Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food

Koen van Seijen
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Sep 23, 2025 • 53min

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

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.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.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! ==========================🎙 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST AND SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL OR WATCH IT ON  📽️ our YouTube channel==========================FOLLOW US!🔗 Linkedin📸 Instagram==========================The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Use KOEN10 for 10% offRFSI Europe 2026 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 showFeedback, ideas, suggestions? - Twitter @KoenvanSeijen - Get in touch www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.comJoin our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P! Support the showThanks for listening and sharing!
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Sep 16, 2025 • 1h 22min

383 Rasmus Nørgaard - From bricks to soil: rethinking real estate from the ground up

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.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! ==========================🎙 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST AND SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL OR WATCH IT ON  📽️ our YouTube channel==========================FOLLOW US!🔗 Linkedin📸 Instagram==========================The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Use KOEN10 for 10% offRFSI Europe 2026 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 showFeedback, ideas, suggestions? - Twitter @KoenvanSeijen - Get in touch www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.comJoin our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P! Support the showThanks for listening and sharing!
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Sep 9, 2025 • 1h 32min

382 Dianne, Ian and Matthew Haggerty - Food, not commodities: how regenerative agriculture works at scale on 63,000 acres

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.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! ==========================🎙 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST AND SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL OR WATCH IT ON  📽️ our YouTube channel==========================FOLLOW US!🔗 Linkedin📸 Instagram==========================The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Support the showFeedback, ideas, suggestions? - Twitter @KoenvanSeijen - Get in touch www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.comJoin our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P! Support the showThanks for listening and sharing!
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Sep 2, 2025 • 58min

381 Sarah Hellebek - Training Denmark’s next farmers with practitioners, not professors

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.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! ==========================🎙 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST AND SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL OR WATCH IT ON  📽️ our YouTube channel==========================FOLLOW US!🔗 Linkedin📸 Instagram==========================The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Use KOEN10 for 10% offRFSI Europe 2026 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 showFeedback, ideas, suggestions? - Twitter @KoenvanSeijen - Get in touch www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.comJoin our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P! Support the showThanks for listening and sharing!
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Aug 26, 2025 • 1h 5min

380 Frederik Lean Hansen - Double-purpose chickens and the regen dating agency matching landowners with land seekers

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.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! ==========================🎙 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST AND SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL OR WATCH IT ON  📽️ our YouTube channel==========================FOLLOW US!🔗 Linkedin📸 Instagram==========================The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Use KOEN10 for 10% offRFSI Europe 2026 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 showFeedback, ideas, suggestions? - Twitter @KoenvanSeijen - Get in touch www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.comJoin our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P! Support the showThanks for listening and sharing!
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Aug 19, 2025 • 54min

379 Cindie Christiansen - Top 50 Farmers update and the simple tweak to raise millions for regeneration

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.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! ==========================🎙 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST AND SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL OR WATCH IT ON  📽️ our YouTube channel==========================FOLLOW US!🔗 Linkedin📸 Instagram==========================The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Use KOEN10 for 10% offRFSI Europe 2026 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 showFeedback, ideas, suggestions? - Twitter @KoenvanSeijen - Get in touch www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.comJoin our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P! Support the showThanks for listening and sharing!
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Aug 12, 2025 • 1h 42min

378 Darren Doherty - 35 years in regeneration training farmers and the role of tech and AI

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.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! ==========================🎙 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST AND SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL OR WATCH IT ON  📽️ our YouTube channel==========================FOLLOW US!🔗 Linkedin📸 Instagram==========================The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duThoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Use KOEN10 for 10% offRFSI Europe 2026 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 showFeedback, ideas, suggestions? - Twitter @KoenvanSeijen - Get in touch www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.comJoin our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P! Support the showThanks for listening and sharing!
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Aug 5, 2025 • 1h 12min

377 Rob de Laet - Water is key to cool the planet within 20 years

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.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! ==========================🎙 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST AND SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL OR WATCH IT ON  📽️ our YouTube channel==========================FOLLOW US!🔗 Linkedin📸 Instagram==========================The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed pThoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Use KOEN10 for 10% offRFSI Europe 2026 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 showFeedback, ideas, suggestions? - Twitter @KoenvanSeijen - Get in touch www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.comJoin our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P! Support the showThanks for listening and sharing!
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Jul 29, 2025 • 1h 3min

376 Sheila Darmos - Why Greece is leading the regenerative agriculture movement and what the world can learn

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.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! ==========================🎙 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST AND SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL OR WATCH IT ON  📽️ our YouTube channel==========================FOLLOW US!🔗 Linkedin📸 Instagram==========================The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Use KOEN10 for 10% offRFSI Europe 2026 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 showFeedback, ideas, suggestions? - Twitter @KoenvanSeijen - Get in touch www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.comJoin our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P! Support the showThanks for listening and sharing!
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Jul 22, 2025 • 1h 55min

375 Matt Orlando - From Noma to building the world’s most circular restaurant and disrupting the chocolate industry

A conversation with Matt Orlando, chef, entrepreneur, and former head chef at Noma. He is also the founder of Amass, one of the most circular and fully organic restaurants in the world, which closed at the end of 2022. He then focused on a project in Singapore and is now back in Denmark, currently very busy with, among other things, a new restaurant in Copenhagen.What happens when someone who worked as a head chef in one of the best restaurants in the world, Noma, starts going deep—deep—down the rabbit hole of sustainability and responsibility?Welcome to a fascinating journey of one of the most interesting chefs in the world, who not only redefined what a circular, sustainable restaurant mean (and no, it isn’t more expensive to run, and it doesn’t require a lot of tech, etc.), but it does require a completely new mindset and way of thinking.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.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! ==========================🎙 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST AND SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL OR WATCH IT ON  📽️ our YouTube channel==========================FOLLOW US!🔗 Linkedin📸 Instagram==========================The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Use KOEN10 for 10% offRFSI Europe 2026 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 showFeedback, ideas, suggestions? - Twitter @KoenvanSeijen - Get in touch www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.comJoin our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P! Support the showThanks for listening and sharing!

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