Investing in Regenerative Agriculture

As a child in Nairobi, Benedetta Kyengo spent holidays climbing trees and eating mangoes and papayas at her grandmother's food forest in eastern Kenya. Eight years later, every tree was gone, replaced by maize and beans, and her grandmother, who used to send food to the city, was depending on money sent from it. That reversal, from abundance to dependency in a single generation, is the wound this episode is about healing.Benedetta, founder of Feedback to the Future and a practitioner of syntropic agroforestry in Kenya's semi-arid east, bought five acres of severely degraded land in 2020 and spent the next four years turning it into a 100-species food forest. She describes how terrible droughts almost forced her to quit, why she teaches farmers to be "greedy with water", stealing runoff from neighbours' plots and slowing every drop into the soil, and how training hundreds of farmers across 300 acres has measurably changed local rainfall patterns. She also explains how she plans to make this food accessible not to wealthy Nairobi consumers, but to the slum communities she grew up in: by stripping input costs to near zero, saving indigenous seeds, and packaging in the small quantities the slum economy actually runs on. For anyone asking whether regenerative agriculture can work in brittle, semi-arid landscapes and at a price point that serves ordinary people, this episode is a field report from someone already doing it.More about this episode.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.

Fermentation is the oldest food technology on earth. It happens in our guts, in the soil, in every cup of coffee and most restaurants still throw the juiced lime away. At Baldío, Mexico City's zero-waste restaurant, Chris Locke has built an entire philosophy around that lime: a Korean-style raw syrup, a lacto-fermented powder for seasoning, a tapache, and finally a koji-based shoyu. Four products, zero waste, from something already used. In this conversation, recorded inside Baldío's production warehouse in Mexico City, Chris unpacks the three real drivers of fermentation — flavour, health, and waste reduction — and why most kitchens only chase one. He explains why the menu at Baldío functions like an ecosystem, where removing one dish breaks six others, why consistency is the wrong obsession for any restaurant working with small regenerative farms, and how 200 litres of surplus corn vinegar a week is pushing the project toward a retail product line. A UK chef who built his fermentation practice in Toronto and a circular innovation kitchen in Melbourne before arriving in Mexico City and waited four months for a job that didn't yet exist, Chris brings a rare cross-cultural precision to a practice most people still associate only with natural wine. Fermentation as a tool for closing loops, building shelf-stable products, and making the economics of zero-waste food actually work.More about this episode.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/Support the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.

An ancient farm system, built by hand on top of water, hidden inside one of the largest cities on earth and almost nobody knows it exists.The chinampas of Xochimilco are human-made islands, constructed over centuries in the lakes that Mexico City was built on. At their peak they fed an entire civilisation. Today, more than 60% are abandoned, the city is slowly swallowing the edges, and once a chinampero stops farming, another one rarely takes their place. Pablo Usobiaga from Arca Tierra is trying to reverse that not by fighting the city, but by bringing it in through a dining experience.This is part one of three episodes series recorded around Arca Tierra: Pablo Usobiaga built a restaurant — Baldío — around one idea: source everything from peasant farmers, waste nothing, and use fermentation to turn what would have been bin bags into the best things on the menu. It just became the first restaurant in Mexico City to earn a Green Michelin star. This conversation is where it starts: on the chinampas, where the food comes from. Parts two and three go deeper; into the fermentation lab with Chris (episode 423), and into the kitchen with Daniel (episode 425).More about this episode.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.

When Janet Maro started building training programs with farmers in Tanzania, she didn't arrive with a curriculum. She asked farmers what they knew, what they needed, and what they could bring to the table — and built from there. That instinct, to treat farmers as the architects rather than the audience, turns out to explain most of what makes Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania unusual: why groups keep meeting and planning years after projects end, why an organic shop opened in Morogoro in 2012 has since seeded eight more across the country, and why a conflict between Maasai pastoralists and smallholder farmers that had turned violent was resolved not through outside intervention but through a simple exchange of manure and crop residues, negotiated by the communities themselves.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!LARIS 2026Latin American Regenerative Investment Summit (Cumbre de Inversiones Regenerativas de América Latina). Be part of the movement that is regenerating the way we learn, invest, and live.Bogotá, ColombiaMay 12 - 14https://regenerativo.org/en/laris/ Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.

Mexico has thousands of bean varieties. Most people living in cities know four to five. Silke Gérman is on a mission to change that.She is the founder of La Comandanta, a premium heirloom bean and salsa brand now in its twelfth year of connecting smallholder milpa farmers in central Mexico to retail shelves in Mexico City, the US, the UK, and Germany. Ancient Mexican bean varieties — grown for millennia in the traditional milpa polyculture system alongside corn and squash — are disappearing from fields and plates at the same time. Silke's answer is neither a seed bank nor a subsidy. It's packaging, storytelling, and making a purple runner bean from Puebla feel like something worth paying for. Along the way, La Comandanta has brought income back to communities that were emptying out, kept ancestral seeds in living soil rather than frozen storage, and built a value chain that pays farmers fairly — one bag of heirloom beans at a time. More about this episode.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!LARIS 2026Latin American Regenerative Investment Summit (Cumbre de Inversiones Regenerativas de América Latina). Be part of the movement that is regenerating the way we learn, invest, and live.Bogotá, ColombiaMay 12 - 14https://regenerativo.org/en/laris/ Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.

Gut & Bösel in Alt Madlitz, Brandenburg is one of the largest regenerative farms in Europe — 3,000 hectares of arable land and forestry on some of the sandiest, driest soils in Germany. For years, farmer Benedikt Bösel and his team have been experimenting with agroforestry, holistic grazing, and composting at scale, with no blueprint and no neighbours to learn from. That experimentation costs money, takes time, and generates knowledge that other farmers benefit from for free.So they set up a foundation next to the farm to do the research properly — 10,000 soil samples, four university partners, climate sensors across 300 hectares, and a carbon credit programme that is already generating revenue. Max Küsters, managing director at Gut & Bösel, talks with Koen about how regenerative farms can start turning their hard-won data and ecosystem restoration work into actual income streams — through carbon markets, biodiversity credits, and eventually the insurance industry, which is slowly waking up to the fact that healthy soil is cheaper than flood damage.This podcast is part of the AI 4 Soil Health project which aims to help farmers and policy makers by providing new tools powered by AI to monitor and predict soil health across Europe. For more information visit ai4soilhealth.eu.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!LARIS 2026Latin American Regenerative Investment Summit (Cumbre de Inversiones Regenerativas de América Latina). Be part of the movement that is regenerating the way we learn, invest, and live.Bogotá, ColombiaMay 12 - 14https://regenerativo.org/en/laris/ Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.

