Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food

How do you turn a whole Indian region to zero budget natural farming using Climate Bonds? ----------------------------------------------------------Welcome to Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food.Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits here: www.gumroad.com/investinginregenag. Other ways to support our work:- Share the podcast - Give a 5-star rating- Or buy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture. ----------------------------------------------------------- This time I interviewed Satya Tropathi, Assistant Secretary-General and Head of the New York Office of the UN Environment Programme and chair of the board of the Sustainable India Finance Facility, a partnership between the United Nations Environment Programme, World Agroforestry Centre and BNP Paribas. We discussed the bold and very ambitious project he is working on to raise institutional impact capital to transition a whole Indian region to zero budget natural farming. If they succeed this will have an enormous impact on the local communities, ecosystems and beyond. Many people in the regenerative impact space will be watching the response of institutional investors to such a bond product and what the impact and impact measurements will be, I will be checking in with this project regularly and see how it goes!Show notes and links:www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2018/10/21/satya-tripathi. ----------------------------------------------------------- For feedback, ideas, suggestions please contact us through Twitter @KoenvanSeijen, or get in touch through the website www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com. Join our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P. 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!Find out more about the position here:https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4278379588 https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course 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!

Can you farm regenerative in soil less high tech green houses? Let's find out.----------------------------------------------------------Welcome to Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food.Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits here: www.gumroad.com/investinginregenag. Other ways to support our work:- Share the podcast - Give a 5-star rating- Or buy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture. ----------------------------------------------------------- This time I interviewed Dirk Aleven, founder of FoodVentures, a company leveraging the knowledge of the high tech green house industry in the Netherlands and bringing it do countries where the middle class is demanding fresh, sustainable vegetables in their local supermarkets. Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Malaysia etc. We obviously discussed the tensions between soil less and growing in soil, the energy use and CO2 use of green houses etc.Show notes:www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2018/09/21/dirk-aleven. ----------------------------------------------------------- For feedback, ideas, suggestions please contact us through Twitter @KoenvanSeijen, or get in touch through the website www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com. Join our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P. 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!Find out more about the position here:https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4278379588 https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course 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!

Facilitating the transition of the best regenerative soil to the next regeneration of regen farmers.----------------------------------------------------------Welcome to Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food.Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits here: www.gumroad.com/investinginregenag. Other ways to support our work:- Share the podcast - Give a 5-star rating- Or buy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture. ----------------------------------------------------------- This time I interviewed Ian McSweeney director of the Agrarian Trust. The Agrarian Trust’s mission is to support land access for the next generation of farmers. Supporting all stakeholders, from farmers and community members to activists and investors in this absolutely key process. The Agrarian Trust decided to work with the oldest organic and regenerative farms (with the best soils and ecosystems) of the country and focusses on getting the next generation of farmers on this land. These farms give the new farmers a head starts of a few decades as they are much more resilient to drought, pest infestations etc. are able to do so much more with so much less in terms of labor and time.Instead of focussing on getting new farmers on them on land with poor soil, poor infrastructure etc. Some highlights of our conversation:Great wealth has been accumulated in this country through extractive industries. We need to collectively realise that the returns and wealth we got used to are based on extractive and exploitation. We need to get used to negative return, we need to return wealth to the soil, the ecosystems and communities we extracted for so long. We need to look at ways to compensate for sequestering carbon in soils. The prices of the leases of the Agrarian trust are directly connected to the soil building of the farmers. Thank you Thomas Rippel for the introduction to Ian!Show notes and links:www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2018/08/21/ian-mcsweeney. ----------------------------------------------------------- For feedback, ideas, suggestions please contact us through Twitter @KoenvanSeijen, or get in touch through the website www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com. Join our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU3Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about the position here:https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4278379588 https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course 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!

Entrepreneur turned impact investor with a new found passion for SOIL!----------------------------------------------------------Welcome to Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food.Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits here: www.gumroad.com/investinginregenag. Other ways to support our work:- Share the podcast - Give a 5-star rating- Or buy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture. ----------------------------------------------------------- This time I’m talking to Martijn Blom, senior manager investor relationships at Hivos Impact Investments. the impact investment arm of a large dutch NGO. Their Hivos Food & Lifestyle Fund is focussed at making investments into food companies in southern Africa. We discussed his impact investing journey, the fight agains the maize monocultures in Malawi and Zimbabwe, fancy sustainable Rooibos tea companies and his new found passion for soil! Show notes and links:www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2018/08/23/martijn-blom. ----------------------------------------------------------- For feedback, ideas, suggestions please contact us through Twitter @KoenvanSeijen, or get in touch through the website www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com. Join our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P. 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!Find out more about the position here:https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4278379588 https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course 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!

