181 Arizona Muse from walking fashion shows for Prada to global activist for biodynamic farming

A special interview with Arizona Muse, Greenpeace Oceans Ambassador, founder of the charity Dirt, model and advisory board member of the US Biodynamic Demeter Alliance.
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Arizona's journey started in the environmental bubble of Arizona in the US and led to a high-end fashion career with shows for Gucci, Prada, front covers of Vogue and more etc. Arizona was exposed to the incredible destruction of the fashion industry which awoke the activist in her. She dove deep into the issues and found solutions which all tight back to soil.

More about this episode on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/arizona-muse.

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Transcript

Why are you doing what you are doing? Why Soil and why fashion?

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Learn how a journey which started in the environmental bubble of Arizona in the US led to a high-end fashion career with shows for Gucci, Prada, front covers of Vogue and much more, where our guest of today was exposed to the incredible destruction of the fashion industry, which awoke an activist in her. She dove deep into the issues and found solutions which all tied back to the soil. Now she continues to be a model for the high-end fashion industry, but she uses her voice and her position to push for sustainable materials and practices, which are there. And while at the same time acting as a global ambassador to promote biodynamic farming and explain time and time again why it holds the solution to the issues we face, the climate crisis, biodiversity, water, health, and more. And she has to explain time and time again why it's not a farming practice for quote unquote hippie weirdos. Enjoy. This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast, Investing as if the planet mattered, where 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. Why my focus on soil and regeneration? Because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land and our sea, grow our food, what we eat, wear and consume. And it's that we as investors, big and small, and consumers start paying much more attention to the dirt slash soil underneath our feet. To make it easy for fans to support our work, we launched our membership community. And so many of you have joined us as a member. Thank you. If our work created value for you, and if you have the means, and only if you have the means, consider joining us. Find out more on gumroad.com slash investing in RegenAg. That is gumroad.com slash investing in RegenAg. Or find the link below. So welcome today to a very special interview with the Greenpeace Ocean Ambassador, founder of the charity DIRT, and model and advisory board member of the US biodynamic Demeter Alliance, and friend of the show, Arizona Muse. Welcome, Arizona.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Hello, it's so great to be here. I'm a longtime listener of the show, and it's just such an honor to be chatting with you officially now.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

And of course, people can Google you. There's a nice interview with Elle magazine, actually, which I'll put in the show notes as well. But just to briefly, also not that briefly if you want to, a bit of your background. How did you roll into modeling first of all? And then when did this, I would say sustainability side first started? And then of course we'll go into the regenerative biodynamic side, but what started your sustainability journey? Was that one moment? Was that seeing certain things? Was it a gradual story? What was the trigger there too? Because I think you can stay in the fashion industry for a very long time without looking at the sustainability side, but you decided to face it head on,

SPEAKER_02 3:03

basically. Okay, since you're asking, I'll tell you a bit of my life story. I was born in Arizona, which is where I got the name. My mom is English, and she was pregnant in the desert, in the Sonoran Desert in Tucson, and I think just was overwhelmed by the pregnancy, maybe, but also by the beauty of the desert, and decided to name me Arizona. Then I grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is highly populated by environmentalists, so I thought my worldview was was that there are too many environmentalists. I'm gonna go and do something more radical, like go into fashion. And so I became a model, and then I realized that there was more for me, and I found my passion at age 26, 27. And my passion is environmentalism, going right back to where I came from. And of course I learned what you would imagine that environmentalists are not overpopulated in the world, and it's actually quite an underdog, to have taken. And I love it so much. The work I'm able to do as an activist, I now call myself an activist proudly because that's what I'm doing. So I'll go back a step. I was invited to a lunch on biodiversity. This was the first moment for me when I was, I think, 26 or 27 that I realized, wow, why isn't this word, biodiversity, being

SPEAKER_00 4:22

used? Why did you accept that? Why did you accept the lunch? Because I'm imagining you were invited for a lot of different things, say no to and say no to a lot of things.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

It was pretty random, actually. It was a friend who invited me to, yeah, as you say, a charity lunch, and I'd been to many, and I just went. And I was surprised that this word biodiversity wasn't being used in front of me frequently. In fact, this was the first time that I was really engaging with the word biodiversity and going, wow, why not? Why aren't we talking about this? This seems really important. And so that, for me, was my beginning moment. And then I started to research fashion and, as you can imagine, found a lot of negative information, but also a lot of non-information. This was seven years ago, and it was still relatively unknown that fashion was causing an immense amount of damage to ecosystems, human welfare, through the dyeing process, the growing process of fibers and leather, the tanning process of leather, and all the transport that's involved. So there is immense, not to mention the packaging as well, immense waste and a lot of opacity around that waste I didn't even know though I had been at the core of the fashion industry for such a long time I didn't even know how clothes were made and that really shocked me too I was like well again why not why don't I know this stuff I've been in the showrooms and in the fittings for the shows of the most the biggest most amazing fashion houses in the world I got very lucky and my career went super well straight away and I've done campaigns for Prada and Chanel and so many of the other big fashion houses and been on the covers of Vogue for years. And that is kind of crazy that I managed to do all of that without ever realizing the impact that this industry was really having. So I started to educate myself and I could never go back. And I now say in my activism, knowledge protects you. Knowledge protects you from making poor decisions, from making decisions that cause harm to the environment and to the people around you. And the knowledge isn't scarce. very weirdly. I mean, I can tell you I am happier than I've ever been. I am more excited about life than I've ever been since I became an activist about climate change, about the climate crisis that we're all living through and that we're all causing in some way or another. I mean, have you flushed a toilet ever? Do you eat food? Okay, you're part of the climate crisis. It's all of us. And I think it's nice to just get that out there with a smile and a laugh because until you admit to yourself that you're causing problems, it's very easy to just kind of pretend they're on the other side of the room or the other side of the world, even worse. And that it's not really up to me. I'm just one tiny drop in the ocean. I can't really do much. I don't really have a big impact. All those little things that we tell ourselves, it's just not true. Each one of us has an immense impact. I'll give you my plastic water bottle example that I love that, you know, if I make it a policy in my life that I don't drink water from plastic bottles that means I will save thousands of plastic bottles over my lifetime suddenly you realize it makes a difference whereas that one time that you're like oh I'm not going to buy the plastic water bottle you're like oh it doesn't really make a difference but over the course of your lifetime it makes an immense difference now think of your bathrooms how many do you have plus your kitchen sink do they all have plastic soap bottles sitting there next to them or do they have bars of soap that were unwrapped and that sit on soap dishes now imagine those three or four bathrooms maybe and the kitchen sink and over the course of your entire lifetime wow that's a lot of plastic battles plastic bottles sorry so just always

