Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food 44 Geoff Burke, scaling organic regenerative dairy and organic kiwis in NZ
Discussion about how to increase the impact investing in regenerative agriculture in New Zealand.If you want to drive meaningful environmental change you are going to need to make it more profitable
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Today I interviewed Geoff Burke, co-founder of Agro-Ecological, a New Zealand based impact investment manager and advisory firm focused on farmland.
We also recorded our conversation as a video with some background slides. Please have a look and let us know what you think! https://youtu.be/0BR3v-_2aO8.
Things we discussed:
- One of the things holding the agro ecological transition back is the myth that regenerative agriculture is less profitable. And that is wrong especially in New Zealand. You are able to run leaner and have more resilient returns
- Organic is important, independently audited and gives the consumers some comfort and drives the premium. It has been successful for 20/30 years
- We should focus on profit per acre instead of yields of acre
- If you only substitute your non organic inputs with organic inputs you are destined to fail
- You need to completely redesign your management system
- There is a lot of water quality regulation coming in New Zealand
- Farmers are asking themselves how to farm and have the social licences from their community to keep farming
- New Zealand has an amazing climate, on most farms animals can be outside all year round
Organic Kiwis
- Why are organic kiwis interesting? Market is booming
- Kiwis need ‘winter chilling’, in the current kiwi region there isn’t enough winter chilling and producers use a chemical to ‘fake’ the winter, this isn’t allowed in organic production
- It isn’t easy to deploy big quantities of (institutional) investment capital
Organic regenerative dairy
- Dairy is a major industry but created huge environmental issues, mostly on water quality, run off etc.
- Regulation is becoming much stricter and forcing the intensive farms to change
- Geoff is focussed on one water catchment, to improve the wat
Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!
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