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
212 Angus McIntosh – Going from Goldman’s trading desk to regen farming in South Africa
A wide-ranging conversation with Angus McIntosh, a regenerative ag pioneer in South Africa, about markets, carbon, nutrient density, cobalt, chemical-based fertilizer, large distribution, and so much more. He is the founder of the Farmer Angus brand.
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What started with refusing a very promising Goldman Sachs promotion to Tokyo led to starting a big regen farm in South Africa. Join us in this wide-ranging interview with a regen ag pioneer about markets, carbon, nutrient density, cobalt, chemical-based fertilizer, large distribution, aka supermarkets, and so much more. 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 regen ag. That is gumroad.com slash investing in regen ag. Or find the link below. Very warm welcome to this interview today with an ex-Goldman Sachs bond derivatives trader, if I'm not mistaken, turned region farmer. And there is so much to unpack here and I wanted to jump right in. So welcome, Angus, to the show. I don't think it's the last time we've connected before. I thought it was way longer ago, but actually I checked my notes and it's less than a year. So it feels, it's interesting, but we got connected through Quadia, through Joseph Reiden in the middle of the Corona pandemic. And then we finally managed to jump on a call beginning of 2022 and now we're recording. So I'm very happy to get to jump in with this review and you want to ask me a question. So let's start with that. true yeah yeah we and we have two now so it's like uh it's been uh it's been one of a it's been a hell of a ride i can say and it's uh let's say it makes you appreciate food even more we've been very focused on that um but it's really interesting the first thousand days of course including the pregnancy we've done some interviews on that as well like simply the quality connection to soil and quality of food is is one where yeah i i call it probably the most important story we told in 2022 and I still stand by that even though we're now three days into the new year. You wanted to ask me a question before we dive into your story. You've prepped me with some
SPEAKER_01:amazing questions. But my question to you is how do you stay positive and what is it that motivates you? Because you've got a big smile on your face.
SPEAKER_00:It's a good question because I'm looking out over a land now where we should be seeing a lot of snow and it's 15 degrees Celsius to even more and it hasn't rained in a while and it should be winter now here. So it's quite depressing and nice at the same time. It's a good question. I think mainly because I'm not on the land, on the land all the time. So I don't see the changes that if I bounce the question to you might be your answer, like how do you stay positive, but talk to people like you, like the stewards of the land, the farmers that say and show that this is possible in a relatively short timeframe. I'm not saying two years, I'm not saying two months, but changes are... the landscapes we see with our eyes are extremely degraded and we often forget about it. There's a beautiful word for it, which I don't remember, but we get used to a very low, let's say, level of biodiversity, level of biomass, level of abundance, and somehow adjust to that and say, that's okay. Like, let's try to keep this. But then through people like you, I get reminded of what is actually possible. And we're literally, and pun intended, scratching the surface of what is possible in the landscapes we manage as a, what is it, hyper Keystone's I think is the right term. So it's actually, and of course, you're like a small post stamp in a much bigger world of ag and land because you manage a lot of land, but it's nothing compared to what is being managed around you. But I can't imagine farmers like you and you talk to many others that are on the journey ever going back. Like as soon as you've seen some of the results and some of the impact and the speed of certain things and biodiversity coming back and the quality of food, which for sure we'll talk about, carbon side of things, the water side of things, I can't imagine you go back. And of course, we need to create all kinds of instruments and support systems and resources to help more farmers start. But I hope at least that most won't go back. So it's going to be a tough 10 years. I'm denying that at all, but we don't need any new technology or we don't need any, we need new instruments. We need new investment structures. We need a lot of new things and a lot of new companies, but it's definitely possible. So I think that keeps me hopeful even though I know maybe 1% of 1% of land is currently managed the way we would like it to see. What keeps you, if you are, what keeps you hopeful?
SPEAKER_01:So the most hopeful thing that I've experienced has been other regenerative farmers. people who are making an amazing impact on the land. All of them through introducing the use of animals, all of them through cover cropping, all of them through reducing the use of chemicals. Where I see the biggest challenge is the language. I happen to believe, like Vandana Shiva, I don't know if you know who she is or you've met her. Vandana Shiva has said this years and years ago that human beings are committing species-wide suicide. And we are. You know, your children are a lot younger than mine, but it's very difficult being a parent and realizing that society, mainstream society, I'm talking about mainstream academics, mainstream media, mainstream government is hell-bent on exterminating the world's population. And that's just a fact. You can look at sperm counts, you can look at cancer rates, you can look at Fertility counts. It's not disputable. It's not even a theory. It's a fact. It's not even a conspiracy theory. It's a fact. So I believe that there are going to be a lot of people in the next 10, 20 years who are going to die, a lot. And we just need to make sure that we're not in that group of people and we are part of the solution, not part of the problem. And the regenerative movement, I believe, needs help in using the right language. You know, people talk regenerative. What do they actually mean by regenerative? And how does one measure it? You know, for me, the simplest way to measure it is carbon. It's also the one we can agree on the most because once the carbon is fixed, then the water cycle falls into place. Another measure is biodiversity, but that's a very controversial one. You know, what is the correct measure of biodiversity? Do we know, can you say what that area that you, that window that you're looking out of now, that's supposed to be, you know, snow covered. Can you, do you know what that diversity was 400 years ago, 500 years ago, 600 years ago? I mean, the area where I live hasn't had, you know, Europe has degraded quicker than Africa has. But I can't tell you what the biodiversity here was two, 300 years ago. I imagine it was like the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_00:And let's start with the question we always ask. I mean, we're a couple of minutes in and we went deep immediately. But let's set a bit of context. What led you to soil? And then we're going to unpack all of these. We already mentioned all of the very interesting hooks you already mentioned. I mean, you have a great TEDx talk, which I'll put down in the links below and the show notes from basically banker to what would the tie say or the farmer, which I will recommend anybody to do. to watch but just to share with anybody that hasn't seen that what led you to farming and soil and then we're going to unpack obviously what you're doing and what you're working on which is extremely exciting and so what made you become a farmer
SPEAKER_01:out of London City because that's a very different world what I didn't do I mean I didn't leave Goldman Sachs to come farming that was not that was not my intention so there was a push and a pull a lot of factors that are push and pull. I mean, I didn't have a Damascene conversion where the lightning strikes you on the road to Damascus and you turn around 180 degrees and go back. I didn't quite have that. Having said that, from what I used to think and say and believe to where I am now, it is 180 degrees.
