey, completely sugar free in the sense of no fruit or anything. We didn't use like refined sugar, but we would use a little honey and we would use, you know, we would eat fruit and all of that. But in the next generation, and I can't, you know, I can't say nothing's ever, you know, happened. I've never been sick. Well, I really haven't hardly. But you know, we've had a little bit in our life. But the next generation, when we raised our children, we ended up having 11 children in our, in our family and we only had one doctor or hospital visit in any of the time the kids were in our household from 0 to 18. Wow. Not only did we have zero chronic disease, but we didn't have anything bad enough to. To. For one of our kids to even see a doctor, except for one broken femur. Unbelievable otherwise.

[Ginny Urch]

And that's just an accident.

[David Seltzer]

That was an accident. That was a farming accident. He got run over by a plow, broke his leg, and we didn't know what to do other than go to the hospital.

[Podcast Host 1]

Yeah.

[David Seltzer]

You know, I guess anybody, probably. Most people probably would. So we did the same thing anyone else would do when it came to something we didn't know how to handle. But, you know, we used herbal medicine. I mean, if we had sniffles or fevers, I mean, we use fever fuel. We use cold baths. We used all the natural stuff. We read the Dr. Christopher book, School of Natural Healing, you know, so it's not like that. They never got anything. But very rarely. I mean, they mostly grew up rough and tumble and, you know, climbing trees and working on the farm and riding four wheelers way too fast and all the stuff kids do, right?

[Podcast Host 1]

Yeah.

[David Seltzer]

And horses and bicycles. All the. All this stuff. And, you know, so I began to realize, you know, hey, this does absolutely work. It makes a difference. It makes a huge, huge difference. Instead of 1 and 2 having a chronic disease, we had zero chronic disease. And notice only one case where we even had to take someone to a doctor. And they were kind of. You know, when we did, they almost turned us into CPS because we didn't have a pediatrician for the kid. Right. Well, they never have a pediatrician because they've never been to a doctor. None of them.

[Ginny Urch]

Because they were healthy.

[David Seltzer]

Because they were healthy, including being born. I mean, we just had a midwife at home. We didn't. Didn't take them to a hospital to be born, you know?

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah. So current statistics would say that if you have 11 kids, that six of them would have chronic health issues and you had zero. And so the food. What's so incredible about it, David, is that you've not only done it for your own family, but then you're allowing all of these other families to, at an affordable cost, change the way their food is. So. So for people who are not familiar at all, and we're familiar because we've done, like, milk, you know, we're in Michigan. So, like, if you want to get your milk, you got to go to a location where the person comes. You almost feel like you're doing something illegal, you know, so. So this is. So this is you. Would you put in an order and know this is everything from chicken feed to your own feed to clothing to household products. It there's all sorts of options. You put in your order and then you're going to, they lay out the tarps. Like you're going to meet at a centralized location. I would imagine people are even making friends.

[David Seltzer]

Oh absolutely. So basically, you know, if I what what happened and you know, it wasn't necessarily because it was my great brainchild, it just kind of turned out that it happened this way because it was no way that I could deliver to every single person's home. I finally just picked hey, can everyone pick up at your house? Is kind of the way it started. So we began to call them drop points. This is a place in a local community that would be the drop spot for the Azure food. So Azure grew, I mean from that four page catalog, every time somebody wanted something else, I went out and sourced all those. All the products today we have about 11,000, they call it SKU SKUs. 11,000 different items. So anything that you would use in everyday cooking and baking and then healthy products that are pre prepared to some degree and then every variation for every kind of an allergy and anything that might be happening gluten free, dairy free, you know, not all the, all the different stuff that may be happening in everybody's life. So you know, so that's how it kind of adds up to so many. But we then we added things like gardening products and so we have seeds and we have you know, basic garden fertilizer like liquid fish for instance. And we have, you know, and we started doing clothes. We're going to actually expand that quite a bit because clothes are kind of one of those things. Natural fiber clothes is, is becoming a, a bigger piece. But that's been really small for us so far. That's kind of been an edge case. But you know, even you know, pots and cast iron griddles and stainless steel utensils and all the things that would tend to inspire healthy and abundant living. That's, you know, that's kind of the major gauge that we do for our products is this. First of all, we do have some standards that are printed. They're on our website if you want to go look. You know, our marketing department says banned. We've pinned all these ingredients. Well, banned, I don't know, we just never accepted them. We didn't ban them. We just don't allow them because we don't think they're real food. So you know, if it's got refined sugar, if it's Got artificial anything. If it's got, you know, preservatives, whatever, we just don't carry it. It's not on our list. And it's something that we just, you know, we don't do and never have. We have strengthened our standards a little bit when new information came out or new chemicals like, you know, hey, there.

[Ginny Urch]

Was the apple one. That's a new one.

[David Seltzer]

Lr is it called Appeal? Well, the appeal, yeah. That's just for vegetables in general. Yeah, Crazy about it.

[Ginny Urch]

But you start to see, like, to your point, there's new things popping up all the time.

