Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food

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 m...

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 smal...

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 lon...

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 agric...

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 ev...

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...

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...

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 fundament...

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...

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...

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 model...

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 rota...

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...

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 she...

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 mechanic...

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...

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...

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 silvopastu...

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...

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...

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 talk...

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 pu...

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...

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...

A check-in conversation with Thomas Kliemt, formerly part 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 remo...