SPEAKER_00 8:12

think about plastic battles as well yeah

SPEAKER_02 8:13

plastic battles probably

SPEAKER_00 8:15

and actually in restaurants etc or with other people let's say the plastic bottle becomes sometimes a plastic battle but it's very very interesting and the signaling effect i think is super strong but i want to take it one step backwards because you said i became a model i went into the heart of the fashion industry did you do that with the idea of stepping away from the environmental let's say scene or bubble you grew up in or was it really okay i want to be as far away as possible or i want to learn maybe among an industry that's not really known like did you do it with an idea of um on the sustainability side or just i want to be far away from home i want to go into a very different lifestyle a very different and then what happened there to sort of pulls you back to the environmentalist or was there a trigger was because you could have done the modeling quote-unquote thing for a long time without ever worrying about the waste but some something triggered there not the biodiversity lunch i think it was already before that triggered that like wow this is a very very wasteful industry or an industry that really needs to to to look in the mirror literally and see what's happening what what triggered that or did you know that already from from basically where you grew up

SPEAKER_02 9:22

so my entrance into modeling like like many models was very random i happen to be a certain height and i happen to in quotes, pretty for this era. I mean, look at how beauty across the ages in history has really changed so much. So it's really very random. And I really mean that I just happened to be in the right time in the right place, but also it's caused a lot of problems in my life. So I don't want to say that I'm, I'm grateful for some of the things that it brought, but it also brought me down in many, many ways, emotionally, physically, it's, it's not a job that builds people up and it's not an industry that builds people up and that can cause a lot of problems and just my self-esteem was extremely extremely low which is contrary to what you might think of a model like I looked at all the pictures of me and just saw the problems and the flaws I didn't think of myself as being wow amazing oh she looks so good not at all so it was causing immense kind of trauma on my mental health and and the way I thought of myself which was paralyzing so I also feel like this moment where I found this purpose in life was tremendously valuable to me as a person my growth my development it's just it brought me out of that which was and now I can move and I can think and my brain works so much better and it's really it's amazing to me to realize that you can one can anyone can really find themselves later on like I didn't I was quite directionless in my 20s and didn't really know I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do and I was in a very high powered career that was taking so much time I mean to give one example in Milan Fashion Week you have drivers because the public transport isn't great and you so my driver drove for 112 hours that week that means that I was working 112 hours that week because my driver would drive me to all the appointments I had and wait outside while I had the appointment and then I'd get in the car and drive again it's a whole culture the model driver culture during

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Milan Fashion Week for let's say the public transport in Milan is pretty good but of course not that fast and not that direct as you can have it even no I'm not this is not a blow

SPEAKER_02 11:37

at Milanese public transport

SPEAKER_00 11:39

at all if you have to do 120 hours of work you cannot go subway in train in bus in and out you need a driver and that's a lot of hours it's a lot of hours I think people forget that they see the pictures and they don't see I mean in general they see the piece of fashion they see the people of food where they see the picture and they don't see 100 hours that go into that. Or the 65

SPEAKER_02 12:05

people that are in the background on every shoot and that nobody sees. This industry is so enormous when it comes to energy, human energy, fossil fuel energy and time energy. It's really, really a big deal, which is why it carries such tremendous importance in the face of climate change and the solutions. And there are incredible solutions that are being found in the sustainable fashion industry. And at the moment, it still seems like the sustainable fashion industry is separate from the normal fashion industry. And my dear friend and mentor, Ursula de Castro, the founder of Fashion Revolution, has a great quote where she says she would prefer that the sustainable fashion industry were just called the fashion industry, and the other one was called the unsustainable fashion industry. And I just, I think that's such a perfect encapsulation of the future we need to move to like this what we do needs to become normal

Sustainable Fashion Industry

SPEAKER_00 13:05

do you remember the first time you you saw like potential like solutions because you started to go deep into let's say the issues quote unquote not not quote actually the issues of the fashion industry you said i stumbled upon or i found many solutions and different materials and things and do you remember that first one that you said wow it's actually possible to do it in another way and do you remember that moment you're like okay this potentially is a positive story and not just let's make it a bit less dirty or a bit cleaner, but still it is in effect, it's fossil fuel, nylon, et cetera. Like, do you remember stumbling upon an example there that really triggered you into the positive side of things?

SPEAKER_02 13:45

Definitely. On my birthday one year, September 18th, I met someone who became a tremendous mentor of mine, Nina Marenzi, who started The Sustainable Angle. And The Sustainable Angle is a London-based organization whose advisory board I now sit on and who sources sustainable materials for the fashion industry from all over the world. She's been doing this for almost 12 years now. It was not cool when she started at all, but she came from a degree in regenerative agriculture and she was reading about cotton and she realized, wow, this needs to change. We cannot continue growing cotton like this with all the water irrigation and all the pesticide and herbicide uses in order to make clothes that are sold for far too little money and do not reward anybody along their supply chain. So she set up the sustainable angle and it is providing a service that is invaluable to the fashion industry because many designers, if they start to learn about sustainability and they want to make a change, it was almost impossible to do so before the sustainable angle because looking for sustainable materials was like searching for a needle in a haystack. They were impossible to find. They were not gathered into one place. So Nina has the sustainable angle where you can source sustainable fabrics all year round, but you can also go to the Future Fabrics Expo, which is once a year. It's coming up in June 2022. Very exciting in London. I love it. It's a hub of innovators. There's so many sustainable materials, and they're the suppliers who make them, who you can talk to at their booths, but also seminars all day long with speakers from all over the world, digital and in person, talking about incredible innovations and solutions. Some of them are not yet on the market. And some of them are commercially available.

New materials

SPEAKER_00 15:31

And so these materials, just to describe, she stumbled upon cotton as an enormous polluter. So what do you replace cotton with? Or how do you do cotton differently? Or maybe there are two different questions. What are examples of materials you're very excited about? We're talking now in spring 2022. Stuff that is commercially available, which means at a certain scale, not enormous, but maybe at a certain scale, that if you're running a fashion brand or or you need materials and like what are exciting ones you've seen coming out over the last period?