Sylvia Kuria started with a kitchen garden and a refusal to use chemicals on food for her newborn. Seventeen years later, she runs Sylvia's Basket, aggregates organic produce across Kenya, trains smallholder farmers on half-acre plots, and helped get agroecology written into county government development plans with real budget behind it. The journey from that first bottle of pesticides to a funded policy win is not a straight line — and the business realities along the way are rarely the ones that make the headlines.The question running through this conversation is deceptively simple: should farmers feed themselves first, before thinking about any market? Sylvia's answer, grounded in seventeen years of practice, has implications for how we think about food security, monocropping, market access, and who gets to sit at the table where decisions are made.More about this episode.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!LARIS 2026Latin American Regenerative Investment Summit (Cumbre de Inversiones Regenerativas de América Latina). Be part of the movement that is regenerating the way we learn, invest, and live.Bogotá, ColombiaMay 12 - 14https://regenerativo.org/en/laris/ Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.

Argentina has just issued its first grazing-based carbon credits  and the story behind them is forty years in the making. Pablo Francisco Borrelli, co-founder of Ruuts, has spent the last decade building the infrastructure to get farmers in Patagonia and beyond paid for what their land is actually doing: sequestering carbon, retaining water, and growing more grass than anyone thought possible.The carbon credit is not the point. It is the door. Once a farmer steps through it and experiences what holistic management does for their land and their bottom line, the market can disappear and they won't go back. This is a grounded account of what it takes to turn forty years of agronomic pioneering into a verified, sellable outcome and why the hardest part was never the science.More about this episode.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!LARIS 2026Latin American Regenerative Investment Summit (Cumbre de Inversiones Regenerativas de América Latina). Be part of the movement that is regenerating the way we learn, invest, and live.Bogotá, ColombiaMay 12 - 14https://regenerativo.org/en/laris/ Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.

Your tongue might be the most underused tool we have for understanding food quality — and for moving consumer buying power toward regenerative farming. Sherry Hess, culinary professional, nutritionist, and founder of The Flavor Remedy, makes the case that taste is not a nice-to-have. It is a powerful biological signal, and the food processing industry has understood this far longer than we have.We go deep on the five tastes — salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami — and on why ultra-processed food has been so effective at training us toward intense sweetness while stripping out complexity. Sherry argues that bitterness isn't a flaw to engineer out; it's the missing piece tied to polyphenols, antioxidants, detoxification, glucose metabolism, and satiety. The good news: chefs already know how to balance bitter with umami, fat, protein, and spice. We don't all need to go to culinary school — we just need to borrow a few of their moves.We also take apart the "chocolate steak syndrome": the fitness industry has built an entire pipeline of protein products with steak-level nutrition engineered to taste like chocolate and in doing so, trained a generation to completely ignore what flavour is actually telling them. For investors and brand builders, Sherry has a practical provocation: if a product claiming to be regenerative needs five or six flavourings on the label, it's almost certainly masking the low quality of what's underneathMore topics covered: the five tastes framework and what each signals biologically; why bitter links to immune function, glucose metabolism, and detoxification; how non-nutritive sweeteners disrupt the microbiome.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!LARIS 2026Latin American Regenerative Investment Summit (Cumbre de Inversiones Regenerativas de América Latina). Be part of the movement that is regenerating the way we learn, invest, and live.Bogotá, ColombiaMay 12 - 14https://regenerativo.org/en/laris/ Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.

African soils were once so alive, nobody called it regeneration, the land just gave. Dr. Kofi Boa, founder of the Center for No-Till Agriculture (CNTA) in Ghana, has spent decades proving they can give again.Boa traces his journey from a burned family farm to one of Africa's most compelling soil restoration demonstration models and makes the case for a distinctly African approach to regeneration: grounded in what fallow land has always shown us, driven by farmers who need a full granary before they need a carbon credit, and proven through evidence you can walk through and see for yourself.From community-led adoption to the tension between carbon credit schemes and food security, this is a grounded, honest account of what building a regenerative agriculture movement looks like from the inside, in the soil, with the farmers, over decades.More about this episode. Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!LARIS 2026Latin American Regenerative Investment Summit (Cumbre de Inversiones Regenerativas de América Latina). Be part of the movement that is regenerating the way we learn, invest, and live.Bogotá, ColombiaMay 12 - 14https://regenerativo.org/en/laris/ Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/Support the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.

The healthiest economies will show up with drinkable rivers. That is the image Laura Ortiz Montemayor works backwards from — every Monday morning, every investor meeting, every slide deck.Laura is a regenerative finance strategist, founder of SVX Mexico, and co-founder of LARIS — the Latin American Regenerative Investment Summit. This is her third time on the show, and a lot has happened since we last spoke. LARIS 2025 sold out — more than 200 people, billionaires, farmers, and practitioners in the same room, conversations moving from spreadsheets to love and frequencies. LARIS 2026 is coming bigger: hosted on a wetland in Bogotá, May 12–14, with WATER as the central theme. We also talk about the collapse of USAID and the damage it did across Latin America, how the sector is rebuilding with local capital, and the question this whole conversation keeps circling: how do you make investors fall in love with life — without losing them on the spreadsheets?More about this episode.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!LARIS 2026Latin American Regenerative Investment Summit (Cumbre de Inversiones Regenerativas de América Latina). Be part of the movement that is regenerating the way we learn, invest, and live.Bogotá, ColombiaMay 12 - 14https://regenerativo.org/en/laris/ Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/Support the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.

