287 Sebastiaan Huisman - Farmers die slowly

A conversation with Sebastiaan Huisman, large-scale organic farmer and advisor, about consulting on many large farm transitions, including the British royal family and working with Wildfarmed. Why is he so optimistic about biodynamic, holistic, and regenerative farming, and why does it all start with children?

Picking apples on an biodynamic farm at age 12 led to setting up one of the largest biodynamic farms in Europe, almost 2000 hectares in Poland, on very very poor soil, Sebastian had an incredible journey from that Dutch farm to the creation of one of Europe's largest biodynamic farms. As he shares his story, we'll uncover the transformative impact of regenerative agriculture, not just on the soil but also on the very heart of the community. 

---------------------------------------------------

Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits on www.gumroad.com/investinginregenag. 

Support our work:

• Share it
• Give a 5-star rating
• Buy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture

----------------------------------------------------

More about this episode on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/sebastiaan-huisman.

Find our video course on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course.

----------------------------------------------------

The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

https://foodhub.nl/en/opleidingen/your-path-forward-in-regenerative-food-and-agriculture/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

Taking apples on a biodynamic farm at age 12 led to setting up one of the largest biodynamic farms in Europe almost 2,000 hectares in Poland on very, very poor soils. Now consulting many large farm transitions, including the royal family, and working with wild farmed. Why is he so optimistic about biodynamic or holistic and regenerative farming and why it all starts with children? This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast. Investing as if the planet mattered, when 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, NRC, grower, food, what we eat, where 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 Regenerac. That is, comroadcom slash investing in Regenerac, or find the link below.

Speaker 1: 2:00

Welcome to another episode today with large scale organic farmer and advisor. Welcome, Sebastian Hi. And to start with the personal, we already had a pre-chat and I think there's so much to explore which we're going to do. This is going to require a few rabbit holes I think we're going to fall into. First of all, a shout out to Stein of Wurschrappe, who introduced us and definitely was right when he said this is going to be an interesting conversation. But to start with, a personal question, because I heard a bit about your backstory but I think it's fascinating to share here with our audience. How did you end up focusing your career and most of your awake hours basically on soil?

Speaker 2: 2:40

Oh, that starts fairly early. When I was 12 years old, I started to work on a biodynamic farm in Holland, in the Netherlands, because to make some money it was about 10 bucks a day for my surfing carrier, what I didn't follow up, but I'm still windsurfing. So there I got the enthusiasm for farming and soil.

Speaker 1: 3:06

And then, was it by accident that it was a biodynamic farm, or was that the nearest place to go to, or was it a deliberate choice?

Speaker 2: 3:17

I have no idea. I didn't make so much choices. I think it was like that. A neighbor have a friend of me. His father was working on an institute for handicapped people and they have a little farm and so we come in contact with them and start to pick apples and harvesting vegetables, and that was a biodynamic farm. So I have no idea.

Speaker 1: 3:42

And then you chose to actually go to farming school and not to continue windsurfing or anything else career finance or lawyer, etc. Why? Because many people, I think, have done the odd summer job on a farm somewhere, but then many choose not to go down that route. What made you choose, or fall in love with, farming?

Speaker 2: 4:04

I don't know, my family is more doctors or the medical and a marketer and such people, I don't know. I feel really well outside, to be outside, to work with nature, to work with animals, and somehow I never fit in the normal school system. So I make my high school and then I start studying agriculture, but I didn't take that so much. I was most of the time there was a lot of wind is blowing and we was outside and not in the school. So I didn't fit in the system. Maybe that was a bit my problem. My luck, I have no idea.

Speaker 1: 4:48

And even though this was a biodynamic focused school, which is already was at the time and still is relatively outside, quote, unquote the system. And then, how did you launch your career? What was the next step after agriculture school to get your hands on larger farms?