SPEAKER_02 16:05

Well, the straightforward answer is that organic cotton is a much better solution than conventionally grown cotton. There are restrictions on irrigation and also there won't be the use of heavy duty chemicals. But a more exciting answer is that look first where you are. Localize. So are you in a desert? Cotton is a thirsty crop, but also likes hot weather. It's a disaster for climate change. basically so it's grown all over deserts and it's irrigated with water that should never have been pulled out of the river nearby so going to crops that replace cotton that are grown in wetter climates where you don't need to irrigate such as flax and hemp those crops are amazing for european countries because they can be and used to be grown widely all over europe without any fertilization and without any irrigation unfortunately what happened fairly recently in the last four 40 some years, is that

SPEAKER_00 17:01

all

SPEAKER_02 17:09

the processing equipment for hemp and for flax was bought by Asian countries, mostly Asian countries. So it doesn't any longer exist in Europe. So this is one of the contributors to why Europe doesn't grow its own flax and hemp anymore. Sometimes if you buy a piece of garment that is called kind of Belgian linen, usually it's not even grown in Belgium. It may be processed in Belgium still, but the growing is very likely to have happened in India or in China, and the processing will have happened there too, which is great for localization of processing. The processing equipment should always be near to where the material was grown, but we need to get that back into Europe. So whether it's building new machines for Europe or buying them back and distributing them more evenly around the world that would help hugely to reduce our reliance on cotton and something interesting happened in the US around cotton horribly and interesting is that it was really used as a defense mechanism to bring down the lives of people of color in the US it was weaponized because originally in the US again hemp and flax were grown widely and they're very resilient to drought and wetness and they're just an amazing crop basically and the processing can be done locally without any chemicals and then they were replaced by cotton which is a hugely vulnerable crop and so it needs pesticides and herbicides and it needs different machinery and it needs irrigation and it needs lots of tending it's much more time intensive so this is historically a really big deal in the

SPEAKER_00 18:48

social history the perfect solution for slavery basically that's the the end yeah if you want if you want to tie people to the land and chemicals to the land and to keep

SPEAKER_02 18:56

them in certain it's just it works really well and it worked really well so moving away from cotton is important socially and environmentally and in terms of logistics and transport we we don't need to be growing so much cotton we can reduce our need for cotton by transitioning to these other materials and that may not be a hundred percent you might the feeling of hemp is different than cotton it can be refined to be smooth but also you can just blend it with cotton so you could reduce your cotton intake by half by just blending it with a hemp material. So that is a really fantastic solution. Also, hemp for fiber needs to be separated away from hemp for CBD and THC because if you see them as one plant and one species, you're going to outlaw hemp, which is again what happened in many, many countries. People were required to stop growing this traditional fabric material. material because of the FDA's of the world because of the drug administrations of the world who said no no no you can't grow that anymore and everyone's like yeah but it doesn't produce a drug and they're like it doesn't matter it's the same family

SPEAKER_01 20:10

just like

SPEAKER_02 20:11

these kind of big stupidities that in the end change the course of history in such a dramatically negative way we need to examine this and look at how we can fix that and how we can go back to growing these fashion materials that are so much easier on the environment and on human welfare as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

And do they fit, because I'm really not obviously a fashion material expert, like flax and hemp and linen to a certain extent as well. Do they fit into these, in the rotations we would like farmers to do? Like this is an easy, I would say, plug-in, quote unquote, almost to do that. Do they also produce food? It's like, where does the fiber-ish come from? Is it, do you harvest ore food or fiber when it comes to flax? Because I think you can flex seeds, you can also eat them. Like how does it, would that look like in Europe, for instance, would it be a relatively easy way to integrate them? Of course, then there's the processing, which has to come, which probably needs some new machinery, smaller, more localized, et cetera. But I'm imagining with a lot of the new robotics, et cetera, that should be possible. But does it fit easily into the current rotations that many organic farmers and Is it an easy sell, let's say, to the farming community or at least the advanced farming community?

SPEAKER_02 22:07

About the question of food and fiber, we should definitely ask about Dynamic Farmer because I don't know if it's the same species of flax that makes linen as you can eat the seeds and the oil. It could be, but I

SPEAKER_01 22:19

don't want to answer incorrectly.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

But from an investment point of view, I can answer that question and say one need for investment is to invest into the infrastructure of the processing of these materials like I mentioned before we need to build new machinery for Europe or we need to buy the machinery back

SPEAKER_00 22:37

and the brands are there too like the the brands are there let's say the machinery would be invested in and would be built do you see interest strong interest from brands to to that want this transparency coming from Europe that wants this localized let's say localized stream like is there the potential of offtake which is the same discussion in food obviously yeah we should bring back this we should grow this but always the question is okay is there at least a front runner market ready to buy these things, which makes it a lot easier to sell to farmers.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

Sustainable fashion is a hot topic now. Everyone's interested. Everyone wants to participate. But brands don't have the money to buy this machinery. It's super expensive. It's like millions of euros are needed to invest in this machinery. It's not cheap. They're very big machines. They process a lot at once. And it's a hefty investment to buy one even. And then to, you know, the logistics around it so it we need financing for this to work we need in in general in the sustainable fashion movement it's relatively small businesses and in the unsustainable fashion industry it's relatively big businesses so right now we need to encourage the big businesses to move into the sustainable fashion industry to start putting their orders in and behind and guarantee or commit to making orders once these technologies become available and to just in express their interest that would help so much so that's i think activism is the answer for that is getting people to talk about this and getting people to be inspired by the idea that they can change the world and this is what i love about the consulting that i do to transition fashion brands to become more sustainable is the look on people's faces when you explain to them how they can be heroes and i mean that they can literally change the world through their business but right now they're causing problems with it so and it's not it's not as difficult

SPEAKER_00 24:30

so describe I've had it works like they ask you to to become a consultant or I'm imagining you also give your opinion let's say unquestioned when you're unasked when you're in these meetings you say did you know that you could become a hero or how would how do you approach that when you are let's say in a boardroom of a of a large large semi-large fashion brand I definitely

