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
208 Randal Breen – How a first generation farmer uses holistic investment to double the farm
A conversation with Randal Breen, a first-generation farmer in Australia who managed to double their farm with a very innovative financing structure. We talk about investing holistically, non-flexible lease, ecological and social debt payments and more. Randal, Juanita, Eli & Bridey Breen run Echo Valley Farm.
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How do you invest holistically? We all know, or should all know, about how to manage land holistically. And if you're not, just Google. And many, many farmers have done so with great success over millions of hectares globally. But when that touches the world of finance, many of these principles go out of the window very fast. So how would you approach a holistic investment? Strict, linear and non-flexible lease payments, for instance, don't really fit the reality on the ground. Learn today from a first-generation farmer in Australia who managed to double their farm with a very innovative finance which should give them the freedom to manage the land holistically and pay down a lot of ecological and social debt while generating a fair return for the investors. This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast, investing as if the planet mattered, where we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Why my focus on soil and regeneration? Because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land and our sea, grow our food, what we eat, wear and consume. And it's that we as investors, big and small, and consumers start paying much more attention to the dirt slash soil underneath our feet. To make it easy for fans to support our work, we launched our membership community. And so many of you have joined us as a member. Thank you. If our work created value for you, and if you have the means, and only if you have the means, consider joining us. Find out more on gumroad.com slash investing in RegenAg. That is gumroad.com slash investing in RegenAg. Or find the link below. Welcome to another episode today with an Australian farmer with a very, very interesting financing structure. Welcome, Randall.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you, Kun.
SPEAKER_01:Before we're going to unpack that, I already put a nice teaser in the intro, basically. I would love to hear your story because you're a first generation farmer and there are many other career paths or things you could have been doing, but you chose to not only become a farmer, but also focus on soil and really focus on deeper regeneration. How come? How did you end up, you and your family, as a first generation on the land in Australia?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I guess it's an interesting pathway that we took to get here. Yeah, neither my wife, Janita, or myself were born onto the land. My mother's side of the family are farmers, but, yeah, for me myself, I didn't grow up on farming in a family or anything like that. I guess we sort of came to farming, I'd always aspire to be a farmer, but I guess the common story was that unless you inherited land or were born into it, it wasn't really a pathway worth pursuing, that that would be far too difficult. And so I, as a teenager, I went and got a trade as a carpenter and became a builder, but it was always aspiring to end up as a farmer and So I guess I wasn't really drawn to construction. And then from that, I actually left the building industry and went and studied social science and became a social scientist and worked in the community development field for around a decade. And it was around 2008 that Janita and I both made a decision to leave city life. We'd been living in Brisbane. I've been running a community arts organisation and we decided to leave Brisbane and we just moved out into a regional community, had a small paddock, managed to buy a very small parcel of land and literally lived in a tin shed with our two young children. And that's, I guess, where the reconnection with country sort of started for Janita and I. Yeah, so we'd sort of... I'd always been drawn to live on the land or to be around country, I should say. You know, when I reflect back on my life, I was always finding ways to be out in nature, either bushwalking or camping or doing whatever. And so it was interesting around that period where we chose to sort of move away from city life and pursue a different life and maybe that had something to do with the fact that we had two young children and we're looking for other options for them but at that point we probably weren't really considering a full-time life as a farmer. We were just looking for a different way of life. And so I returned to my construction profession as a carpenter and was doing building work. And Janita was working as a community development worker in the local town. And that was kind of how we sort of saw things. And then over a period of three to four years, we sort of reengaged with our landscape and then started to explore different aspects of regenerative agriculture and that's where the seed was planted I guess and that was yeah sorry I