SPEAKER_00:So it was like a few degrees at the time. It
SPEAKER_01:was a small change, you know, and you just keep changing, changing, changing, changing. But basically what happened is that the first thing is we made the decision to leave Goldman Sachs because we didn't want our children to grow up on the 23rd floor of a building in Tokyo, which is where my promotion opportunity was. I was doing equity sales and the promotion opportunity was to go and do derivative sales. And sorry, I got so excited that I pulled the microphone out of my ear. But what happened is we quit the stockbroking life within intention of coming back to South Africa not knowing what we were going to do and then we decided we're going to build a house and we met five different architects and the one was a green architect and said you're going to build a clay house and I said what the earth are you talking about you know Goldman Sachs people build steel houses no no no no and he took us down this journey and that was sort of the start of environmental type thinking. What made
SPEAKER_00:you choose that architect over the other
SPEAKER_01:three that were for sure easier? Purely a personal man called Etienne Brouwer lovely lovely man and we hit it off with him I mean the other architects weren't horrible people but he's an amazing special guy and he guided us down this path and and it ended up doing quite a lot of works on biodynamics my children ended up going to a Waldorf Steiner school for primary school so I got quite into Waldorf Steiner and then the big the biggest change in that hundred 180-degree shift was reading Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. It's the most insane book about the world's food systems. When I put that book down, I said to my wife, I want to be like Joel Salatin, who's the farmer who features...
SPEAKER_00:I know a few people that have taken that book and then jumped on a plane and two days later sat down with Joel and went down the rabbit hole. It's been
SPEAKER_01:influential. We've been paying a lot of school fees. We've learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes. You know, hindsight being the exact science, I would have done things a lot differently and realized that the South African market is very different from the US market.
SPEAKER_00:So you bought a farm and started and, or what was, there was already land connected to the house. So there is
SPEAKER_01:land connected to the house. So it's a much bigger farm now. So I leased the land. I've put in, the owners have bought into the principle of regenerative agriculture. So I've put in about two thirds of the capital. They put in about a third of the capital. And we started originally. So, so, so now everything is sold under the farmer Angus brand, but, before that we sold pasture reared and so why i'm telling you this brand story is that in regenerative agriculture and joel salatin says it best fifty percent of your time is focused on production and fifty percent is focused on marketing and i said to you earlier the regenerative agriculture movement in my opinion does a really bad job or the organic world also of telling the story marketing particularly around the quality of food Now, I've got some ideas about how we can get around that. But basically, we started selling pasturiered. And then my wife said, no, no, there's other people who say pasturiered. You must make it around you. And I didn't want to do it around me because it's not about me. It's about the movement. Anyway, she persisted and she's right. And we've now refined the model even more. We've changed the logo. We now put my picture on the packaging. And all of that personalization has increased sales because people want to connect. connect to another human being. There's a storytelling that they're interested in.
SPEAKER_00:And what do you say, I mean, there's so many things to unpack there, but what do you say, let's, sorry, what's the size of the farm, just to give an idea, you're inside Africa, obviously, just to paint a bit of a picture on this audio podcast, let's paint it visually, like what do we see, what would we see if we look out of the window behind you? Right now,
SPEAKER_01:you see bright sunlight and 32 degrees Celsius. That's what you're going to see right
SPEAKER_02:now. What
SPEAKER_01:kind of landscape? We farm just outside of Stellenbosch, which is a town about half an hour from Cape Town. We farm on the Speer Wine Farm, 650 hectares. But of that 650, there's 150 which is hotel, organic gardens, conferencing, restaurants, all that kind of stuff. Then there's about 120 of irrigated pasture. And on that, we run 330 pigs, 7,000 hens, and 120 cattle. And we rotationally graze our animals. That's the most important thing. We move the pigs once a week, we move the cattle two times every day, and we move the chickens every day. And because the weather is so good, we don't have a barn. We've got no fixed housing. And for me, that's the biggest crime of agriculture, is that animals, apart from glyphosate and artificial fertilizers. The biggest crime of agriculture is keeping animals in cages. So your manure is a huge problem. Your disease pressure is a huge problem. Animal welfare. Animal welfare. I mean, it's all problematic. And so we move animals daily. That's basically what we do. Then there's what we call a feynbos restoration area. So feynbos is the original biodiversity, I guess, of this area. where we don't graze animals. We've planted thousands of bulbs and, you know, just propagated those areas. And then there's vineyards. It's a wine farm. So I converted the vineyards to organic and they've been eight years organic certified now.
SPEAKER_00:Are you grazing the vineyards as well? We do once a year. And so when you said the market, like I would have done things very differently in hindsight, which is usually the case, but what would be the biggest change if you would step back? Biggest change I
SPEAKER_01:would have made is that brand around me right at the beginning and I'd have done just one thing not all the different exercises okay Yeah, and I would have, look, at the time, pre-COVID, 65% of our clients were restaurants and hotels. Now, it's much less. We are forced to go to big national retail. But retail, I don't think we're ready then for a regenerative story. They are now. But the restaurants, after COVID, dude, you can't believe, they don't care. I mean, I've been seeing restaurants. I've been visiting restaurants since 2009. Beginning of 2009 with product. I don't know how many hundreds of chefs I've been to see. I reckon 95 out of 100 don't care. I'm talking about here. I don't know about Europe. I'm just talking about here. They don't care about what's behind their food. They just want the cheapest egg they can find.
SPEAKER_00:And that changed with COVID or it was always there? It's always there but it's got
SPEAKER_01:even worse after covert it's probably gone from almost all of them have traded down in terms of their ingredients
SPEAKER_00:And you're saying the big distribution change, they do care or they see an opportunity to sell? They see the opportunity.
SPEAKER_01:So my products are in two big national retailers and they're very supportive and very interested and they're starting to get it. I mean, obviously I'm a tiny little supplier of theirs, but the fact that they, for example, the cured meat, which is charcuterie, we're the only people curing charcuterie without adding nitrites, nitrates and phosphates. And that's not something that they... Don't
SPEAKER_00:think that would have been interesting. Because they see that there is a public, there is a group of customers choosing that. Yeah, I
SPEAKER_01:think so. And then there's another national, there's another retailer, which is a national retailer, Iron Supply. They have now launched a nitrite-free bacon.
SPEAKER_00:Very interesting. And is that a risk? Like it needs to be that personal with your face on it, et cetera, for farmers that either don't want to go on the marketing bandwagon or are not good at it? Like does everybody have to build that personal brand around their farm and their face on it?
SPEAKER_01:You don't have to build it, but if you are a commodity producer, you are a price taker. If you're a niche producer focused on your own brand, you're a price maker. Price taker or price
SPEAKER_00:maker? Which changes everything. Which do
SPEAKER_01:you want to be?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Okay. And how much space is there for all these personal farmer brands? I don't know. I mean, quite a bit.
SPEAKER_01:That depends on how interesting the brand is, what they focused on. In South Africa, I've always said to farmers to try and brand them around themselves or their children rather than the farm. Because unlike Europe, the South African government, is desperate to push through a thing called expropriation without compensation which means that they take your land without paying you for it because basically the only thing our government can do is steal and
SPEAKER_00:and so you need to be not tied to the land because you might be farming somewhere else exactly and You mentioned carbon. Let's take a step back to that. Why is it such an interesting one? Because it feels like, at least here in Europe and in the US, extremely hyped as well. Soil carbon companies, platforms, marketplaces, you name it, sensors are popping up every three seconds or so. And it doesn't seem to be based on, or most of it, on very sturdy models or very sturdy research in it. There's interest. And I don't think the hype will end this year. But what is your take, a bit from afar, in that sense and in the Southern African market on the soil carbon piece? Because you very specifically said that's the most exciting or most relevant piece now to focus on in terms of compensation.