SPEAKER_02 24:51

start chatting about it on photo shoots all the time and this is it's a question I get asked a lot actually like how do I feel and how do I reconcile working with brands who are causing damage, who are not sustainable, working with them as a model with my activism. And at the moment, I still feel like it's necessary to take modeling work with brands who are not sustainable because it gives me an access point that I would never have otherwise. I mean, it's just, it's incredible to walk into a shoot and be with head designers and CEOs and chat all day, chit chat chat about how amazing sustainability is and what they can do and all these fun innovations around materials and how it just isn't as as difficult or as scary as they may have thought and one one big issue in consulting now is greenwashing that many many businesses are starting to feel like they can just talk about sustainability whether or not they've done anything and i my biggest piece of advice for that for anybody is only talk about the things you've already done do not talk about your ambitions and do not celebrate your ambitions because an ambition is

SPEAKER_00 25:58

something in the future 2050 and That you've never

SPEAKER_02 26:01

done. Yeah. So you will get criticized on that because the press now, the media are so much better educated than they were even last year, even three years ago. People will find you out because also consumers are educating themselves. They want to buy from businesses that are doing something better and at least are showing the progress that they're making and setting ambitions and targets is not the same as making progress. I've even seen situations from very big institutions that i probably shouldn't name but who who have increased the gravity of their ambitions without even explaining what they've already achieved on their ambitions from last year i'm like what like that makes no sense at all that makes no sense and i'm supposed to sit here and clap like that's not okay that is not progress so yeah greenwashing i think that's the biggest solution is just don't talk about anything that you haven't done yet

SPEAKER_00 26:59

and has it shifted like in like in food you see that let's say the smaller or medium-sized companies we just had an interview it might be out already when this will air with Grounded with Gijs Boers and on like really regeneratively grown or used regenerative practices pepper and other spices and tea etc. from sub-Saharan Africa and they supply to a lot of brands in Europe that they see these middle-sized brands that really want transparency one this good story but also want certain quality and certain size because they're not tiny tiny startup they're not an enormous unilever but they're sort of in the middle and they seem to really be taking off they're growing fast the consumer is really embracing the front runner consumer obviously is embracing are embracing these these brands is that happening as well in in the fashion side like that the consumer starts to and does the big brands start to worry because they're actually starting to choose other things do you see that has been is that the say is the pace increasing because of course the small ones were always there but are they starting to become slightly a bigger force in the space and thus more serious or are we not there yet on this sort of tipping almost tipping point I would say

SPEAKER_02 28:11

so what seems to be happening in fashion is that when these bigger businesses get involved they usually want to do a capsule collection with sustainable materials which is kind of annoying if I may say so myself like

SPEAKER_00 28:24

which means they do one collection with materials but they leave it out

SPEAKER_02 28:26

they do one tiny collection it's not even their main collection or their whole season they just do six pieces with one sustainable material and then they get to enjoy the PR off of that and it's just not real it's not truthful and it's not honest so I don't suggest that brands do this it's more impactful to say if you're a big brand just change your lining material make sure that you're sourcing organic lining for your

SPEAKER_00 28:55

entire collection what is lining for every fashion dummy that's listening

SPEAKER_02 29:00

I used to think that a coat, say, is made of wool. Okay, done. No, not at all. A coat is made of a wool outer. It has plastic buttons. It has a lining made of probably lyocell or silk if it's expensive. It has fusing to keep the lining together with the outer material. It has shoulder pads. It may have a zip as well. It may have come in a carrier bag made out of a synthetic polyester. Like, wow, so many materials. So imagine an entire collection of a really big business. They've used a lining, a fashion business, they've used a lining material which is usually made from trees or from cotton. Trees would be Lysol or a sustainable version is Tencel. And they buy that one material in huge quantities because they're going to line their whole collection with it. So that makes an impact. So that's

SPEAKER_00 29:49

the entry point you would say. I would say that's the

SPEAKER_02 29:52

best one. Take your biggest spend as a fashion brand, whatever material that is, your highest quantity or and change that you won't get the biggest PR impact though because who wants to tell a story about all this lining that's sustainable like I get it from a PR point of view it's not as valuable but it's truthful and it's honest and that's you making the biggest deal which I would argue that consumers now do want to hear stories like that that's actually a more interesting story because it educates as well it doesn't misguide the consumer another story that I wanted to tell off the back of this question is about how these businesses that are larger can start to really truly support their supply chain and the farmers down at the bottom end of their supply chain. Bottom not being derogatory at all, but bottom being baseline, like at the beginning of the story where the materials were grown. Build relationships with them that go beyond just visiting the farm. Like this I've heard from farmers a lot, especially I'm thinking particularly of an amazing farm in the US that is 10,000 acres in northern Montana on the border of Canada. It's incredible what they're doing they are really working at the cusp of at the height of regenerative agriculture they want to transition into biodynamics they're they're working with a lot of biodynamic methods already so they are finding that they're the businesses that source their crops are really interested in the ways that they're growing they even want to come and visit the farm and make sure that they're really growing them in these regenerative ways but they don't want to make any different a commitment to this farm than they would any other normal supplier so in fact what they're doing is taking a lot of time away from the team when they come and visit they're not paying for those visits they're not adding value to the farm by visiting and they're not making commitments that are regenerative in the economic side of things meaning that they're not taking

SPEAKER_00 31:48

advantage of pictures and that's it yeah

SPEAKER_02 31:50

yeah they're not they're not experimenting with csa's community supported agriculture they're they're not buying ahead of time like that would be the most helpful thing is what i'm finding for a for farmers is that farmers just imagine if you were growing something and you had to pay for the whole thing to be grown before you got money for it oh wait that's our normal system that's what

SPEAKER_00 32:12

every farmer has to do potentially three to six months later after you harvest it and you don't even know

SPEAKER_02 32:16

it's not

SPEAKER_00 32:17

fair sometimes against prices etc no no it's just not fair better off take agreements is is the key is one of the keys but big key let's say to to unlocking money you mentioned just one step back to to biodynamic do you remember when you stumbled upon biodynamic it feels sort of like the next phase I mean you were looking going deep into materials like do you remember the first time you heard about biodynamic farming what did you think and what was it really like like what was that the meeting with biodynamic let's say how was that or how did that happen

What is biodynamic?

