A check-in interview with Jason Hayward-Jones, founder & director at REGENFARM Ltd., and Sustainable Agriculture Specialist at Cefitra, about why corporations are suddenly paying for low-carbon grain, the revolutionary impact of digital twins and satellite technology on sustainable farming practices and, finally, why it is connected with gaming and Scottish whisky. This podcast is part of the AI 4 Soil Health project which aims to help farmers and policy makers by providing new tools powe...
A conversation with Bridget Emmett, a principal scientist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and a board member of the EU Mission Soil. Bridget shares her inspiring journey from a passionate botany student to a leading soil scientist, revealing the critical, yet often overlooked, intricacies of soil health. We explore its complex structure, teeming biodiversity, and indispensable role in sustaining life, all while diving into the cutting-edge technologies like remote sensing and digit...
A conversation with Georg Baunach, managing partner and co-founder of Hatch Blue, a knowledge-driven aquaculture and alternative seafood specialist. We discuss what aquaculture is and why it is important; what, where, and how to farm; what are the potential and challenges of regenerative aquaculture, and why is it important to look into it. We end with the risks and challenges of aquaculture, the feed conversion ratio and why it is important, the role of algae, waste, medicines, microplastics...
A conversation with Kat Bruce, founder of Nature Metrics , going from scooping insects with a small net and putting them in a food processor, to analysing the goo with an EDNA machine, to working with lots of large food corporations on measuring their biodiversity, food footprint, and impact.How do you look back at raising 27 million dollars and spending 10 years building the biggest biodiversity measurement company using eDNA in a time where very few people care at all about biodiversity, le...
A deep dive conversation with Fernando Russo about the reasons why he is going deep into coffee and cacao without being a coffee drinker and how he turned from being a Playboy’s salesman and a travel entrepreneur to an impact investor in the regenerative agriculture and food. We also talk about fashion and heights, the Amazon, deforestation, reforestation, the role of cattle—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and, of course, the potential and why he is in the water camp, not the carbon camp.What...
A conversation with Scott Poynton, founder of the Forest Trust, now known as the Earthworm Foundation, about supply chains, environmental regeneration and addressing environmental scandals from the forests of rural Australia to his groundbreaking work with major corporations like Nestlé on no-deforestation commitments. Scott’s experiences in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, Tasmania, and reforestation projects reveal the intricate balance between economic growth and environmental conservation. Do...
This is the second part of a wider conversation with Henry Dimbleby, founder of Bramble Partners and LEON Restaurants (please find the first below as episode 303). We continue our deep dive into the three compartment model and we discuss what should we grow where and why, the invisibility of nature and why biodiversity is not on the balance sheet. We go from why regen isn’t anti science to making a strong case for reducing our animal protein (mostly meat and dairy) and how to do that. We expl...
A wide range conversation of almost two hours- second episode will follow soon- with Henry Dimbleby, founder of Bramble Partners, a venture capital firm, that invests in businesses seeking to improve food security. Before Bramble Partners, Henry co-founded Leon Restaurants and the Sustainable Restaurant Association and also served deep in the heart of the UK government as he was appointed lead non-executive board member of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.In this exchang...
A conversation with Jonas Steinfeld, a researcher and consultant based in Brazil specialising in agroforestry systems, about the many different levels of complexity in agroforestry. Does complexity lead to more or less work? Does complexity lead to more or less carbon storage, and why? And are complex agroforestry systems more profitable? The scientific world has been quite clear up until now that adding more complexity to agriculture, especially with perennials like trees, almost always make...
A check-in conversation with Yasmine Cathell in which we discuss everything from why we should focus on solutions that work for all farmers, not just regen organic, to the reduction of bio stimulants on farm or off farm, microalgae, nutrient density, and quality. Why does it all start in the soil? And we finish up with a masterclass on smelling soil and other random but world-changing regen trivia.This is part of a series of interviews unpacking our recent video course. Yasmine was on the sho...