SPEAKER_01:Kun, that's a great question. There is a huge amount of hot air and hype and money being promised and a very competitive environment. Very few people have actually given money to farmers. Very few. In South Africa, we only know of ourselves who've received money. And who paid you for it? We were paid by a bank. It's happened three years. We went through this registry called Credible Carbon. Very interesting registry. And
SPEAKER_00:was it significant for you? So the first
SPEAKER_01:two times was nice. The third time was over half a million Rand and, and credible carbon stories, half goes to the staff and half to, to me, my cattle herdman got a hundred thousand Rand. He bought himself a house in Zimbabwe. So, so yes, there's a lot of bullshit with carbon, a lot of greenwashing, but money spent properly. Carbon can actually be a transformative thing. Ask my guys, bought a house in Zimbabwe for himself. So, so yeah, It's a basic law of nature. The more carbon you have in your soils, the more nutrients your soils hold, the more water your soils hold, the healthier everything is. The plants growing in there have a higher brix, they're more nutrient dense. The most fertile soils in the world are the American prairies, which they are still mining with corn and soya today.
SPEAKER_00:Which is such a waste. Yeah. And how do you measure the carbon? Like in this process for
SPEAKER_01:three years? It's called a Walkley-Black test. Every soil lab in the world does it. You weigh the soil, you burn the soil,
SPEAKER_00:and you
SPEAKER_01:weigh it again.
SPEAKER_00:Do you do like how many samples and how deep, et cetera? So in our
SPEAKER_01:case, we go 300 millimeters below the ground. And the soil laboratory wants approximately half a kilogram per block. So some of my blocks are the biggest block is 16 hectares. The smallest block is 1.2 hectares. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:And you pick and then you, of course, come back at exactly the same GPS located block. Yes, of course. Or located spots the year after or whatever timeframe you choose. And now you got paid and now you're working on getting farmers paid as well.
SPEAKER_01:And not just farmers, not only farmers in South Africa. I'm talking to farmers in Kenya, in Zimbabwe, mostly South Africa. I'm trying to persuade a farmer in America to do something with me.
SPEAKER_00:And why now? Or why do you decide because it seems like you're already busy enough with running the farm? Why take it on this nice extra side project? What happened
SPEAKER_01:is I've scaled back my beef business. I was doing beef nationally. And the primary reason why the beef business became marginally, basically almost loss-making was because of the electricity. So I don't know if you know what's happened in South Africa. We've gone from being the best electricity provider in the whole world in 2001 to not being able to keep the lights on for six hours And the costs of those have just driven a lot of businesses under almost our beef business. Then fuel has rocketed up. We've waited so long to get our money back. The margins are super, super small. And so I pulled my horns back on the beef business and I'm doing the carbon business, which is just so exciting. Traveling around the country, seeing farms. As I said to you earlier, I'm depressed about the future of humanity, but being able to make mixed with regenerative farmers has really helped me mentally and spiritually and psychologically. It's just positive stuff. Plus, I think there's going to be a lot more money in it than in the beef market. I don't know if it'll go forever, but at least for the next two or three years, maybe four years. And here's the next thing I have learned about the carbon market is that soil carbon... is the gold standard. And I don't mean to use gold standard because they're a registry. But if you are increasing the carbon in your soils, it's the carbon credits that will earn the most money, not forestry or diverting waste. And there's a lot of income streams for carbon or putting up solar panels. The most reliable one is increasing the carbon in the soil. And it then has the greatest benefit up for drought, for nutrition, for job creation, All of these things.
SPEAKER_00:And aren't you worried on the science part not being completely ironed out yet? There's a lot of discussion of a lot of this carbon increase on the top layer comes from a deeper layer, which is good still because it's available for plants. How much of this is net coming out of the sky? Or are you saying, look, the next four years, there's cash on the table for farmers to transition and how much exactly is going to be the end result net of everything is important, but we'll figure it out. over time?
SPEAKER_01:There is going to be a market and the market is increasing. That's not what I'm worried about. The fact is, if you measure in the same way every time you measure and the carbon is increased in your soil,
SPEAKER_00:The carbon's increasing your soil. But it depends how deep you go. Yeah, sure. That's what I'm saying. You must always measure
SPEAKER_01:to the same thing. Some farmers measure 300 millimeters. Others, 150. You need to measure on the same block to the same depth.
SPEAKER_00:And probably multiple deaths. I see what is
SPEAKER_01:happening. There's a very interesting company in the US called Chibo Technologies. C-I-B-O. Bruno Basso is the brains behind that. Okay. So look them up. Bruno Basso is an incredible man. And their technology is using geospatial data and they'll tell you exactly what's going on in the swell. And they are 97% correlated to ground truthing. That's where we're going to go. We're going to look at this thing from the sky and tell exactly what's going on. You know, AI has certain benefits and this will be one of them.
SPEAKER_00:Speaks to former tech equity
SPEAKER_01:trader, yeah. But I'm very worried about AI and I'm super anti-technology. particularly on the effect that it's having on human beings. And, you know, the only thing you can do for your children is limit their screen time. It's the best thing you can do as a parent.
SPEAKER_00:Let me tell you. And... But at the same time, you would like them. It is a whole different discussion to be able to, I mean, mine are way too small, but to be able to deal with it or to somehow navigate. Sure. Because it's not they're going to not have screens. You can
SPEAKER_01:postpone that for as long as possible. They're never not going to have screens. But for example, if you put them in front of television, television is tell a vision. Someone else is telling you their vision, which is why you freeze. It's the best babysitter ever. Stick a kid in front of a TV. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:no, no.
SPEAKER_01:You know? But I'm digressing here. We're going back to carbon in the soil. We're a carbon planet. Carbon is the scaffolding of life. The most stable place for carbon to be is in the soil. So if we can reward people for keeping carbon in the soil, all the better for it.
SPEAKER_00:Are you excited about things like biochar and enhanced rock weathering, like the rock dust movement and things like that? I don't know about the enhanced
SPEAKER_01:rock weathering. I know a little bit about biochar. I mean, I've built two biochar kilns and experimented making biochar.
SPEAKER_00:Which means you're a guru.
SPEAKER_01:So listen, there's no question that biochar could be incredible. But Biochar, no, no, but biochar is not just burning the material and putting it on the land because then you're going to destroy things. So you need to burn the material with as least energy as possible and then you need to fortify it or make it bio. So you need to stuff all those tiny little carbon spaces filled with, you know, whether it's urine or manure or bone meal, you know, whatever it is. Then you create this insane fertile Which is
SPEAKER_00:super stable, like hundreds of thousands of years. Absolutely. Like the carbon states.
