Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast features the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
202 Sven Verwiel - How to unlock the potential of syntropic agroforestry in East Africa
A conversation with Sven Verwiel of ForestFoods, a Kenyan based premium produce brand, about the potential of syntropic agroforestry in Kenya, and what we can learn from the over 40 years of experience in Brazil and what is needed to apply it at scale in the local East African context as well as why is the African continent the crucial and most interesting place to apply regenerative practises.
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Unpacking the potential of syntropic agroforestry in Kenya and what we can learn from the over 40 year experience in Brazil and what is needed to apply this at scale in the local East African context. And why is the African continent the crucial and most interesting place to apply regenerative practices? Plus some conversations about the role and place of annuals like cereals in syntropic agroforestry and why investing in unlocking water is the most important thing to do now or actually yesterday. plus some thoughts on water cycles. 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 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. Welcome to another episode today about Forest Foods, which is a Kenyan-based premium produce brand that utilizes syntropic agroforestry. They combine a wide variety of indigenous and commercial produce to recreate natural biodiversity, replenish soil health, and grow food with high nutritional value. Welcome co-founder and director Sven.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you very much, Koen. It's a pleasure to be
SPEAKER_00:here. It really is. And... As you know, you're a fan of the podcast. You've listened to a few episodes. We always start with a personal question. Why soil? How did you end up in Syntropic Agroforestry in Kenya?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, I actually grew up with food and restaurants as my parents are in the hospitality sector. But at the same time, I had a big passion for spending time on the ocean, in the African wildlife and in forests, surfing, fishing, diving. So always quite connected to the natural world and then yeah I always really had a thirst to understand the world from a biological perspective so I thought how can we marry environmental regeneration with sound food production and that was really where it all started I then went and did a degree in aquaculture and fisheries management but it didn't really matter what module I was doing it was all monocultures from fin fish to bivalves and crustacea algae it was all just monocultures we did a little bit on the integrated multi-trophic level stuff and biofloc so that really led me into my dissertation in aquaponics and into my sort of first intro to the permaculture world and that's really what led me then to the soils because I wanted to come back home after studying abroad and at home aquaculture was really in its infancy and you only really had sort of tilapia and catfish to choose from and so that That permaculture world opened up a lot of doors for me. I started off our own consultancy and training company straight out of uni and so that really led to where we are today and and everything i've done in the last 10 years since i finished and into what we're now focusing on heavily is you know with forest foods is the syntropic agroforestry but also with our other company leaf africa working on getting larger scale regen projects off the ground in this part of the world so that's what led me to this oil really and in a nutshell
SPEAKER_00:And to, I mean, if you study agriculture, but also aquaculture, like you mentioned, the track to go into or the path, let's say, or the path dependency to go into monocultures is very, very strong. Do you remember what triggered or how you stumbled upon permaculture? Because I can imagine there wasn't a permaculture class in your aquaculture studies. Like what was the path that you took left or right out of this beaten path that normally leads to large monoculture farms?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, good question. I mean, we're lucky enough that you need to be able to do two placements every year. And that's sort of led me all across the world. And I did meet some very influential characters, I would say, who introduced me to that permaculture concept. And I just started learning it during the degree. So I just did an online... pdc as it as it's called and it was only actually in my second year that i discovered the power of aquaponics you know using the fish to produce the nutrients for the plants and then the plants to clean the water to then go back into the fish system you know so I think it was that combination of permaculture and aquaponics in the sort of end of my second year that led me to think about aquaculture in a very different manner and it was just so much more interesting than some of the modules at uni and just because it it was circular it had everything had a purpose everything had a design element to it and I think that's what really changed the shape of my degree. I was actually going to go and study bluefin tuna aquaculture in the very early days of my degree. And then in the end, I ended up in love with the permaculture and aquaponics side of things.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Yeah, I can imagine. And Syntropic, when did that enter the journey?
SPEAKER_01:Well to answer your question I mean I was born in Kenya and I only spent a couple of years abroad during my degree and really wanted to come back to Kenya and so I just became an entrepreneur out of university but the syntropic I mean I suppose in permaculture there's quite a quite a lot on food forests which I always thought was quite interesting and so when I had a previous company of mine together with a best friend we we did actually set up quite a lot of food forests in in different areas on different scales for different clients. But it was really when we moved to the desert, we got a big contract for an oil company to set up farms in the desert, community farms. And that's really where the journey started. Of course, watching a lot of YouTube movies, trying to decipher a lot of Portuguese literature from Brazil. And it was only really when I went to Brazil for the first time in 2018 to go and visit some of these amazing projects that we'd watched online I really started to understand it a lot better. And I've been lucky since then to be quite connected with a couple of the early students of Ernst Gottsch and some of his colleagues. So I suppose that really gave me the proper insight into how these complex systems work. And then of course the drive to bring them back home. I wouldn't say we're by any means the only ones doing syntropic agroforestry in East Africa, but we certainly seem to be the only ones trying to push it on a commercial level and spread it across all the agroecological zones. So I think we can take so many amazing examples from Brazil, but we still need to remember that there's a huge amount of work to do here in East Africa to actually incorporate a lot of the native species as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so how do you quote-unquote translate that to the local context, which is, of course, East Africa? Like, how do you take that, what works really, really well in Brazil? And we've actually featured Filipe Passini on the podcast who's trying to apply that in Portugal, actually successfully in Portugal and Spain and now in Italy. And so how do you bring that to another context like Kenya? And what is needed to translate it into something that makes sense in a local context? How complex or complicated is that?