Speaker 2: 5:10

Yeah, I start with my work to manage the cowherd of quite a big farm in Holland this is from Piet van Eisendorne because he was breeding angler cows. It was a special breed and so I did it. I think maybe one year, something like that and then we together decided it's better if I have my own entrepreneurship, because I was always focusing on do it better and change the system and he didn't want to change anything. I think it's still like it is for 28 years ago at his farm. But it was a lovely guy, a lovely period and he had about 1000 hectares of nature places where he cut grass and so on. So I learned that bigger skill farming. And then I make a half year of learning processing milk, because I thought it was helpful to know that it wasn't easy for a farmer to stand in a cheesery and with sunshine outside, but it was.

Speaker 2: 6:19

I did it and I loved it somehow, because she can make so much beautiful products out of milk. It's incredible, it's really incredible. And then I could rent a farm in Germany, so in Holland it was all.

Speaker 1: 6:35

As one can. How does that happen?

Speaker 2: 6:41

I worked on that. I made a practicum, a practice there on that farm, and then they called me and asked me if I don't want to rent it. So and then I was 23 years old, A bit crazy, and it was also a bit sad story because I have my best friend, which I once, to start that farm. We have an accident, a car accident, a heavy car accident on the day we want to sign the contract and he gets handicapped and I have nothing and I continue and he is now on the farm, not handicapped, not in a heavy way, but he is somehow not able to work alone. So that was a sad story at the beginning of the start of the farm. But it was cheap, so I didn't have a high rent and I have about 150 hectares. I could borrow cows or friends of me and I said to them okay, I give you back your cow if the first car was adult.

Speaker 2: 7:50

So it was a really slow start and I made a lot of experience there. So it was one guy who starts a dairy but he gets bankrupt, so he almost took me with him in the deep and then I have to start myself with cheesery and everything. So it was not an easy road but I think it was a very important part of my life to do it all myself, to milk the cows for seven years, eight days, to make cheese, to work on that quite a difficult climate with a difficult soil, and we made it somehow. But then I started my breeding project for long-life fertility cows on a natural base. So that means something like we want to have a very functional exterior, like in nature. For a cow to run like a horse, you have to be able to run like some horse, so it has to be really, really good in his body shape to produce milk without any problems. So and that's quite a success that there are about 300 farmers where we help them to breed their own breed, to bring the power back to the farmer and not to be depend on the breeding industry.

Speaker 2: 9:12

And in 2005, I think it was 2004, 2005, dr Manfred Klett asked me if I don't want to go to Poland to support a project that just started. But it wasn't that successful. It was quite a mess. It is a 2000 hectare farm. We bought it with the foundation, so the value of the soil is neutral. There's this unsellable. The statutes say it has to be biodynamic or organic.

Speaker 1: 9:44

Antispeculations.

Speaker 2: 9:45

Yes, exactly, and that was very important for me because my experience was on that farm. I rented.

Speaker 1: 9:51

I was going to ask you what happened to the rent.

Speaker 2: 9:52

The owner didn't want yeah, nobody wants to invest in my farm. So the roof I was investing under it. But the roof wasn't that good, the water didn't come in. So that was my experience. I said, okay, never, ever, I will rent a farm for a private person anymore. So the next step was have a foundation. The ownership is owns itself, so it's owns itself. The whole entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship belongs to itself. And that was the starting point. I think it was quite a good starting point. But we have, of course, in Poland after the Second World War. Then the Russian come, they drain us all the water away, all the landscape elements away. They deported the people was living there and bringing our credence back there. So they, they rooted the people into the area. So you can imagine how it looks.

Speaker 1: 10:56

It wasn't a happy place.

Speaker 2: 10:58

There wasn't a happy place and there wasn't a lot of humans in the people and there wasn't a lot of humans in the soil and there wasn't even a market for anything. So what's quite difficult start, but we managed that. So we collected quite a lot of gift money and quite a lot of the station to rebuild soil fertility on 2000 hectare and till now it's the largest biodynamic farm of Europe. So no, I know, but maybe somebody is going over now. I hope so.