SPEAKER_01:mean very interesting path because you hear the story often I think it comes in waves like every generation has the back to the land movement or something like that often it's very idealistic but also different like you land back on the land and then it's not as you imagined when you were in the city like how but you'd seem to be at least not going straight into farming or there wasn't a plan. It was just back to the land, trying to reconnect to a rural, smaller, not city life, but not immediately going full-time into farming. How did that switch then happen to you? Because you probably could have continued as a carpenter and your wife could have continued to work in the local town and that might have been easier. How did you roll into, or was it inevitable, into full-time farming?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I guess there was a series of events, but I think as we got, you know, went back to the land and we started to explore that sort of homesteady type ideal and we really enjoyed the reconnection, but then wanted to try to find ways to... possibly do a little bit more. There was a couple of moments. I think we started exploring, you know, I think the common thread of people getting on YouTube or reading books and sort of start heading down that rabbit hole. And I came across an Australian farmer called Colin Sice, who had developed some pasture cropping concepts. And we had a very small herd of cattle that we were trying to work out, you know, what was the best way to manage these guys. And He was talking about pasture cropping and using animal impact and then discovered Alan Savory and his TED Talk and started down that journey. And then I think the third person that we really discovered was Darren Doherty, who's a land planner and does a lot of yeoman key line farm design and those sorts of things. And so I think those three things, that really sort of was a ballpark enthusiasm
SPEAKER_01:and yeah but then you still didn't have land because I mean you had a very small plot of land which isn't economically viable unless you do high intensive market gardens next to a city
SPEAKER_02:yeah that's exactly right and so we never really looked at the market garden angle I guess probably because of the nature of the land that we were on it was very brittle tending you know if we use the holistic farm category, way to categorize our land. We were very brittle tending, not a lot of water, definitely didn't have any permanent water. And so we sort of, yeah, it wasn't, we were on a small, a small holding. And then We, in 2013, I went to a three-day course when Joel Salatin, that had come out to Australia, and we say that that was probably the moment that sort of launched us into the concept of, well, here's some ideas around stacking enterprises on land. And so that sort of, I guess we can blame him for giving us the idea that that possibly this was something that we could do more than just on the weekends the other thing I think that was happening at the time was we were both working pretty big hours trying to cover the mortgage on that block of land and so we weren't spending a lot of time at home we had two young children that were spending time in after school care and it just it felt as if the city life again yeah we tried to escape that sort of lifestyle and just found ourselves back in it. And so with the charismatic sales pitch that we got from Joel at that course, we ordered ourselves 250 laying hens and built ourselves a little mobile chicken trailer. And on the January of 2014, those chooks turned up and then there we were. So it wasn't– We'd done some sums and sort of looked at the different options. He'd talked about pigs and meat chickens and those sorts of things and we'd looked at the different options and it felt as if egg production might have been the easiest way to enter that sort of stacking and integrated farming model. We'd already started moving our cattle around under that sort of holistic planned grazing program
UNKNOWN:Thank you.
SPEAKER_02:And that was that. And from that day on that little block of land, we started selling eggs at local markets and that was kind of the trajectory and we found ourselves get even more busy rather than less busy. Yeah, so at that point, we were still trying to manage two jobs and also now try to clean grade and sell eggs at markets on the weekends and and all of that and so that that was that was our sort of baptism of fire into the the regenerative agriculture movement that's for sure
SPEAKER_01:and and so where do you find yourself now or what like that transition then because i don't think you you still work as a carpenter and and your partner your wife works in the local town like you transitioned to full-time farmer when that yeah did that go fast slow was it very balancing act. Like your startup basically needed to grow up fast to, to cover two jobs. Like how, how did that, how did that go? Because a lot of people, I think without land in general are a bit stuck. Like how do you, how can I get started? And if I want to, and then land is always a huge, um, huge question mark and elephant in the room. And, and, and yeah, how, how do I make it work without, and let's say off farm jobs to, to cover basically the call and do this in the weekends and the evenings, which sort of, as you said, doesn't really work from a time perspective and a family perspective. So how did that transition happen?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so it happened quite quickly. So if we keep in mind, so we got our first 250 hens on the January of 2014. And by the end of June, that same year, we had relocated our entire operation onto 350 acres. Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Less than six months.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Less than six months over the range and into a completely different location. We had purchased a bigger farm and had made that conscious decision that we were going to be regenerative farmers and this is what we were going to do. And that sort of happened. There was sort of, I guess, some key moments in that process that sort of led us to that point. The first one being that little small holding that we were on, we had gone to the local council trying to seek permission to increase our egg production because we'd had a huge amount of demand for it. So we're like, well, we can scale. There is demand there and maybe this could be a viable option for us full-time even on our small holding. But while we were really struggling to get permission from councils to get those sort of approvals in our area Immediately next door to that property, the council approved a large bluestone quarry to be put in. And so we then had to make a pretty quick decision on whether we wanted to live next to a bluestone quarry. Bluestone
SPEAKER_01:is a special kind of like you don't want to live next to mine, basically.