[David Seltzer]

Yeah, the Appeal and Appeal even had an organic component, but we, we definitely. They had an organic approved version, which I think has been revoked now. But at the time when it first came out, and so, yeah, we instantly said, hey, no, we don't do that. No appeal. No, you know, the new vaccines after Covid now the new vaccines. So we don't, you know, it's another thing. Yeah, no, no meat products that have had any of the RMNA vaccines. Just. And we actually have science statements from every livestock producer that they don't and won't use those because it's not regulated under organics. But, you know, those are, you know, so they do keep happening. And we are even moving more towards it on the conventional side. I am going to be. In the next six months, we will be very carefully making sure that we don't have anything that is. Even has any risk of a glyphosate residue. You know, we do currently have some conventional products that we don't really test for glyphosate. We're clearly saying they're conventional, but we don't do that testing. And those things that are not really tested and vetted fully, we're going to be phasing them out. Okay. And moving towards, you know, because I just feel like that that has become. It's become such a problem. You have the glyphosate and more than one level. But, you know, and this, particularly in adults, this whole thing with, with destroying joints, it's absolutely destroying the joints of a whole generation. How many, how many people do you know that are getting into their 70s and 80s that don't end up with a joint replacement? Wow. It's all glyphosate. You know, 50 years ago, that didn't happen. Nobody, nobody got joint replacements. This is agricultural chemical that are getting into, you know, because it's. They're. Most of these chemicals are synthetic proteins. Right. They're amino acids that the body doesn't know how to deal with the potty, thinks it's l. Lysine and it puts it in the joints. Especially when we have a low protein diet. So people with a lower protein diet tend to get it worse and. But if you don't have the glyphosate, you're not going to get it anyway, no matter how much protein, whether you're lower high protein diets, you know, it's. Yeah, you know, these are things, I mean and it's very straightforward. But you know, they're never going to admit that because, I mean, can you imagine the liability right, not only on the, you know, on mayor, but on, you know, on the government. I mean it's, they're never going to say it, but everybody knows it. It's not, it's no secret that, that these kinds of things are happening. So we're going to be moving, you know, we already are really close to being there, but we're going to be moving closer and closer.

[Ginny Urch]

And you've done all that leg work. I mean the, the average family cannot test a product and it's hard to sort it, sort it out when you're at the grocery store. So what people can do instead is they can go on the website and they can pick from the 11, 000 products and then make some friends when you go to your drop location or you can start your own drop location then you know, you just have to have a couple families come together and hit a, like a minimum amount that you spend to start a drop location. These are all over the country. You say we believe that everyone should have access to high quality, organic, non GMO foods to live strong, meaningful lives. And you talk about how the key to a healthy society begins with healthy people who are committed to healthy foods and healthy lifestyle. Azure does so much more than this. Do you talk about how you're, you're helping with GMO awareness, glyphosate and roundup awareness, providing a sense of community and continuing education and really supporting these different events that are happening for people to come together and learn more about their food. So this is such an honor to.

[Podcast Host 1]

Get a chance to talk with you.

[Ginny Urch]

You're like famous in my world, so a really, really cool thing. And I just want to encourage people to make sure that you check it out. Go to the website, I'll make sure, I'll link it in the show notes. I mean you have everything from grains. There's just an endless amount, 11,000 products that people can choose from and you.

[Podcast Host 1]

Talk a lot about the supply.

[David Seltzer]

Ch.

[Ginny Urch]

So you say, you know, our food supply is at risk when everything becomes consolidated under a few behemoth companies. So this is helping you to, to be more connected to smaller farmers and to independent distributors.

[David Seltzer]

That's another one of our core values, is to support independent and family business. Yeah, we, you know, we are a family business. Even though, you know, a lot of people wouldn't consider us small anymore, but we still are definitely family. In fact, you know, there's like eight or nine family members that work at Azure today. Yeah, it's not just, you know.

[Ginny Urch]

Yep.

[David Seltzer]

You know, we have 400 people that work here, but it still is not. But it's still completely family, a family run company, and we feel like it's very important to support that. So the Cargills of this world, they really want to just tie up the food supply in general and they want to commoditize food. Food should never be commoditized. And that's been the thing that's destroyed the food supply is commoditization. There is no value to quality, only quantity. That's the change that we want to make. We want to create value for quality. Yeah, quality is where the value is.

[Podcast Host 1]

Yeah.

[David Seltzer]

How much better to eat, you know, grain. You talked about wheat a minute ago. If you eat wheat that actually has all of the appropriate amino acids that wheat should have in it and can build muscle and, and nourish our bodies versus the conventional weed of today that primarily just has one amino acid, l. Glutamine, that eventually leads to things like celiac's disease. It's just the way, the way it works. And there, there is a better way. There is quality, there is sustainable and regenerative agriculture. And I know those terms are sometimes used loosely because they're not legally defined, but regenerative agriculture is when you're actually making the soil better.

[Podcast Host 1]

Yeah.

[David Seltzer]

Mineralizing the soil. And that's what we're here to do, is to connect. I want to connect the consumers that care about the food they eat with the farmers that care about the food they grow. And that's what we're here to do. And it's been a pleasure being able to. To do that now on a national scale. Yeah, it's really awesome. Yeah.

[Ginny Urch]

You look at the map and you're like, this is everywhere. David, what an honor. You say we are dedicated to the organic principle of cooperating with nature, and we pray others will join us so that we may once again see prosperity in our land. Thank you so much for being here.

[David Seltzer]

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