Covering over 1.5m acres in less than 18months, Eric is building an organic powerhouse. ----------------------------------------------------------Welcome to Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food.Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits here: www.gumroad.com/investinginregenag. Other ways to support our work:- Share the podcast - Give a 5-star rating- Or buy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture. ----------------------------------------------------------- This time I had the great pleasure to interview Eric Jackson, the CEO and founder of Pipeline Foods. After a career in conventional chemical agriculture and software could retire but decided to build the missing piece in organic broad acre row crops (grain and soy). He was triggered by a fascinating statistic: the US is a grain, corn and soy powerhouse but imports 75% of its organic demand. Why? There isn’t enough organic farmland in the US, so Eric started on a journey which led 18 months ago to the founding of Pipeline Foods, to build the infrastructure needed to get organic grain, corn and soy from the farmer to the food processor. Thus giving the farmers certainty and getting more farmers through the difficult transition process. Why are they focussing on broad acre crops and not livestock, or produce? Because of the scale that they can bring. Broad acre crops cover many many millions of acres and when you can bring them under organic and hopefully soon organic plus/beyond organic management can really have a huge impact on local/regional climate systems, biodiversity and water quality (which we briefly touched upon in the interview).Listen to the interview to hear why Regenerative Agriculture isn't a big topic yet for many broad row crop farmers as the market signals aren't strong enough (yet). Hopefully this changes soon. We also discussed the role of Impact Investors in the transition and the role investment vehicles and funds might play to help more farmers through the organic transition. An evergreen vehicle or a green bond, helping farmers who want to transition to organic, do so. If you are interested in developing this or now someone who is doing this, please reach out to Eric:) Pipeline Foods currently works with 1.5M acres in North America 150k acres in Argentina And is projected to do 150m-175m in sales next year.Show notes and links:www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2018/07/18/eriThoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about the position here:https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4278379588 https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course 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!

A lesson on soil and all its wonders----------------------------------------------------------Welcome to Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food.Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits here: www.gumroad.com/investinginregenag. Other ways to support our work:- Share the podcast - Give a 5-star rating- Or buy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture. ----------------------------------------------------------- This time I interviewed Peter Donovan, who has been active in the space since he met Allan Savory in 1990!Take-aways from the interview:Measurements of carbon is difficultPeter: Soil carbon the living the dead and the very deadThe best kind of measurement is one that is repeated and is looking at agencyPeter is looking more and more at results not management, as everyone is doing them differently Good questions vs bad questionsOrganic growth and succession of managementFuture of agriculture means more people on the landFocus metrics on water because the benefits are localShow notes and links:www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2018/05/21/peter-donovan. ----------------------------------------------------------- For feedback, ideas, suggestions please contact us through Twitter @KoenvanSeijen, or get in touch through the website www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com. Join our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P. 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!Find out more about the position here:https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4278379588 https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course 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!

Thomas raised over € 1M with a German CSA to buy the land under their farm. Now Thomas is looking at blockchains to help more Farmland Stewardship Organisations do the same. ----------------------------------------------------------Welcome to Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food.Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits here: www.gumroad.com/investinginregenag. Other ways to support our work:- Share the podcast - Give a 5-star rating- Or buy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture. ----------------------------------------------------------- Listen to the update interview with Thomas here:www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2018/04/21/thomas-rippel. Observations from the podcast:A lot of speculative cash has moved into agri landWe have seen a real decoupling of productive value and the farmland priceBuying land is out of the question for most farmersFarmland is mostly bought by financial institutionsFinancial Institutions only look at the highest lease (which is usually the least sustainable farmer as he or she is not paying for all the externalities they produce. Because they mine the soil. 80% of the classmates of Thomas at the biodynamic (4,5 year study) couldn’t find land afterwards Regenerative farmers, who are good stewards of the land, can’t make those cashflows (especially at the beginning) to pay back the loans. This is one of the big drivers of industrial agricultureThomas helped Luzernenhof a German CSA farm raise over 1M.-They set up their own crowdinvesting platformOrganised events made a cool videoShares in the cooperative which owns the land Buy land and charge very low lease rates to the farmersThe shares give no dividends. Really unattractive termsLuzernenhof who has also bought land for 10 others farmers, has noticed that landowners are willing to sell for a fairer price, if they know the land is going to be used sustainably! This is a very interesting point! If regenerative farmers get a lower price for land, if this is true in other areas and countries this could be huge. Advice for impact investors wanting to get into Regenerative Agriculture:- Look at your local Farmland Stewardship Organisation and get involved- Look into your local CSA farms, they usually rely on bank loans you could refinance them, which would be cheaThoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about the position here:https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4278379588 https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course 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!