SPEAKER_01:Correct. And South Africa, I mean, I'm sure the whole world has this problem, but we've got a very serious problem with what they call invasive species or alien vegetation. Now, all of those things can be turned as they can become a resource through biochar. They are destroying the environment at the moment, but they can turned into biochar and become a benefit. So I'm excited about the biochar thing, I have to tell you, but I've seen lots of nonsense in biochar too.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And then so who are, like why you're excited about the potential of the carbon markets? Partly I'm imagining because the market is developing. And so who are you going to be selling to or are you already selling to? Is that the same bank or do you see other, because you're talking to a lot of farmers in South Africa now to start selling, like who will be buying? So
SPEAKER_01:where I am exactly now is we've got two projects that we've submitted to the registry. The registry needs to approve them and send out an auditor. So those projects need to be audited. And once they've been audited, which we're expecting to happen this month, we can then offer them into the market. And listen, I've heard of all sorts of people who are interested in these carbon credits. I purposely, though, have not spoken to anyone because I don't have anything to sell. I don't have any projects to promote. So we'll see. This registry is going through a process of becoming part of ICROA, which is a Swiss organization, as well as part of the South African government, which will then make it part of the UN, which then means that they can get overseas prices. So, for example, there's guys in Egypt who are getting 25 euros a ton. In South Africa, the price is 140 rand a ton, which is like a a fifth of 225 euros and there's farmers in england who are getting 75 pounds a ton which is more than 10 times the south african thing so if if we can get our south african and and kenyan farmers or whatever farmers paid on a more level playing field. And I think that's where the opportunity is going to come in is the playing field is going to level. There's no ways that you can have credits in a certain place for 140 Rand and in UK for 75 pounds. It's just not going to happen. That's going to level out. I'm not, and listen, I'm not a cynical person. Are you worried about this carbon hype? I know there's a lot of hype in the carbon thing, but where I do take comfort, is that carbon in the soil is not going to tell a lie. Now, whether you increase the carbon in your soil through rotational grazing or cover cropping or biochar or compost or, you know, all of the above, it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00:And how about, like, what... how do you make sure, I mean, permanence is an interesting word there that I don't want to use, but how do you make sure that these practices stick? Is that like you've seen that in the past? And also the same, the second question, how do you make sure that the pioneers get paid as well that have done a lot of work over the last 10 years to make sure that they get rewarded and not just say, okay, let me get, I've heard farmers say, let me get my carbon removal tool out of the shed, which is a plow. And then let's start again so I can get the benefit of the increased carbon and not just the carbon I already stored over the last decades in some cases. How do you approach those
SPEAKER_01:two? We take our guidance from this registry in Cape Town called Credible Carbon and they have a very simple agreement that every three years you take your soil tests and if the carbon has gone down, not increased, you, Mr. Farmer, need to pay in. So that's the one thing. The second thing is they, in answer to your permanence question, you just trust that landowner stays the landowner and doesn't change. But as you said earlier, I've not found one regenerative guy who started on the regenerative journey who's gone back. So you have to take a certain degree of faith and trust in humans and then your other question about how far back the pioneers. Well, these guys have said they don't want to go back further than three years. That's their own story. Whereas the guys in England have said you go back as far as you've got soil records. I was paid in 2014 the first time. I've ridden my wave all the way up. So I don't really have a strong feeling either way. I do think that maybe three or maybe five years makes it, you know, I don't think you should go back 10 or 15 years. I don't know. I mean, I just haven't particularly thought about it. At this stage, we are going through this registry and this registry's rules are three years. But one of the projects, for example, does not take soil tests that regularly. So in their case, it's a five year project because they didn't have any soil data in the middle.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I've seen examples of ways to use remote sensing, sort of satellite stuff, to go back. Of course, using models, but quite ground truth, go back quite far, like 10, 15, 20 years in some cases, and also forward, like looking, okay, what could it be in terms of the carbon piece, obviously, on the first half an inch or so. So where do you
SPEAKER_01:think the carbon market's going to go, Kun?
SPEAKER_00:I mean... I would say, I would agree with you. There's money on the table now, it seems like. There are crazy prices being paid for biochar, for certain enhanced rock weathering and soil carbon in general in some places. It's very messy. It's very hyped. It's probably not completely ironed out in terms of clear and we're going to see some scandals for sure. But at the same time, any extra money that doesn't have to come through paying more for your food, which is a whole different topic we can dive into, but extra money for farmers that want to transition, that are in transition and are applying different practices. I think it's let's take it and let's get going because we don't know how long this is going to take. It might be two years, might be four years, might be five years, or might be 10. And you can ride the wave and do a whole lot with this extra cash and pay for a lot of compost facilities, biochar, changing rotations, et cetera. So I would say... I would be worried if you build your full model only on carbon because it might just collapse at some point. But I don't see that happening over the next couple of years. So I'm thinking let's take the cash off the table and get transitions going and practices in place on the land on a lot of hectares. And then we'll see how we clean up the mess when the whole thing comes down. But that's for another. I don't think that would be the biggest issue when the whole thing comes down in general. So I would say let's be practical, pragmatic, and take the cash that's there. But make sure, I mean, do whatever we can to make sure it is tied to real practices and real change. I mean, we had Rumi on the show that does sell carbon credits, which is mostly based on reducing a significant amount of chemical fertilizer and a bit about soil carbon. So they combined the two, which is very interesting. Full disclosure, we're probably investing a small amount into them in their current round. Is
SPEAKER_01:that the NPK fertilizer that they're reducing?
SPEAKER_00:yes so they work with ranchers or we say livestock farmers I think in the UK and they do the two so they get them on the transition of I will put the link below of the interview they get them on the transition of a different so it's all livestock farmers in the UK to get them off chemical fertilizer and pay them for that transition and sell those reduction credits plus a bit of soil credits but I think it's like 80-20 so that makes it less like less vulnerable to the soil carbon hype and I think it seems like Johannes the founder is very aware of this is a hype for a while but it doesn't mean you cannot build a company on that for a while as long as it's not your end goal and stay there like you're not going to build a 50 year company but for now there's real cash and farmers make transitions so let's go
SPEAKER_01:and the fact is that the US fertilizer industry emits more methane than all other industries in the US combined so there's a very simple calculation so many tons of nitrogen reduced equals so many tons of CO2 sequestered. And that's the carbon credit.
SPEAKER_00:and getting the fossil fuel out. And they can see it from space, interestingly enough. They can see when you applied chemical fertilizer, fossil-based fertilizer on your fields, because the next day is basically the grass explodes. So you can basically see it when somebody cheated or when somebody didn't follow the protocols that they worked with. So in that case, it's a control. It's not like we're measuring the soil carbon in the soil because we're using satellites. No, we're just checking that the grass didn't explode because you put something on it. And in many cases, I mean, if you have that weather and that climate, you can try dramatically or completely cut out the fertilizer use and really start grazing properly. And you might need a kicker. You might need the education. You might need a market. You might need some transition capital to get your grass or your pasture off that, which is, of course, going to be shocked if you cut all the inputs. But that doesn't mean, I mean, so there are ways like that I see huge opportunities because it quickly reduces a very, very harmful input. and basically gets farmers to change tomorrow and not in 10 years.