SPEAKER_02:No, exactly right. And so bluestone is a very hard rock. They use a lot of it in road base and for building roads, but it's a lot of explosive processes to extract. Great for chickens. Yeah, excellent for laying hens. And so we had to make a very quick decision on whether that was where we wanted to be, and so we made the decision that no, it wasn't, and we wanted to start looking around. And so then it worked out how we were even going to do this because finance was challenging. and we weren't sure on how that was going to go. And so that was what brought us to the point, which I think a lot of people, when they're trying to get in as first-generation farmers, find it really difficult to work out, well, how do we finance this project? Because it's hugely capital-intensive to get started. Even these stacked pastured poultry systems are a pretty low entry to the market, but still there's a fair bit of capital that's needed in order to be able to do it. And so we... started looking. The first thing we did was read every local plan, every council plan within a two-hour drive from our local township of Brisbane, which we knew that that was– it's the capital of Queensland and we knew that we needed to be within striking distance of that city in order to be able to sell our product. And so we set about reading every local council plan guidelines in that area to try to find the council that was most receptive to what we wanted to do. And that was a huge... That was a very beneficial thing to do because it immediately put a line through a number of councils in the region because it was quite clear that they weren't open to what we were wanting to do. And so then we set about to try to find the property. We found the place where we are now and it just sort of ticked all the boxes ecologically. It was a mixture of heavy timbered country through to open farmland and some cultivated country. had pretty good water and and that's what led us to to here um now but in order to buy that property we we had to try to secure it um and that's where we went into um we actually tried something a little bit different where we actually sold a small amount of um that land off to family members prior to purchasing it which gave us the deposit to to purchase the whole property if that kind of makes sense
SPEAKER_01:yeah yeah so you basically and those family members are act as sort of silent shareholders in this enterprise? And are you buying it back at some point? Is that the plan? Are you planning or they are fine with basically helping to secure this and being a silent shareholder in this enterprise?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so I guess they own it in their own right. It's in their name, but we have an agreement that we farm it. It's about 15% of the original farm area. But what that gave us was the deposit to purchase ours and to secure a mortgage over our part of the land, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. But you had to be pretty comfortable that what you were doing on the small scale would make sense at 300 plus scale. And what gave you that confidence? Because that's a lot of eggs, potentially. What gave you the confidence to do that?
SPEAKER_02:There was a little bit of just blind, jump on in and swim like crazy. And I hope it worked out. But we did do a lot of numbers around. So in that six months, there was literally only one week, which was probably the second week after those hands started laying, that we didn't sell everything we produced. And the demand was incredible.
SPEAKER_01:Where did that come from? People talk about it a lot. I think it's a nice entry point. Where do you think that triggered such a latent and unmet demand? In 2014, and let's talk about, because of course it's eight years ago, actually more than nine. But were you surprised? Were you like almost overwhelmed? Like, whoa, this is not what we expected when we show up with our pasture eggs.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think absolutely we were shocked at the level of demand that was there. I think at the time it was still... Very early days for that model of system. So there wasn't an oversupply of pastured eggs in the market. There was free range. And then the other thing, right off the bat, we took a pretty– active role in social media telling our story and what we were doing. And I think that was a huge plus and something that we telling our story was really important. And it brought a lot of people on board. But yeah, it was quite amazing to see. I think perhaps that's probably changed today a little bit in this region. There's a lot more people doing this style of egg production. And maybe there's a for their eggs. But in all reality, eight years later, we still sell every egg that we produce every week.
SPEAKER_01:It's quite amazing. And so what is, if you had to, because of course it's audio. So what, if you had to describe your current operation and bring us on a visual tour, what do we see when we walk the land, when we feel the land? What do we, because it's difficult to get a grasp for the size, but also the different operations you're stacking. Just walk us through what we would find now. We're talking the end of 2020. What did that little one chicken caravan of 250 hens grow into?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, excellent. So it has blossomed into a genuine stacked integrated farming system that now stretches over two properties and close to 700 acres, which would be great to chat further about how we actually managed to secure that second farmer only recently. But It is made up of holistically plant-grazed cattle moving across the landscape daily to weekly. We have approximately 60 to 100 breeding cows and 190 head of cattle on farm at any one time. We've got 2,000 laying hens in four mobile poultry sheds that get moved everywhere And then we have pastured pigs that we're running around 150 pastured pigs in our forested country and taking them through to processing. And then we do a whole range of pasture cropping and diverse cover cropping in order to sort of regenerate our landscape. One thing we didn't really understand when we first came onto the farm here was that We saw farmed land and we thought, oh, well, this must be good soil. And the reality was that once upon a time, it probably was. But this landscape has spent 120 years either being plowed or chemically controlled. And so we've really struggled in those early years to try to kickstart the biological activity in the soil because we're a chemical-free farm. We don't use any synthetic fertilizers. And so we're trying to use the biology of the plants and the soil and all the living organisms within it to generate plant growth. So that's been a steep learning curve, to say the least.
SPEAKER_01:And the pasture cropping, like what crops are you doing there? Or would you say like the majority of the farm is animal protein and or maybe the animal protein part or the animals are the tool to kickstart the ecosystem? How would you describe, let's say, the journey in Like if we were talking five years, would there be a lot more pasture cropping? Is that a goal? Would there be more agroforestry or would it be pretty similar to what you're running now?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so we've developed what we describe as our 100-year plan. And so we have looked right out into the future and are trying to build an ecological design for our landscape and have tried to push it right out to 100 years to give us to enable us to really explore what our landscape can do and to be sympathetic to what our landscape is trying to tell us. And so, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:I think more than sympathetic, I think it's listening to what wants to grow and what landscape wants to do. Sympathetic is like, I hear you, but I'm still going to do something else. I think you learned that that's not the approach.