Regenerative agriculture really works. Data shows that the ability of crops, from planting to harvest, to withstand weather shocks (50-year droughts and floods happening every year, anyone?) correlates very strongly with regenerative agriculture practices. To enable that at scale, MRVs are crucial. Happy to welcome back on the podcast Anastasia Volkova, co-founder of Regrow Ag, the AI-powered platform to make agriculture resilient, who just made another acquisition. We check in with the MRV pioneer and successful entrepreneur about why they are merging with the leading LATAM player. Last time we talked, five years ago, they had also just merged.We talk about the current state of the MRV world: who is paying, who isn't, who is doubling down on remote sensing, and who is investing in resilient agriculture.What do the current wars everywhere (we are recording this in mid-March '26, when the Iran war is in full swing) mean for resilient agriculture and the investments needed to unlock it? We also talk- just as we did five years ago- about fertiliser and the double role it plays. In the Global North we can easily cut 70%- yes, 70%- without meaningful yield drops, but in the Global South it's desperately needed in many places. With the current exploding prices and energy costs, that will be difficult.We discuss AI and its ability to unlock insights from large (cleaned-up) data sets, and why she is stepping into a more living-systems way of thinking. She's optimistic that watershed- scale regeneration is almost at our fingertips.More about this episode.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!LARIS 2026Latin American Regenerative Investment Summit (Cumbre de Inversiones Regenerativas de América Latina). Be part of the movement that is regenerating the way we learn, invest, and live.Bogotá, ColombiaMay 12 - 14https://regenerativo.org/en/laris/ Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.

Seeds, seeds, seeds. It all starts with power and who controls the seeds. But who is actually building scalable companies in this space? Today we have one: a decentralised seed company in Uganda that only works with indigenous seeds, is farmer-owned, and gives power, value, and control back to the farmers. The farmers are trained to select seeds and to grow them, and Emmanuel Luwemba, the founder of Eden Seeds, helps sell the best varieties to other farmers without extracting all life from the countryside like most seed companies do.What about yields? Emmanuel went deep into what farmers actually need. Of course, yield is important, but so is profitability. Dirty little secret: hybrid seeds are often very expensive and need a lot of very expensive inputs to perform. They often don't perform in challenging circumstances (droughts, extreme weather, etc). Taste, flavour, and nutrition are important too. Indigenous seeds are naturally high in iron, for example and there's no need for a multimillion-dollar, donor-funded GMO or CRISPR project to change hybrid seeds to add extra iron. Just breed, grow, and eat the indigenous variety selected over time for iron. That's not to say we can't develop these seeds further or that they are frozen in time, of course we can and should. If indigenous seeds got a quarter of the funding hybrids get, they would outperform everyone.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

Why are we completely ignoring our biggest organ, our skin? The skin care and cosmetics industry is a 200 billion industry and growing fast, often with great margins. Most of it is filled with barely legal chemicals, but there is a fast-growing natural, even regenerative, beauty space and we talk to one of the leaders.We cover everything with Pierluigi Scordari, Sustainability Manager di N&B Natural is Better: ferments, probiotics and prebiotics, the skin microbiome, how they started, why they are fully vertically integrated, why they specifically grow plants for their active ingredients (aka nutrient density), and why processing fast (less than 2 hours after harvest) is so crucial, otherwise the ingredients aren't alive and thus not working anymore.Does it sound familiar? There are so many overlaps and similarities with the food space, except that this skin care space is full of really well-built brands with great margins. So, we have some work to do! And for many regen farmers, growing something for the skin care industry could be very interesting. Many plants which thrive almost naturally in the hard Mediterranean climate (rosemary, lavender, olives, etc.) are fundamental ingredients.Yes, this involves frequencies, thinking about playing music to the plants and asking permission before removing leaves, all to achieve the highest possible quality and effectiveness. We spent a lot of time unpacking the almost superpowers of the queen of healthy plants: aloe vera.More about this episode.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.

Carbon is life, not the enemy. And in this wide-ranging conversation with the legend that is Paul Hawken, we get into all of it. Paul is an activist, entrepreneur with Project Drawdown and Project Regeneration and prolific writer who started a natural food brand back in the 1970s. We trace his journey through writing Drawdown, Regeneration, and Carbon: The Book of Life and why people loved Drawdown so much even though that was never really the point. Regeneration got closer to the core. And Carbon is chuck-full of nuggets of wisdom about the magical, magnificent role carbon plays in our lives. Yes, there's too much of it in the atmosphere, but there are also many places it can go, quickly and safely.We talk about his work with large food companies, and the pure joy of bringing top executives to real regenerative farms and watching the lightbulbs go off, followed immediately by the panic of realising just how far their current supply chains are from anything like that. We get into food as medicine, and how furious Paul was with the healthcare and food system after he cured his lifelong asthma at 18 simply by changing what he ate. He had never taken a full breath of air until that moment. And we talk about his genuine excitement about the new generation of scientists coming up.One advice: just go outside for as long as possible, and listen to this episode somewhere beautiful and alive.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

We sit down with Olusola Sowemimo, a lawyer-turned-farmer and founder of Ope Farms in Nigeria, to unpack how grief became a blueprint for organic, traceable, and profitable agriculture. Her catalyst was a cancer conference in California where survivors only ate what they could trace—an idea that reshaped how she thinks about soil, inputs, and integrity. Back home, the early days were rough: antibiotic-laced manure wiped out hundreds of tomato plants, a strong tobacco extract burned cucumbers, and buyers were nowhere in sight. What changed? Relentless record keeping, strict organic standards, and smart design—corner plots with buffer zones, on-farm worker housing, and a refusal to cut down trees.Olusola details how rabbits and carefully managed poultry helped her close nutrient loops, why fruit trees are the most underrated cash-flow asset for new organic farms, and how processing gluts into shelf-stable products saved revenue. She shares the playbook for market fit—from salad staples to premium greens like kale—and the power of traceability in winning home deliveries, retail partners, and even international lab validations for turmeric and ginger. We also explore the human side: training that prevents avoidable mistakes, social media that tells an honest story, and the mindset shift needed to move beyond "organic is impossible".More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

