272 Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin - Chickens are the perfect entry point to decolonize our food system

A conversation with Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, CEO of Tree Range Farms, farmers and producers which a focus on establishing or maintaining a “jungle like” habitat that honours the true natural environment of chickens. When they do this, they not only create a better habitat for the chickens, they create a better world. We talk about using indigenous knowledge to transform the food system, how chickens could and should be raised with a focus on soil health and how to structure business with an indigenous mindset.

Thinking and seeing the world from a chicken perspective probably is not something you do everyday, but actually it is a fundamental piece of the regenerative food system puzzle. Sounds weird? Get ready for a wide ranging interview on why chickens are such a perfect entry point into the regenerative production world, but also on regenerative mindset shift and decolonizing our food system.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

thinking and seeing the world from a chicken's perspective Probably not something you do every day, but actually a fundamental piece of the regenerative food systems puzzle Sounds weird. Get ready for a wide-ranging interview on why chickens are such a perfect entry point into the regenerative production world, but also on a regenerative mindset shift and decolonization of our food system. 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.

Speaker 1: 0:53

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 time 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 comroadcom slash investing in Regen Ag. That is, comroadcom slash investing in Regen Ag, or find the link below Welcome to another interview today with the CEO of Tree Range Farms, which focuses on establishing or maintaining a jungle-like habitat that honors the true natural environment of chickens.

Speaker 1: 1:57

When they do this, they not only create a better habitat for chickens, they create a better world. With full disclosure, we invested a small amount to our syndicate in Tree Range Farms. Welcome, regen Ag. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 2:09

I've been looking forward to this one.

Speaker 1: 2:12

for a long time We've met before. We've exchanged emails, I think, a lot of LinkedIn messages as well, and now, finally, we're here together. I mean together, virtually together. Unfortunately, this is not in person at what happened at some point. But the next best thing is definitely here and I would like to unpack, of course, your journey, and I have the feeling this conversation will go in all kinds of directions. So let's start with how did you end up, let's say, reinventing the chicken farm, almost, or Tree Range farm, like. How did you end up focusing on soil so much?

Speaker 2: 2:45

Well, first of all, thanks for this opportunity and also for doing this from across the world, for the partnerships, and it actually has to do with the answer. I am thankful for my ancestors, for the wisdom that they, actually that I inherited from them. I did not reinvent anything. I did not reinvent the poultry. I simply it's reinterpreted ancestral teachings and knowledge and ways of seeing and living within the ecosystems that we are part of. Not with, you know not. We don't work with those ecosystems. We are part of those ecosystems. We are nature ourselves.

Speaker 2: 3:30

And so when you think that way, when you are taught to live that way, to learn and to share the space you live on with all those other organisms, then the only way you would work with livestock, with any animals, with all those creatures, so that you can have sustenance, nutrition, food, as we call it, is by looking at the world from their perspective. It's what we call the Indigenous intellect, the Indigenous ways which others who have discovered quote unquote, discovered this space lately, have named regenerative. But it is an ancestral way. I simply utilized that ancestral way of being in when I came into this space here in the United States, and I mean my life has been dedicated to agriculture and to and to finding food and food security and moving out of poverty and hunger in Guatemala.

Speaker 2: 4:28

And that process leads you into doing things the way we are here at TreeRange Farms and the whole ecosystem on which TreeRange Farms is nestled, within you know, and then using that again framework as a way to define how would you do, in this case poultry. But it isn't just about poultry, it's a blueprint for developing living systems and within that, all we did was I did and with others was literally asked the chicken, what does it want? And then engineer from that perspective so that we would have the best expression of that living system. You know that creature, their best expression, would emerge out of that design, and that design is based on its ancestral habitat, the jungles of Southeast Asia, where it evolved, and we simply recodifying that ancestral knowledge into a modern version where the chicken can be raised anywhere in the world, where a jungle like habitat can be replicated and the rest of it is just the chicken telling us what it needs.

Speaker 1: 5:49

And why the chicken? Why did you decide to ask the chicken and another animal or another tree? I mean, of course we will talk about the trees as part of the system, but why is, let's say, the entry point or the starting point the poultry and the chicken?

Speaker 2: 6:06

Yeah, it truly spoke to us. So here's the process when you think of the biophysics and the chemistry of the planet, which is responsible for all of the energy that is continuously being transformed from the process of photosynthesis to the animals eating the outputs from photosynthesis, turning them molecularly, breaking them down so that microorganisms in the soil, they can then further process that energy, as that energy is continuously processed on the land-based living systems, those three areas on the planetary energy transformation infrastructure are generating life all the way across the chain reaction. So when you think of those three levels as a foundational competitive advantage that we have in order to solve the planetary issues with carbon and the air and food and economies and all of that, you have to realize that the animal part of the three stages of energy transformation, where most of the energy is transformed, the animal part, the livestock, that's where the most efficient transformation of energy is happening. Even a tree that is photosynthesizing a large landscape photosynthesizing takes a long time. The animal comes in in a very short time, within 72 plus hours. It will take that photosynthetic output, chew it down and turn it into meat, hair, manure and pee and move it within another 48 hours into the massive exactly, and so livestock was the entry point for us.

Speaker 2: 7:56

Now, what does it mean as Well? Here's the thing. I'm an immigrant, first generation immigrant in the US. If I were in Guatemala, I would likely have picked Turkey and pigs, because I have access to forests there that I didn't have access to here. Now, within the context of the US, if you look at the socio-economic and ecological frameworks under which the dominant systems operate, there is no entry point for anybody who comes in with no land, no financing, no infrastructure, not even knowing the language, not even having connections, don't know the history, doesn't have neighborhoods, doesn't? I mean? Literally, we are like a duck that knows perfectly well how to swim and all of that, but you drop a duck in the middle of the ocean and you will know what to do, and the water is right there, right Well, I came into this space and the land was there. I understood these things. I needed to learn how these waves and this specific space operated, but the biophysics and chemistry of the planet are the same.

Speaker 2: 9:01

So, as you go into that process of trying to figure out a strategic way to enter the food and ag system but don't want to do it from the extractive, exploitative, destructive ways of the conventional ways, but you want to continue to codify that ancestral indigenous ways into this new space. You got to find an entry point. Now. Livestock, like again, is the entry point. Now, which livestock is the question? And the chicken is the only one that spoke to us. Shortest life cycle yes, one of the most difficult, aggressive, cutthroat sectors of the whole system. But for some of us, especially like in my case, I came from a. You know, I was four years old when the war started in Guatemala, the Civil War and I was. I had been here in the US four years before it ended.