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think what's so beautiful about the Brazilian models, and actually I owe that to one of my business partners, Marcos, he's been in Kenya for 25 years. And if you take the map of Brazil and you put it over the African map, you'll find that there's a huge amount of similarity with Central Africa, East Africa, and parts of Southern Africa. And so without reinventing... Yeah, that helps a lot because without reinventing the wheel, we can take a lot of their models, their successful models, be it in the agriculture sector, be it in the livestock sector, be it in the forestry sector, and localize them to fit into the East African or African context. So a lot of their climates, a lot of their biomes, a lot of their soils are not too dissimilar from Africa. And so by tweaking what they've already been doing very successfully for 40 50 years we can you know we don't need to reinvent the wheel and start from zero whereas i think a lot of the temperate um syntropic models that are being developed at the moment in the temperate regions of course the fundamentals are of course the same but um that tweaking i would say is a lot more severe than doing it here in africa
SPEAKER_00:so if you had to of course i'll put some links below but if you had to describe uh which for sure you've done a gazillion times by now syntropic agroforestry or syntropic agriculture in general to someone who's new to it but interested how do you start or how do you describe it just for people that are listening and that have heard it somewhere but don't really know what it means specifically what is your go to intro
SPEAKER_01:yeah I mean I think we need to respect that term a lot and I think someone like Ernst Gottschner the godfather of it all would frown upon many people using that term incorrectly but I think without trying to fully incorporate his definition I would say from the way I've always seen it really is to use the fundamentals and the dynamics of forests and forest models and translate those into the landscape right because every landscape no matter which part of succession it's in has the ability to become forested or to become um a paradise in terms of plants even even in desert and dry land environments right so i would say it's really using the the fundamentals of of the forest to create and drive production um i i know that the and
SPEAKER_00:that word succession seems to be absolutely absolutely it's not a static
SPEAKER_01:absolutely it's an ever changing dynamic um production system and i don't think there's one exact answer there's there's fundamentals that can be followed but there's no exact recipe like each place has its own recipe and at the end of the day the people uh in charge of that piece of land or the project are ultimately in charge of what the design looks like in the end so you know as long as the fundamentals are followed then the end result can be beautifully different depending on what you want And I think Africa is the place for it, really.
SPEAKER_00:And so what is your recipe for forest foods?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, in these early phases, we find it very important to not only be the pioneers of bringing commercial syntropic systems here, but I think through our brand of premium produce, I think initially it's very important. So obviously creating very high-end food be it both fresh and in the near future value added and then I think there's no limitation to what we can do in the medium to long term because we've obviously got the incorporation of all sorts of amazing timber varieties that are found across this continent as well as a lot of fruit, nut, botanical species and ultimately how amazing would it be if we could also do most the arable crops in a syntropic manner so everything from your daily staples like you know maize is a really big one here in Kenya a lot of bean varieties sorghum millet cassava not so much but you know sweet potatoes quite big as well so you know it'd be just incredible to be able to do this across different agroecological zones on scale as well using small to medium acreages but lots of them and being able to produce even staple crops like this I think that's that's really where the vision is and then of course livestock too I mean there's no need to end it at plants
SPEAKER_00:so just walk us through it I mean walk us through an example of how maize for instance would look like or how no how maize looks like now in in the the predominant let's say local system or the predominant system you see and how would it look like in a centropic one keeping in mind obviously we're in a podcast so you have to talk visually and discuss it if people close their eyes now what bring them to a before and after or a comparison one
SPEAKER_01:sure sure I mean I think I need to start with you know I'm 35 years old now and obviously quite a lot has changed in this country since I was a little fellow but I think one of the most evident changes is that you know lots of farming societies across the country have kind of lost their They're... historical polyculture approach. I'm not saying it's lost completely, not at all, don't get me wrong, and I'm really not trying to generalize here, but you see more and more acreages going into, they might not be only monocultures, it could be maize and a bean variety for an example, but you see more and more maize on maize on maize, you know, very few rotations, lots of plowing, and I think there's certain certainly parts of Kenya that produce really good maize and I suppose they're just a bit more skilled or a bit more climatically lucky than some of the other areas in the country but I think you're seeing more and more landscapes going into a single crop and I think from a succession perspective you're always going to run into problems if you remain only in or if you try and drive your field to stay in one in one one part of succession, right? Because obviously maize falls into that early to mid grass stage of succession. And if you're constantly trying to keep in that stage, you're always gonna end up fighting nature's way of moving succession forwards, right? And so I think historically across the continent, there was a lot more polyculture and a lot more clever polycultural systems that allowed for longer term crops and longer term presence on the same piece of land. But that seems to be disappearing that, and I don't know if it's the knowledge of polycultures disappearing or just people are becoming a bit lazier with their farming strategies. But that's certainly something I see more and more of as you drive across the country. And there's obviously also a hell of a lot less less forest cover. I think we're down to about 5% to 7% forest cover, depending on what literature you read. And that's just simply