SPEAKER_02 32:48

well I went to Steiner Waldorf schools and so I knew about biodynamics as a child and spent the night on a biodynamic farm when I was 10 yeah in the US in Tucson Arizona and Santa Fe New Mexico and And so I knew about biodynamics my whole life and always thought it was great. And then forgot about it when I went into fashion. And then when I started my sustainability journey, my mom reminded me. I was learning that everything in fashion, all this information that I was gathering, kept leading me back to soil. It's all grown for us in soil. So my mom at this point said, oh, why don't you go and spend some time on a biodynamic farm? Remember those? And so I started to do just that. And that was when I fell in love with biodynamics, realized it was a climate solution, and started DIRT, this charity that I now run, which is aiming or is there to support soil regeneration globally. And the way that we do that is by supporting biodynamic farming initiatives all over the world, very global, and creating demand for biodynamic produce, raising awareness about what biodynamics is, because there are so many confusions around what biodynamics is.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

Let's unpack. So what I would love to hear some of those stories. But let's start with, for anybody that doesn't know, I'll put some links in the show notes below. How would you describe biodynamic farming for, let's say on a photo shoot, you're being asked by the CEO, I heard about this biodynamic farming. What would you tell him or her, unfortunately, usually him, what this type of farming or what this approach almost to life actually is? What is it to you? And how do you describe this normally to somebody that really doesn't know? anything about this type of agriculture or agriculture in general?

Why biodymanic hasn’t taken off?

SPEAKER_02 34:34

So biodynamic farming is one type of agriculture that can be used in any setting on land. It doesn't have to be to grow crops. It can be used to afforest an area. It can be used in ecosystem regeneration. It can be used to repair a mining scar. Biodynamic farming is a richly nutritious way to farm soil. It sends around composting and you need animal manure in order to build the most robust compost which feeds the micro life under soil what's special about biodynamics that is that goes beyond its techniques and it could be said that biodynamics is an umbrella of regenerative agriculture and you can use all the regenerative techniques like agroforestry or rotational grazing mobile grazing underneath that umbrella but what is different about biodynamics is the preparation And the preparations are nine liquid tinctures that are made on the farm and sprayed across the farm for very specific uses. One is sprayed on compost. Six of them are sprayed on compost. One is sprayed on soil. One is sprayed on the leaves of the trees before they bud. Things like that. Like super specific applications. And they're all made of ingredients from mineral, from plant, and from animals. And with very specific recipes at very specific times of year. And this is the practice behind biofeedback. And at the end of the time of the making of the preparations, you might bury them for six months and then dig them up. And you've got this incredible rich humus that is just turbocharged micro life for soil and for fertility and for biodiversity. And what biodynamics sees is that why biodynamics makes these preparations is for the life within plants. Because look at a plant. It's green. It's growing. You can sometimes even eat it. that you can smell it. Something in it is keeping it alive, and we can see that when it dies. It looks very different. It's gray and shriveled. So that's the life force within it, and biodynamics recognizes that there is one, and you can farm it, and you do that with the preparations. They work on the non-physical aspect of the plants, of the animals, of the humans, and of the Earth. This is the medicine for the Earth that biodynamics has, which is extremely special right now in the face of climate change, And these preparations were developed in 1924 as a remedy for climate change.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

And what happened to biodynamic farming that it would say didn't take... I mean, this... We're starting to find out like on the, let's say the traditional academic scientific, like are slowly catching up with this, let's say, and starting to scientifically prove all of these methods that there's a lot of it in it. And it's working at scale, at any scale. I mean, we've seen examples everywhere. And somehow biodynamic farming, the moment you mention it, you always get this chuckle like, oh yeah, these are the weirdos in the corner. And it's really odd because it is such a practical subject. set of practices and and somehow now it seems like regenerative agriculture is taking off and applying most of these talking immensely about fermentation and and all of that in life in plants in soil etc so why why didn't that happen with biodynamic farming like what what went i wouldn't say wrong but why did it take this weird curve to the right or the left into into weirdo land instead of mainstream do you have an idea because you've studied this you've you've looked deep into this and and why why did that turn happen?

Biodynamic certification

SPEAKER_02 38:13

I definitely don't have the complete answer for that question but I can ponder it for a while. It's nearly 100 years old. It's 98 years old right now and organic agriculture came out of biodynamic agriculture and that's often misunderstood. It's kind of talked about that biodynamic agriculture builds on organic agriculture but actually organic came out of biodynamics and was a simplification of biodynamics that served a purpose and has been amazing in marketing and changing the way we think about mostly food not fashion as much but right now I think we need a more complex solution for nature because nature is very complex and actually can't be simplified down into one specific formula and often not always because there are some regenerative organic farmers who are doing incredible things but often organic can be just the same formula as conventional but a less toxic version than. So it's still plant the seed, fertilize the seed, harvest the crop and plant the seed again. And it just follows this kind of circle that isn't really full of life and isn't really regenerating soil nor biodiversity around it. But to go back to your question, I think that the people who are attracted to biodynamics are wonderfully humble and don't value shouting about the amazing things that they're doing and so that has naturally meant that the movement remains smaller and quite internally facing which is quite a beautiful thing when you think about it no one's showing off everyone's just doing their good work and it's amazing so I invite everyone to get into biodynamics go and learn about it go and visit a biodynamic farm if they want you to visit obviously be respectful farmers don't always want yeah do you pay for it or buy a lot of things exactly offer something to them and and be really grateful that you can go and spend time with them because they're amazing. Biodynamic farmers are the most intelligent people I've ever met or spent time with. I mean, what this practice does to humans is incredible. They're on another level of being human. Their conversations, the way they think, their observance of the land around them, it's very, very special. This quality of sensitivity is heightened and heightened when you're doing these biodynamic practices.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

What is very unique about it as well is that it is certified in many places, like there is a certification, there is a certain standard that you have to, like before you can call yourself obviously biodynamically certified, like what, how did that happen? And do you think it avoided the pitfalls of organic, which with the certification that they asked the government to come in, in the US specifically, but in other places as well to certify it. And that led to, of course, a boom in organic, but also let's say the loss of the original principles. And like you said, it's just a less toxic version in many In some cases, it isn't. In many cases, it's very large scale, relatively extractive, large plowing machines, etc. It's not viewing the farm as a holistic entity or a holistic organism. Do you think that biodynamic certification has avoided that pitfall?

What should smart investors, who want to invest in reg ag and food look out for?