Speaker 2: 9:55

I mean, difficulty and challenges wasn't something that ever said to me yeah, you shouldn't do that because it's hard and so so, yes, I looked at the poultry industry and I knew it was going to be an uphill. There was there's a very low margin and a lot of other barriers in the market, but a beautiful entry point for literally millions over 30 million workers and small farmers in the US who provide the labor. You know, literally they are the reason there is cheap food and yet go home poor and hungry. So I thought of the chicken, not as a livestock, but as a system level, a strategic entry point that would allow us to have one entry level and a massive ripple impact. And so the chicken became the main thing for us, to codify and then design around.

Speaker 2: 10:58

And now, this many years later, we have a whole ecosystem of enterprises, landscape-based agronomics, and you know we can go on and on about everything. We have built on that original idea. But the chicken the chicken being a jungle fowl allows us to tap and optimize all of the three levels photosynthesis, animals and soil and also aligns economically and culturally with all of us immigrants and small farmers in this country and the 700 million farmers across the world that can reorganize themselves. You know, with poultry center thinking, it can reorganize their farm operations. We know that over 70% of the food in the world, according to the UN, is produced by around 700 million plus small farmers with under 25 acres of land, and the chicken is the one that can allow us to organize globally a truly transformational, regenerative and also economically, ecologically and socially high impact new system and then create a blueprint for how you could do anything you want in this world. Like seriously, if we can win at that level, with one thing like this being one of the most challenging sectors, I think everything else is downhill.

Speaker 1: 12:24

That's why the chicken. And so you pick the chicken and then you literally sit down and think and ask the chicken okay, what would an ideal system look like? And it looks very different from your average chicken farm. It looks like not even on the same planet. So when you ask and when you use your indigenous blueprints, you have like what comes out of that, and then you have these processes like that go when you really want to look from, in this case, the animal's perspective. How does it go? How does one go about that?

Speaker 2: 13:38

So there is a process we call indigenization of the mind and then decolonization of methodology and systems. So the indigenization of the mind comes from observation, meditation, sharing of the stories, listening to feedback and then doing it all over again and every time asking the question what does the chicken see? You can answer that by observing the chickens. We can't look at the world from the perspective of the chicken because we are not chickens. I mean, not most of us don't chicken out that easily, but we don't know how many chickens are listening to this.

Speaker 1: 14:18

There might be a few. I know, somebody is listening to this, shout out to Anna, if you're listening to this, while packing eggs. So that comes pretty close to pasture raising, obviously. And so that process, walk us through that. How, in this case, did that go for the humble chicken that we pushed in a whole different direction, let's say, with our industrial extractive ag system and you're really envisioning another, like how do you go about it? And then, of course, we'll talk about what it is now, et cetera, but I'm curious about the process.

Speaker 2: 14:55

Yes. So again, we are born with innate intelligence that allows us to actually see the world pretty much the way every other creature in the planet does, bare, naked, seriously for what it is, not for what we want to turn it into. And I was lucky to be born in extreme poverty, which forced us to see everything as it was because there was no other option in order to survive that innate intelligence that all of us are born with. If you then add the observation, meditation, sharing and all of that, and in this case exactly the process with the chicken, was very simple. I was born in Guatemala, so I was lucky to observe chickens my whole childhood and I already knew quite a lot about their behavior and finding their nests in the wild, all things like that. In Minnesota. It was about, you know, envisioning and talking, seeing the world not only from the chicken but from all of its relatives, what the Native Americans in Lakota call Tioschpeas, their families, and so no species, except for one or two, I think, on the planet live alone. And so who's along? The chicken, the chicken. All of us are organisms that are threatened by both ground and aerial for the most part ground-based threats, so the chicken as well. So, if you think of it, it needs protection at night. It needs protection from the air during the day. I mean, here again I'm talking to you from the perspective of the chicken. So this is what it takes being able to see the world from the vulnerabilities of this species you are working with and from the needs of the species you are working with. It needs food. It's going to have to have it from the ground. It doesn't have a chewing mechanism so it can't rip, it's got to peck. And on and on and on it goes.

Speaker 2: 17:00

And once you catalog all of that, then you observe the chickens doing exactly what they do. And that's what I did for two years. I just literally sat, frequently observed the ranging distance from their barns, noticed that when you move the shelters they get lost, disoriented, and then they get stressed, which then affects the immune system. It's like a chain reaction. So never move the shelter.

Speaker 2: 17:27

That was the first decision we made. So if you're not going to move the shelter, then what's the density of animals that you're going to have there that balances out with a nitrogen uptake, especially of which species? And then you start talking to the native species, and the hazelnut is the first one that spoke to us from here in the Midwest, and the elderberry was next, and then the oaks, and then the maples, and then the hickory nuts, and then all the other species that want to protect the chicken because they need their nitrogen to grow healthy. And so now you start balancing out the nitrogen output, the behavior of the chicken, with the needs of those other species and the needs of the chicken to be protected at night, solid and protected during the day. I'm telling you the code for regenerative thinking right now. That's exactly how you do it.

Speaker 1: 18:18

And so that's amazing on paper, but then where do you start in practice? How do you take that to a working system that also functions in the current, very flawed, but still the current economic system?

Speaker 2: 18:37

So everywhere you go, whether it's corn, soybeans, sugarcane and the tropics, is measured according to units of production. So whether it's a cow with a specific blueprint, land-based blueprint, or corn and soybeans and so on, I mean the US is the acre, the acre is your unit of production. So everything is measured against that inputs, outputs, government subsidies, corporate welfare All of that is measured on the basis of acres that you engage with, all of those different crops. So we needed to get to that as a first step with this new system.

Speaker 2: 19:19

Now, for us, the unit of production was in an arbitrary number, it was the blueprint of a flock. So we took the flocks from 500 chickens to 1,000, 1,500 to 2,000, and even a couple hundred to like a 2,200, and observed them. And that gave us the balance of whether the social behavior, the density, the intensity, the grazing, especially the ranging ability the egg layer, for example, is got a completely different blueprint than the broiler. And so we separated them early on to observe them in separate environments. And at the beginning, for example, I had the sheltered but no fences, no perimeter fences, and I just use flags every day based on the density of ranging.

Speaker 1: 20:12

How far they would walk, basically. Yeah, exactly how far they would range Exactly.