SPEAKER_00:not enough. And now let's take us to an ideal system with my maze included, because I think many people think of syntropic agroforestry, rightfully so, as agroforestry. So a lot of trees, tree crops, but don't really know unless they have done a deep dive into YouTube or have been to Brazil don't really know how annuals and how these grasses because at the end that's what we're talking about here can be incorporated into a syntropic agroforestry system so now take us to an ideal one that you would already have designed and has been running or something you would design and how does it look and feel and smell and sound for all of us that are stuck in the city and can't even imagine that so take us on an audio journey to a syntropic agroforestry system with annuals actually included
SPEAKER_01:yeah sure no problem yeah I mean I think myself personally I haven't grown as much maize as some of my Brazilian partners and colleagues but if I'm to describe what it would look like there's obviously lots of different recipes for these systems and so you've got to take some orientation into mind right and so I think if people were keen to grow certain cereal crops or early to mid grasses for as long as possible then obviously your tree lines would be wider apart than if you're trying to create shade quite quickly you'd also have to orientate them east west to maximize as much sunshine that's on the equator anyway where we are but I think the beauty with growing maize which is really actually a placenta crop really it can be grown with so many other things because it's actually an emergent so if you look at its stratification
SPEAKER_00:so I have to ask you what is a placenta crop just to just to frame it for the audience that's not a syntropic terminology expert
SPEAKER_01:yeah great well I mean placenta really refers to like it does in a mammal you know it's where everything starts it's where I suppose babies are nurtured and so I think in the early phases of agroforestry systems there's certain placenta crops that are grown to maximize photosynthesis to open up the ground and so like cassava is one of the kings for an example but cassava and maize can also grow very well together because they have different stratification A and they have different time frames of how long they're in the ground for right and so I think for the audience to imagine what a really nice centropic maize field would look like is you know you could potentially consider the three sisters you know like a ground cover like pumpkin a climber like a bean and then maize in the middle for an example if you wanted to really take it to simplicity with tree lines and as long as those tree lines don't provide too much shade you can continue growing these crops in those combinations until the land is is ready to receive a perennial crop, for example. So I don't know if I'm doing a good job there in trying to make that visual for the audience, but I think the three sisters is a great little example of how simplistic these systems can look like on scale as well. Three annual crops grown together.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because that's, I think, a good point as well on the scale. on the scale piece which many and the three sisters I'll put a link below I think it's a very famous but if you haven't dived deep into it example I think from from Central America originally like how to yeah have three annuals which which of course is not ideal but incredibly incredibly abundant if you do that well together but on the scale piece because always people are like oh yeah our first tree is great food forest isentropic blah blah blah but I would never scale it's always nice on a few hectares a few acres and things like that and I know many people are and we're going to do for sure some interviews on it on how to like what's the role of machinery and automation and what's the what is the strategy to scale but if you would have to summarize it because of course you you have to when you talk to investors like okay how does this go from a few hectares here and there to an agriculture system or a production system yeah that is scalable like how do you reply to the scale a question which you must get all the time.
SPEAKER_01:yeah no great so that's a wonderful question and we get it asked we get asked that all the time i think my probably a better way to answer it is that there's constantly new machinery and technology being developed for the larger scale agroforestry systems i would also like to you know to bring up that in places like france they've also got quite serious I mean they're not as complex perhaps as some of the tropical syntropic systems but they've got some very successful arable agroforestry systems that are 15-20 years old and so that's just a matter of bringing in your planting equipment and your harvesting equipment and making sure your tree lines can handle that and in some other cases some of your spraying equipment I think in the context of scaling this across much larger landscapes i think there's plenty of good examples in in brazil as well and just off what i've visited in some of the states in brazil some of the work in brapa has been doing and which is their research um facility for agriculture and forestry they've got i think over 225 million hectares of i suppose restored rangelands that were once heavily degraded and probably overgrazed but simply with four or five species you quite often see you know hundreds if not thousands of hectares with the what they call the integrated forestry and livestock system which has lines of eucalyptus and generally brocari underneath and then livestock grazing in the shade in them but before the or before the panicum or one of the tropical fodder grasses was added, you would have had rotations of soya and maize. And just that right now, those systems are being marketed as carbon neutral systems because the livestock, all the methane and all the gases that the livestock are producing are combated by the, or neutralized rather, by the combination of trees and pasture. And I think to be able to do that in a place like Brazil over like i say i think the figure is 225 million hectares is just shows you what the potential is if we if we wanted to scale these types of agroforestry systems even here in africa
SPEAKER_00:and and so are you saying with scale you lose a certain level of complexity
SPEAKER_01:well i think most people on scale want to simplify the process right and so i think that's one of the beautiful aspects of the central model is that you can go as complex as you want on a small to medium scale but then maybe when you when you're doing it across thousands of hectares you'd want to simplify it a little bit right just so that the machinery required wouldn't need to be too advanced because obviously you're harvesting and you're planting equipment mostly needs to be taken into consideration but that's not to say that you can't make it as complex
SPEAKER_00:and are you in that camp or are you yeah
SPEAKER_01:I
SPEAKER_00:Are you in the camp or are you saying we should, like it loses too much if we make it less complex, thus we need to create the conditions or the context that we can do this at scale with the complexity, biodiversity, nature, soil needs and wants?