SPEAKER_02 41:45

The certifying body of biodynamics is called Demeter. And Demeter exists all over the world and is wonderfully independent of itself in a way. And I think that is a protection mechanism that we should really respect. So there are many, many entities of Demeter all over the world, most of which can offer the certification, some of which just promote biodynamics. But basically, each territory around the world has its own Demeter. And that means that communication around the world can sometimes be a challenge to make it all the same. But it also, again, as I said, it protects from this unification, this centralization that can often lead to lower quality everything so I really respect this about the biodynamic movement that they have maintained this autonomy in different regions understanding that different regions have different needs nevertheless the standard of the certification is equally as high everywhere in the world

What about the carbon markets?

SPEAKER_00 42:46

and What would you tell to investors? Imagine we're in a large theater, we do this in person and the room is full of, or the audience is full of investors that are curious, obviously, because otherwise they wouldn't have come. We're talking about soil, we're talking about life, we're talking about really good food and fibers and materials. What would you tell them when they walk out? Obviously, we're not giving investment advice, but when they walk out of that theater tonight, what should they do the next day? Should they visit that farm? Should they search for it? Where would you send them to learn more and to start getting active, not maybe immediately buying a few million euros worth of flex processing machinery, but where would you send them to learn more where we definitely need more, let's say, investment resources in this space? Is it to grow the farms? Is it to grow the processing? Where would you send them to start getting to work?

SPEAKER_02 43:40

Well, there's something very interesting happening with Demeter and with biodynamics globally, which is that this is are certified meaning all these farms are of a similar caliber all over the world so think about carbon crediting and how that voluntary carbon market right now is a I guess we could say mess sometimes I

SPEAKER_00 44:02

was going to say the same understatement but it's a bit messy

SPEAKER_02 44:08

it's all over the place let's put it that way kindly it's all over the place because it's new and there are many conflicting views about it first of all and I'd like to highlight the indigenous point of view or many indigenous points of view is that the carbon market itself is deeply flawed because it's capitalistic so when you put a value on something that is of nature you are undermining its intrinsic value without its monetary value and that can be really dangerous and let's listen to indigenous peoples because they are the wisdom holders they have been protecting our earth forever and a lot of different groups of people have constantly trampled on their teachings, ways, knowledge, and themselves, their cultures. So that's just a caveat that I want to share that opinion, that we need to take that into account as we look at the carbon market and the nature market. And biodynamics has a unique opportunity to be able to look at and consider its nature value because biodynamic farmers are offering so many services to the public good so many and it's not but they only get paid for their crops and that is something that is just really mind-boggling me right now and how i want to find a solution for this these biodynamic farmers deserve to be remunerated for the services that they are providing humanity and the earth and those include things like water absorption and retention on biodynamic farms is so much higher than labor farms always then reduction in fire because fires don't burn as well on a farm that is absorbing so much water so those again two very very good solutions they increase quality of life to farmers biodynamic farmers are not as vulnerable to the mental health issues that tragically I mean suicide rates in farming are higher than pretty much every national average it's horrific that these are the people who grow everything we need for us and yet they're in such an impossible situation mostly brought on by debt and the debt cycle comes from the purchasing of chemicals and genetically modified seed and heavy duty machinery that they do feel so unwell and so pressurized that they're actually willing to take their life I mean it's just this is so not okay and as a society we need to figure out a solution where we can start supporting farmers in a way that actually makes them feel good about their lives because of the services that they're providing so to carry on with the list of the services that biodynamic farmers are providing increased biodiversity on the farm and also farms act as a safe haven for endangered species because they can come and live on that farm without the spraying of chemicals for instance the list goes on and on I've been able to find about 10 or 15 incredible services that farmers could be paid for so I'm thinking about earth assets rather than carbon credits because the mainstream climate narrative you may have noticed is in a bit of a carbon tunnel people are only talking about carbon and when you only talk about carbon you don't have time to talk about any of the other really really really important urgent aspects that we need to resolve in order to avoid a climate crisis if we're talking about net zero by 2050 and that's the only thing we do, we won't win. Even if we sequestered all the extra atmospheric carbon tomorrow, we would still be in climate change because it is not only a carbon problem. It's also a pollution problem. It's also an ocean acidification problem.

SPEAKER_00 48:02

It's also a... A water cycle problem.

SPEAKER_02 48:04

A what?

SPEAKER_00 48:05

A water cycle problem. And there are people that argue... Like, yes, sure, it's a motorcycle

SPEAKER_02 48:10

problem too.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

But not the biggest one. I mean, you can do some meditation on that on the motorcycle diaries, but I think... There are people arguing even that carbon is a symptom of a broken water cycle of our land being not full of life and thus full of water. And we should focus. Waterjena, I will put a link below, we interviewed him, makes a very strong point of most of the heating comes from a broken water cycle, not from carbon. Doesn't mean we shouldn't worry about carbon, but it is a very small piece or it's a piece of a much bigger puzzle. But then how do we compensate for that without becoming the issue again of a capitalistic system or the issue again of what we've done so many times with indigenous peoples, et cetera, that as soon as we put a price on it, let's say we also argue that if this forest is worth a billion, which Charles Eisenstein just brought up in a previous interview, which should be added now, otherwise we'll link it below, then if we pay two billion for it, we should cut it down and we should develop that mine underneath. How do we avoid that reasoning of as soon as we put a price on it, it means that when we pay that price or more, we can do whatever we want with it. This is a whole different rabbit hole we go into, but what has your research until now? I'm not saying there should be an answer, et cetera. How would you approach that when we want to start paying as soon as possible biodynamic farmers and land stewards for the immense services? I also don't like the word ecosystem services, but let's say ecosystem services they provide. How do we start tomorrow without digging ourselves into another hole that we don't want to get into?