Speaker 2: 20:18

And then we established, okay, it was about 200 to 220 feet from the shelter. At that point they were having very little impact. And then we started we had to like, mow and manage the weeds at that point because they weren't eating all of them. There was always like a 5, 10% of the chickens that would go that far and we probably have kept going. But that didn't make economic sense anymore because now you didn't have the intensity that we needed in order to start codifying the economics of the production unit. And when it was all said and done, for broilers here in the Midwest, especially in the upper Midwest where we get an average of 30 to 38, 40 inches of rain, we have X and Y species, I mean that blueprint then became one and a half acres per production unit, 1,500 broilers per flock, three times a year because we get winter and it gets too cold, and building with no more than one square foot per chicken because they don't sleep in. I mean they only sleep inside, they don't live in the building. So it's the square footage is almost irrelevant, it's just. What is relevant for the building is the sheltering and protective characteristics, not the square footage. Square footage is critical only to a certain point. So they because chicken naturally like to go next to each other anyway, so they're not going to spread like use the space. Most of our barns are actually empty most of the time because they will pile up against each other and just use the corner. So all of that square footage codification that we saw the industrial system doing is like sure, if you're going to pack chickens into a factory, like conditions, or you're going to keep them inside the shelter, yes, you got to do that because you are not raising them according to the natural instance. For us that was not that relevant. Now, how the building is built, that was critical because it represents the shelter, protection from ground predators and so on, and that's how we codified this and that's what became the production unit.

Speaker 2: 22:20

One and a half acres. We started with four paddocks, we rotated them and with four, and then we moved to three. But that was too difficult. It was too much labor, too complicated, because we also had too many fences and we didn't want to use mobile fences because they are. They didn't work. We needed them fixed, and so we needed too many gates and too many potential mistakes, and so we moved to three and then we realized that we only needed two because they really are light animals. They're not like cows or pigs or sheep. You need a different system, like 20 days or plus rotations for sheep and larger for cattle. Well, for chickens, five days, eight days is sufficient, and you rotate them back and forth only about three or four times before they go to the processor anyway, even though we grow slow growth breeds which was another big piece of the process was what breed to use. What breed responds?

Speaker 1: 23:20

better to that kind of environment, all of it.

Speaker 2: 23:23

I mean, I'm telling you, I can only give you the pointers. What went into it was quite extensive observation and management, and all of that when we was, when it was all said and done again. We had one and a half acres divided into two paddocks one building in the center, the shelter, with doors going into each paddock so that they will never go out the same door to the same space, so that they will never trampling on the same pathway. They were flipping the, so we flipped the pathways to take care of viruses or parasites that you know, when the animal is not present anymore, then you break their biological cycles, all kinds of things like that. And that became the production unit One and a half acres, 1500 chickens per flock are sheltered with at least one square foot per chicken.

Speaker 2: 24:11

We now realized that it was too much. We can use 0.7, 0.5 square feet per chicken and it still works. And then the fences, grain and water, and now you can just dedicate yourself to managing it. Throughput and all of that. And this, by the way, many will say listening to this, who are trained in this area say well, how do you deal with the excess nitrogen that they're going to put out in the field, and the key is that there is no such a thing One because the amount of uptake of the perennial crops in the fields is greater than the total nitrogen that the chickens are putting out even at that density. Most of that is due because they mostly defecate at night, and at night they are in the shelters, and that manure from the shelter is moved out to fields where there is no chickens. That answers that question, because I know it's going to come up.

Speaker 1: 25:02

And then for the jungle-like piece. How do you I mean, you said we first looked at, or actually you said first the hazelnut spoke to us, then the berries, and then some of the oak and some others. Then how did that come into the design of this one and a half acres plus building, because you need this perennial species? How did you not pick? I mean, they spoke to you, but how do you design that into a system that makes a lot of sense for you as an operator, but also, obviously, for the jungle creature, which is the chicken?

Speaker 2: 25:38

Yeah, in the past you had a podcast with this fellow, charles Hutchins. You wanted to interview them, but they were talking about the awakened mind and the achiever mind. Well now this is about as good as it gets in terms of balancing out those two, the indigenous I don't call it awakened mind and achiever mind, just let's cat it what it is Colonizer versus indigenous. That's really what it is. The indigenous mind is fully aware of everything going on. The colonizer mind is just trying to get something, achieve something, extract, in other words. And so, in this context, what we're looking for is, as we think about this species, we're looking at the fact that we have to get a return on investment. But you are doing it with a native species, the hazelnut. We look for hybrid hazelnuts that were more productive than the wild versions. So a little bit of improvement there, on the species as well, on the varieties or the cultivars, and then we put them on in rows, because in rows we can expedite the process by which you manage them and you harvest them. So that's to the extent that we are using the colonizer mind. But on the other side, we're looking at the symbiotic relationship and the biome on which that species evolved in partnership with other species. So to figure that out, I went up north many times with the Minnesota and Iowa Conservation Corps and I went into clear cut areas in northern Minnesota and burnt areas to watch what were the clusters. That came back naturally, and you will find berries, especially raspberries, hazelnuts, elderberries, oaks and some maples that's an up there birch and aspen. So I watched that and then we came back and, to the extent that we could, we started mimicking that association of plants in the paddocks and that way we could reconcile the fact that we were stacking enterprises timber, biomass, nut production in chickens, plus large scale grain sprouting systems in the under story and forages. Those were things that we wanted to optimize, and this way we could do that while at the same time achieving some level of mechanical efficiency in the planting, harvesting and then in the management of the chicken, because the chicken needs to run all the way to the feed and water in the morning, and so the rose allows us to create literally chicken runs, and so, anyway, you can see now the pattern. That's how you go about this, so reconciling the fact that you still need to harvest something in the most economical way, but not going all the way, colonizer and overcoming and blocking the indigenous intellect that is trying to balance out the need to harvest something. So this is where we have to start practice.

Speaker 2: 28:53

And you asked before how do we do this? And I said indigenization and decolonization, right? Well, here's an example of how you still think from an indigenous perspective, but you are applying decolonized methodology because it's only partially about efficiencies of the way we understand from an extractive perspective. It's also about balancing out with the natural geo-evolutionary desire of those species to give us all they can. And to give us all they can, they need companions and support, and the chicken and the hazelnut and the elderberry and all of those are how they actually optimize that gift that they have for us.

Speaker 1: 30:53

And what has been the biggest challenge in this, or, if there was like to, when you designed or when you formed, let's say, these systems? Is it feed, is it the processing which we get to, or something else that has been the biggest in that balance between the extractive and the regenerative mind, or between the indigenous and a non-indigenous? What has been a compromise or the biggest challenge you had to solve, for Maybe you're still struggling with that?