Using flexible loans to invest over 10M into regenerative food and agriculture companies in Europe.----------------------------------------------------------Welcome to Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food.Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits here: www.gumroad.com/investinginregenag. Other ways to support our work:- Share the podcast - Give a 5-star rating- Or buy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture. ----------------------------------------------------------- I had a conversation with Aymeric Jung and Josep Segarra of Quadia Capital who have been investing in regenerative agriculture and food companies for a few years and put more than 10M to work.Two barriers for investing in regenerative agriculture according to Aymeric and Josep: You have to understand that food isn’t a basic product, it is about life, it isn’t a smartphone. You need to regenerate it. It takes time! Price and costs aren’t everything. Quality vs quantity Long term view. If you think buying high quality food it is too expensive you can reduce your food costs by reducing animal protein. Key is externalities, the more they are integrated the easier it is to compete companies with less or positive externalities (which you invested in).Advice to starting impact investors in regenerative agriculture:Look at emerging countries, fair trade isn’t enough, look at the value chainInvesting in the good companies in Europe, help them to scale and to educate their consumers It is too late for being just sustainable we really need to rebuild the economy regeneratively. It’s a new economy we are building!Find all links and show notes:www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2018/03/24/aymeric-jung-josep-segarra. ----------------------------------------------------------- For feedback, ideas, suggestions please contact us through Twitter @KoenvanSeijen, or get in touch through the website www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com. Join our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P. 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!Find out more about the position here:https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4278379588 https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course 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!

Propagate Ventures, scaling up agroforestry to every farm----------------------------------------------------------Welcome to Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food.Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits here: www.gumroad.com/investinginregenag. Other ways to support our work:- Share the podcast - Give a 5-star rating- Or buy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture. ----------------------------------------------------------- I had a long and very interesting conversation with Ethan, Jeremy and Harry, the co-founders of Propagate ventures. Our conversation ranged from chestnuts to crowdfunding and how to get more impact investors into the agroforestry space. As you will hear, we suffered from a bad internet connection which resulted in a lower sound quality. Sorry for that! The reason to start Propagate:For most farmers putting their money in tree-crops for a long term investment was too riskyWhy is Propagate working with companies? They can bring purchasing power and with purchase agreements lower the risk of planting trees. Similar how Power Purchase Agreements have changed the solar industry and got large institutional investors onboard.Example on how Propagate is working with a natural cosmetic company and their purchasing influence: Pre purchase agreements are key to allow to create some certainty for the farmers to put trees in the ground long term. So what about retail investors? Propagate is very interested in retail investors but feels it is too early to start catering to them, despite the huge interest from consumers to invest. Why are they so interested in them? “like corn which grow on a tree!” Show notes and links:www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2018/05/21/jeremy-kaufman-harry-greene-ethan-steinberg. ----------------------------------------------------------- For feedback, ideas, suggestions please contact us through Twitter @KoenvanSeijen, or get in touch through the website www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com. Join our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P. 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 professioThoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about the position here:https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4278379588 https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course 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!

The CEO of Cienega Capital, Esther Park on investing in Regenerative Agriculture.----------------------------------------------------------Welcome to Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food.Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits here: www.gumroad.com/investinginregenag. Other ways to support our work:- Share the podcast - Give a 5-star rating- Or buy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture. ----------------------------------------------------------- This time I had the great pleasure to interview Esther Park, the CEO of Cienega, the investment company of Sallie Calhoun who I interviewed last year (where we discussed among other things, the new vineyard they are building, where most of the management is done by sheep)Advice for impact investors wanting to get started in the space:Start with some education, Great place to start: the Soil Health Primer Do something, just do 1 thing, make 1 grant, or loan or investment To find your first investment you need to build a local community, to get to know the people in your community who are interested in ecological farming. Maybe start at your farmers market, who is producing what, who is building soil?Esther would like to focus this year more on getting Farmers off color into the conversation as over 90% of farmers are white. And we need more people not fewer people on the land!Cienaga has about:20M dollars outstanding in the NoRegrets initiative28 investment outstandingof which 2 are not performingwww.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2018/05/21/esther-park. Please hit the share button if you think this interview is relevant for someone you know!----------------------------------------------------------- For feedback, ideas, suggestions please contact us through Twitter @KoenvanSeijen, or get in touch through the website www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com. Join our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P. 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!Find out more about the position here:https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4278379588 https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course 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!