SPEAKER_02 49:47

Well, I think that to start in my space is the Demeter certification guarantees a certain quality of farming. So therefore, it's kind of easier to say these farms are of a similar ilk. And so we can guarantee that this is happening on these farms because it's part of our certification. These farmers deserve to be at least recognized. First of all, just recognize them for what they're doing. Then a later stage would be to actually pay them for what they're doing. And maybe that needs have come out of subsidies maybe taxpayer money could go there I mean I would feel amazing if I knew that my taxpayer money were going to ecosystem services that support farmers to grow richly nutritious food as a byproduct amazing like how great would that be because

SPEAKER_00 50:33

right now I know subsidies that are doing something very different yeah right

if you could wave a magic wand and change one thing in the agriculture

SPEAKER_02 50:37

now I know where my taxpayer money is going when it comes to agricultural subsidies and I am personally through my taxes paying for the purchasing of immense amounts of chemicals that are destroying the earth when they're mined when they're created in a lab also in transport also when they're applied to soil and insects and plants it's it's just crazy that i'm paying for that and i don't want to be paying for that so i think that is the first shift and and i want to recognize that i'm not saying take subsidies away from the farmers who are using those subsidies to survive not at all i'm saying use subsidies to support farmers to transition to farm in a way that's nature friendly hopefully biodynamic farmers want to farm this way no farmer wants to destroy soil no farmer is sitting on their land going i want to kill all the micro life under the soil not at all like farmers are really intelligent amazing humans who are who are just stuck in a cycle that isn't a system that isn't working and we need to educate out of it and provide exits

SPEAKER_00 51:44

i have two questions that i always like to ask based on that i So what if you had a magic wand and you had one thing you could change? Could be in fashion, could be in land use, could be in general, could be global consciousness. But if you had, and most people then say, yeah, I would like to change two things. So I would like to force you to do one thing only, but if you have two, it's also fine. What would you change overnight? Like tomorrow morning, we all wake up and Arizona changed one thing. What would that be? I mean, maybe we didn't know that you did it. Obviously you don't need the credit, but what if you had that amazing power and responsibility, what would that be?

SPEAKER_02 52:17

I'm smiling now because I'm going to go really radical on you. And my activism is quite radical. I read the most radical people and I love it. The most radical makes the most sense. It's the most logical. And so what I'm going to say here is get ourselves out. I would, if I had a magic wand, get ourselves out of this domination cycle. We are conditioned to think that domination is our status quo. We need to dominate. We do it in all our relationships, our relationship with the earth, our relationship with our children, our relationship with with our friends and partners, our relationships professionally. They're all about domination built on domination. We need to change this around, learn from people like Rhian Eisler, for instance, who wrote a whole book on the partnership way, which is one great asset when you're trying to learn how to relearn, recondition yourself into a more positive way of being because when you stop living in a dominating way, you have much more space to be curious. Your creativity can grow. And you can make decisions that you would otherwise not have made. We need this in the face of climate change because climate change is a human behavioral problem. It's not a carbon problem, as we were saying. It's just us. We need to change the way we think. And there are many, many ways to do this. Go in and learn from indigenous peoples. They all know this. They've been doing this forever. And if you're a white European descent person, you have indigenous roots too. It took me ages to realize this, but I used to think, oh, the glorious people with brown skin, they have indigenous roots. I do too. Every one of us does. Look at the Druids, if you're from Britain. They have incredible rituals and ways of thinking that are more distant, so it's harder to find the European ones because they got wiped out longer ago than the ones in North America, for instance, and South America. But that wisdom is what's going to fuel our future. It's the most exciting learning I've ever done.

What would you do if you were in charge of a 1B investment portfolio tomorrow morning?

SPEAKER_00 54:16

Do just recently read a book yeah very very good and radical but i wouldn't say i mean we're used to something on this podcast and i i would definitely link um the books around below as well and i read a book i i'm gonna remember the title probably talking for the trees i think or to speak for the trees on someone in ireland that was the last one that got the traditional knowledge like she was specifically picked by the community that when the last standing for in Ireland which there are not many anymore and especially now and she was trained in everything like she was trained she got all the full as we would say now download but of course then back in the day she didn't and she went into academia and slowly but surely in the US she basically proved scientifically proved all the things she learned already when she was a teenager which is it's a fascinating short book I'll put the title below in the show notes as well and it was really it's really interesting that because we need those bridges between and she was very very, very lucky. And we are lucky because she wrote it down. And some things are because she mentioned a lot of the trees at the end and a lot of the recipes, a lot of the healing. We don't know anymore because it got lost with the Celts, I think. But there are still bridges back to that. Of course, it's longer ago than we would like to. But I know many farmers that in places start to go deep into old agricultural or architecture books to understand what was grown here and what made sense in places. People go back all the way to Roman times. But of course, we have to go back way further to start seeing okay what made sense here what was the context what was the place like what what grows well together what doesn't what makes i mean a lot of this has been developed probably lost because it wasn't written down or it was written down and then burned at some point or was just told in oral oral history and unfortunately we we lost a lot of that but there is still some some of that around and we need to really make sure we capture it and and start re reusing it and buy that see see how it works and if it works

SPEAKER_02 56:17

yeah It holds so many answers and so many tips about what is going to work in the future. So thinking from an investment point of view, if you're looking for what really is going to be a climate resilient investment, learn all this about the indigenous people. I mean, all the secrets are hidden there so that then you can use that knowledge to apply it to what businesses are available right now to invest into. The ones who are aligned with what indigenous people say, those ones are going to succeed.

SPEAKER_00 56:45

And it's a perfect bridge to the second question. People frequent listeners from the podcast if you made it until now you must be probably a frequent listener how would you invest money if you let's say a billion dollars or billion euros let's keep it in Europe for now I mean you can invest it everywhere if you had to put that to work obviously I'm not looking for the exact euro amounts behind the comma etc I don't care I would care more about what would you prioritize what would you what would be the main themes you would focus on in a short time or a longer time if you had to put this amount of money to work?

What do you believe is true about biodynamic agriculture that others don’t believe to be true? Inspired by John Kempf

SPEAKER_02 57:20

Nature tech solutions, looking at biomimicry, ocean regeneration, land regeneration, but not through technological machinery because it's too costly to build. The investment that it absorbs, first of all, I mean, the billions that go into making machines to regenerate, it doesn't make sense. Just do it by putting those billions into people because people need jobs and people do better things with money than machines do. Definitely. And I would look at simple things like killing two birds with one stone. For instance, I've been thinking a lot about automobile pollution. We have roads. We're not going to stop using them anytime soon. Instead, what we're doing is building cars that use batteries, but we don't have a good system for disposing of batteries or recycling batteries right now. So they're also causing immense amount of problems, even though they are a solution for air pollution. But what about just planting greenery on the edge of every single road to absorb a lot of the pollution so that it doesn't get into our lungs, so that it doesn't get into our farms, because so many farms are on the roadside. And what is that doing with the diesel particulate matter in the air? It's getting on our food. That's not okay. It's getting into our soil. Also, one of the biggest plastic pollutions is tires as they drive on the road and disintegrate. And that's all going by the roadside. So we need a buffer on the side of every single road. And that should be a prioritization prioritization from municipalities get a buffer on every road legally and plant it with native species of plants have it tended to by local communities make it a community event I think making everything we do into a community event can really increase the power of it it's free marketing but also it brings people together and makes people happier