Speaker 2: 31:27

We still are, but I think all of us, I mean, if we were to put a common denominator for this whole space. I think that what Will Harris said in another interview that he did with you guys, you know, he said that the only way we're going to have a regenerative future is if consumers start to desire and start to support this kind of systems. And then, in the same sentence or following that, he says but they want, he won't happen. Right Now there's a lot of stuff like short-term memory and so on, but I think that all of this, all of us face the challenge of culture.

Speaker 2: 32:08

The culture of cheap, the culture of fast, the culture of, oh, you are just a farmer, the disregard for the most, one of the most important citizens in any part of the world. That culture, the. You know, in Guatemala nobody wanted to say in school that you were Campesino because that was like so degrading. Right, because if you are not a Campesino anymore, well, you are now better off, you are smarter, you are all these things that a Campesino is not. It's dirty, stupid, it's dumb, it's all of those things, right?

Speaker 2: 32:39

So I think that culture is the biggest barrier all of us encounter right now, because that interferes with the way people invest, interferes with the way people choose their food, the nutrition in the store, and instead of choosing nutrition, they are choosing poison at a very high price, by the way, very expensive poison while here it is very affordable nutrition, right. Yet why do we pick this? That culture is our biggest challenge by far, and then from there you start seeing how it trickles. So, for example, from a scientific perspective, the fact that we have a scientific community that, in the name of feeding the world, has generated over 80 plus thousand chemicals, 100% designed to kill, to destroy, right Instead. And so that culture is also so epic. We are so up against it that when we start talking this way, when we're talking about real science and the real biophysics and chemistry of the planet, and how regenerative ecosystems actually have their own self-generated inputs, you don't need their culture industry to do regenerative agriculture.

Speaker 1: 33:54

Even though they are trying pretty hard to frame that narrative of that, they are definitely part of regenerative future.

Speaker 1: 34:02

It's fascinating, interesting and scary to see at the same time, but it means we're getting somewhere we're getting to a I wouldn't say threat level, but at least we're being noticed, which is a good thing. But it's fascinating the killing focus and so so many rabbit holes here. But have you seen a shift over the last years? If you've been deeply deep into the protein space in that piece of culture, like, have you seen something change over the last years or not?

Speaker 2: 34:36

Oh, significantly. So one indicator of how things are changing is that, you know, beef consumption is going down. Now, there is a lot behind it, of course. It's people blaming the cows for their farts and burps, and people blaming the farmers and the industry for the animal abuse and welfare all of those things right, but it is changing the consumer choice. Beef consumption has been going down, at least here in the US.

Speaker 2: 35:08

Pork is barely staying put. It's not growing. It hasn't been growing. Meanwhile, chicken has been on the rise in double digits, right, and so those are trends we are tracking closely. Now, if we can at least move that into that growth space and instead of the growth being more conventional chicken, we can tap into that growth. Because why is there? The changes in the other sectors are happening because consumers are more concerned about their food and about what is it doing to the climate, right, but they also need high quality and are willing to pay a better price for something that guarantees them, you know, the peace of mind and better health outcomes. Okay, well, that's part of the growth, in that we have watched that change significantly.

Speaker 1: 35:59

Especially since the consumer, or the customer, whatever you want to call it at the end buying your chickens. Has that been quote unquote easy? Has that been relatively straightforward to get a proper price, of course, for the work you put in?

Speaker 2: 36:19

So far, so good. Not convoir, as they say, and it continues. It continues to grow. Now, of course, once people taste the chicken, they know this is good chicken, it's worth the price anyway. So to get them to that point is hard. But we know that because of the feedback. People who have said I have eaten chicken my whole life, this is the first time I tasted the real chicken you know especially the older folks who had good chicken in their childhood and remember that. And now they are like, wow, this is like chicken used to taste like Now. Those are the responses that we are tracking, because once you have that, then the story spreads. Then they attack to the neighbor, then they attack to the shopper next, then they do all kinds of things and it spreads. And that spread is what we are tracking and capitalizing on. Now the problem is that so is the industry. They are looking at those trends and those changes and then going out there and calling whatever they have regenerative so they can put it into those shelves and fool the consumer. The good thing is that once people have tasted the quality of chicken that comes from an actual regenerative system, it's so different that I think there is a point of differentiation and we're gonna keep fighting for that.

Speaker 2: 37:44

Because you asked about barriers, I mean those are some of the most critical barriers. We cannot produce cheap food, nobody can. It's just that we have this illusion that you can. The challenges that you know and Will Harris also talked about this in many other farmers talk about the risk associated with what we're doing.

Speaker 2: 38:08

It's only perceived because conventional systems are actually more risky. They present the real risk. But how do we deal with that risk? What we loaded onto taxpayers Right now, as taxpayers, all we collectively pay for the risk of conventional systems. Now, regenerative systems are less risky, but we have to pay for that risk ourselves because there is no systems in place to socialize the cost and pocket the profits, which is what we do in conventional systems. We socialize the high cost and risk and we pocket the profits. Well, in regenerative, we pay the real cost and we pay for the risk, and because of that, the only thing we have is more wealth, not necessarily more profits. And so that wealth and that wealth management and distribution is actually the key antidote.

Speaker 2: 39:03

Because we are talking about barriers, get a remember we focus and concentrate. We are specialized in strategies to overcome those barriers. That's what my life has been about and that's what we are in this business, because we believe we can overcome those barriers, come out, you know, successful on the other side and expand this space. We're talking about that is, changing and feeding it with the real stuff and hopefully, as we do that, the culture, our biggest barrier, will start shifting and then tip over, you know, at least for the next three or four generations, before people forget all about it again and realize that our fields are so rich that they can be extracted upon really quick, which you know. I know it's a pessimistic thing to say, but that's what we have done. We go one way, all the way, and then we come back all the way as a society.

Speaker 1: 39:54

And it's back and forth.

Speaker 2: 39:56

Exactly. I just hope that we learn this time and that you know this this sixth food system or a potential existential level of destruction we are watching, that it teaches us something and that we don't swing as much going forward and that we don't swing away from regenerative as we accomplish what we are here to do.

Speaker 1: 40:21

And so it might be a good moment to look at what tree range is now, because you didn't stop at an acre and a half, definitely. You started to build a company around that and basically said, okay, how do we use this as a tool in many cases to spread wealth, to create more equality, to create an access point for people without any wealth or without any large acreage, let's say, to get into the regenerative agriculture and food space. So how does it look? If somebody asks you now in at a dinner party, let's say in a few sentences, what is the tree range, farms? How do you, how do you answer and how do you describe it? We're talking the end of 2023. Just for for record. Depending on when you listen to this, it might has shifted, change grew a lot, etc. But we're talking the end of 2023.