Speaker 1: 11:28

And and like how do you start then if you come to a place like that, even though you have you don't have the, the burden of of huge, let's say, land payments or or that, because that's like taken care of with the foundation et cetera, but still you have 2000 hectares, very, let's say, hostile environment from a farming perspective and very, not very, friendly environment because it's been extracted of everything. Basically, on a social side, like where do you even begin with 10,000 problems to tackle?

Speaker 2: 12:01

I still remember that I was, of course, young and I was driving there through this landscape in a Russian Jeep, a very old Russian open Jeep, a red one, with on benzene, so it's smelling like hell, make a lot of noise. And I was driving through that beautiful landscape there, with that beautiful waving landscape, with that alle you know, with the trees, and suddenly it was like it comes down and I thought, yeah, that's my job, I have to do that, and I knew how to do it. I never know, I cannot explain you how it was, but I knew how to do it and I thought, okay, before I have 150 hectares, so I have to cut the 2,000 hectares and 20 little pieces to understand what I have to do. So that was the starting point and I invited one friend to assist me, to help me, and, yeah, it's all about farming, so it's all about people. I think that's maybe the best thing I did is say I really invite that employees to join the vision. So we had a really strong vision and I worked with them.

Speaker 2: 13:12

So the first three, four years I was always with them outside, on the field, in the barns, in everywhere to help them, to support them, to learn them, to teach them how to do the job and to always talk about the importance of each person in that system, as, for example, I have a lot of stones around laying there and so each year in the spring, people 20 or 25 people have to walk over all that fields to pick up the stones. And in the meeting in the morning, a half past six in the morning, I was talking with the guys and say okay, and they say yeah, but we are not that important and we were sort of a little bit deperceived. Maybe it was also most of the time. The people who picked the stones was the easiest guys out of the village, of course, and I said no, no, no, it's very important that you pick all the stones, because if you don't pick the older stones on the harvester or the combine will be destroyed and I have nothing to sell. So you are the most important person in the farming system at the moment. So always take them seriously, take them with you on your road and take you with you, that's, with you on your journey. Explain what you want to do, explain what you want to achieve in year one, two, three, four, five, six, and then you also have a lot of luck in such a beginning. It's always some magic in the air if you start such entrepreneurship.

Speaker 2: 14:46

Everybody say you are completely nuts and completely crazy in what you are doing here. And we didn't even have a house. We rented a holiday house with two rooms and with one dog, three cats and a cat, so we didn't even live on the farm. But I was somehow, together with Manfred Kled, absolutely sure if we stay open and fair and open-hearted, it will somehow work out. And so, of course, I underestimate everything. I think that was the best thing I could do. I underestimate everything. It was very naive, but yeah, I was 29 years old, so I was quite young. I didn't even speak Polish, so I always have somehow something in my pocket to draw on the wall how we do it. So we, but we, somehow, maybe I managed to reach the heart of the people, and it's important like that. If you read the people by heart, they do everything for you.

Speaker 1: 16:01

And just to paint a picture, how different is that farm, the 2000 hectares, compared to the neighboring farms or compared to the neighboring landscape? Just do I mean? This is an audio medium so that's tricky, but let's make it as visual as possible. What do you see? Because you go back a few times a year. What do you feel, see, smell here, in terms of difference between when you get there compared to maybe before, maybe the neighboring plots or the neighboring area?