It's a very interesting time for African agriculture and food, the continent is realising it's potential to help feed the world, money is flowing into infrastructure to unlock this, more and more talent is coming into the space and the realisation that agro ecology or regenerative agriculture is no longer a nice niche with big margins but has the potential to become the predominant way of agriculture is performed. After putting over $20 million to work in East Africa, Ivan Mandela, founder of SHONA Group, has learned the hard way: chasing Western style so called unicorns might not be the right approach for a predominantly agricultural society. So he shifted his approach and started investing in real companies, to help create a functioning main street a functional real economy where unicorns will naturally start to occur. We discuss why Ivan ends up mostly backing female entrepreneurs, his tips for young students and his takes on nutrient density and quality.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

The food, agriculture and planetary systems, for that matter, are all in serious need of change. No news there. But how? Individual investments and grants, however large, will never be big enough to move these systems. What we need is a serious, deep analysis of the food and agriculture space within a certain context: hundreds of hours of interviews with many stakeholders to map the players, the positive and negative feedback loops, and the intervention points with huge leverage (or not), trying to make sense of the messiness of a system. No, a map is never the territory, but it's better than no map.Then what? How do we go from mapping to action? It is key to build dedicated funding vehicles for-profit, low-return, no-return, philanthropy, the whole capital spectrum concentrated on the highest leverage points in a system. And then, and only then, we might have a chance to move something.CO_ is one of the most interesting regen investment vehicles we have come across, combining deep systems research with long-term, on-the-ground work, weaving until you have a common vision, and then deploying serious capital to make it work.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

Think about where and how you live. Close your eyes and picture your ideal neighbourhood. We bet it looks something like this: a walkable neighbourhood designed around a fully functional farm, with different types of houses built from healthy, non-toxic, natural materials, multifamily, aging-proof, small but not too small, with plenty of privacy, and affordable. The neighbourhood is designed for meeting your neighbours, hence the word neighbourhood. Cars are confined to a designated area, and most importantly, there are lots of free-ranging kids and chickens.Why are we talking about real estate? Because so much agricultural land is being swallowed up by “development”. Cities are expanding, often building super ugly, incredibly toxic suburban homes on that land with big gates and big cars parked in driveways or garages, and kids who never go outside.At the same time, real estate is very good at raising money and investing it, often without taking negative externalities into account. So, what can we learn, and how can we use the highly developed real estate capital markets to build agrihoods and thriving regenerative farms, enabled by well-planned, healthy neighbourhoods? And yes, we can achieve market-rate returns. Happy to welcome on the podcast Neal Collins, founder of Hamlet Capital.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

A conversation with Sylvia Banda, Zambian business woman, restaurateur and social entrepreneur about her journey started when when she was 12. She opened her first food company, and she hasn't stopped since. She now runs a multi-million-dollar business with over 15 restaurants in Lusaka, Zambia, a food- processing company selling traditional Zambian food worldwide, and has trained over 60,000 smallholder farmers to produce higher-quality products and process them to receive better prices. We talk about why researchers should take a back seat and let farmers and entrepreneurs lead now; why the hand tools many farmers still use belong in a museum and why mechanisation is key, but with care; why processing and preserving are essential to ending hunger; and about nutrition, traditional food versus imported food, and how she taught urban people to re-appreciate what is often considered “food for the poor” that is traditional, nutrient-dense, and tasty food. To supply all of this, she set up two factories and trained over 60,000 smallholder farmers, changing many lives. Enjoy the story and the knowledge of a true Zambian and Southern African powerhouse.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

We are at an interesting moment in the dairy sector. For years, smaller farmers with around 200 cows, who were also great graziers, could undercut the costs of large concentrated dairy operations, keeping costs low, taking healthy margins in good years, and surviving the bad ones.But something has changed: CAFO dairies have grown bigger and bigger (10,000 cows is now normal, and 100,000 is no longer an exception) and their economies of scale mean they are undercutting the grazers. Of course, this leads to massive manure lagoons, animal welfare disasters, and all kinds of other externalities, but nobody is paying for that yet. Not to mention that you can only push biology so far before it literally breaks.So what's next for regenerative grazing? Joe Tomandl, 4th generation dairy farmer, founder and director of the Dairy Grazing Alliance, argues instead for focusing on the transition of mid-size farms with 300– 700 cows that have surrounding land which could be grazed but currently isn't. You need grazing experience and a long-term offtake agreement, but it can be done.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

The difference between agroecology and regenerative agriculture is the deep social change we need in the food and agriculture system. As Laura Ortiz Montemayor told us once "ecology without social justice is just gardening". Million Belay, who leads the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, the largest social movement on the African continent, is very clear stop intervening with agriculture on the continent, stop imposing all kinds of rules, practices, seeds, inputs etc, which don't serve in this context (and we could argue in the context we come from as well, how many European banned pesticides are exported to the continent?)We talk about the shut down of the USAID which was actually a good shock to the system. And finally donors, which unfortunately dictate quite a bit the direction, are talking and slowly also acting around agroecology. We discuss how through lobbying they managed to get many countries to adopt agroecology policies in the last few years, what Million would do with a billion dollar and what his message for investors is.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

This is deep dive into common misconceptions about red meat, methane emissions from cows, and the feasibility of transitioning to grass-fed beef production. We discuss the health impacts of red meat based on the cow's diet, the actual environmental effects of methane from ruminants, and busts myths surrounding CAFO operations and land use. Cows. Methane. Climate.The debate is louder than ever — and still full of myths.That why, after recording a podcast on why building a $100B home for regenerative brands is key, with Martin Reiter, we went for a Meat MythBusters episode in which we unpack some uncomfortable truths that rarely make it into headlines:

What is needed to truly move the needle on health? Create more research, more trials on nutrient density, more advocacy? Or, as Martin Reiter, founder of RARE argues, create the next regen Nestlé or Unilever: a 100 billion (yes, that's a B) regenerative consumer goods conglomerate, with only better-for-you and better-for-the-planet brands. The demand is there; the current incumbents are unable to innovate in regen, as they are built on chemical ingredients.The story usually goes like this: a group of people sets up a food (or cosmetics) brand that is better for you and better for the planet. Much better ingredients, honest sourcing, actually healthy, not UPF, etc. Then they need some money and raise funds, keep building, scaling, and at some point, 10–15 years down the road, the founders get tired and want to take some money off the table. and their existing investors need to get out and return money to their LPs.Currently, their only option is to sell to an incumbent, which then unfortunately usually screws it up. They start tweaking the ingredients, squeezing farmer margins, etc. The original founders leave after a few frustrating years.Is there a better way? A permanent home for regen, good-for-you, good-for-the-planet brands? A regen Nestlé or Unilever, if you will?More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

