Grandpa would be 92 today, and my dad and I are on our way to tell his story at New York Climate Week. Grandpa Harlan was the third of four brothers. He was four years old when his family left Nebraska in the wake of the Dust Bowl with a Farmall tractor, a flatbed Chevy truck, and a new philosophy: “Leave the land better than you found it.” Grandpa and his brothers—Eldon, Wendell, and Homer—started farming organically in 1969. It was before most people knew the meaning of the word, including them. But they had a copy of Organic Gardening Magazine. So, they called up J.I. and Robert Rodale to ask what it was all about. Turns out organic farming is a lot like leaving the land better than you found it. Grandpa and his brothers decided to give it a go. Soon, they bought an old bread truck, filled the back with bags of rice stenciled with the Lundberg name, and hired a driver to stop at health food stores along the coast from California to Washington. Still, it was a long row to hoe. Grandpa and his brothers were kicked out of the local rice growers co-op. There were years when they didn’t take a paycheck. And people called them “those crazy Lundbergs” for trying to do something different. But that’s the thing about Grandpa. He was never afraid to do his own thing. He joined the Peace Corps and spent a year in Brazil, where he was inspired to develop new varieties of rice. He bought a rice cake machine off the floor of a trade show in Vegas and convinced his brothers to start popping rice cakes. He and Uncle Homer were always experimenting with so-crazy-it-just-might-work ways to manage weeds without chemicals. He was a founder. A farmer. And a freethinker. But to me, he was Grandpa. It’s been fourteen years without him, and I wonder what he would think about my dad and me going to Climate Week to tell his story. My bet is he would clap his hands and laugh.