SPEAKER_01:So that's very exciting. I mean, I hope they do really well. It's amazing. And that's one of the things that we are trying to add to our, explain to these farmers that it's not just about increasing the carbon in the soil. It's about reducing your nitrogen fertilizer. And it's about, in the case of South Africa, changing over to solar power.
SPEAKER_00:Which, I mean, it's getting fossil fuels out of the egg. That's a big part here, and not being vulnerable for inputs you don't control. It's a power discussion, like we discussed with Jeroen. So here's the
SPEAKER_01:fossil fuel thing, which is very interesting. I don't know how much time you get to listen to podcasts, but I very rarely get time, but I happen to be in the car for a few days. Actually, just for a day. We're going around Cape Town all the time to fetch my daughter. And I started listening to Joro interview, Siddharth Khara, whose book, Cobalt, or Cobalt Red, about the cobalt industry is being published. I can tell you, it's the most traumatic thing I've experienced in the last, I don't know how long, to hear about what is happening every single moment in the Congo. 75% of the words cobalt comes from there. Your cell phones have 10 grams or something of cobalt in them. The EVs have 10 kilograms of cobalt in there. It's total slave labor. It's the environmental catastrophe, the human catastrophe. It's like Leopold's gone back 150 years later into the Congo, and this time he's not cutting their arms off because of rubber. He's doing it because of cobalt. And so as Aymeric from Quadia actually said to me months ago he said this electric car thing is bullshit and now you listen to this the cobalt story and it's so bad I'm not saying fossil fuels is the answer the hydrogen economy I believe has got to be the answer but it's definitely not EVs you cannot the human cost is way extreme and you should just listen to the first 20 minutes of Rogan talking to this guy. Siddharth Khara is his name. Number 1914 of Joe Rogan's podcast. It was last week, I think, or this week. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's, I mean, I have a Fairphone here, which is not cobalt-free, but traced at least without slaves involved. Okay, but now listen, so
SPEAKER_01:you must listen to that because this guy in his book and on his talk says that people who claim it's slave-free cobalt are lying.
SPEAKER_00:I'm pretty sure that these ones are the only phone brand in the world that is not lying about this because they went there. They bought it straight. This is as far as you can go, they went to get this phone to be conflict metal free. And it's fine, but it's a tiny shiver, of course, of the phone. What's the brand? Fairphone. So it's an Android-based phone, which actually is modular as well. I can fix most of it myself if I wanted to. So you can open it up. It's yours to fix and it should last. And it actually does. It should last quite a long time. But it's an enormous... At the same time, you see lithium, which is not a clean one as well, but no cobalt batteries coming up. This is not a non-fixable piece. Of course, the storage in batteries is an absolute mess. But at the same time, if you look what Nigeria went through or many other places or Canada in terms of fossil fuel, I still don't know what's worse. There's no place for coal.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely no place for coal. There's another, I'm going to email you this. There's a very interesting guys they've developed.
SPEAKER_00:I've been listening to the great simplification. Their first plant,
SPEAKER_01:these guys, their first, these guys' first plant was in, let me just find this quickly.
SPEAKER_00:I've listened to the great simplification, which is very interesting with Nate Hagen's on like the energy intensity we're on as a, as a society at the moment and how, where we like it or not, we're going to have to drastically reduce that. Like, like there's no way we can, we can stay on this energy diet because it's been a short bleep in time where we just had free fossil fuels and it's going to go to like to 10, 20% of what we have now. And that's going to be very painful and ag is going to be a big part
SPEAKER_01:of that. It depends. There's a school of thought that fossil fuels are actually pouring out of the ground, depending on where you find them. There's scientists who've shown that these things are reproducing. It's not crushed beds. It's not the abiotic view. That's one thing. The other thing is, I've just emailed you, when you get an opportunity, have a look at what these guys have developed. They've done their first plant in Colorado, where they take whatever material it is, put it through what they call a mitochondria, and their oil comes out the other side. So, plastic, you know, 25% of the oil that comes out the ground becomes plastic. Why can't that be reverse engineered back to oil? Yeah? What is stopping hydrogen engines? I saw a friend of mine two weeks ago, he's buying trucks, hydrogen trucks he's going to use in Namibia. And then, of course, here's another question which no one's been able to answer for me. There have been in the world's oceans for probably 50 years, nuclear-powered submarines, nuclear-powered warships. Why can't that engine that's powering that nuclear submarine be put next to my farm and power my farm or my town? Why can't I do that? Why do I have to fucking mine coal or burn gas?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think there are some people working on like this. I heard a podcast somewhere on floatable. I mean, putting these kind of smaller scale, once we've done for a long time on a barge, which fixes a lot of the issues around permitting and building a huge plant, et cetera, but actually bring them into metropoles where they are needed. There's a lot of interesting things, I think, around nuclear. We're going to see a lot of development there because we have to, but it's also, it's so sensitive to so many people because we're scared of that kind of power probably and potentially we should but I think the energy like how do we coming back to the chemical fertilizer piece like how do we get as much fossil fuel out of ag as soon as possible and use the big nuclear power plant up in the sky as much as possible is a massive underlying and like how do we but how do we still fertilize and how do we still animals dude do that animals animals yeah and so let me let me ask a question then we're going to get to some other questions but what do you tell people? Because you must get that question all the time, either from chefs that no longer work with you, but used to, or others that, okay, what about this whole plant-based movement? What do you tell people that said, we just need to get rid of all the animals? I'm asking because we get a question a lot and I'm always like,
SPEAKER_01:there's
SPEAKER_00:a complex answer to it, but what's your go-to
SPEAKER_01:answer? I had a farm tour this morning, for example, and one of the couples that was on one of the couples that was on this tour was vegan, although she's now pregnant and has started to eat meat. The plant-based thing, so here's the story of the plant-based thing. I like to talk about the good, the bad, and the tragedy of the vegan movement. The good of the vegan movement is that they're shining a bright light onto caged animal agriculture Thank you. The bad, the first bad is that there are more animals in cages than when the vegan movement started. So they haven't done the job. The second bad is the ecological impact of veganism. And what was something you and I spoke about two minutes ago was methane emissions from fertilizer. So the fertilizer emissions in the vegan world without animals are way higher than they would be today. Okay. Then the third thing that's bad about the vegan movement is what is this concept I refer to as body count. How many beings do as a vegan kill compared to what I kill? So if I kill a grass-fed beef cow, she has had calves, so she's given life. Her manure and her urine has fertilized the soils. Billions of bacteria and fungi are growing as a result of her, because I mean rotationally grazed. I'm not talking about a cage system here. She feeds, I don't know how many people you can feed off one cow. Now, let's now look at a vegan staple like wheat or soya, you know. The animals, the first time they kill those animals is when they plow those soils up pre-planting. Remember, when you put a plow in the soil, Kun, you kill an underground city. There are more microorganisms in a handful of healthy soil than the human beings on Earth. And Earthworm takes 18 months to build its network underground. That's all gone. Then they spray them with all the poisons. Then the plants grow. They spray again. Then they harvest. Now the animals that get sucked up in the combines, whether it's snakes or rats or other rodents, insects, they're all killed. And then those that survive the harvest die of starvation because their food source is taken away. So, yes, of course, I mean, I do know actually quite a few friends who are pure carnivore. They only eat beef and they're in very good health. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, but I can see a diet that does very little harm. Veganism does huge harm to a diet. And then the tragedy... Is that the bad or the tragedy? No, no, that's the bad. What's the tragedy? The tragedy is that the vegan movement has been hijacked by big food. And that's where the great evil comes in with a plant-based diet. is the world's being told, especially the rich world, because this is very much a first world problem. The poor African people don't give a toss for the plant-based thing. They don't care for it. But it's the news makers, it's the media, it's the rich white world or the high middle class world who talk about the plant-based movement. It doesn't solve any ecological problems. Why does Big Food love it? Big Food loves it for a you think you're doing the right thing by going plant-based. It's all virtue signaling. The second thing is the products that come out of that are highly processed and therefore highly shelf-stable. And that is what big food wants. It wants products that are going to sit on the supermarket shelf for months. Because I supply national retail. I supply these big national supermarkets. Food wastage. Wastage is a massive problem. But now you put do something that people think is good, that they think is healthy, and it's shelf-stable for a long time. And then, Kun, the last thing is, show me a long-term healthy vegan.