SPEAKER_02:No, that is, yeah, absolutely. And yeah, that's what we talk about is trying to build a deep and intimate relationship with our landscape, our animals, and the people that we feed. And so we are trying to be patient, attentive observers of our landscape, and I think that's probably why we've set a 100-year plan for what we're wanting to do. But, yeah, we are being guided by our landscape and by our environment, which is ever-changing. But I guess... We've got a landscape, if I can paint a picture, it's undulating. It goes from gentle undulations up into quite steep country. Half of it has been fully cleared for the purpose of cultivation and cropping, and that landscape is pretty heavily degraded. If you imagine a sloped country that's spent half its life over the last 120 years under tillage, a fair bit a lot of that topsoil has left. So we're trying to restore that so we don't till it all and try to let all plants grow. And over time, we're trying to reintroduce trees back into that agroforestry, I guess, system, probably alley cropping type concept where we have rows of trees and I guess swales are the best way to describe it. So this landscape has had what we call here as contour drains, which were put in place to try to mitigate the soil loss through tillage, but we've converted those into more of a swale system that can slow the water down and allow us to get more water back into the landscape. Our landscape is quite a brittle tending, so we have long periods of dry. We went through, it was interesting, just after starting our farm journey. We went into here into the worst dread and recorded memory culminating in 2019. Yeah, great test culminating in 2019 when we only received 187 millimetres of rain for the entire year. And of that 187 millimetres, 115 of it fell in one event, like one rain event. So that tested our system. And yeah, so I guess what we trying to do is to build a system that works in partnership with the landscape and the natural ecology that we're with. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And would you say the cropping versus animals now, how is it 80-20? Is it 50-50 in terms of what you currently do or how should we imagine that?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so the Cropping really at the moment is really just a tool to build diversity back into our landscape. So we're not taking too much stuff through to harvest or anything like that. The way we're harvesting that cropping is through the mouths of livestock. So we're really using those animals. So, you know, we are essentially a protein farm producing beef, pork and eggs. We do some opportunistic small cropping within our pasture cropping process. Like we might plant pumpkins or or sweet corn or beans in our diverse cover crop, but really it's not a financial venture. The diverse cover cropping is all about building diversity. Do
SPEAKER_01:you see that transition over time? As soon as the land is able to carry again, let's say, I think many people underestimate how degraded many pieces of land in the world are. As soon as that soil is able to carry cash crops again, is it something you work on? to do or it will always be a tool to restore and then be harvested through the mouths of animals, as you so nicely put it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I think we would love to be able to start harvesting grains, and this is a very grain-heavy district, a lot of people growing cereals and things like that. But I think at the moment our priority really is to try to build that soil health back again. It was remarkable when we first started this process that it was almost– well, we came to believe that the soil had a memory and that for 120-plus years that this soil had only grown single-species monocultures, predominantly cereals, and that seemed to be all we could grow. That and what people describe as weeds, which we don't really use that. We use the word repair plants. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, it's taken a long time to really start to trigger things. It's been amazing this past year. Every time we'd put in a diverse cover crop, I'd put a small cup of lucerne seed or alfalfa seed in with the mix and we never seem to see the lucerne plants growing. And as we've built more diversity and more life back into that soil, all of a sudden we're seeing things like lucerne and more perennial grasses starting to emerge. And it's quite remarkable to see the seeds that have even, you know, after 100 plus years of being beaten about under the plough and with chemicals, all of a sudden we're starting to see native grasses reappear that probably haven't had the opportunity to grow for 100 plus years.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. And seeds can make it that long. I mean, they can be dormant and waiting for the right, I mean, they act on different timescales, I would say, and they're waiting for the the right conditions in the right context to emerge again. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. It's been remarkable to see how those plants can, once those conditions are right in the soil, can kickstart and away they go and start to flourish. And so as we've gone on this journey of succession with the soil, of allowing those repair plants or weeds to run their course and heal what they've arrived
SPEAKER_01:to fix. On this podcast, you can say repair plants. Don't worry. Nobody will look weird at Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:so, you know, taking that journey. I'm going to use it now. Yeah, the prickly plants and, you know, the bigger the prickle, the more important the job and allowing these plants to move through succession and allowing those things to be triggered within the soil. And then, you know, watching worms arrive, you know, that when we first came onto this landscape, I could dig every day for a week and not find a worm. Whereas now we're finding 20 plus, at my is 27 worms in one shovel. And so we're clearly building soil health through the use of livestock and allowing plants to grow and heal, not deciding which ones stay and which ones leave, but allowing it to go on that journey of succession and moving through the stages of soil health.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it really feels like a healing journey. And how has it been for you and the family because you mentioned before you left city life and then became as busy or even busier on the small scale like now is it a bit more balanced this is a tricky question of course but is it like are you enjoying time outside are you is it as you expected or better maybe in terms of lifestyle which is a weird word in terms of balance like are you enjoying it
SPEAKER_02:yeah absolutely every day it's a It's an honour to walk outside and be part of the process of working with nature to grow food to feed other people. I was chatting with some other farmers and, you know, we were talking about the fact that there's no better job, no bigger honour to be able to be part of a landscape and to be growing food for people. And so despite... Yeah, probably working harder than we ever expected. We knew that we were coming into an industry that demanded a huge amount of time and particularly coming in without a great deal of capital that we've had to trade. We've had to trade labour for capital. We haven't had the capital to invest and so therefore we've had to do it the long, hard way. But I think we're moving. It's an ever-evolving process and so... we are finding efficiencies within our system and looking for other ways to extract resources to feed people. Yeah, and I think there's no question that every day can be challenging, and I wouldn't say we've always got our balance right, right in terms of time versus lifestyle. But yeah, we definitely love what we do.