SPEAKER_01:No, I'm totally in the camp of doing it on a large scale with complexity because if you look at what I just described in Brazil, you know, the pasture grass that was planted after four or five rotations with soya and maize for an example and and only eucalyptus i mean we can go so much further than that like eucalyptus is is a emergent um it has an emergent stratification and so there would be so many more species that we could integrate into that model already and make it a bit more complex just based on stratification because really with those eucalyptus systems we've got a nice ground cover and we've got a emergent but we're missing all the other layers in between there what I'm trying to say is if they're able to do it already now in Brazil on that scale then it's just a matter of tweaking the recipe and getting in those different stratification and different layers to be able to produce much more food fiber fruit and timber even you know so
SPEAKER_00:and how easy is it to like integrate to complexify after you or already started the system like like like these systems are on millions of hectares and are four or five species way more complex than than your normal soil corn rotation and way more complex than only livestock obviously but not nearly as complex as could be like is it are you then relatively path dependent and you're you're stuck or is it relatively easy okay we we put a base layer we're at 20 or 10 or whatever and now we're gonna tweak and add and and and cut and like complexify over time is that a doable strategy or do you need to do it from the beginning
SPEAKER_01:yeah yeah i mean it's a great question and i've made i've burnt my fingers quite a lot in the past by trying to introduce new seedlings in a in a system that's already a couple of years old and i think the nicest analogy is is is of football actually if you try and take a small child and get him to play with a professional football player that they're they're in a very different in a very different league. And so what I've learned is that the best way to do all this is when you plant things together and that's why planning these systems is so important and using past experience and past research is so important. I'm not saying it's impossible. I think you could quite comfortably get rid of a whole bunch of eucalyptus and replant different species, But you do need to realize then you're going back to, in many ways, the early stages of succession. And so you probably need, again, to introduce some placenta species to be able to get those tree strips ready for a native variety, for an example. And I think this is where the conversation of using natives and non-natives is so important because there's so many people who are against non-natives and I think they get such a bad rep, but we need to remember that there's... like every landscape's in a different position and if I think so many tree planting initiatives fail all across the world because there's a big heavy focus on planting native species but if the landscape's not ready to receive those native species then they're never going to survive or they're never going to thrive they may survive but they'll never thrive and so I think this is where we need to stop criticising species based on where they come from and and start figuring out how to work with them as a combination right because a lot of the time the non-native ones will support the native ones until the native ones are ready to thrive and at that point you get rid of them so back to your initial question is it too late to change things once you've already got your plantations up and running in a lot of ways it's it's much easier to just start um with that diverse in the beginning but it's got to be planned very well in terms of space and time and that's not that complicated you know you need people who have some experience with forestry and you need people with experience in planning and putting together projects to make that a reality and I don't think finding that combination is impossible it really isn't
SPEAKER_00:yeah but it is I mean it doesn't sound too complicated but at the same time it's such a paradigm shift even in forest to think in layers and even in forestry to think in time. And in agriculture, of course, completely to think in the different stages and succession and layers that it might not be too difficult, but it seems to be quite far away from the current status quo in many places. So that maybe makes the jump so difficult. And what do you say, I mean, we're going to get to forest foods in a second, but what would you say to investors that are interested or people that are in the financial sector that are tasked with putting money to work, where would you say, like in the succession or in the phases, where is Syntropic Agroforestry, you would say, maybe globally, but also definitely regionally, where you are in terms of succession, et cetera? Where are we? Are we ready for big investments? Are we still in the placenta stage? Where do we find ourselves now? We're talking at the end of 2022. No,
SPEAKER_01:that's a great question, Koen, and I appreciate that. but I think what's become radically clear is that the conventional system has and continues to fail us. I mean, I won't get into what I think the history of sort of pre-colonial farming is on, you know, in South America, in Africa, but I think the conventional systems just continue failing us. And so anyone who wants to invest in tomorrow needs to understand that there's other models out there and that there's better models out there. When it comes to the whole regen question, I think it's a bit different than the syntropic question just because, you know, the oldest syntropic systems to date are nearly 40 years old. Some of them actually may be a little bit older. And so we're no longer in the trial phase. Like there are thousands of consortias or combinations rather that have been developed in South America that just need a little bit of tweaking to fit the African context. So I would say, you know, investment like i would say syntropic agroforestry is definitely investment ready um we of course
SPEAKER_00:here with with what we're doing so we're in this scale up and implementation space like it's no longer tweaking the the solar panel to take the renewable energy analogy but it's now okay how do we develop large enough scale projects and make it bankable and investable and put put it on a lot of rooms
SPEAKER_01:absolutely absolutely and i think this is you know time to also make mentioned that I think The profitability per acre, you know, we need to really focus on that. And when we talk about the layers in space and time and the ability for this entropic model to be, you know, 220% efficient, I mean, that's really the bottom line is, you know, how can we be as profitable, but also as productive and as biodiverse as possible on a per acre basis. And any of these models that beat the current conventional model should be considered as key things to invest in when it comes to food systems
SPEAKER_00:I think and so what I mean bringing a question forward that I sometimes ask a bit later on but if you had a billion dollars or euros what would you invest in obviously without giving investment advice and I'm not asking for a dollar amount but I'm asking what would you prioritize of course you might prioritize your own company but maybe you put it in machinery or maybe in software or what would you do if you had quote quote, unquote, almost unlimited resources?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, that's a great question. And actually, I'm going to keep it Africa-centric for now. I think this continent has and should be a powerhouse in terms of producing food, fiber, timber, medicinals, you name it. But that's from a terrestrial perspective, right? What about the entire African coastline and all the inland freshwater habitats? So, I mean, I think if I had a billion dollars, I would split it equally into two. terrestrial and aquatic systems um a lot of africa is untapped and um you know we've got 365 days of sunshine and a huge amount of natural resources so i would yeah i would turn it into large-scale um agroforestry systems and then of course do try and do a very similar thing in the water both marine and freshwater
