Connecting The Dots: Berkshire, Killing The Keystone, Rail, Chickpeas, And Vegan Eggs -- Five Steps From Berkshire To Vegan Eggs -- March 1,2021

Aaahh...serendipity -- if "necessity is the mother of invention," then "serendipity is the stepchild of ennui." Yes, I know, doesn't have quite the same ring. But we move on.

On the way to something else, which I never found, I did find this. Although it's a bit dated, March 15, 2018, here we have a listing of Berkshire Hathaway Subsidiaries. I assume you can find an updated list in the annual report, but this site certainly seems to work for me.

Unless you've lived under the Geico Rock most of your life, you are aware that Berkshire Hathaway owns Geico and Burlington Northern. 

But look at another company Buffett and Munger own: Marmon Group. It's amazing to look at the interlocking pieces of this holding company. Most interesting is how the wiki entry begins. With all that Marmon is involved in, it it interesting that the wiki entry begins with tank cars and railroads. This is the first paragraph at wiki on Marmon Group:

Marmon Group is an American industrial holding company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois; founded by Jay Pritzker and Robert Pritzker in 1953 (as Colson Corporation), it has been held by the Berkshire Hathaway group since 2013. 

It owns companies that produce transportation equipment, electrical components and other industrial components, and companies that provide services in the construction and retail sectors. 

Tank car manufacturing is a significant part of its business, products which are sold through its subsidiaries Union Tank Car Company in the United States and Procor in Canada. Berkshire Hathaway, which owns the largest freight railroad carrier in North America, BNSF Railway, acquired controlling interest in Marmon in 2007 and became sole owner six years later.

Read that paragraph again, and focus on this:

Tank car manufacturing is a significant part of its business, products which are sold through its subsidiaries Union Tank Car Company in the United States and Procor in Canada. Berkshire Hathaway, which owns the largest freight railroad carrier in North America, BNSF Railway, acquired controlling interest in Marmon in 2007 and became sole owner six years later. 

Now, connect the dots:

• Buffett: huge Democrat donor
• Biden defeats Trump
• Keystone XL: permit revoked; Keystone XL killed
• CBR

So, what else can BNSF transport by rail? Chickpeas.

LOL. 

Chickpeas = hummus.

Hummus: huge market in China and India. 

Unfortunately a trade war with India (for sure) and China (maybe) is having huge impact on chickpea farming in North Dakota and Montana, the two states that lead the Estudos Unidos in production.

These articles will bring you up to speed on chickpeas and North Dakota:

• North Dakota pulse crop marketer, JM Grain Inc, files for bankruptcy, July 14, 2019; I am unable to find update;
• US pulse market, volume, production, import, export by segments, including chickpeas, August 26, 2020;
• pasta made from yellow peas hits the market, July 20, 2020;
• outlook improves for lentils, dry peas, October 27, 2020, Grand Forks Herald;

I could stop there but then this popped up: "chickpeas, not chicks." Note the date of this CNBC article -- February 27, 2021 -- two days ago. Wow. 

Serendipity. 

The story begins:

Uber project manager Grace O’Brien worked at the company’s San Francisco office until the Covid-19 pandemic forced remote work. 

First, she moved back home to Los Angeles. Then, she and her boyfriend, who also has a job that transitioned to remote work, started Airbnb cabin-hopping to places where they could go hiking. 

When O’Brien, 23, and Ryan Schools were in Bend, Oregon, this fall, wildfires hit, taking hiking off the table, too. 

“I’m a young 20-something in a pandemic: the things that filled my extra time, like socializing with friends, completely disappeared,” O’Brien says. “I wanted to fill my additional time with a meaningful project.” 

O’Brien took the opportunity to tackle a problem that had long nagged at her: the paucity of quality vegan eggs. 

It's a long article, but amazingly "fun" to read. 

Between Walmart, Amazon, and internet sleuthing, this 23-year-old, Stanford grad, entrepreneur, came up with a solution: chickpeas and kala namak (black salt), turmeric, onion powder and nutritional yeast for flavor. So, we'll see where this goes, of if she ends up on Shark Tank.

The company: Peggs. "P" is for plant-based, or perhaps "peas," as in chickpeas.

So, there you have it, all the way from killing the Keystone to chickpeas. 

What a great country.  

By the way, in case you do not read the entire article on vegan eggs, here's what you missed about O'Brien:

Peggs isn’t O’Brien’s first venture. 

When she was 14, O’Brien says she started a non-profit NGO, “Ears for Years,” where she raised money to get solar-powered hearing aids to “a few hundred” deaf children in developing nations. 

Though she says she still checks in on the children who received hearing aids, she wound down Ears for Years when she got to Stanford. 

The never-ending need to seek donations to keep a non-profit operating made O’Brien interested in starting a profit-generating company.

This whole rabbit hole led me to Kickstarter, but that's another story for another time. 

By the way, O'Brien set a goal of $35,715 on Kickstarter; she easily surpassed that goal. With four days left to go (same link as above):

• $59,428
• 706 backers

And, yes, I can't wait to try these "eggs."

Memo to self:  put kala namak on the shopping list. I'll have to ask Sophia's best friend's mother if she is familiar with kala namak. She is from India.

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