SPEAKER_01:And about those efficiencies, you alluded to it before that relatively recently, quite a big milestone was reached or quite a big transition happened as you basically doubled in size in terms of land. And you did that in a very innovative way. How did it come about? Where can the urge, because you already went relatively big, of course for Australia it's tiny for some other context it's massive but where you came from from no land to a bit of land to a lot of land this was already quite big what made you imagine or say like did you see the opportunity from like the market perspective like you could this protein you're producing the animals the eggs are just yeah there's a bit much bigger market we can do more or came the land available or both or what did you see where did the urge came from to grow Let's say 2X.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think the– so I guess something we haven't talked about is that we take all of our product through to market and so our beef, our pork and our eggs are all taken right through to sale by us under our own brand. And so that– and we have experienced a huge amount of demand for it and one of the key ways in which we sell our product is through a program called a CSA, which is community supported agriculture, where people sign up as members of our farm and they go on that journey with us. And that's been an incredible part of what we've done as we've built community around our food system, which, you know, so those people come on onto the farm, they plant trees with us, they invest in us as farmers, but also they're investing in the healing and the rebuilding of our landscape. And so that's pretty amazing. And so when we sort of hit a bit of a wall at year seven, so, you know, seven and eight, and I think it's a pretty classic time for that move into farming to sort of come up against it and feel as if nothing's shifting and we're not getting into that point. And we really made it, we came to a point where we said, well, we either have to, we have to do something. We can't keep at the level that we are. We either have to get a lot smaller or we have to move sideways or we have to do something in order to find viability in the farm. And I think it's a big issue within the regen food system world that I think there's a real revolving door of young farmers that get into this farming. And we see all these people starting up, but there appears to be a lot of people all moving out because of how intensive it is and how demanding it is. And so we were trying to address that for ourselves. And so we started down the process of trying to build an on-farm boning and packing room, which we're still moving along. And out of nowhere, one of our CSA customers came to us with a proposal that they wanted to invest into regenerative agriculture but also into our as farmers. and to try to enable us to scale a little bit more to find viability in what we were doing. Because they saw you struggling, basically. Yeah, they felt as if watching what we were doing with a little bit more land and a little bit more support, there's potential for us to move forward and sort of get over that hump. And so that was amazing. And so we went on that journey with them. And as a result, we were able to purchase the adjoining property to us And yeah, eight weeks ago, essentially, just maybe a little bit longer, it was just before we came to Italy where we met you, we took control of that property. And so now we're on the restorative journey of learning about that landscape and starting to build the same systems that we've got going here, which will enable us to expand. And that coupled with the on-farm boning and packing where we can take control over our production of our system, I think we'll have a far more effective farm model that hopefully we can assist other young farmers and other farmers in general to be able to utilise the journey we've been on to do it for themselves as well.
SPEAKER_01:So really the process and taking control of more pieces of the value chain sounds like that's the bottleneck you were hitting against. You couldn't capture enough value and bring it back to the land or enough margin to bring it back to the land and you were sort of stalling or slightly too small to do that and not enough part of the value chain came back to you, even though you sold it through a CSA. But then a processing plant is of course probably too inefficient or too small or too big for a small farm and it led you to okay how do we how do we scale and grow um but at this scale it's does it start to make sense i mean of course it has to pan out still but like in in the excel sheets do you need to grow a lot bigger in terms of land or this is this is an okay size to or comfortable i will be a comfortable size in a couple of years when the repair plans have done their work and etc
SPEAKER_02:yeah um yeah in terms of the the number that we've done it, it looks really exciting for us. I think the other thing is that something we've done strategically all the way along is to try to collaborate with other farmers and other producers. And I think that's what in the long term will give us scale. And so, you know, although we're working on now just short of 700 acres where we can finish cattle and pigs and produce yegs and as we heal the soil, those numbers should increase theoretically as we but I think something that we've made mistakes as we've come along where we haven't observed effectively sometimes and I think we've pushed it too hard. So I think now we're sitting at a place where our connection with the landscape and the numbers of animals that we've got working on it is more effectively balanced. But then the other thing is that we're now working with a range of other farmers that all contribute to this system so we're building that sort of collaborative scale which is which is generating um more viability for for more farmers than just us um so yeah effectively across with all of us combined um we're regenerating more than 7 000 acres
SPEAKER_01:wow and on the new land are you because you mentioned that we've made mistakes we might have pushed it hard are you doing things very differently of course it's a different landscape you have to reconnect but from what you've learned on the original piece what what are you doing do you think it can go faster or you you can at least avoid a lot of mistakes or you have to go through the same process again as it's a slightly different landscape
SPEAKER_02:yeah it's you know we're very fortunate that this property literally is a is a is a fence line apart and so a lot of it is similar but it has been managed differently and it it's quite interesting to be observing some of the the different you know the the the historical... ways in which that landscape was managed compared to ours. But I do think there's a number of mistakes that we've made in our journey getting us to this point that we will be able to avoid in the future next door on the property that we'll be able to sort of fast track and be able to avoid some of the mistakes we've made, you know, in terms of how we've done things. So yeah, I think there's... It's really exciting. It's exciting to see this landscape start to come back to life already just in the small time because we've taken all of our livestock, all of our cattle particularly onto that landscape and have stacked them up tight and started to really have some high impact grazing happening which should really wake that soil up and tell it that it's ready to get going and we've started doing our recovery periods and starting to observe that landscape starting to really Awaken.