How to get more entrepreneurs building in the regeneration space? If you are a regular listener of this podcast, you have heard us discuss this so many times you probably lost count. No, we are not saying entrepreneurs and companies are the solution to all our problems. But entrepreneurial people who set up companies, but also non-profits and movements— basically people who don't accept the status quo and get to work to change it—are always the ones who change the world.So how do we get more of those started in the biggest challenge of all: how to regenerate a severely degraded world? And when people get bitten by the “soil” bug, how do we give them all the support and resources to make sure the chances of them succeeding against most odds are as high as possible? Or, in the words of Bart, how do we create the best enabling conditions for them and others to succeed?More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

Bill Gates Foundation works in Africa: what goes through your mind when you hear those words? We all probably quickly have our thoughts ready, but hold on a second. Just as we often talk about farmers without asking them, we often talk about the African continent without asking people actually living there. So, we never fully grasp how big, how interesting, how full of potential, and how fundamental it is in a regenerative future.In this new series on The African Regenerative Frontrunners, we try to do that differently. We will be talking to amazing regenerative entrepreneurs on the continent, but we obviously are not the best suited to do that and thus won't be doing this alone. We are collaborating and co-hosting this series with Omoke Brian, aka The Organic Guy, who has been deep in organic agroecology for the last 10 years, based in Kenya, an entrepreneur himself and a podcast host. We will be co-hosting a number of conversations. We will both interview different guests and build upon each other's episodes, and we kick it off with a double interview where I join Omoke's show and he joins ours. More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

AI is transforming agriculture, how can farmers and land managers be sure it works for them? What digital twins, soil health metrics, novel robot sensors and other technologies can do to support profitable farming and enable ecosystem service payments—while also addressing critical questions about data rights, governance, and ownership like: How can farmers and landholders retain control of their own data and capture more of the value AI creates? How can the new tech help farmers to monitor, track and predict soil health and empower them to make on-farm decisions? Through maps and real-world examples, let's explore limits and opportunities.This episode was recorded live at Groundswell 2025, in the UK, one of the most important gatherings for regenerative agriculture in the world. During the panel Koen moderated on AI in Ag: What's Possible,What's Not, What Farmers Need to Know  we dove into into challenges and opportunities with the scientist Ichsani Wheeler, the farmer and investor Maarten van Dam, the journalist Louisa Burwood-Taylor and the fund manager Naeem Lakhani. More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

Regenerative practices lead to higher quality and much higher prices in year one and, over time, to lower costs, which makes the regenerative business case in certain cash crops that are exported (spices, tea, coffee, etc.) so strong that it almost spreads on its own. Nothing is easy, but this is really hopeful. In this conversation with Thekla Teunis and Gijs Boers, founders of Grounded, Grounded Ingredients and Grounded Investment Company, we discuss why quality is intimately linked to regenerative practices.We talk about why we don't need transition finance in many cases, but we do need philanthropic capital to figure out what regenerative looks like in specific circumstances. When that research and development (in other sectors we would call that R&D ) is done, it can be rolled out profitably and relatively easily with more commercially focused, return- driven capital.We talk about why it's easier to act regeneratively in many places in the Global South (easier, not easy). And we talk about the why of super hands-on investing. Knock knock- there are regenerative barbarians at the gate. What if we do private equity right and use it as a tool for good?More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

This is our 2025 wrap episode. If 2025 had a soundtrack, it would be pressure: pressure on systems, on people, on animals, on land.Heat. Drought. Fire. Flood. Repeating across regions and headlines.But this year we also paid attention to what doesn't always make the news. We spent time in real conversations with farmers testing new practices in their fields, scientists challenging outdated models, investors reassessing what risk really means, and builders putting regenerative ideas into practice. Online and in person, we saw regeneration moving from theory into action.As 2025 comes to a close, the picture is still complex but clearer. The evidence is growing. Regeneration works, and the path forward is becoming more defined. Tune in to listen to what 2025 inside regenerative food and agriculture taught us.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

How do you make legumes great again? This is not a political episode. It's about something far more urgent: giving legumes the role they truly deserve in our food system. Together with Andres Jara, co-founder of Favamole, we explore what it really takes to build a regenerative food brand in the middle of today's industrial food landscape. What if a simple, delicious sauce could change crop rotations, farmer income, and your weekly lunch? With Andres we explore how a chef-turned-butcher-turned-farmer built Favamole: a fresh, clean-label legume spread that tastes great, pays growers fairly, and can scale without losing its soul.How do you play the game while sharing shelf space with giant food companies, big retail, massive processors, and catering empires? And more importantly: how do you scale fast, influence as many hectares as possible, and not lose your regenerative soul along the way? We dive into regenerative business models, flavour as a lever for change, regenerative finance, scale, money, and impact, all while walking on the stunning, sunny, and very cold fields of Jeroen and Mellany Klompe.We dive into the origin story—why a guacamole “alternative” wasn't enough—and how redefining “mole” as its own category unlocked flavor, pricing, and brand freedom. More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

Make America healthy again: is that helping the food-as-medicine movement or hurting it? And why is it so important to focus on quality food as medicine- which means nutrient density and real quality- rather than settling for simply “more fruit and vegetables”? Why would you, if you can, deny people with severe diabetes and lower incomes the best-quality food possible, especially when it has the biggest ripple effect?Today, a check-in conversation with Erin Martin, one of the leaders advancing the food as medicine movement in the US. It has been an exciting, interesting, and challenging few years — from speaking on the Hill in Washington, to passing a food as medicine act in her home state of Oklahoma (which has some of the worst health crises in the country), to scaling their program of prescribing produce to reverse type 2 diabetes to over 500 patients. But also: politics, making America and children healthy again, a global and local health crisis spiralling out of control, GLP-1 drugs breaking through, and somehow food and regenerative agriculture becoming polarising, a political minefield.So much to talk about: the first social impact bond, which isn't a bond but an outcome-based payment scheme,  is coming in early 2026 in Oklahoma. And super important: real data is showing massive savings when it comes to prescribing healthy vegetables, fruit, and cooking classes.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