SPEAKER_00:Actually, we had somebody on the show saying that his ideal customers, it's a sheep farmer in the UK, are ex-vegans because they want to do the ethical right thing. They struggle with health in many cases. And so when they buy animal protein, they will search for the best thing possible because of the environmental outcome. But would you say there is a way possible to separate, let's say, the impact of the animal, which is by all means extremely positive and the eating like is that a um an ethical discussion we need to have on the eating side once we establish and i think we we settled that claim that animals livestock in general when done well have an extremely can have an extremely positive kind of an extremely negative and an extremely positive impact on on ecosystems is it then by definition we should also eat them or if you do really well with your pulses your lentils your other proteins, etc. Would that be fine to go? Or are you saying, look, it's healthier, it's actually more efficient, like you said, in terms of killing, in terms of turning sunlight into food to then also eat them? Or is that something that just comes together and we shouldn't bother to ask those two separate questions?
SPEAKER_01:You ask the most fantastic questions. My own view is that if you have animals to regenerate but you don't want to eat them you know sure you can do it but the animal is going to die at some stage okay you don't want it to suffer in old age and its effectiveness wears down so what are you going to do that animal it's great in compost you know our chickens that die the laying hens that die we put them in our compost heaps and we've got fantastic compost animals in compost are amazing So you could compost all the animals and then put that manure out or compost out on the land. No problem. My own view is that we need animal protein in our diet and animals can be a positive. And I've got no problem. Look, my own view is if you are not prepared to kill an animal, you must never eat meat. But I'm no problem killing animals. So I'm happy eating the meat. And
SPEAKER_00:what was the reaction of the vegan couple that came on the tour?
SPEAKER_01:Well, she's not eating meat because she is pregnant and her body told her she's got to crave deeper nutrition. But they are ethically, as you say, your sheep farmer in the UK, these are people who care deeply and it's a wonderful thing. And it's tragic that way Well, meaning... initiative has been hijacked by big corporates. And remember, big food is a beautiful thing for big corporates because it's highly processed, highly mechanized, huge control. It gets away from the small scale farmer. It's the opposite of balance and localizing things. I don't know if you've read Schumacher's book, Small is Beautiful.
SPEAKER_00:Mm-hmm. No, no, it's the absolute opposite of all of that. So switching to another big industry, the finance side, what would you tell, obviously without giving investment advice, but what would you tell investors that want to have an impact both financially, ecologically and socially, like a net positive impact? What would you tell them currently in this crazy world we're in where to start digging a bit deeper, where to look, where are the interesting opportunities, according to you, again, without giving advice? investment advice, but where should they look? Where should they start? I
SPEAKER_01:mean, I think the first decision to make is which continent you want to get involved in. You know, where's the greatest potential? I mean, there's a case to be made that the greatest potential is in England because English soils have been destroyed almost more than anybody else's soils, right? Then there's an argument to go, no, no, no, it must be Africa because Africa is where the poorest people are and what could be India? I mean, so the first thing is your appetite about where to go. The second thing, obviously, I think it's got a lot with the regulatory stuff. And this is what, you know, we were talking earlier about some Dutch friends of yours. I don't know if I'm allowed to mention them, but I'm not going to mention them for now. But these are Dutch farmers who are looking at doing a regenerative thing, but they are concerned about the regulations around animals.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:which is just, again, shows you how the system is against the regenerative movement. It's not the cow, it's the how. And so I think that's another thing to bear in mind is how easy is it to work with animals in that area? And I would be inclined to go to a country where there isn't the bureaucracy in the way.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but then you might have a government that takes away your land. This is the thing. I
SPEAKER_01:mean, we talked about in South Africa, there's a risk of the government taking away your land. But if you're teaming up with local people, black people in this case, you're much less likely the government's going to take the land. I do think that to be in agriculture, it would be good to get involved with a farm that is both exporting and producing for local. Are we okay on time?
SPEAKER_02:We're
SPEAKER_01:perfectly fine on time. Are you okay? No, I'm fine. Because what the export thing does is provides a cushion for domestic swings. So, you know, there's this incredible pecan nut farm, for example, that I'm starting to work with. These guys, you know, the industry, fruits and nuts, the trend is to plant everything closer and closer and closer and closer together because you're going to increase the yield per hectare, right? This guy's gone... And you can't run the machines over it. Exactly. He's gone exactly the opposite way. He's gone, fuck that. I'm going 12 meters by 12 meters. I'm planting these insane... pastures in between, and his cattle are grazing there, rotational grazing. The result is he's going to make as much money off beef as he is off pecan nuts per hectare. And then I'm adding the third income stream for him, which is carbon. And I'm trying to persuade him to add a fourth income stream, which is the seeds of the cover crops.
SPEAKER_00:Which is a very
SPEAKER_01:interesting concept. But this is how I'm answering your question about where to invest. I'd be investing in places where it's possible to do stacking like that. Multiple income streams in the same piece of land. It would be great if there was already an established brand. But, you know, it all depends on the impact that the investor wants to have. Now, let's say the investor wants to impact on the ground level. Then you've got to go and find a community that's already sort of community established and see how you can work with them. Then you go to India and you work with Manoj Kumar, who's planted something like 10 million trees, fruit and nut trees into these valleys in India. I think that someone's saying they do, it's only organic and biodynamic. 60% of the vegetables sold in Hyderabad come from their farms, small scale, smallholder farms. You know, I mean, Manoj Kumar's model is unbelievable. But, One of the things that Manoj does is he sells, I think it's the most expensive coffee in the world. It's called Araku coffee. And Manoj says, he says, rich people want to buy things packaged like iPhones. So I'm going to package my coffee like an iPhone.