Speaker 2: 16:35

Yeah, absolutely, totally proud on that place. First thing, totally proud. And if I come there, we all fall each other in the arms and start crying, so it's really a really emotional thing, almost. So there's a really hard connection to the people. That's beautiful, because I saw the difference between 2004, 2005 and now. So the people are more happy, they have a perspective, they don't have to go to Germany, to work there and lost the contact to the family and so on, so they can stay on the place and invest in their own home. It wasn't exactly in 2004 the people thought they have to give back their home to the Germans if they go to the EU. Okay, imagine. So they didn't invest anything in their houses because they were afraid, okay, I have to give it back. So if they feel that they don't have to give it back, and then they have a financial perspective out of the work they do on our project, they start to renew the windows and the roofs and so the village start to get alive. So that's the first thing. So the villages are more alive as before. The second is that, of course, if you drive into the farm and also people without knowledge about agriculture, they feel somehow here's something different and one of these I cannot really say that, but I think it somehow has to do with the atmosphere, but also, of course, visible, because you see, the landscape is changed. There is more diversity in the landscape in sense of cropping, so it's a nine years crop rotation, so with a lot of legumes in it, and always somewhere in the farm, the whole year round is something flowering for the insects and we plant about I don't know how much trees and hedges and building lakes, and in dry landscape we build incredible lakes to get more moisture into the landscape, to get more cooling in the landscape in the summertime. So there's a lot of wildlife going on. Now. There are more beards more, yeah, so it is and in the neighborhood I don't want to be unfair to them, but they make somehow a crop rotation, maybe two free crops. They don't invest in composting, so there are not so much insects and not so much beards. There are no cows running around, so the cows brings a lot of life into the landscape, also if they are grazing. Of course, beautiful buildings.

Speaker 2: 19:12

We build One of the principles I had we will build buildings, what everybody likes to make photos of. So everything is wood and everything has a good color, it's in a good shape into the landscape. So we build, of course, a lot of holes and a lot of barns and everything. We build everything ourselves. So we have our I grounded my own building company because I can save a lot of cost and I love to build and to draw. So we have 15 people and the carpenter and at the end we have a completely company what now works for itself. It's a ganasanschaff, so it's an association of themselves. So they are working now in their own company, that 15 people, what I took from the street. So, yeah, I think that's the difference. There's somehow happiness.

Speaker 1: 20:09

And then, after such a high, let's say, you decide to move back to Germany. I mean, you're from the Lanz originally, but you were in Germany before. And then what? What do you do after such an achievement? But also, for sure, time wise, there was not an easy journey, it was definitely a marathon. What do you decide to do next?

Speaker 2: 20:35

And I didn't take, of course, ugo was first of building soil fertility and then building on add on all the society, because I think the base of the society should be an organic approach to have a healthy society. And at the moment we have a problem that we have a big hat on a small base and that's also one of the problems. People lost their connection to soil and earth and maybe also sometimes to their selves. Yeah, I have no plan. So I bought here an old rectory on Rügen for a little money, completely destroyed and rebuilt that. So it was somehow my project. It's about 560 square meter big house. It's incredible big, and we are living here now with two kids instead of five. So together we have five kids. And that was the first thing I started to do. And then people start calling me and say, hey, do you don't have time? I heard you are not in Ugo anymore, do you have?

Speaker 2: 21:39

So a few people wants me to farm their farms, but the one in Italy, a few in Germany. But I thought that was not the right thing to do. So I want to do something else and good friends of me said to me make some consultancy, because then you can share your experience. That was not my words, but it was. There was share your experience more to more people to help more people to go in a transmission, in a change process. So that was what I started doing. So I have a little company and have an advisory role and lost what was it lost in 2003? So 2018 till 2022 summer I run a farm for a friend of me about 800 hectares. So always we are going back to a management role or an interim entrepreneurship role to run a business, and so I was asked to the Royal family to help them in some of their projects and always organic, always biodynamic.

Speaker 2: 23:01

That's been your focus yes, yes or in transition or what's typical.

Speaker 1: 23:07

when you said, 800 hectares here, a thousand hectares there, like, what are the like, the questions you get in an interim, or what kind of transitions Do you get thrown at that?

Speaker 2: 23:16

Yeah, it's always starting with the soil. Some people also worked a lot with the hip group, with Stefan Hipp. It's also a very good friend of me.

Speaker 1: 23:27

It's a baby food brand right In the baby food brand.