SPEAKER_01:And so now let's talk about the financing mechanism you use. No, not even mechanism. Like, how did you, because this customer, a partner of the CSA program reached out to you and said, what can we do? We want to invest in you. And then X months slash a year, et cetera, later you end up buying your neighbor. It feels like there are a few steps in between there. Like how, how did that come about? It's not the traditional day, buy the land and you farm it for them. Otherwise you would be on I mean you would still be on the podcast because it's a fascinating story but the trigger really was that you structured it completely different like how because you mentioned when we met we wanted to make this a regenerative and holistic investment and then I of course asked okay what does that mean so how did you do this how did you unconventionally holistically manage to buy your neighbor
SPEAKER_02:yeah well I guess initially it is based on relationships but first and foremost it It was built– the concept was developed holistically. So we've done– we're holistic land managers. We've done training through the Savory Institute, and we knew that if we were going down this path– and it did happen incredibly quickly, but the purchase of that property occurred quickly, but the relationship had built up over a number of years– And I think that's what enabled the opportunity to happen. And so what we went on as a journey with the people that wanted to invest in that landscape and invest in us, really, we sat down and wrote a holistic context together as purchaser and farmer and developed a vision for that landscape together, which is really, really exciting. It means that it's not us farming the land and them owning the land, but it's actually we're on this journey. together to develop the landscape and to build a business that essentially is viable for us but also provides them fulfillment in what their holistic vision was.
UNKNOWN:And
SPEAKER_01:the it's nice to write it down obviously but then when it comes to like what are the when it comes to the real and the returns when it comes to what triggers something when it comes to the financial details often things are still very very traditional not in this case so how did you then translate that holistic context into actually something you can sign and then work on let's say daily and and of course communicate through investor to farmer and farmer to investor which is sometimes an interesting relationship where the power dynamics are not very very nice so how do you how do you translate that into practice would be my question
SPEAKER_02:so yeah so I guess I guess the challenge is often you know we could sit down and write a holistic context together with with someone that's investing in the land and I guess it's important to say that this is a dynamic document or a dynamic agreement that is constantly evolving and developing but What we identified is that one of the challenges is, particularly in our landscape, which is a brittle environment, is that we need things within that agreement or that partnership that is directed through similar to what would encourage us to destock cattle off a landscape is if we notice that we don't have enough grazing days or that we're starting to lose ground cover or that we haven't had enough rainfall. that those biological monitoring of our landscape would trigger us to start destocking. Now, if we had a very static agreement, lease agreement or access to that landscape or what we had to pay, we then may start to push the limits of why we might start to remove animals from the landscape in order to protect the ecology that we're farming. And so we've written those things into the lease agreement. So things like rainfall, ground cover, grass growth, all of those things are triggers that will enable us to either increase or decrease our financial obligations to the owners of the land. And so in the long term it should, you know, the concept is through working with that together we should have a very dynamic agreement but it's trying to be responsive to the landscape and the environment.