SPEAKER_00:And he's right. I mean, and so what would you do if you would do, if you would have had, I mean, you know, this question is coming, but the billion dollar and a billion dollar investment fund. So if you'd asked me, or if you'd asked me this, if you'd asked me
SPEAKER_01:about the billion dollars a week ago, I'd give you a very different answer to what I'm going to give you now. I want the answer. Okay. So the answer now is I'd spend a billion dollars in the Congo in Katanga, which is the province where the cobalt is. I would, I would do, do, I would, of the billion dollars, you can put aside$20 million to do a regenerative agriculture project there that will produce insane beef. You're going to have to invest in the electricity infrastructure for the cold rooms and all that kind of stuff. But you can earn a carbon income and a beef income from that area. And the rest I would put into buying up land, mining it with machines, refining the cobalt there and actually producing the batteries there at all the value in the Congo for the people of the Congo. go. Because it would be really interesting for you to listen to what this guy has to say on the cobalt thing. It's a horror that is almost beyond comprehension. And there's videos that he sneaks in of thousands and thousands of people digging with their hands with basic tools, people covered in filth. It's indescribable. And so that's what I would do today with a billion dollars. And last week? Last week, I would split the billion three ways. I would spend, and it would be solely focused on regenerative agriculture projects, combining livestock with, I love the idea of the nut trees because I think the mega trend is towards healthier nutrient dense food. And I think nuts offer that protection. So I'd be doing that in Uruguay, in South Africa and in England.
UNKNOWN:you
SPEAKER_00:And you'll be buying land, vertically integrating, you'll be leasing, what would you, building brands and then partnering with farmers? Absolutely,
SPEAKER_01:building brands, partnering with farmers, maybe buying a little bit of land. I'd rather invest in the brand and in getting the guys earning money for carbon, those kind of layered services. And the reason I would go to Uruguay. I've not been to Uruguay myself, but I've done a bit of research into Uruguay. The climate is very similar to here, which is a climate I know well. The population is highly educated. It's the most literate population in South America. Their tax laws, their laws seem to be very progressive. South Africa is just because I know South Africa. And I think that the economic, put it this way, a dollar goes a lot further than Africa than it does go anywhere else. Because there's a lot of need for it. It might not actually be South Africa. It might be another African country because the political situation in Africa is very unstable. And
SPEAKER_00:If you could change one thing overnight and you had a magic wand to do that, what would that one thing
SPEAKER_01:be? It's very simple. I would invent a handheld machine that you could walk into any supermarket anywhere or any market anywhere and you just shine this machine on your product and it will tell you exactly what the nutrient density is of it, what pesticides are in it, genuinely measure the quality of it and even you can even even have a gdv it can also be a part gdv camera you know gdv is gas discharge visualization okay so you're actually measuring the energy of that thing like if we put a gdv camera on me and a gdv camera on you it's going to pick up what radiation is coming out of us you can call it energy called radiation give it whatever name you want but that's what i would do so so what would then happen couldn't is you'd walk into your supermarket they'd be two or three different types of apples. You hold the machine, you choose the most nutrient dense one. It would be the one coming from the regenerative agriculture world. No question. And so that will then force a revolution in a heartbeat.
SPEAKER_00:So if you're, I mean, I completely with you with the nutrient density connection to soil. I mean, we're doing a full series and are actually doing another one. We'll do two series this year focused on that. If that's the biggest lever, why are you focusing on carbon? Because those devices will come and it's actually, it's mostly a discussion now on what is nutrient density and how do we benchmark because we can measure things in the field, but then it doesn't tell anything unless you know what apples should look like. Like you need the the background literally to understand if this is good or bad. So why carbon and not go all in on nutrient density?
SPEAKER_01:Well, the one is I don't have the money to go into nutrient density. The second thing is that the farms that build in carbon will have the highest nutrient density products. So when that development happens, which I believe will happen, although Zach Bush said to me, and I mean, he's an incredibly smart knowledgeable guy I saw him in November he said he doesn't believe that the because I basically said what I envisage is that the laboratory comes to the shop and he says he thinks technically it's too much of a challenge to have those handheld devices although I know people like Jill Clapperton are working
SPEAKER_00:on it Clapperton there's it might be in between it might be somewhere in the distribution like at the moment big distribution has no idea of what they're buying in terms of quality. I mean, they buy the nice ones with your face printed on it because you tell them the story, but it's not that they can, they have a handheld device to scan your minced meat or whatever and say, okay, this is actually. So it might be an in-between step just as, I don't know, mainframes first came to universities and big companies before they landed on all of our desks. So it might be a question of time and maybe Zach Bush goes down. I mean, we had him on the podcast. He's a friend of the show, but maybe it goes down at the person that I think it was Intel or IBM and said the world only needs so many mainframes like 20 or so and then it turned out to be slightly different but who cares if it gets the revolution going like that's there's no um and and there might be brands i see some beef brands now it's early but using some nutrient density study the beef study of the bionutrient food association in their marketing which i think is a bit early um to claim a lot of things but it is um also there it's going to be the wild west for sure um but it's uh it's going to be very interesting to follow that connection the health connection at the
SPEAKER_01:And Kun, if you had a billion dollars, what would you do with it?
SPEAKER_00:I should prepare for this question. I think I would probably a big chunk into like what you said, the brand and the marketing, the storytelling piece, like vertically integrated brands. I would definitely want some exposure to land in ways that are obviously not extractive, speculative. So somehow figuring out ways to put it to work for a long time or forever and without the land grabbing that you often get when you come in with so much money in basically all communities honestly and trying to not overpay for land prices that in many places are completely disconnected from the carrying capacity but some exposure to that and vertically integrated brands and brands that then also source from others and then maybe I would probably do 80-85% of that and then 15-20% in the say enabling technologies or the more speculative not speculative in terms of but speculative there's an impact like it most likely fails but we need it and one of those could change I wouldn't say change everything because there are no silver bullets but could really speed up compost applications or really speed up satellite like remote sensing and really understand what we should plant where and where and how in a landscape or like some of the more the moonshots let's say and hope that a few of those make it and help the other 80% of the portfolio to really speed up. Or if I'd say, okay, we just run out of time so quickly, let's put everything in the moonshots and let's make it very speculative. I keep switching back and forth depending on if I'm in the optimist state or if I'm in, okay, we're really running out of soil on time and let's just go as speculative as possible. Speculative, again, in terms of impact, not in terms of
SPEAKER_01:financial
SPEAKER_00:results. It
SPEAKER_01:depends how much sleep your children have let
SPEAKER_00:you have. Yeah, quite a bit actually. But it also depends where you are. So I would split it in that way probably. But it depends. Like I talk to, like this conversation, I think, ah, shit, we really have to push the carbon side. And it also shifts because we get to talk to so many people. And all of it, many of it, I mean, we do have a framework, but many of it is very, very important. Like it's not a one, it's not, I wouldn't put it all in biochar, let's say. There's no silver bullet here because it's just, it's so complex specific, let's acknowledge that. We are making small investments personally, which is very interesting. And yeah, it's a mix to see how this can speed up. I think that's where we're at. The transition is happening. Everyday farmers are getting on the bandwagon, etc. But now it's the question of how we enable it to go faster. And that's through brands, it's through carbon, it's through tech. And so we're probably trying to get exposure. to all of that and speed it up.