Speaker 2: 41:15

Yeah. So in this last year we have been able to structure the company for future growth, basically building all, the, all, the foundational infrastructure any business needs. The difference is we have built that infrastructure in this business to aggregate, to brand, market and distribute the output of an ecosystem of businesses rather than as a single standalone chicken business. And that is the biggest difference, right? So, even though our role is concentrated, our role is is the aggregation, the, the, the contracting, branding, marketing, aggregation, distribution of the outputs of the system, with chicken at the forefront, because that's the first output that the system delivers.

Speaker 2: 42:03

But then, remember, there is hazelnuts that are already coming through, there is vegetables, specialized vegetables, that are coming out of the fields, with the poultry, manure is used and we don't let it go. We capture everything because that is where the wealth creation and return on investment is centered on, it's not on the chicken. The chicken is how we make the business case. Now, the other part of it is that, as we build the business ecosystem, we also have a nonprofit organization. That nonprofit provides all the services to the farmers and including training, access to capital, negotiating with foundations for investments on the grassroots, organizing, governance, and all of that Plus. The nonprofit also owns the poultry processing facility, which is where a lot of the labor abuses happens in the conventional system. We chose not to put that into a private entity. Rather, we use the nonprofit so that the workers can run the operations and set the working standards and so on.

Speaker 1: 43:09

So as we stand at, the end of 2020, that's such a fundamentally different way of organizing your processing. Start with the chickens and, of course, there will be other processing of other products coming out of. The system is owned by a nonprofit, is run by a nonprofit, to avoid all the abuses that has been part of the, let's say, for-profit chicken processing. If anybody has not visited one of those facilities, I would urge you to do that, not because it's good or nice or interesting, but it's just a hard lesson of what humanity is capable of doing. It will probably cure you of ever buying a KFO chicken or a factory chicken ever again, but you chose deliberately to do that in a different way and to put it in a nonprofit. Do you remember how that came about or when was that moment to decide? Okay, it's gonna be in the for-profit or it's gonna be in the nonprofit.

Speaker 2: 44:07

Yeah, it was always in the nonprofit side. In fact, the company was originally supposed to be a subsidiary of the nonprofit independent, but a subsidiary because, I mean, we're not naive, we knew that every business around us was not making it, and so to go into that space for profit as a starting point didn't seem like a good idea to begin with. But there was an opportunity to do a hybrid, and technically Triminge Farms is a hybrid by default, even though we are a for-profit company and we're taking investments and all of that, and it is structured to quantify and to call that integrity. We have the other half of the ecosystem, or more than half of the ecosystem is under the nonprofit structure intentionally, and so the intention was to achieve the triple bottom line without having the external pressures to negotiate downwards, especially on labor and working conditions for people. I mean here, listen, we have achieved arguably the highest animal welfare, because we are not defining whether these chickens are happy or not. They are simply in their best environment that the world could offer them, and if that is not the highest animal welfare, then there isn't such a thing. Right, one and two. Why would we do that and then turn around and be part of exploiting immigrant families in the United States, which provide almost 100% of the labor that the conventional food system uses, to create the illusion that there is such a thing as cheap food. Why would we do that to chickens and do the opposite to people and children? That is the big question. We cannot be part of something like that. It's simply not regenerative if you don't include the whole system, not just the practices on the land, and so it under our nonprofit structure. It has community based, grassroots governance and ownership, and that changes the conditions. Now it may still not do everything perfect, but it is miles, light years ahead of the game in terms of building the conditions for a regenerative food system in the future. So that was never under question.

Speaker 2: 46:22

The question is which parts can be done under a for-profit, completely independent, which parts can be done under a hybrid structure and which ones have to be 100% nonprofit. And in this case it's hybrid. But at the end also, the governing system that we are installing for the whole regenerative poultry ecosystem, under which regeneration I mean tree range farms, will be part of the regenerative poultry council. That would be the maximum authority, and that authority will be represented will be made out of representatives from all of the different affinity group sectors, enterprise sectors in the system and tree range farms will participate. We will have a seat in that space, but it wouldn't be the decider, so that the farmers also have a seat.

Speaker 2: 47:13

The grain growers, the poultry growers, the poultry processing facility workers, the nonprofit partners. Everybody sits in that council and then we collectively decide on how the wealth is created, whether we launch a new for-profit where we invite somebody from the outside, versus growing the for-profit from within the ecosystem. All of those decisions now become part of this truly regenerative framework. That's where it all settles. That's where we actually decide. Are we regenerating for real or are we just calling what we do regenerate for the sake of improving our brand presence or face lifting our company? That's when the rubber hits the road. So far, we are seeing very little of that anywhere else.

Speaker 1: 48:05

And so just to go back, because I interrupted you on where we stand, or where you stand at the end of 2023, you mentioned processing. Then we went down a tiny bit into that rabbit hole. But where do you stand? You spend most of this year building the foundations and then I interrupted you, so please take it from there.

Speaker 2: 48:23

Right. So at this point, tree range farms is in the middle of the seed stage race. One year into the startup stage, we have built sufficient markets for the current production, focused on the Twin Cities metro area, the Twin Cities in Minnesota, minneapolis and St Paul, and then the surrounding markets. We started building the national partnerships to take our poultry into new markets while we build new regions. We completed the processes with the Regenta Culture Alliance for the training of the systemic training of new farmers, including the, you know, perfecting the online platform and they and built the main demonstration and training farm, which is my farm at least up to like 60% of its total capacity. So it's now operational and we have again built all the structures so that we can hit 2024 with a solid network of farmers producing chicken, suppliers of all of the raw materials in place, embedded markets that are now built that now start the. We start the year with those markets already established rather than having to build them throughout the year, and then from there we can expand, as the financing capacity, the cash flows and all of those other very, very straightforward business business challenges are going to allow us to do. So that's what we are right now. We feel very strong. We've, we've. We don't feel very. We are not overconfident, but we are very. We are self assured because we have built a team that is top notch. Three of us right now are running, are running the company, and when we talk to people, everybody thinks we are like six or 10 people. Right, the Regenta Viaculture Alliance is now in three range farms. We're coordinating day in and day out to ensure that as we grow the company, so does the farm supply system and that is done resiliently, so that, so that we are not going to be whacked by the market swings and a lot of those other challenges we know we're going to face. We're trying to anticipate at this point a lot more of those challenges so that we can prepare for them.

Speaker 2: 50:41

This year we also completed our baseline lifecycle assessment for the chicken. We completed our our first ESG. By the way, we scored on a investor grade ESG score. We doubled the industry average. So we are positioned to lead in the ESG space as well, and that gives us an opportunity to potentially position the company to enter new conversations with different kinds of investors into the as we move into the series A race after we're done with this seed stage and also completed a few partnerships that that brought in the capital to continue their research and development so that we can actually improve on the further.