Straight from La Junquera farm, in Murcia, Spain, a Walking the Land episode with Alfonso Chico de Guzmán, a regenerative livestock farmer.It starts as a hobby. So, you take a few cows just like someone in the city would take a cat or dog or a chihuahua, and it slowly gets out of hand. But what really enables this kind of grazing in these circumstances is technology, virtual fencing, virtual shepherding to be precise. This is ag-tech done right. It enables farmers to hold more complexity on the land. In this landscape it would be impossible to have these animals outside year-round because you would have to fence it. You have to drill, and basically it takes a week to put in a fence that the cows maybe use for two days. So that's not a very good multiple.So, this is a story about the reintroduction of animals as a tool, with all the animal welfare worked out, on a farm that has been transitioning to perennials, transitioning away from annual crops, and seems to have found the puzzle pieces to actually make it thrive. And now the question is: how to get more cows? How to get sturdier cows? How to get stronger cows that can survive outside and thrive outside? And that is surprisingly difficult. Getting cows from too far away almost guarantees that they won't adapt quickly and won't thrive.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. ==========================

A check in conversation with Stef van Dongen, founder of The Pioneers of Our Time. Sitting at the fireplace we trace how neighbors who barely spoke began phoning across ridgelines, how tourism money are flowing uphill to fund forest work, and how a dense, abandoned woodland started opening into a living mosaic that holds water, softens fire, and invites wildlife back. We walk through the mechanics of a cost-based climate credit that pays for what a hectare truly needs over 15 years measured across water, carbon, biodiversity, and fire safety. It's a public–private framework that the regional government helps certify: pilots sold out, and a thousand credits are now in sight as the valley scales from dozens to thousands of hectares, all within a 40,000-hectare fire prevention plan designed to be holistic from day one.The conversation goes deeper into governance and replication. How do you manage a watershed you don't own? Start with trust, map the layers- forest, water, biodiversity, agriculture, economy- and build a campus where scientists, foresters, and investors can monitor, learn, and iterate. We compare desalination's billion-euro price tags to the cheaper, cleaner gains from soil sponge restoration. We talk predators and grazers, “green deserts” and beavers, and the hard pivot from carbon-speak to water security, a narrative that resonates across politics because everyone needs a shower, a harvest, and a forest that won't explode each summer.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

How do we feed the world? It's all nice and cute this regenerative agriculture and food stuff, but how do we actually feed the world? By 2050, we'll need to produce double the amount of food. This is a question you, like me, get a lot, we bet, from banks, pension funds, large institutional players, investors in general, entrepreneurs, and eco-modernists.Our go-to answer was always: go to the most pioneering farmers and see what they can produce. But the counterargument was always: “Show me the research!". Now we have the research.In this Walking the Land episode, recorded straight from one of the most advanced farms in Europe, we talk to Simon, Kraemer, executive director of the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture (EARA) and the lead author of a revolutionary study where they looked at 78 of the most pioneering farms in Europe and compared them to their conventional neighbours. They analyse everything from fertiliser use, finances, and pesticides to the holiest of grails: photosynthesis. And guess what? Regenerative outperformed conventional in almost everything. Similar or higher yields, more than 75% reduction in NPKs, significantly reduced chemical use and, best of all, over the seven years they compared them, the regenerative farms kept getting better and better. More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

In order to save and more importantly restore biodiversity we don't need biodiversity or carbon credits; we need biologists to find super profitable business models within the magical deeply complex world of nature. It's the case of Toby Parkes, founder and CEO of Rhizocore, with whom go deep into the third, mostly ignored, and much more complex kingdom: fungi. We talk numbers that matter to forest managers: commercial sites often lose 15–25% of trees in year one, native mixes 35–50%. Across 70+ sites, Rhizocore's locally sourced pellets consistently cut losses in half and add roughly 20% in height and girth, with outsized benefits under drought. We also explore the bigger vision: a frozen library of hundreds of strains that powers not only forestry but new lines like nutrient capture from farm runoff and wastewater. Think high-throughput screening for fungi that strip nitrates and phosphates fast, plus future prospects for enzymes and therapeutics- practical ways to put ecology on the balance sheet.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

Meet Julia Kasper, cofounder and CEO of Zukunftmoor, a company rewetting drained peatlands and growing sphagnum moss to transform how we think about agriculture. Their powerful approach reduces greenhouse gas emissions and makes climate-friendly farming possible in peatland regions.Peatlands, peatlands, peatlands: the biggest climate opportunity in agriculture isn't cover crops or even silvopasture, but rewetting the humble peatlands. They cover only 3% of the global land surface, yet hold immense amounts of CO2. And when they're drained- as many are- they release it, not just once, but year after year after year. Like a bathtub with the plug out and the shower still on.These lands, at least in Europe, are often farmed and not very profitable. But before these farmers risk their livelihoods, we need concrete alternatives to transition. That's what Julia works on: how to grow something that can replace current agricultural methods on peatlands while rewetting them. And it seems they've found a big part of the puzzle: rewetting peatlands and growing sphagnum moss. Currently, when you buy a plant in a shop or when plants are grown in greenhouses, the growing medium contains a lot of extracted peat, which comes with huge emissions and will soon be illegal in Europe. Sphagnum moss can replace this 1-to-1. More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

Can you pay a decent year-round salary to farm workers, enough to go to a bank, get a mortgage, and still not charge prices that make your produce accessible only to the happy few? What do vibrations, pest management, nutrient density, and processing have to do with it?With Nicola Giuggioli we walk the Quintosapore land, on a hilly but stunning landscape in the green heart of Italy, Umbria, where GPS auto-steer tractors don't exist because simply keeping the tractor in a straight line without slipping down the hill is already an achievement. Quinto Sapore is new farm, only 5 years old and 2.5 years into serious business, but it is making huge steps. They are building a brand, paying attention to revenue and costs, measuring nutrient density, and paying living year-round wages. For the past few years, they've been going very deep into the next frontier of agriculture: vibrations, frequencies, and more. In this episode we cover it all: seeds, living wages, trying to intervene as little as possible, quantum agriculture and transformation, and processing.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