SPEAKER_00:and what would be your approach like would you buy a a lot of land or a lot of leases for coastal areas? Or would you focus on the consumer side of things? Or what would your structure be or your approach be to develop these large scale agroforestry systems?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, great question. I think I would probably take a similar approach to what we're doing currently with Forest Foods in that there's a huge amount of idle land or unproductive land across the continent, huge. And so whether it's a matter of purchase or I don't think owning outright massive tracts of land is the way forward. I think there's a huge amount of community engagement that needs to happen. There's a huge amount of capacity building, like training hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people under the age of 35 to create careers careers in this because you know I think that's the beauty when you compare agroforestry this style anyway to other forms of farming is this really allows for a career path because there's so you know an agroforestry system is so complex and can last so many years that you're actually you never stop learning and so you know that capacity building front I think setting up really top end schools for both the private sector and the public sector would be key in capacity building and creating literally hundreds of thousands of experts across the continent we have so many different biomes in Africa that anything is possible but I think that doing it through people the education of the people from a production side is the most important thing and then from a consumer perspective obviously mass education in guys how can we create nutrient dense food systems and why is that so important I think another massive change since I was born in Kenya anyway is that there's a lot more new diseases and ailments hitting the local populations that were never there before and then you ask yourself okay well what's the reason for that and I mean again I'm not going to try and pretend that I've really dived deep into the science behind it but is it because there's a lot more chemicals in people's diets is it because there's a lot more kind of fast food in people's diets nowadays but all those things in combination are good reasons why you know from a consumer perspective there needs to be that engagement in the educational aspect of why these food systems can be so much better than what's currently on offer in the market
SPEAKER_00:And so let's unpack your current work. I'm sorry, we take away the 1 billion for now, but let's unpack Forest Foods a bit and what you're building at the moment and what you're, of course, planning to build in the near future.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, sure. Go ahead. I mean, because I could talk for hours and days about it. So maybe a specific question?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, sure. So Forest Foods comes out of experience you already had and have. And why is it such a lot next step in let's say your entrepreneurial path I was going to say career but it sounds a bit wrong
SPEAKER_01:sure no great I think there's three main points that all of us in the team share about why we think this is such an important business to be setting up right now and I think one of them is you know obviously profitable reforestation I think I have Africa's had a lot of philanthropic money thrown at it and a lot of sort of grant and NGO money thrown at it. But like, unless reforestation is profitable, it's not going to happen. And it's so important that a continent like Africa that's going to be the next boom has a prosperous environment, right? You can't create prosperous nations if the environment isn't there. And so one of the main reasons is profitable reforestation modules that can be rolled out across different biomes that's number one number two really is making small and medium acreages shine again because You know, that's the other thing is it's still very much the case that, you know, over 70% of the food produced in this continent comes from small and medium acreages. And so how can we make those, um, shine again? Because I personally don't think the small holder has much of a future if they are not mechanized and if their production systems don't improve and if they don't have access to a thriving market. And I think lastly, the extremely messy fragmented supply chain that's currently devastating a lot of the smaller scale farms. is a real big problem. And that's something that needs to change. But on top of that, really, where can consumers get consistency, traceability, transparency that just doesn't really exist? And if it is traceable and somewhat transparent, then it's all being exported to the European supermarkets or to the UAE and stuff. So where is Africa's food security if we can't look after and make our own small to medium acreages shine again because still the vast majority of the food on this continent is produced on those scale farms so what can we do to improve that?
SPEAKER_00:Okay and so what can we do?
SPEAKER_01:Well we can improve the vitality of them number one and that's by changing what's produced so like I said in the last I don't know, 20, 30 years, it becomes more and more evident when you drive around the country that just number one, acreages are being split into smaller acreages because when it goes from one generation to the next, inevitably, you know, what was once maybe a thriving 20 acre farm 15, 20 years ago is now being split into 21 acre parcels. And it's a lot harder to make one acre shine with one or two crops. or to have the ability to invest in making an acre work in terms of capex versus something that might have been 10 times the size 15, 20 years ago. So what are we going to do about these acreages to make them productive again? And personally, I think the rest of the team agrees fully well that this entropic model is certainly one fantastic solution I'm not saying it's the only one but it's certainly a fantastic solution you know I also think there's no point for a farmer to be growing the same crop for 20 years you know at least with these systems the work gets easier and you know the profits really do improve in time and I think the more models we can because you see the unique thing in Africa too is that a lot of people look over their neighbor's fence like if the neighbor is growing tomatoes really well hey let's do tomatoes too and then suddenly everyone grows tomatoes and the market's flooded and you know people are no longer as profitable or disease comes and wipes out everything so by building in this resilience and creating models that the neighbors will want to copy and get involved in is one way of creating a domino effect you know
SPEAKER_00:and so now we're talking the end of of 2022 which sorry the end of 2022 which is still weird to say honestly um but where are where is forest foods and now how would you describe it i'm not saying an elevator pitch because we're not an elevator but in in a couple of minutes where um what is on the ground where are you selling what are you growing and and mainly how etc and then we'll talk about the near future
SPEAKER_01:yeah no great question so we've got two models um for the high altitude zones of of kenya where actually most of the farming is being done and we've got a model at 2,400 meters above sea level and we've got another one at 2,200 and we're about to start a third farm at 1,600 meters so I say this because those are very important altitudes for Kenya because that's where the vast majority of agriculture is currently happening whether it's arable, whether it's coffee whether it's vegetables, whether it's cereal crops so to have models in those agroecological zones that we can then go and teach is extremely important that's where we're at now and you know having three fully functional farms up and running and as we enter 2023 is i think is a really good milestone i think the second phase and perhaps the sort of series a round can become a lot more interesting interesting because we can go to the semi-arid areas of Kenya, which are vast. Kenya is covered by 65% semi-arid land as a minimum. We can also go to the coastal regions, which I think is even more interesting because there's very little agriculture there and whatever is there, I mean, it's really an industry that needs to be brought to life again. And then, of course, there's everything in between. So I think having these, what we refer to as our own nucleus farms in these different agroecological zones and starting to do the training where we offer people, you know, two year minimum contracts with us before we sort of. allow them to go and set up their own farms on our behalf and become outgrowers for us, I think is the key next step to trying to build capacity and to create these models for the rest of the country before we start rolling them out on scale. So I would say in a nutshell, that's where we're at. We're definitely selling into a premium market, mostly in Nairobi, the capital city. But with time and scale, we should be able to penetrate different market segments. and look into value addition as well. I think that's going to be a key part to our success as well.
SPEAKER_00:And then what are the crops you sell at the moment just to give people an idea what comes out of these two and soon to be three farms?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, sure. So, I mean, at high altitude, unfortunately, you can't grow most of the warmer loving crops, you know, most of your solar nation stuff. So a lot of this, you know, a lot of salad varieties, a lot of sorry lettuce varieties and some really niche crops like blueberries and avocados as well there's a bit more long-term crops but anything that goes into a sort of average weekly shopping basket is what we're growing really successfully at altitude and then the next farm will be able to integrate a lot more of the warmer climate crops so maize beans pumpkins tomatoes cherry tomatoes aubergine capsicums and and start playing around a bit more with some of the cereals crops, which do well at altitude. But I think, you know, we need more scale at altitude to be able to grow more staple crops. Right now, our farms are a little bit too small to grow them at scale.