Speaker 2: 51:28

On the production side, I mean, I touched on some of the innovations we have implemented. We are not even 50% done. We have a lot of new innovations that we're bringing into the poultry production model. I'm not going to disclose them right now, but a copy to talk about it as we implement them in the in the coming years. So that's what we are right now. It's very exciting. Again, we're not overconfident because we got a lot of challenges ahead of us, but we are very excited, energized, very self-assured and confident in the context that we have what it takes to at least give it our best and if the market response, investors respond and our, our partnerships hold, 2024 is going to be a very exciting year for us.

Speaker 1: 52:16

And let's say we're talking the end of next year, so we're talking the end of 2024. What is a good metric or a good? What would the success look like? Is it the amount of chickens, the amount of acres, the amount of new farmers or something completely different amount of vegetables, like what would be something you look at. That is a successful. That I would go, and in the case you would call a successful year. We talked December 2024, in 12 months or so.

Speaker 2: 52:43

Yeah, first, first indicator of success. We'll still be in business.

Speaker 1: 52:48

We can still talk. Yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 2: 52:50

Well, I mean, talk is cheap, right, but if we're doing our best I mean we I have no doubt we will be in business, but that will be the best indicator of success. Second, we will, we will have at least a you know set up the foundation to double the throughput of the company, meaning pounds of chicken going through the system.

Speaker 1: 53:12

That means doubling as an idea like how, how much are we talking about now and what would doubling look like?

Speaker 2: 53:20

So so let's differentiate capacity versus actual right. So in a year you achieve a certain amount. So we we didn't sell as many products this year, but we now have secured enough markets for one and a half million roughly of sales just in the Twin Cities. Well, with the same in 2024, we'll have produced about 70,000 chickens.

Speaker 2: 53:44

Right, yeah, yes, so around 70,000 chickens that we would have produced and have and will have established the capacity to move into 2025 with capacity to around 250,000 chickens. That those are the metrics we're going to be held up against and by the end of 2024, we need to have achieved one and a half million dollars of sales, at least to reflect on on this year's efforts and whatever we do in 2024 and have built markets so that we can, we can secure to 2025 into the next million dollars. And then after that, we have been, in fact, we're in the middle right now, about to finish a couple of weeks, a high level consultation with Kearney I don't know if you know this global consulting firm is one of the leading. I happen to have an Ashoka fellowship, as you know, and that Ashoka fellowship brought us this, this services from Kearney International, pro Bono for to plan the companies next five years, at least the next three years, with projection for two more years, and within that we'll be finishing answering the questions for 2026, 27, in, you know, in fine, tuning those projections, but by you know, as we go forward, our, our first benchmark is two million pounds of chicken, roughly 500,000 chickens being produced, processed and marketed through the company.

Speaker 2: 55:21

That's our next benchmark and then from there we'll go to one million, to two million, to five million and to 10 million, which is one regional blueprint, and at that point we'll be at around 250 farms. Right now we are 11 farms. At the end of next year we should be at around 25 farms, with more farmers in training to go into 2025. And so on. I mean this is the, this is the, these are the stepping stones going forward here.

Speaker 1: 55:50

And you are a listener of the podcast, so you know I like to ask these, these questions. What is? And we've actually quite a few years ago so we weren't on stage together but RFSI, the region, food and food systems investment forum. We met there. Let's say we're on stage at the next one, maybe in Brussels, maybe in in Denver, and we're in a room full of investors. What do you? Without giving investment advice, obviously, but what would you like them to remember from our talk? Of course they're going to be super interested in chicken. They might see protein, protein slightly different. They are not only going to look into into grass fat and grass finished beef, but they actually say, wow, chickens is, is a super interesting product. But let's, let's park that they're excited. But what would be the main message you would like to, to be able to, for them to walk away with, to, to plan sort of a seed in there in their mind? What would be, what would be your message to, to give to them?

Speaker 2: 56:47

To see regenerative for what it actually is. If there is regenerative outcomes, then that system is regenerative. Whether you call it regenerative or not is not relevant to is actually, you know, put you know, potential regeneration, regent, regent of capacity. And here is what we offer, or what we want to talk about. When you look at a system that is designed as ours, you are de-risking the business side to the greatest extent that is possible by utilizing natural systems. One you de-risk the main business, in this case chicken. So you invest in the chicken knowing that you are investing in an ecosystem. The ecosystem is what makes the return on investment possible, not because you are extracting on the farmers that produce the chicken or the company, but because you are capturing the wealth of an ecosystem, and that wealth is much greater than the money that we put in at the beginning. That only materializes when true regenerative principles are applied, and that's what we are inviting you to do Now.

Speaker 2: 57:51

Right now, of course, we are launching a poultry center business, but just as we speak, right now, we have garlic production that is starting to increase exponentially because of the poultry manure coming out. Now that garlic is being produced with almost no inputs. I mean, the cost of the input is the cost of feed for the chickens. To give you an idea, to plant an acre of garlic, you need around $20,000 worth of seed and around $6,000 to $7,000 worth of fertilizer to make it actually come out healthy. But we don't have either, because we built a seed bank that we are now spreading to the farmers as part of an internal system, and the poultry manure covers 100% of the inputs. That is what I want to point you to.

Speaker 1: 59:04

It's really a mindset shift.

Speaker 2: 59:07

Yes, it's a mindset shift and then let's together capture the wealth of this ecosystem and then later distribute it. I don't call it return on investment. I call it wealth management systems where all of us participate in deciding how that wealth is then managed. And yes, you can call your part return on investment if you want to, but now you will be part of one, changing the world. Not losing your money in fact making some, if that's what is important to you but also becoming part of the solution and stop being part of the problem. So it's doable. It's so tangible. We have demonstrated we can do it. We just need the partnerships now to be able to move it to the next stage.

Speaker 1: 59:53

And so take us to because we've talked before as well and I think you shared some of your struggles or interesting conversations, let's say, with the financial world. How has this message landed in general? I mean, until now, how much of the financial, even the impact world, has still an extractive mindset compared to an indigenous regenerative to focus on wealth, not necessarily return on investment. Like, how has been fundraising going and how much of an educational journey, let's say, you've been, instead of how frustrating has it been? Sorry, let's get to the chase. How frustrating has it been so far?