A new conversation with Jonathan Lundgren, one of the world's most interesting and most cited scientists when it comes to regenerative agriculture. For the last four years, Jonathan and his team have been in full swing with their 1000 Farms Initiative, where they document research and follow regenerative farms, actually closer to 1600 farms now.An episode where we talk about data, data, and more data. We unpack a four-year effort that spans commodities, ecoregions, and management styles, revealing how regeneration scales in the real world. The results are striking: equal or better yields, stronger profits, higher biodiversity, improved water infiltration, and a path to substantial soil carbon storage.But it isn't just about that. It's about farmers' health and happiness. It's about pushing our imagination of what farmland could look like. It's about the outliers in these studies that show us what is possible: more people on the land, more farmers connected to every acre being managed. It's about producing food for your family and community.  More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

A conversation with Justin Bruch, Cofounder-President & CEO of Clear Frontier, born and raised 5th generation Iowa farmer.  He has actively farmed on 4 continents and has spent his entire career working in agriculture across North America (USA/Canada), South America, Europe, and Africa.  Organic makes more money. This is a financial decision first. Of course, it's context-specific: we're talking about the Midwest in the US, corn, soy, and specialty crops. But a fund that has been operating for the last six years clearly shows it makes more financial sense to farm organically. Not saying it's easy, you have a lot of things to manage: crop rotation, pest management, weed pressure, manure, and all of that. But it does make more money.So now the question becomes: how do we get more farms and farmers to transition? What are the financial models? What are the investment models to unlock this transition at scale?More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

Yes, we're talking again about water cycles and this time with Douglas Sheil, Professor of Forest Ecology and Forest Management at Wageningen University, one of the most famous agricultural universities in the world. Why has it been so difficult to get scientific discoveries, like the biotic pump theory in physics, to enter other fields like climate science and forestry? We talk about the huge pushback biotic pump scientists have faced in publishing papers and gaining recognition over the past 20 years.But we also talk about optimism, why water is a much easier sell than carbon, and how it could spark far more cross-border cooperation. Still, to make it work, we need to think big and get much better at working together, which is no easy feat. It's a wide-ranging conversation on tropical forests, science, the Sahel, natural regeneration, and politics.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

This is a check-in conversation with Lauren Tucker, co-founder of Kiss the Ground and Renourish Studios. We talk about wrapping up the cohort at Renourish Studio, where they've worked for three years with a diverse group of entrepreneurs and investors across the US food and agriculture system.How do you bring the fact that we are part of a living system into your work in commercial organisations? Lauren shares lessons learned, and what they're doing moving forward. How much of this work is inner work—how we see the world, what we think is possible and not—vs. outer work like planting cover crops, digging swales, showing the financials and nutrient density of almonds, and demonstrating how regenerative farming systems are more alive by measuring biodiversity? How do we open up to opportunities like small water cycle restoration, instead of only thinking about cover crops on our farm?More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

A conversation with Maria Jensen, co-founder of Antler Bio, helping dairy farmers identify and address factors limiting their herd's full potential. What if cows could speak? Especially dairy cows. They would probably share not only the horrors of the dairy industry, but also stories of many dairy farmers who truly try their best to care for their animals and yet still fail. Their cows are neither healthy nor happy, their bank accounts look worse every year, and their mental health and marriages are shaky. Intensive dairy, unless you are massive, is a very difficult industry.So how do we change this gridlock? By taking technology from the horse racing industry to let cows and herds speak: to share what's missing, what could be improved. And, surprise, there is plenty of low-hanging fruit in improving dairy cows' lives practically overnight from better minerals to more water points, and of course the holy grail: super-diverse pasture management.This leads to healthier cows, fewer vet costs, and more milk.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

A check-in conversation with Thomas Kliemt, co-founder of Kulturland, which has been growing and they are suddenly, after 10 years in the making, an overnight success. In the first 6 months of 2025, they accelerated their fundraising by 100%, raising the same €2.5m they raised in all of 2024.Once you enable access to land, transition it into the commons as an anti-speculation measure, and remove the huge debt burden new farmers face, who is actually going to farm this land? That's what Thomas' next venture is working to solve, inspired by a highly successful French model which has trained hundreds of farmers in running their businesses through incubator farms: new farmers work their own land for 3 years, run their enterprises, and receive a salary. Afterward, they are ready to take over a farm elsewhere and, remarkably, over 75% of them do. Many of the rest join other farms as employees. This is an incredibly high success rate for any incubator, and the model has already scaled to Belgium, Spain, and Finland. Now Thomas is bringing it to Germany.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

Straight from Copenhagen, a conversation with Rasmus Nørgaard, co-founder of Urban Partners, Home.Earth and Nordhus with over two decades of experience in real estate, pushing the boundaries of sustainability within conventional systems. With Rasmus we dive deep into the world of real estate. The built environment is one of the three major sectors that needs a complete systems change, alongside with agrifood and energy.What happens when you reimagine real estate development from first principles? What can the regenerative agriculture and food sector learn from one of the pioneers of sustainable real estate? Rasmus shares the revolutionary approach behind Home.Earth, a company proving that sustainable, affordable housing can also be profitable. He is building a much more holistic for-profit company that is reinventing real estate from the ground up. Yes, we talk a lot about buildings and homes, but there are so many overlaps with agriculture and food. Let's face it: soil is a real asset in investment terms.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

Legend alarm on the podcast! We are happy to welcome the Haggerty's family, Ian and Dianne, together with their son Matthew, on the podcast sharing their 30+ year journey- from being considered the hippie weirdos to leading a movement in Western Australia- showing that you can absolutely farm regeneratively at scale, in this case over 60,000 acres, with deep regeneration. Leading regenerative farmer and co-founder of Natural Intelligence Farming (NIF), the Haggertys' farm is a living example of a harmonious alignment of soil, plant, animal, and human microbiomes in farm ecosystems.They regularly take on new land, but only if they feel the land wants and needs them to manage it. In other words, they don't go looking for land, the land finds them. Often this land is extremely degraded, and they bring it back to life with the help of sheep, whose gut microbiome kickstarts regeneration, followed by well-integrated annuals.We also dive into the different water cycles they are influencing and how these have even affected local rainfall. Of course, we unpack the massive mindset shift that is fundamental in the regenerative transition, vibrations, quantum agriculture, and rebuilding local supply webs. We cover it all. More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