SPEAKER_00:And you mentioned you sell them to Nairobi. Does it mean you go to the market or how do you make sure you capture that premium or also reach the consumer and, of course, bring that premium back to or the margin back to the farm?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, a hundred percent. So we very much believe in doing direct sales with our customer base. We sell into a couple of online retailers at the moment, as well as chefs and restaurants. Our aim is to be in quite a few schools as well in the not so distant future. And yeah, we're kind of focusing on impact retailers at the moment, people who really care what they're selling and selling a story as well. That's got nothing to do with saying that we will remain in that premium class forever. Obviously, with scale, we can infiltrate the middle class in Kenya, which is by far the fastest growing sector, I would say, of the demographic. And that's, of course, our longer term target market. But we need a bit more scale to be able to penetrate that. market
SPEAKER_00:and in terms of accessibility I mean we talk a lot about nutrient density on this podcast but also always with or try to always take the angle okay where can it have the biggest impact which is definitely where people eat let's say the worst quality food at the moment or have access to only that which is food deserts in the US or many other places which is probably people with certain medical conditions etc how do you see that because going into the middle class is amazing but probably in many cases they can already afford or at least they have access to okay let's say food of course not the nutrient density you would like but is there any thought or plan is where let's say to get nutrient density food into the hands of where it matters most and if so what is your approach I completely understand you have two farms small at the moment it's not something that is easily it's easier said than done but what are your thoughts there
SPEAKER_01:yeah no 100% and I think that's a very valid point I think from a you know we're a private business a startup it's there's nothing to say that we can't venture into you know when we scale create an SPV or maybe perhaps even a non-profit arm or even set up a you know secondary business that looks only into processing for an example right because there's very many clever innovative ways of preserving nutrient in foods nowadays and and value adding it, right? Just so that the shelf life is better and that you're not running around with huge volumes of very perishable produce, right? So I think that's a two, you know, I can answer that in two ways. Number one, I think with scale and as soon as we enter our second phase where we will be working with other landowners as well as organized groups of smallholders and communities, going to be you know an impact straight away there with penetrating the average market right the market that the average person has access to but then there's also the ability to be able to have multiple grades of produce right nutrient density is not going to change from a grade A to a grade C leafy green for an example the nutrient is still there It's just how it's presented and how it's.
SPEAKER_00:Which you might sell to a, to a restaurant, but yeah, the, the, the, the quality inside doesn't change how it looks from the outside. Correct.
SPEAKER_01:Correct. And like Kenya's just getting into this, into this movement of, you know, supporting, um, discard like oddly sort of the rescue, the rescue side of things, you know? And I think that's, like I say, as Kenya is such a dynamic place, and it's changing so quickly and the middle class is also changing or growing so fast rather that I think there's going to be enormous potential in having all sorts of crops grown like this at scale but then entering marketplaces where yeah you're not earning a premium for them but you've got scale on your side right and so it becomes a volume game rather than a price point game so our goal is never to to be more expensive than anything that's considered organic here. Our goal is actually to come below the organic price. But when I say we're not keen on selling to supermarkets and stuff, it's because we're quite keen to keep the vast majority of that margin within the direct control of either our farms or the farms we're working with.
SPEAKER_00:What's the community angle here? You mentioned it a few times and outgrowers you've mentioned in the current phase and what is the future model look like in the ideal phase, which I'm imagining is not going to go towards a colonial owning every, owning half of Kenya and employing a lot of people under very, very bad circumstances.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, sure. No, no, absolutely. Absolutely. Great question. So I I think, again, it's kind of two-sided in that there's a lot of people living in the urban cities that have land in their ancestral home areas, right? And these people range from lawyers and doctors all the way to, I don't know, anything that fits into that sort of middle-class bracket. but they're not really doing anything with their land or it's not really productive. And there's a lot of people who would like to sign in on this model. I say that because most of the time when we do our farm tours or we have visits, people are actually like, wow, we really want to do this on our land. And so I know that there's an abundance of idle land that's sitting there and that people are willing to improve or invest in. They just don't know what to do right so I think that's important to say because a lot of these people have either have access to the finance or already have the finance to put together some of the capex that's required to set up these systems right of course you need money to make money and then there's of course the community aspect slash the smallholder aspect and I bunch them into two different categories because most of the time the smallholder won't have access to funds won't have access to what's required from an infrastructure perspective to get them on the right path. And so I think clever partnerships with third parties that specialize in dealing with either the smallholders or the cooperatives would be our approach for that. And we'd always want to make sure we have our own strong nucleus farm in the middle of that geographical area so that we can provide the required support and both from a both from an expertise perspective but perhaps also from a CapEx perspective. We'd have cold storages on our farms, we'd have machinery, access to irrigation and little agro shops where the small owners could buy some of their equipment from us from. So I think there's that approach and then there's the landowner who wants to do something with their idle land but just lacks the knowledge or lacks the inspiration to do something with it and that's how I think we're gonna
SPEAKER_00:and basically for for them you provide sort of a plug and play like I would love this on my land as well but I live far away in Nairobi and I can't or I don't want to and you would lease it long term they might invest in and you would manage it basically long term for them and sell the produce and somehow the revenue or the profit or they might even invest in that because they have the means to do that, but just not the means to actually do it on the ground.