Speaker 2: 1:00:36

Well, when you operate from the perspective I do, frustration is something you can afford. You simply share. You share with the most abundance that you can find within. You work hard and then those who come along and partner with you, you give thanks for them. You ask for the energy of the universe to flow through them so others will listen.

Speaker 2: 1:01:05

And as we do that, every day we are encountering the people who are making these investments and moving in this direction, and I don't think of the ones that haven't as lost causes. I believe that every time we have an opportunity to have even the slightest conversation, a seed is planted. It will eventually grow into something. Now that's the work we do. It's the regenerative finance.

Speaker 2: 1:01:34

I work in regenerative finance not because, necessarily, I'm taking my own personal capital although I did some of that for tree-range farms but because we are all part of building a system that regenerates the mindset, you know, ensures the mindset and shifts the paradigms so that we can achieve what we want. When we do that, things will change. For when you wake up in the morning with that intention and you dedicate the energy of your day to that outcome and move that energy, it does have a mathematical certainty that it will happen. That's the world I live in and that's why there is no space for pessimism or frustration or anything. Now. It doesn't mean that we are succeeding yet, so we still got to do a lot more work. I just see it as a challenge to be tackled. It's an opportunity to grow in my own world as we help others grow on their own.

Speaker 1: 1:02:35

And you already mentioned something on culture before, but it might not be the answer to this question, which is the magic wand question. If you could change one thing overnight, what would it be?

Speaker 2: 1:02:49

Yeah, for starters, I don't wish anyone to die or anything like that. Okay, but we need to kill the colonizer, meaning the spirit of colonizer within us. If we could just balance it out with the indigenous intellect and an indigenous capacity we have, if we could at least balance those two, we would see the other 95% of opportunities out there that we squander when we focus on extraction and exploitation and destruction. A magic wand to change that on every person on the planet will flip tomorrow, the way we see and interact with the living things on the planet. In a couple of years from now. We would have healed the earth and be happy again.

Speaker 2: 1:03:42

If I had a magic wand, that's what I would put it. I wouldn't put it in. I know people who probably I heard people say well, I wish for $3 million. No money in this planet is going to change anything if our insight, who we are, doesn't change, and that is fundamentally the problem we have. It's who we are right now, who we have become as we evolve in this planet. It's no longer. It's more now equivalent to the behavior of viruses than to the behavior of a rational thinking, sophisticated mind.

Speaker 1: 1:04:19

And this is a rabbit hole, but how far? I mean you grew up in a very different context than, let's say, in a city center or in a financial center, or in a big city et cetera. How difficult do you see, or have you seen, that, let's say, for people that are not from indigenous? I mean, we're all from indigenous background. Maybe it took a few more generations ago. Let's say, just asking for a friend, aka myself, grew up in the city center of Rotterdam. How do I flip that switch? Or how difficult is it? How far deep do I have to go?

Speaker 2: 1:04:58

If you're willing to engage just a bit of the indigenous intellect, they will tell you this. You and I, and every living creature on this planet, are indigenous to this planet. Nobody is not. We're made of the elements of the earth where primarily carbon hydrogen oxygen like 97.5 percent, like okay. We're indigenous to the planet. The question is do we understand what that means when we go around and live our daily lives? That's the first question and that's the first thing we got to reconcile with. And then, after that, let's look at what we yearn for. You may be from the city, but why are you here sitting talking about this? You may be from anywhere you want we are fundamentally.

Speaker 2: 1:05:48

When we start touching that indigenousness that we are born with, it starts to speak to us and it gets louder and louder and louder and eventually, for people like you, it literally forces you to make a shift in your life because you are no longer happy with the status quo. Now, that's the way we do this. Everyone out there ask that. Feel that. Go within and talk to your indigenous self you were born with. Bring that.

Speaker 2: 1:06:19

You know, I call it the green man. I grew up in the shadow of green man. That's the name of my book and in the shadow of green man, is intended to excite that internal force that we all carry with us and we suppress it in the name of the pursuit of happiness, which is coded in the pursuit of individualism, which results in mental illness, physical illness and spiritual poverty. When we do that, those things become manageable and become solvable, including the climate crisis. That is how powerful we are as creatures, as living systems, and we just we just got to tap into it and then make the changes that we need and you will see it, just like you did many others have.

Speaker 2: 1:07:04

I have never had to change much because I was born, like I say. I was born naked and the rest of it is profit, so there is no. I mean, for a lot of folks who, again you were pointing out, you know you're born outside of the so-called natural environment. I mean, there's no such a place on the planet. Everything is natural, but but if you feel disconnected, you some of the emptiness is coming from the fact that you yearn to be connected again, because you are primarily a creature of the planet, indigenous to this planet, and he wants to be, you want to be, and we die with that hold when we don't pursue it in our lifetime. You got an opportunity to do that.

Speaker 1: 1:07:47

Which is potentially a perfect entity to view. But there's still a few more questions I would love to ask and get your perspective on. It's a terrible bridge, I know listeners, I'm sorry, but actually there's a good bridge here. We're both inspired, I think, relatively quite often by by John Kemp, and I like to ask a question he likes to ask as well, in a slightly different form what do you believe to be true about regenerative agriculture that others don't?

Speaker 2: 1:08:15

The true regenerative concept is actually defined by a way of thinking, of learning, of being, of relating, a way of living, and those things are codified on how we relate, how we relate to each other and how we relate to all of the living systems of the planet. When we lose touch of those relationships, we lose touch of our reality and of our own identity as a living as part of that living system. That is the foundation of regenerative. If we can't do that, we will start seeing that, you know, we start seeing this white washing where watching happening right now, where people are calling products regenerative or a farm regenerative, when there is no such a thing. Only ecosystems have the capacity to regenerate, because regenerative is about life. It's not about practices on the land or about a product. It's about life itself, and life itself thrives on building relationships.

Speaker 2: 1:09:19

Where there is no relationships, we become brain dead, literally, and we suffer the consequences. So this is where we are being challenged right now. Can we, are we able to resist the colonization of this concept and embrace it for what it is, which is the restore, the restoration of the or the regeneration of the relationships across the living systems, so that we can again balance things out, all the way from the carbon in the atmosphere to the emotional you know the daily emotions that we go through that result either in imbalance, that we call mental illness and all kinds of other consequences of that disbalance, imbalance. And are we able to do that? Now? Regeneration is about regenerating all of those, all of our capacity to do that, and that's about relationships. When we do that, everything else starts to add up and start to connect again.