SPEAKER_01:So basically your lease payments are triggered it's not a fixed term which could be very challenging if you hit another one of those droughts or just any challenging situation where it would be better for the land ecologically context speaking would be better to destock maybe completely to not have animals or very very few but as you have to pay whatever percentage or whatever lease agreement payment at the end of the year you probably won't and and still would push the land um have too many animals basically from from your context and that that's how most lease agreements are written in this case you build a number of triggers and say okay it's not a fixed amount it's based on rainfall ground cover things you can control you can't control um but you are able to and let's hope that doesn't happen but in the worst case, to destock completely and not pay and not hurt the land, which is their underlying asset of the owner. So it also makes a lot of sense for them, obviously, but that somehow never made it into other lease agreements. How tricky was that? Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:it's tricky and it's ongoing. And so I wouldn't say that we've finalized it as yet, but it's still an ongoing conversation. But I think what's really– what's been– really exciting to go on this journey with these guys is that they understand the vision of, and like you just mentioned, that if we are able to have the freedom to destock when we need to, to look after the landscape and to look after the soil, that in actual fact the long term will come out of that drought sooner and then that landscape will be healthier out the other side of it. And so that conversation has been an excellent conversation to have and I think that as we continue to develop this agreement and what in those triggers that and it's through that biological monitoring so that's a big thing with holistic land management is that we are constantly monitoring the landscape we are being patient attentive observers and looking to see improvement and if there is an improvement then we're looking at ways in which we can sort of support the landscape to continue to heal. And so that conversation then goes back to the landowners and we have that conversation with them and we talk about the strategies in which we can put in place in terms of to continue it. And so if we see a need to destock, we can immediately talk to them, have that conversation. And yeah, I think it's a really exciting process. There's going to be no doubt as we go along, long, things that we hadn't foreseen. If we go into another severe drought, which I'm sure it will happen with climate change, we have to work out how that looks. If we have to completely destock and ensure that there's no one that's going to be put out on their ear, I guess, for want of a better way to describe it. But yeah, it's been a really exciting journey to go on with them and yeah, I think that, does that kind of describe?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And especially the objective pieces of, I mean, rain is something we measure. Ground cover, you can objectively occur. So it's not, and having that flexibility, it's not something you come up in the morning, I really felt like de-stocking. No, this is a process you go through and it's clear for everyone when it's happening, why it's happening. And at the same time, when you have really, really good years, you will be paying a significant sum to, I wouldn't say cover, but of course for the worst year. So there's a balancing act there, of course, which you have to be comfortable with as well. Of course, you destock in the bad ones and thus pay nothing or very little and you do pay significant. But that's, yeah, if you're comfortable with that and you know that's happening and everybody knows it, it's a very interesting model to grow into. And is there like a long-term goal for you to own the land or would you like this family to somehow of course long term be connected to you and make sure that doesn't get speculated away and as very often happens in the land what's the long term vision for the land ownership of the land?
SPEAKER_02:I think so there's, you know, we have a first right of refusal over the land if it was, if it came to a point. But there is a long-term vision in terms of that it would stay managed in this way. We're still exploring together and independently on how that might look at the other end. It's secured for us for 15 years, which really is a pretty short period of time in all
SPEAKER_00:reality. In your 100-year plan, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's exactly right. But I think the vision is there for a longer term. I think– Work in progress, yeah. Yeah, it absolutely is. And, yeah, we have– I guess both parties are pretty driven by this notion of paying down the ecological debt that we've got over the landscape so we don't view it just as a financial debt. debt that we've got all sorts of debts that we need to pay down and sometimes within farming or even there's some of these other quieter voices as I like to describe them are put to one side so we've prioritised ecological debt and even things like social debt that we've seen within rural communities that we want to sort of try to address those things first and foremost and so it's been great in terms of taking on this new property that we have like-minded people that we can do that with and go on that journey.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it sounds like a whole different podcast to go into all those steps, which we'll do at some point, hopefully in person, but I want to be conscious of your time and ask a few more questions as well. What do you think other investors that are listening to this and are interested and very committed to regeneration, I wouldn't say regenerate because it's suggest we have a definition but to regeneration and want to put their money to work of course without giving investment advice but what can they learn from a producer perspective in this case in a very innovative deal what would you tell them if we are like in a theatre and they walk out what would be the main message you would like to give to investors of the lessons learned of course ongoing process but you've been through quite a year now what would be your main lesson to them
SPEAKER_02:my A big thing I would encourage investors to look at is building relationships. I think that particularly if you're looking to invest into a system of ecological restoration, then you have to be in it for the long game. And I think that I would be looking to build relationships with people and looking for relational transactions rather than transactional relationships. So trying to build those– Yeah, deep relationships with people that you want to partner with. And that way every single process and investment is going to be unique. And so there can't be too many descriptive processes because you will work that out together. And so that would be something that I would definitely encourage investors to consider. And it's incredibly worthwhile because once you invest in the relations the outcomes are far greater than just economic. And so then I would be encouraging them to searching out and seeking out farmers and opportunities to invest in things that are looking to pay down on more than just the financials but are looking to pay down on ecological debt and social challenges within the regions and farming communities and all those sorts of things. And I think there's some really exciting opportunities for people to get involved on that level.