SPEAKER_01:Correct. And I must be very honest with you. A lot of work's gone into some intensive spreadsheets, both from a production perspective and planning, but also into a financial perspective. And a lot of that work has gone into our own nucleus farms, which are currently geared to be upwards of four hectares. And we need to have those strategically up and running in the different parts of the country that we want to operate in first I say this because those farms will create our brand a very trusted brand which we're going to need our customer base buying for first before we start off taking or promising off take from our future partners, be them the communities, be them the landowners, so that we can guarantee these products end up in the market. So I think we're doing it a little bit opposite to what most people
SPEAKER_00:try. Are you going to test the quality or how are you going to secure, how are you going to make sure the, of course, if it comes from your own farm, you know, but if you start buying from others, you're going to test the nutrient density or are you going to measure, I mean, I don't know, omega-3 and 6 ratio depending on like an animal protein? How do you keep quality control? And let's say, as that's your main focus, of course, like it has to come from a centropic, but how centropic system, like how do you make, how you're going to make sure, of course, is a hypothetical question.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, again, this is where the capacity building becomes so important. And this is where I think building an army of, you know, Kenyan experts who represent us either as field scouts or who end up being senior supervisors on these outgrower projects, that's really where I think the first point of traceability and transparency lies. I also think that with us managing them for the vast majority, I would say, means that it has to be to our standards. I think one of the critical things moving forward for us and I think for the Syntropic movement globally is actually going to be its own certification because I don't think we want to follow the organic route I think the Syntropic deserves its own certification scheme and so that's one thing that I think will be key to develop in the future of course testing nutrient density or making that available and affordable is going to be key and I think there's plenty of grant money out there to hopefully help us in creating some of those requirements right i don't think we per se need to be investing in that ourselves and and then i think really like what we're currently building internally because we've tried we've tried buying software in the past but you know unfortunately it seems it's not quite fit for our production systems but we're creating our own dashboard which allows us to enter a lot of data and production data harvest data waste data it allows us to create a digital twin of our current farms and all the different crops and the different varieties and stuff and i think the legitimacy and the quality of this data on the on the on the eventual blockchain is going to be worth gold and moving forward because we're going to be able to prove a lot of things and And having it on the blockchain, I think, is going to be key to securing the legitimacy of everything we're saying we're doing, right? And so I think as that technology becomes more and more available to the everyday person, I think that's going to be where we're going to find ourselves spending quite a lot of time and effort in. I myself am not very well-versed with blockchain, but luckily some people in our team are, so... And yeah, looking forward to the value of the data we collect over the next couple of years, I think is going to be super important.
SPEAKER_00:And I want to be conscious of your time as well. And I'm looking forward to check in on this in the future. But to end with a few questions, we always like to ask, what do you believe to be true about regenerative agriculture that others don't believe to be true? And this is definitely inspired by a question John Kemp asks often. So where are you contrarian?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. um you know i i think the biggest thing for me having having taught myself a lot of what i know by reading a lot of books and you know investing in a lot of books and doing courses online both physical and online i think what what i would like to see be the biggest change is that we need to start creating tropical literature for the region world i think a A lot of it is tempered. And so what I believe to be true versus false from your question, it really comes down to which part of the world, right? And so I think regenerative is a very feasible option for us. I think it's one of the only options actually we've got as a civilization moving forward. So I believe in everything that it stands for, but whether all the different approaches work that's a separate question but the reason I'm talking about the temperate versus the tropical is because there's very little on tropical region how to if you like manuals and stuff and so I think I've tried a lot of stuff that I've read in the books and watched in the movies from temperate regions that don't necessarily fit the tropical context because we don't have a winter and we don't have a die off and we have 365 days of sunshine and so a lot of what is currently being described for the temperate regions isn't per se transferable to the tropics and so that's I think one of my biggest goals or our biggest goals goals with what we're doing now is to create literature that's Africa centric, right? And so I think we need to prove a lot more by having partnerships with universities and researchers and proving all this stuff on a local context before I could fully answer what do I believe is true or not about the model, right? Because I think a lot of the successful pioneers are operating in the US or Europe or Australia and New Zealand, you know? So, yeah, I hope that answers that question.
SPEAKER_00:And it leads perfectly to the last one, actually. I can, I can imagine the answer, but I'm still going to ask it. What, what if you have a magic wand and you can change one thing overnight, what would, what would you change in the region or in the agriculture and food space or wider if you want, but let's, let's keep it to agriculture and food for now. If you had to change one thing and you, you had the power to do it, what would that be?
SPEAKER_01:Sure. I think for me, Yeah, so I think the single most delicate as well as the single most fragile component in the agri and forestry space moving into the future is water. I think if I had a magic wand, I would literally unlock water because I think water will become the most expensive input in the future. It already is. countries, companies, organizations, regions that invested in water in the last 20, 30 years have done the best thing they could do. I think there's obviously massive concerns about the very finite resource of fresh water we have available to us in a liquid form on this planet, but I think especially in Africa with nitrogen 98% of the agriculture being done in a rain-fed manner and with a crazy, crazy changing climate. I mean, it happens every rainy season where we're seeing massive changes. So I think for me, unlocking water as either an OPEX or a CAPEX is going to be the most fundamental change that I would like to see happening over the next five to 10 years. And if we don't do it now, then it's going to be even more...
SPEAKER_00:And this is going to be a whole different kind of world. But yeah, if we don't do it now, sorry. No, just if
SPEAKER_01:we don't do it now, it's only going to become more expensive and it's only going to become more difficult in the future if we don't start doing it now. And when I say we, I'm talking about as individuals, as organizations, as governments, as areas, like we need to unlock water and it needs to happen now.