Speaker 1: 1:10:18

Which is interesting because I think it's something John Kamp also likes to say. It's about restoring relationships and this is a bit of a shift, but I still would love to hear your perspective. You might put it all in chickens, but I'm still curious what you would do with a billion dollar investment fund if you would be in charge and, let's say, tomorrow morning you wake up. Could be very long term, could be, but it has to be put to work and ideally come back in some shape or form. But what would you do if you'd be in charge of a lot of money? Because even in today's world, with inflation etc, this is still a lot of money to be put to work. But I think we're going to see the interest from players. As soon as more and more people in institutions wake up to the potential of regeneration and true regeneration, we're going to see a lot of interest. So I would love to keep asking that question, because we're going to get those questions and already are getting those questions.

Speaker 2: 1:11:14

So what would you do? Yeah, and I do want a few billion dollars if you can find them, and this is what I'll do. There's three stages of which capital can become regenerative. The first one is to find spaces that need to be fed again, brought back to health. And so, if we're talking about focusing and, by the way, you can't throw enough money at this the problem is quite big. So I will focus on a specific area geographical where the impact can be optimized within a concrete space so that we can see regenerative outcomes, because you can't do that in a fragmented kind of investment.

Speaker 2: 1:11:59

Concentrate yeah, exactly, concentrate, focus on restoring that region to health with that original money, because what happens is, once health is restored, the ecosystem turns that capital, that natural capital, over and over and over. You will have a guaranteed return on investment if you focus the first investments on restoring the space to health, if you feel like and you balance it out, of course, because you need the landscape, health and you need some basic infrastructure, but those become necessary critical things that, if they are not present at all, you first try to bring in from another place leverage, leverage, leverage, leverage and focus the new capital as much as possible to bring the space back to health, so that its capacity to regenerate becomes the foundation of how that capital reproduces for many, many generations, seven generations. The rest of it is infrastructure. Others should put up the infrastructure and, if they want, okay, then take a little bit of that original capital and put it into infrastructure. But leverage, and the only way to leverage it permanently is to focus it on ecosystems, health. The rest of it will happen because of it.

Speaker 1: 1:13:23

So where would you start? Where would you focus? You would focus on one region If you had to pick one. Of course, this is a very tricky and weird question, but what would you do? If you were forced in that position, let's say what would you do?

Speaker 2: 1:13:36

I mean we already have a blueprint for regenerate the poultry. Would it be the Midwest?

Speaker 1: 1:13:39

poultry. Or would it be somewhere else or another, Like what comes to mind first?

Speaker 2: 1:13:45

Yeah, with that kind of money we could deploy the southern region, which would allow us to balance out the fact that it's cold here in the winter. So it's cold here in the winter but it's cooler in the south. When it's warm here in this part of the world, it's too hot in the south. So this will balance out that. And then the east coast, southern part of the east coast, the southeast region of the US for the eastern seaboard supply systems, and then northern California, northwest or the northwest US for the west part, because that's where the water and the ecology is more forgiven and literally easier to regenerate. And then we'll launch those four regions and within those four regions we'll create the code for launching a seven and a half plus potential billion dollar industry sector.

Speaker 2: 1:14:37

Focus on poultry, regenerating the landscape, the water systems, the grain supply system which is directly affected by the poultry, and we will have a ripple impact that it will be in excess. What I estimated way back was within five and 12 times what you put up front because of the way the system churns the capital. And five times is if we don't aggregate all of the enterprise sectors, just the core. But the poultry system affects up to 12 enterprise sectors per region, which can turn capital around to multiplying effects of up to 12 times.

Speaker 1: 1:15:17

Actually that's a good point. On the feet, which we haven't really talked about or double clicked on, what do you tell to people that say, but it's better to eat the grains directly instead of, let's say, passing it through which is not really the right term but through an animal? What's your response to the feed conversion ratio and partly the plant-based or let's eat feed directly instead of feeding it to an animal discussion?

Speaker 2: 1:15:49

You interfere with the actual cycles of energy transformation. The feed conversion rate of our livestock is actually a mind-created concept. It's a colonizing concept. The feed conversion rate was determined to whether we can extract value out of the chicken, not whether we are efficiently transforming energy. So when you look at energy transformation as the foundational function of an ecosystem rather than the production of output, then you get the most output and the most efficient energy conversion. When you have to look at conversion rates, you don't look at the livestock, you look at the ecosystem conversion rates and you always get more energy out than you put in. You will never get that if you harvest the energy too early for human consumption. You got to let it flow and you got to let it through its cycles and then we can harvest the most energy output out of that transformation process. So if you are a colonizer, you look at the feed conversion rate and the return on investment short term.

Speaker 2: 1:16:56

If you are looking at it from an indigenous perspective, you look at the life cycles and yes, but in order for that to be effective, you would have to eat the grain straight out of the field. Now, are you willing to do that? Well then, awesome. And also poo, pee and poop right in the field too. Otherwise, let the animals do that part and focus on the next stage, where the actual energy has been transformed for us to take in without you know. Think of it this way the protein you take out of the chicken versus the food that you bring out of the already processed grain.

Speaker 2: 1:17:37

Now we can do that mechanically, physically, or put it through the animals and harvest the food ready to eat. Now, why would I not want the food ready to eat, instead of picking up oats out of the field and chewing them up and, you know, cutting up my tongue and my lips? I mean literally. That's what animals do for us. So we tend to get into these rabbit holes where we don't actually see things for what they are, and that's why I'm always saying the indigenous, engage the indigenous intellect and innate intelligence and see the whole picture before we make statements about what is better and what is not.

Speaker 1: 1:18:17

And I think that's a perfect end to this conversation. I want to thank you so much, reginaldo, for the work you do and for coming on here to share, and, of course, we're listening to the podcast every now and then Greatly appreciated, and I'm looking forward to check in and see, first of all, very much hoping and very confident that the company will still be around whenever we check in if that's in 12 months or beyond that, but you never know and then checking in on the progress, checking in on what you've learned, what you've seen and how this ecosystem has been blossoming and regenerating. So thank you so much for coming here and I don't think and I hope it's not the last one.

Speaker 2: 1:18:57

Well, thank you, and just the final clarification. I am not advocating that you eat meat. I'm advocating that we see the whole picture and there is a lot of photosynthetic outputs that are designed for us fruits, nuts, vegetables and so on and, honestly, we don't even have to eat meat. It's just that we do, and if we're going to do that, let's do it responsibly. So, thanks so much for the time here, for the opportunity to bring these stats into this new audience.

Speaker 1: 1:19:33

Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. For the show notes and links we discussed in this episode, check out our website Investing in RegenerativeEgrCulturecom. Forward slash posts. If you liked this episode, why not share it with a friend or give us a rating on Apple Podcasts? That really helps. Thanks again and see you next time.