SPEAKER_00 59:10

and when you go to I don't know if you go to like let's agroecology or regenerative agriculture, even biodynamic. Actually, when you go to biodynamic conferences, where are you contrarian? Where in your group, in your bubble, let's say, bubble is a bad word, in a positive sense, where do you think differently? This is definitely a question inspired by John Kempf. What do you believe to be true about biodynamic farming that others don't? Others in your own scene, because I'm curious where you think differently. Where do you stand out when you go to the I

SPEAKER_02 59:49

found that I think of biodynamics at scale. I think of biodynamics covering all the terrestrial land that humans manage. And I think that the biodynamic movement hasn't been thinking so big like that. And I hope that that's going to happen. And I know there are many, I'm not saying I'm the only person thinking about that, and I'm not trying to toot my own horn at all, but I have received feedback from people in the biodynamic movement saying, oh, wow, I wasn't thinking of it. as such a big scale solution. And so I'd like to run with that and keep going because it is an incredible climate solution with so many opportunities.

What is Arizona excited about?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:29

Why do you think that is? Why is there hasn't been, I'm not saying you're the first one or the only one like you mentioned, but few, let's say, talking about, okay, how do we do a region, a country, an island, a bioregion, landscape in these agroecology life focused holistic view biodynamic farming like what what has been holding back I see that in region in general as well like it's very we're very much focused on the farm level and then sort of what happens beyond the farm gate it's like yeah but if your whole landscape is moving backwards it would be nice if it moves forward it makes your life a lot easier because your neighbor isn't spraying like crazy or has been polluting the river I mean you are all in the same system so I would imagine there's a lot of work going into landscape scale regeneration and there's a surprisingly, not so much happening there. What has been holding back the biodynamic movement to think at scale? Because it is, I mean, I will link below the interview we did with Lavialla in Tuscany. It's more than 1,200 hectares under management, plus a lot more forestry. Like scale is definitely there. Maybe not so known, but it's there. Like what has been holding back the rest of the movement there to start thinking or dreaming maybe about scale?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:42

I wonder if it's because farmers are so busy. They're so busy. managing the amount of work and the amount of land that they have maybe it takes non-farmers coming into this space and going how can we think big what can I do to help you expand which is the question that I ask every biodynamic farmer I meet how can I support the amazing work that you're already doing so that this can become one of the most important climate solutions out there and maybe it takes that and

SPEAKER_00 1:02:15

To wrap up, I mean, I usually ask a final question and then it's never the final question, but what are you busy with this? What are you excited about, let's say, over the next months as we're going into summer 2022, depending obviously when you're listening to this, but we're talking spring, early spring, depending where you are. Let's say spring 2022 on the northern hemisphere, which I learned lately actually that according to indigenous peoples, usually the north was down and the south was up, which is very interesting from our perspective, but let's park that for a second. What are you excited about for this summer in terms of your work on your activism on let's say the most radical stuff what are we what we should look out for from you and your team

SPEAKER_02 1:02:57

in terms of what I'm learning about that I'm most excited is I've gotten into the divine feminine I feel like that's the next step and it's the one after the domination stuff it's incredible when you learn about well I'll just leave it there it's incredible go and look at divine feminine stuff Mary Magdalene Hildegard all of these stories and legends and and the way modern people are thinking about it now academics as well as citizens it's it's really adding a lot to the way i think then also i'm really excited about cop 27 which is coming up in november and the preparation i'm doing for that with dirt and other organizations biodynamic association in egypt because cop 27 is in egypt um and also other organizations that we may be partnering with to raise awareness about biodynamics excited I'm excited about my consulting, helping more brands to businesses to transition. I'm also have been wanting to for ages and it looks like it's finally happened getting into the investment world. I've been having my eye on so many businesses for the last seven years of my activism and watching them all become successful and the ones that I thought were going to become successful did and the ones that I thought that's not really a good idea didn't become successful. So

SPEAKER_01 1:04:15

I'm kind of

SPEAKER_02 1:04:15

hoping honing in on how to choose businesses that are going to succeed and I'm really excited about becoming a bigger part of the investing space through conversations that I'm having that are kind of too fledgling to talk about now but really

SPEAKER_01 1:04:28

excited about

SPEAKER_02 1:04:29

how they will develop because I love the regenerative space and it turns out I have a relatively good barometer for what is going to work and what isn't and I think that's because I'm working as much as I can to take my ego out of it This isn't about me. I'm doing this work because I love it. I'm enriched on a daily basis by the learning that I do on a daily basis to educate myself about the climate crisis, about the earth, about human behaviors, about all of these things that intertwine and interlock. And I think I can see from a really clear point of view because of that. I'm not in it to win it in a way. I'm just in it to support because the win is already there every minute that I spend of my time. doing this and speaking of time I'm at the moment I don't pay myself at Dirt and I work 45 to 55 hours a week on it and it's amazing to be able to do that and I feel so grateful and lucky that my modeling career is allowing me to do that and I understand that most people do not have that privilege and I don't take it lightly at all but that's it's amazing to participate in the gift economy like this to be giving my time for an organization that really needs it because Dirt's fledgling and it wouldn't it wouldn't be the same if it needed to pay a CEO right now which at some point I will need to do that I will replace some of what I'm doing or all of what I'm doing with somebody else who's probably going to be way more skilled than I am in some things but at the moment it's necessary that I'm able to do this and I love it

SPEAKER_00 1:06:03

I don't think there's a better one or a better way to end this conversation we'll definitely follow up on a lot of this work on the investment side on COP and all of that I hope it's not the last time we had you on the podcast and I want to definitely thank you so much for your work and for coming on here to share and to discuss about the funny parts the potential the huge opportunities the barriers of biodynamic farming and actually fashion we learned a lot I think in this episode we very rarely talk about fashion which is and fibers which is such an enormous industry we sort of keep in the core so thank you so much for what you're doing and for coming on here to to share and hope to see you hope to see you

SPEAKER_02 1:06:48

soon it was so much fun to talk to you thank you so much always for everything that you're doing and just the space that you give to everyone in regenerative investment it's so important so important and interesting to listen to so thank you for having me

SPEAKER_00 1:07:06

Thanks again and see you next time.