SPEAKER_01:But I noticed you didn't mention retail there. I'm of the view that retail has a massive role to play in this.
SPEAKER_00:The current retail, I don't know enough of it. I think there... I mean, we've been waiting for the supermarkets to get disrupted for a long time. And I don't... I don't know. I don't know enough about the margins, the space. I've seen new supermarket concepts fail constantly. But I also see... like some like Thrive Market and some others seemingly successful, but farm drop miserably fail. So I think anything that can get better margins to farmers is great, but I just don't know enough about the space to really understand if it's a worthwhile place to put money in. Would you? No,
SPEAKER_01:I would be, what I'm saying is I would encourage retail to get involved and see the benefits of supporting the regenerative agriculture community. Yeah, but also they benefit from these shelf-stable ones. They do benefit from the shelf-stable ones. So again, can I tell you, that's where we come to that handheld meter. The first retailer that supports a handheld meter. Of course. That
SPEAKER_00:supplies it in the store. You just need one or two in the store to just scan stuff. Exactly. Like you don't need everybody has needed. It doesn't even have to be handheld. It could just be one of those that you scan the price.
SPEAKER_01:I'm excited by that idea, but... If I was a retailer,
SPEAKER_00:would I take the
SPEAKER_01:risk on something like that? Because what's going to happen is, let's just say it's my salami, okay? I'm just using mine as an example. I know that my salami, because it's pigs that have lived outdoors, the main pig foods, glyphosate-free, no nitrites, nitrates, phosphates, they're cured with vitamin D from the outdoor pigs. I mean, I just know that my product will be in another league to the other one. Do they want to take the risk of someone walking into the shop going, hey, man, you're selling something that gets, I don't know, 87 out of 100 marks, and you're selling something that gets 57 out of 100 marks. Why are you selling shit?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I know Whole Foods. Whole Foods told Dan Kittredge of the Bionic Food Association, as they're still developing that meter, give us two years. Tell us when it's going to, because we need to get our suppliers. And that's probably the higher end one anyway. We need to get our suppliers up to because this is going to show a lot of amazing products like yourself and a lot of not so amazing products on the other side. So it's going to be an enormous Pandora box we're going to open, which is bound to happen.
SPEAKER_01:The way to play it, and I can tell you now, at the heart, these retailers are so competitive. So once you have that handheld meter, it's a function of saying to them, listen, dude, you're going to have something which nobody else has. One. Two, you say to your people who walk in the shop we're on a journey guys we're on a journey this is the start of the journey but we're helping you we're measuring nutrient density for you and
SPEAKER_00:from 56 we're going to 65 exactly and
SPEAKER_01:slowly but surely but I promise you you'll get a jump on the retailers on the other guys and they'll be like oh my gosh
SPEAKER_00:yeah and do you see those differences like are you measuring yourself like what look the only thing i've ever done you apart from the taste of course but how do you do
SPEAKER_01:the only thing i've ever done and um my one of my sons actually wants me to do it i'll do it next week probably uh but one of the things i have done is i've taken our eggs and i've done the amino acid profiling on our eggs because that's ultimately why you want to buy eggs is because the amino acid is the protein right of the building blocks the protein and and and and and And I tested three types of eggs. I tested our eggs. I tested caged eggs. South Africa is about 96% caged. And I tested what they sell as free range eggs, which is in South Africa, consumer fraud. Just plain. These chickens aren't free to range. It's just nonsense. It's abuse of the English language and of consumers' trust. So the amino acids of the caged egg and the a free range egg were identical and ours is just in another league. You would expect that. But what I was not expecting originally, but now I've learned more about the free range egg industry was that it and the cage would be the same. And the irony, the great irony is that the cage hens are actually less stressed than the free range eggs because the free range hens are standing on their own excrement the whole time. They're standing in their own shit. The cage birds are layers upon layers of cages, but that stuff is clean. It's much more hygienic So the salmonella counts are much higher. The disease pressure is much higher for the free range bird, which is why her egg is the same nutritional value as a caged egg.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. That's crazy. It's really interesting how this is going to unfold on the quality piece because that's what it is at the end. Do you share
SPEAKER_01:my enthusiasm for
SPEAKER_00:the quality? Absolutely. We're doing two series just on that. It seems to be the biggest lever we have. People care about climate. People care about water, biodiversity. We care about soil and all of that. At the end of the day, it seems logically, if you're running your life you care about health you care about health of your children and and the research is abundantly clear that that's not going well at all and and it seems like food and then the way we grow and that step is often of course i mean that's the same journey zach was on um like okay i can suggest broccoli to my and kale to my patients but half of them are getting worse yes um so something's happening to the broccoli and kale i think that step is still missing with many many do you say oh you need more fibers oh you need more this oh you need more that or oh if you only and we get this in this month of course everybody having let's this year we do blah blah blah but unless we ask the question how that was grown yeah we're not really getting anywhere we're getting very mixed results so I think that that realization still has to come with many but it's also the biggest opportunity we have and I want to be conscious of your time. We went a bit over of what we scheduled. So I want to wrap it up as well. I don't think it's the last time we talk, at least I hope so. But if you had to pick one place where you're a contrarian, so I like to ask the question that John Kempf always asks in, let's say, traditional ag, what do you believe to be true about region ag that others don't? I mean, we covered a few, but what would be the one you would pick now on the top of your head?
SPEAKER_01:I've never been asked that question. So let me understand it. What you're saying is that... Regenerative agriculture.
SPEAKER_00:Let's say we put you in a room with Regeneye. Yes. Like you're traveling the country, you're visiting all these farmers. Correct. Where do you think fundamentally different than they do?
SPEAKER_01:That I think we can learn something from conventional agriculture.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. And why do you say that? And
SPEAKER_01:what I mean by that is I don't share the same philosophy or philosophical underpinning, but what I've learned a lot from is their systems and their protocols and being a bit more professional. Because a lot of people come to the organic regenerative world emotionally and permaculture, for example, is a great example of this. And a lot of that is farming. Alan York said it best. It's organic by neglect.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's a good place to leave it and to pick it up another time. I want to thank you so much, Angus, for your time, for sharing.
SPEAKER_01:I love talking to you, dude. You've got such a great mind and asking great questions and, you know, hopefully we can talk again.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Thank you. Cheers. Thanks again and see you next time.