SPEAKER_01:Which is a perfect bridge to my next question. What would you do if you weren't running these two farms and building a processing unit, et cetera, but you would be in charge of a billion dollar investment? I don't know if the Australian dollar is very high or low, but anyway, a significant investment portfolio. What would you prioritize? Where would you look for to put this money to work? Could be extremely long term, but it has to be investment capital, not grant capital. What would you prioritize if you had to go to work to do that tomorrow morning?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, I would I think first and foremost, I would try to build some collective scale to the regenerative food system. I don't think it necessarily has to be investment into land itself because I think there are a number of farms and farmers out there looking for opportunities to develop their landscape and I would be trying to connect young and emerging farmers who are passionate about farming but are unable to find land with farmers that are need the community development into their farming enterprise. And so I would love to build what they call in the agroecological world an agroecological lighthouse that would be a demonstration of what can be done when we collaborate together because I think that that's the way that we can build scale to this movement that can then start to rival the conventional food system. And so, you know, it would be amazing to see farms with– stacked integrated enterprises operating, that local townships are where they are, that food is processed, developed, packaged, and then sent out to people. And I think that that would be something that would be pretty awe-inspiring to see.
SPEAKER_01:It's very interesting how often the demonstration or lighthouse farm answer is given. I never realized it. I until you mentioned it now. I was like, that's not the first time and probably not the last one. We should do some research on the last 200 plus episodes. But it's a very often, it's an answer that comes back very often, which means it's something to explore and to look into. It's very interesting. Yeah, how often, I'm now curious how many people said it, but for sure you're not the first and you won't be the last to give that answer. And it's apparently crucial, especially from a producer perspective. It's very often farmers that mention it So that means we need to explore.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:exciting. And asking a question inspired by John Kempf, what do you believe to be true about regenerative agriculture that others don't? Where are you contrarian?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I think I hinted at it earlier around the revolving door of Regen Ag. And I think that we need
SPEAKER_01:to do something. It's not all sunshine and easy.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:It's not all YouTube and Instagram people.
SPEAKER_02:That's right. Absolutely right. And I think that that's where we need to build a culture of collaboration, not competition. And that if we can be more collaborative in our food systems and our farming systems that we can find ways through that to slow down the revolving door of people that come in passionate and starry-eyed and then seven to eight years later move on to find other things because I think that that's something that perhaps we need to really try and address and I think that can be addressed. I honestly believe that through collectivising that's something that we can easily sort out.
SPEAKER_01:And final question, which often is not the final one, but if you had a magic wand and you could change one thing overnight, what would that be? It could be anything, food and egg, or even not in food and egg. What would you, if you had that magic power, what would you change?
SPEAKER_02:It's a really challenging one. I've thought about things like ensuring that we put nutrient density details on all the food that we buy through to maybe listing beside the price that we're paying for our food how much additional cost has been deferred on to future generations. But I think for me something that I would love to see is a greater acknowledgement and involvement of our First Nations people in the food system, acknowledgement. You know, we farm on Bundjalung country here, you know, we have a pretty dark history in Australia for the way in which our Indigenous people were treated and the way that the land has been treated since white colonial arrival. You know, for 60,000 years, Indigenous Australians managed this landscape effectively in partnership with the landscape. And I think if we could find a way, if I could wave a magic wand and have have true acknowledgement of all the work that those people had done prior to our arrival that would be pretty an amazing and magical thing
SPEAKER_01:which probably means changing all land ownership or most of it and all structures we've put in place since then yeah
SPEAKER_02:absolutely and yeah it would be not my place to define what that would look like but to hand that decision back to them would be pretty phenomenal
SPEAKER_01:I feel there's a whole other podcast there, but we're not going there because we're already on top of the hour and we'll do that in person at some point, which I think is a better structure, but absolutely fundamental piece. It's the destruction. Let's say the debt that needs to be paid there, which is partly social, but even beyond that is just enormous. And we're only, I think many countries are going through a process now to acknowledge that, which is just a start and then to start thinking about repaying that is is uh is is unfortunately a much longer process and not i'm not saying repaying financially but just in general those relationships and need to be repaired repaid and that's going to be a very very it feels like something is shifting there though um at least on the outside because i'm not so deep into that but it's um something is shifting but of course not not fast enough and and i think as i heard somewhere a tribe i think in US of course working on fire management and water management and finally let's say the forest service was paying attention to what they've been doing they've been saying forever and somebody asked him a very nice question like what do you feel now like they're so late to the party and he said yeah I'm of course very happy that we're finally engaged in our forest and we're able to do what we do best which is manage this yeah I was a bit annoyed because yeah welcome to the party but a bit late let's say a few decades earlier would have been nice and we would have been able to prevent a lot of this mess So it's a very double feeling, I think. But we need to move and act. So I want to thank you so much for your time. I see it's dark out there already, of course, because it's late. And thank you for making time to share your journey. And looking forward to check in and see how this holistic investment is shaping up in a couple of years and how that process, hopefully with favorable weather conditions and context conditions, has shaped up and how it's been working.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, excellent. I thank you very much for the opportunity. It's
SPEAKER_01:been a great pleasure to share our story. Thanks again and see you next time.