SPEAKER_00:When you say unlock water, you mean
SPEAKER_01:well I mean like right now I'll take our context for an example is you know nobody or not enough people are using rain and storing it for an example so I mean rain is the best form of investing in water because it's the only renewable form you've also got obviously aquifers and there's a lot of bar holes being drilled and you know yes in some situations water is safest underground where it's not being contaminated or being changed but water is a very expensive infrastructure in this part of the world whether you drill for it whether you build reservoirs to capture it from the sky or whether you abstract from you know rivers and lakes and ponds which actually isn't really allowed anymore but the reason I say I'm is because the key to what I'm saying, 98% of the continent's agriculture is still being done with rain, as in rain-fed systems, non-irrigated systems. So when I'm talking about unlocking water, I'm talking about unlocking it for the use of irrigation, but of course sensible irrigation. I think there's plenty of models that use water very irresponsibly, and of course that should never be allowed But this is why I'm such a fan of agroforestry, especially the syntropic way, because if you use irrigation to create profitable models, it's very common to switch that off after four to five years or use it very sparingly after that because you've built such a resilient system. And so my point is let's unlock it now and make it available and make it affordable so that we can create these systems on scale and on mass because unlike a conventional veggie patch or a conventional farm that uses irrigation to produce the same crops for 20 years this system of ours allows you to switch it off after a while and I think that's what's so key is create these systems that inevitably will create more water and more rainfall in the future because of their architecture and use these resources while we still have them available to us now
SPEAKER_00:and asking a potential rabbit hole question and then we're going to wrap up but you mentioned it very nicely at the end of the last sentence like these systems create more rainfall is that something you're actively designing for or taking into consideration and into account like how does these systems at scale influence local or smaller water cycles and even larger ones and bring back rains or even almost nudge rains and nudge water to literally in that case also unlock water is it something that is part of because I know it's part of the largest in tropical forestry movement also the regen movement and I think we need to talk about it a lot more we're most likely going to do a series of water cycles next year to really change the dynamic or change the conversation to we can influence rain and water cycles at quite a large scale and we need to have that discussion how to do that is that something you're designing with or playing with or thinking about is it part of your vocabulary
SPEAKER_01:I think it really is Kun because when you I mean there's plenty of evidence of areas not per se agroforestry even reforestation or afforestation but there's plenty of of data research that proves that you know areas with mass ground cover and in different stratification create microclimates I mean it's a given but I think the biggest mistake is that people look at everything from an above ground perspective they ignore the below ground perspective but what happens when you've got root systems that again like you do similar above ground have different stratifications from a sort of canopy perspective you've you've got the same in the root system and so you know when you're building these pumps below and above ground it's a no-brainer that you're creating i mean you're influencing the hydrological cycle so not only are we using this precious amazing water that we should be accessing now to create and plant these these systems eventually they're going to do it for themselves and i quite often like to use an example of you know what are the daily requirements per hectare of a flower farm or a conventional veggie patch or a center pivot versus our usage. I mean, let's take flower farming that on average in this part of the world uses 50,000 liters per hectare per day, rain or shine, because most of it's done in greenhouses. And let's convert how much acreage we could set up with that same amount of water. Kickstart. I think the answer is obvious.
SPEAKER_00:And just out of like, what is the ratio there? It's like one to 50, one to 100, one to five, because you needed a number of years, but then you don't need it anymore. Or it depends a bit on the crop, of course, like, just in terms of scale, of course, I don't need an exact number. But just to give us an idea,
SPEAKER_01:I think a lot of it depends on the rainfall. If you're me personally, from everything I've seen, and everything I've experienced, if you are in an area of rainfall of less than 1000 mils a year, then you probably need irrigation for the first five years, you could probably probably get away with with cutting it out at three years depending on what crops you've you've chosen to focus on but then in areas where there's only you know between 300 and 700 mils I think you might have to you know you might have to tickle irrigate for the years five six seven and eight you know until really you've got enough humus and enough fungal dominance in your soils to be able to know quite safely that you've got the capacity in your soils and in your above ground biomass so I would say it all depends on you know if you're above a thousand mils you're in a different category if you're below a thousand mils but again with all the rainfall being so so different nowadays you know you might get 500 mils of rain falling in three days and then any landscape is going to get severely hampered by that because the vast majority of that water is not going to infiltrate into your soils you know so I think uh It really depends on the natural hydrological cycle. But I would say give it an average of five years and you can switch off most of your irrigation forever.
SPEAKER_00:And which means that 50,000, I think you said gallons per day, what would it get you? Like how many, instead of a patch of flowers, which you can honestly also argue, do we need that? But that's a different discussion. Yeah, sure. In terms of agroforestry farms, like how many hectares would it get to? Like in a three to 700 mil, is that 20 hectares or 50? And in a thousand mil, like the ideal situation, just to give us an idea of the potential here.
SPEAKER_01:Sure, sure. I think just off my last four years experience up here I would say that a you know 50 cubic meters which is currently used on the flower farms per hectare we could probably do between two and four hectares with that same amount of water quite comfortably depending on the crop we're focusing on or the crops we're focusing on
SPEAKER_00:and then after a couple of years you can do another two to four like this is a renewable source if you do it well and it just should get easier over time it's using the solar panels to make more
SPEAKER_01:solar panels exactly exactly but I mean everything depends on the initial quality of that irrigation water too you know the problem we have here is there's a lot of salts in the boreholes so that's why rain is by far the best fertilizer on the planet is rainfall
SPEAKER_00:perfect I want to thank you so much for your time we went quite deep and diverse and hit some very very important points and I want to thank you for sharing of course for the work you do to really kick start a new African agriculture renaissance and to make sure it is let's say future proof
SPEAKER_01:Kun likewise thank you for having us I really appreciate the time and I really appreciate what you guys do and on behalf of the rest of my team very grateful for this opportunity and And yeah, we'd love to check in with you again in a year or two's time to see how we've evolved.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Thanks again and see you next time.