A walking the land episode with Sarah Hellebek, deputy head at Krogerup Højskole, who spent years at the heart of Denmark's climate activist movement. By most measures, she was successful, climate made it onto the political agenda, though never strongly enough. But the fight came with a cost: it also made her pretty depressed, she was- in her own words- mostly shouting in front of the Parliament. Until a tour visiting progressive Danish farmers exposed her to the world of regeneration and she dove right into it. After spending a lot of time on different farms she noticed the need to train the next generation, as the current ag school system in Denmark (and everywhere else for that matter) doesn't prepare you to run farms and embrace complexity. So she started her own school, outside the free super subsidied Danish school system.We talk about why the next generation of farmers has to be trained by practitioners not teachers and why your holistic context is so important and pretty scary to dive into that in week 1 of your education. She felt she had to get some dirt under her nails and set up a market garden which hosts a lot of activities. We end with a deep dive into our role as positive key stone species.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

A barefoot conversation across his Danish farmland with Frederik Lean Hansen, advisor on regenerative farm finance, revealing the efficiency of his pasture-raised chicken operation and Abunda, the revolutionary business he's building to connect land holders with entrepreneurial farmers.How many times have you visited a farm or heard a story from a farmer or landowner who wished for more people on the farm? Someone to start a market garden, run a chicken operation, or build an advanced biofertiliser brewery? More stacked enterprises, more diversity, and more hands and eyes on the land- of course, only if it makes financial sense. But let's assume that's the case. Where do you find these entrepreneurial people who fit your context, your farm, country, culture, and personality? And once you find them, how do you structure the financial and legal side to create a partnership that lasts?We probably all agree that we need more well-paid people on the land—so how do we make that happen?This episode is a conversation where we walk the land (just a few hectares) and check in on the latest developments: pasture-based chickens on Fred's farm, the earliest steps into agroforestry and, most importantly, Fred's new venture focused on land matching. More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

A check in conversation with Cindie Christiansen, founder of Foodprint Nordic and Top 50 Farmers (no, it's not a ranking, so nobody “won”). We spoke just six months ago, but this time we met in person to talk about the progress of turning farmers into the next superheroes of climate, water, health, and more.We unpack her vision for systems change in food and agriculture. Directly from one of the world's leading culinary scenes, Copenhagen, we ask: why hasn't a strong farm-to-table, local cuisine movement led to real change in the agrifood system yet? And more importantly, what can we do about it?We dive into her work with Foodprint Nordic and how they're about to expand it to the rest of Europe. Very simply, but of course, it's not that simple, the idea is to access a whole new pool of money not yet active in this space: the money of us eaters, and funnel it as quickly and with as few strings attached as possible to farmers ready to expand regenerative practices, planting trees, buying compost equipment, and more.And even more importantly, how this approach could serve as a blueprint for real regional, and potentially national, action, helping shape government policy that truly supports regenerative farmers on the ground.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

A conversation with Darren J Doherty, co-founder of Regrarians, in the space of regeneration and regenerating for over 35 years, about the role of technology, AI, and large language models in training farmers and agronomists. We touch on how expensive and too-short workshops are hurting everyone, and why a hybrid model, grounded on the land and in person, combined with much longer online engagement, might be one way to move forward.We also explore what it means to reinvent yourself after spending years deeply immersed in a project, only to resurface and realise the regenerative world has shifted. Suddenly, you need to work harder to get attention, to find work, and to fill your courses. And yet, there's so much value in being able to draw on decades of experience and the thousands upon thousands of farmers and land stewards you've worked with through times of transition.We ask why larger corporations haven't reached out to tap into this expertise: why aren't they calling about training their farmers or agronomists? It seems we may be exiting the phase of dogmatic pioneers, the era when it had to be permaculture, or holistic management, or keyline design, and entering something more pragmatic. A moment where the focus is shifting toward whatever actually works: on your land, in your human context, and within your market.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

A conversation with Rob de Laet, project lead of Cooling the Climate and co-author of the book Cooling the Climate: How to Revive the Biosphere and Cool the Earth Within 20 Years. The science is pretty clear and getting clearer by the day: water cools the planet. The more living, healthy vegetation we have on this planet, predominately perennials and thus trees, agroforestry systems and healthy forests, the cooler the climate is and the less extreme weather events occur. Living plants literally make the Earth sweat and remove heat from the biosphere.Humans have systematically devegetated the planet as Judith D. Schwartz likes to say, and the ongoing climate weirding suggests we may have gone too far. Now we're seeing real calculations: how many square kilometres do we need to regenerate to lower the global temperature by just one degree?If this is all becoming increasingly evident, why isn't it common knowledge yet, especially in the headquarters of banks, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, and governments?This is the story of a successful entrepreneur getting drawn into water cycle restoration, planetary cooling and all the good stuff that comes with it. We share notes on why this movement, maybe the defining story of our time, hasn't broken through yet and what we can do about it.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================

A conversation with Sheila Darmos, co-founder of the Southern Lights, based in the southern Peloponnese, Greece with the mission is to spread knowledge, techniques, and the mindset for regenerative practices across all domains of human activity. Sheila is also a co-founding farmer of the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture (EARA) and serves as an EU Soil Mission Ambassador.A question we get very often is: which place or country is leading the regenerative movement? It's obviously a very complex question to answer, but after talking to Sheila, our answer might be Greece. Having battled numerous economic and non- economic crises, it seems that those who have stayed don't have much to lose. There is a strong back-to-the-land movement, well-organized local organizations helping farmers and land stewards' transition, and people who want to return to the land more easily.Perhaps the fact that 10% of the workforce is still active in agriculture helps, along with Greece's long history of farming without fully going down the super-mechanized, industrial, extractive path. The rural-urban divide is very real and it's not easy at all, but maybe farming and food are the way to break down those barriers.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================