Koen van Seijen settles into the guest chair for a special 300th episode celebration and is interviewed by Naeem Lakhani and Antony Yousefian. It's fascinating how a simple curiosity about food led down the rabbit hole into the rich ecosystem of soil, carbon and regenerative agriculture. Starting from a coffee with Tony Lovell of SLM Partners, we recall moments and conversations that pivoted our path from a general interest in food to a passionate advocate for regenerative agricultural practi...
A check in conversation with Cameron Frayling, CEO of Pivotal Earth, about biodiversity, one of the most important sets of things we should track and measure, and yet it is super difficult and mostly hasn’t been done until now at scale at all. The data is simply not there, so what do we do? With Cameron we check in with one of the leading companies trying to bring technology to this space and make biodiversity measured at scale and cost-effective.We learn a lot about the current tracking devi...
A long-overdue check-in interview with Dan Kittredge, founder of the Bionutrient Food Association. We discuss their involvement in the revolutionary beef study, all the research they have been doing and where they have been showing absolutely no connection between the labels, local, organic, regenerative, farmer's market, etc., and nutrient density.What has been shown is a correlation between soil health and nutrient density. All the claims about regenerative agriculture that leads to more nu...
A conversation with Chris Henggeler, a second-generation high-density, low-duration herder using herds for land management. From one of the most remote places in Australia, we explore big myths like many animals damage the land, to a huge question: can we actually put the new megafauna to work? Farms need to get smaller, and ranches need to get bigger. If you want to retire in security, you have a vested interest in healthy landscapes.How do we invest as if our grandchildren mattered? How do ...
A conversation with Jojo Mehta, executive director of Stop Ecocide International, about making ecocide a crime, something you can get arrested for and end up in prison. How do we get it from a discussion in lawyer circles and academic circles into international criminal law? And why is it going much faster over the last 5 years than anyone has expected?Law: an area we rarely touch but has the potential to shift our food and agriculture system, and many other systems, completely. Making ecocid...
A conversation with Maria Virginia Solis Wahnish and Mateusz Ciasnocha, both involved in the Farm of Francesco. Maria Virginia is founder of Drink Matera, while Mateusz is the CEO of European Carbon Farmers and member of the EU Soil Mission board. We discuss why it is so important to connect with policymakers and how to actually do that, the importance of farmers' education and a very detailed answer to the 1 billion euro question to enable many more people to get involved in farming. And wha...
A conversation with Emiliano Mroue, founder of WARC, about their recent funding round, being close to the farmers and why he left a corporate job in Germany to start a farmer focussed anti poverty company in Sierra Leone which turned into a company serving today over 20000 farmers, mostly in Ghana, in the transition to more regenerative practices. What is their secret to be close to the farmers always, not quite often but always?Smallholder maize farmers at the edge of the Sahara, brutal circ...
A conversation with Sonja Stuchtey, co-founder of The Landbanking Group, about innovative financial strategies, accountancy standards and rules, reliable sourcing, better quality and lower prices, investing in the value chain and more.Let’s say you are an orange juice or chocolate bar producer: your margins are under pressure because the costs of buying raw ingredients have exploded the last few years. What do you do? In any other business you would likely invest in your supply to secure reli...
This is a special episode, the first one ever of the Walking the Land with a Regenerative Farmer, where we walk the land of the farm with a farmer while we talk about regeneration. [On Youtube you can find a video version of this same conversation!]Walking through Iside Farm on the Iseo Lake in Italy, with regenerative farmer Matteo Mazzola, we unlock the secrets of regenerative agriculture as we traverse the innovative landscapes crafted by Matteo, Paola and the Iside crew. We embark on a pr...
A conversation with Adrien Pelletier, farmer, breeder, and baker, about wheat, seeds, no till organic farming, why all farmers or most farmers need to become seed breeders again, and why it is really difficult to bake sourdough with traditional organic wheat seeds that are not breed for high productive farms.Why Adrien want to start changing the world in the most difficult place, at home, which is a large industrial, mostly extractive, commodity wheat-growing region in France? Picture a sea o...