What we learned in 2022 about nutrient density in food, farmers’ philosophy, enabling technologies and satellites and redesigning products

Wow! What a year it has been. Just when you thought things couldn’t get any crazier we find ourselves in a war in Europe, crazy energy and food prices and extreme high inflation rates in general.

In an ideal world farms applying regenerative practises are more resilient, but as we saw with the story of Josh Heyneke, founder of Parc Carreg, farms can get into trouble very quickly when input prices spike (in this case organic grain from Ukraine to feed the ducks). It seems like Josh and his partner Abigail will make it through the winter and are building hard on their more resilient future, which will include climate neutral eggs!

The most important story

Healthy soil equals healthy food equals healthy people is arguably the most important story we shared in 2022. We kicked off this new Nutrient Density in Food series unpacking this crucial piece of the puzzle (supported by the A Team Foundation who is looking to make investments and donations in the space).

We interviewed Anne Biklé and David R Montgomery who not only co authored the study “Soil health and nutrient density: preliminary comparison of regenerative and conventional farming”, but also wrote the book What your food ate. if you haven’t read it please do it asap and give it to anyone interested in health! 

Interviews with Fred Provenza and Zuzanna Zielińska really showed how strong this connection is. We look forward to continue this series in 2023.
REQUEST: If you have people we should interview that are building companies in the food- from healthy soils- as medicine space, please let us know!

Farmers’ Philosophy Series and Video! 

There is so much more we can learn from the key decision makers of our time, farmers than soil health and this deserves time and space. Following the legends in the podcasting world, we couldn’t stay behind :) and in November we recorded our first video interview.

Together with regenerative farmer and pioneer Jeroen Klompe we sat down and took time to go deep. We covered a lot of ground while really enjoying the process. Let us know in the comments what you think! 

Going deeper

The video episode wasn’t the only place where we went deeper. Non other than Charles Eisenstein joined us for a deep conversation! With

Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more here

Transcript

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Wow, what a year it has been. Just when you thought things couldn't get any crazier, pandemics and stuff, we find ourselves in a war in Europe. Crazy energy and food prices and extremely high inflation rates in general. In an ideal world, farms applying regenerative practices are more resilient. But as we saw with the story of Josh, the founder of Park Carrick, farms can get into trouble very quickly when input prices spike. In this case, organic grain from Ukraine to feed the ducks. It seems like just in this part The most important story. Healthy soils equal healthy food equal healthy people is arguably the most important story we shared in 2022. We kicked off the new nutrient density in food series, unpacking this crucial piece of the puzzle, supported by the A-Team Foundation, who is looking to make investments and donations in this space. We interviewed Anne Bickley and David R. Montgomery, who are not only co-author of the study Soil Health and Nutrient Density, Preliminary Comparison of Regenerative and Conventional Farming, but also wrote the book What Your Food Ate. If you haven't read it, please do it as soon as possible and give it to somebody interested in health. The interviews with Fred Provenza and Susanna really showed how strong this connection is. We look forward to continue this series in 2023. Request. If you have people we should interview that are building companies into food from healthy soil as medicine space please let us know you can find the link to get in touch and the contact page on our website farmers philosophy series and video there's so much more we can learn from the key decision makers of our time farmers then only soil health and this deserves time and space following the legends in the podcasting world we couldn't stay behind and in november we recorded our first video interview together with regenerative farmer and pioneer jeroen klompe we sat down took time to go deep We covered a lot of ground while really enjoying the process. Let us know in the comments what you think. And thank you so much, Kasper Dieterink of StoryTravelers, for experimenting with us. Hopefully more video deep dives in this series will follow in 2023. The video series is wonderful, but has much more complexity and cost than simply an audio interview. So we're currently looking for some funding to do more of them. Contact us if you have ideas. Thank you. Going deeper. The video episode wasn't the only place where we went deeper. None other than Charles Eisenstein joined us for a deep conversation. And with Thomas Hogenhaven of Planetary Impact Ventures, we discussed regenerative investing, while Kiss the Ground co-founder Lauren joined us to talk about regenerative businesses. Sometimes it seems like regenerative practices are new, but if you dig deeper, you quickly find that we stand on the shoulders of absolute and mostly indigenous giants. Liz Carlisle shared her findings from her latest book, an absolutely amazing read and great gift. And recently Wouter joined us on the show to talk about the root cause of all of our issues, private land ownership. Maybe a nice thought for the holidays. When you had a lucky career, your company took off, obviously you worked very hard, and you had a liquidity event, which is just fancy talk for a good financial exit. What is enough? And what do you do with the rest? Friends of the show, so many people came back this year on the podcast to check in and share the updates about their work. From Southern Africa, Gijs Boers on researching more than a thousand farms, Jonathan Lundgren on how Rock dust can save us all with Jim Mann. And Benedict came back to update us on how the transition is going on his 3,000-hectare farm one hour of Berlin. While Dan Miller of Stewart came back to highlight the role of the crowd in financing meat processing and other processing infrastructure. Bert Glover discussed how Impact Ag Partners has invested over$600 million into regenerative farms in the U.S. and Australia and sold soil carbon credits to Microsoft. And of course, Sarah Shear of Eco Agriculture Partners came back to share about their landscape scale regeneration work, 1,000 landscapes for 1 billion people. Absolute legends joining the show. Ebby Rose, friend of the show, revealed her new project with Nicole Masters, where they want every farmer to start observing their land much better and take better decisions. Felipe Passini of Life in Syntropy took us on a deep dive into the world of syntropic agroforestry, why trees lead to much more rain, and when you're in doubt, you should always plant more trees. I'm too lazy to farm against nature. I think this was the title of the year, Matt Chatfield of the Cornwall Project, and myself just had a blast ping-ponging back and forth about life, sheep, building markets, margins, and doing what his neighbors don't consider work, but definitely is, observing sheep for a few hours a day. I can't wait to sit next to him and record another episode. We learned so much about the magical underground world from Toby of Spun. She really explained why mycelium and not us are really running the show. Biodiversity, it seems finally to be a growing theme as the interviews with Cameron of Pivotal and Kath of NatureMetrics showed us. Magic enabling technologies. Which technologies can really enable many more farmers to start a regenerative transition? Virtual fencing seems one of them. Listen to the interview we had with Knut Benson, the CEO of NoFence. Ish and Tom joined us and schooled us about the possibilities of remote sensing. Wow, this really feels like almost magic. And also the companies actually Rumi and Agreed are using the power of remote sensing. Investable, bankable, these buzz terms came back as well. How do we make regenerative of agriculture, the sector bankable and investable for institutional investors, the pension funds, the insurance companies, the big money, let's say. In our conversations with Boris, we looked at how to make regen farming projects bankable. And while with Eric Archambault, we explored how to get large institutional investors writing 100, 200, 500 million euro dollar tickets active in regeneration. Redesigning products and CPG. Emma Chow and Elliot Beebe explained why for large corporates, it's simply not enough purchasing one cash crop regeneratively, between brackets, whatever that means. It's just not good enough. The real magic and impact happens when you redesign recipes and buy full rotations and form full landscapes, as well, of course, as giving food a true price, as we discovered in the conversation with Pietro of the Impact Institute. Not only food, we actually covered some other topics as well. With Johannes of Koya, we entered the world of fashion to understand how you can design and sell a regenerative shoe. Anthony Sarah made a very strong case for regenerative companies. Just as indoor farming expert, third region enthusiast, turned running Patagonia Provisions, Paul Lightfoot did. And Rafaela joined us from Brazil to talk about her snack brand, which is working towards regenerative sourcing. And Aurof made a very, very strong case for looking at the most fraudulent crop in the Mediterranean, which are olives and olive oil, and how to sell olive like wine. So olive oil like wine in Switzerland and bring much more of this money to olive farmers. Women. So many women are working in the space, from Connie Bowen focusing on designing ag tech to help farmers doing backbreaking work in the field, to Jacqueline. We covered with her pumpkin organics, building a baby food brand while taking a closer look at the baby food industry, which is pretty, pretty shocking. Regenerative agriculture became key for the model and global activist Arizona Muse, as well as the former CEO of Patagonia, Rose Macario. And of course, Nicoletta Hahn joined us to talk why she became a rancher after being a lawyer working with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Big ideas, huge ambition, and large questions. Can we IPO natural assets? Asked Douglas Eager on the podcast. And if yes, how? Neil Speckman joined us, an absolute legend in permaculture world. If you don't know him, just Google his work in Saudi Arabia. And now he's working on turning worthless and mostly deserted coastlines into thriving ecosystems. Hervé Dupier joined us to drastically change the CAP, which is the Common Agriculture Program in Europe, which is 387 billion a year to really serve soil. And we had a deep dive with Mariko into the wonderful and very shocking and interesting world of LCAs, which is life cycle assessment. She did the one on white oak pastures and showed us the potential, but also the extremely deeply flawed and misused use of LCAs these days. And our 200th episode is coming up. So tune in on January 3 for a very, very special one. As always, thank you so much to all the people who took the time to come on the show to answer my sometimes silly questions. And thank you so much for listening, sharing, reaching out with ideas, questions, or simply to say hello. I hope you have an amazing holiday period if you're celebrating and I'm looking forward to see you in the new year.