384 Thomas Kliemt - A farming incubator with a 75% success rate (that nobody knows about) lands in Germany

Sep 23, 2025

53:59

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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 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.

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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.

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