Speaker 2: 23:30

Yeah, the baby food brand exactly, and it's always about soil.

Speaker 2: 23:34

So if you, for example, have a company like HIP, they need the best food for the babies in the glass, and that all starts with the soil.

Speaker 2: 23:48

So if the soil is not balanced and that's most of the time after a conventional farming system then you first have to get that right again. And it is not about OK, we start with compost, but it will not work. Because if the body has not the right pH and there are not the right micro elements and there is no oxygen in the soil, like in a body, like if you go into the hospital and you have an accident, they take blood of you and look in the blood. What's going on there, how much, how is the body, in which shape it is, and that's the first thing you should do. And then you start with rooting the soil or subsoiling the soil to get your soil compaction away. And the last step is starting with compost, and compost is in extracts and everything. And sometimes it's like that people start with compost and they are completely disappointed that it doesn't work out. And then they call me.

Speaker 1: 24:53

Which is what happened to you in Poland right.

Speaker 2: 24:56

Yeah, exactly so I suffered myself. Exactly so in Poland. I started with compost and then I didn't have any effects. I had maybe a bit, but not that one I expected it was quite crazy expensive to do it. And then I get a book from Zeb Holzer. I think everybody knows him. Great God.

Speaker 1: 25:18

Everybody should, but that's a shroom. But they don't. I'll put a link below in the description.

Speaker 2: 25:22

You don't know. Zeb Holzer, oh, we have to, I know, but I think everybody should, so I will put a link below in the description.

Speaker 2: 25:32

So I get that book from Carl Ludwig Schweisford, from the Schweisford Stifting. He was visiting me and he saw what I was doing and then he sent me a book. And he sends me each year's books about everything. This was beautiful. And then I thought, yes, that's what I have to do.

Speaker 2: 25:50

And then I start to look on all the tales I have in my landscape. Can I make water places here? Can I make retention places here? And then of course everybody say, ok, now the Dutch get completely nuts. He starts to build dams in dry landscape. But it works.

Speaker 2: 26:11

And because I said, we have 2,000 hectare and 600 millimeters of rain a year. So that's quite a bit of milk, quite a bit of water, what I only have to catch. But it was in the winter time and not in the summertime. In the summertime we almost have no rain. So that was, of course, the next step.

Speaker 2: 26:30

And then I start to plant hedges to break the wind, because we have so much wind that you have to sense storms on some fields, and in the winter time sometimes it was 30 degrees minus and everybody was frozen to that. So I have to make the microclimate to harvest on the rest. So I have decided to build a landscape network on 20% of my soil, to harvest on 80% of my soil. So I give back a lot to nature, but not in one corner of the farm like a rewilding project. They have nothing against that. But I say, ok, I have to build a landscape network and in this healthy landscape network there will be growing, healthy food and that works. So that was an incredibly incredible experience and it was not alone. Of course, I have a great team of people. Alone, you are nothing in such periods.

Speaker 1: 27:32

And now we're in the beginning of 2024. I mean, you've been in the biodynamic movement for a long time and now it seems like the regenerative agriculture, under the big umbrella, probably, of agroecology, is starting to flourish and starting to boom Like. What do you make of that? Versus, not versus, but in, compared to organic and the biodynamic space? What do you see in region? What do you don't see in region? What do we have to be cautious about or excited about? What excites you? So let's start with a specific one what excites you in the region hype that we're going through at the moment.

Speaker 2: 28:14

What I think I was asked was successful 100 years of biodynamic agriculture. And then I said, yes, we are totally successful. Totally successful Because now I am discussing with conventional farmers about holistic agriculture. They want to know, because they feel unnecessary to do something. So what I'm totally enthusiastic about is a few percent of people, a little group of people, were crazy enough to start organic or the biodynamic or to regenerate agriculture without any industry products and it works and it makes an example for a lot of people. It makes it's possible that a lot of people get hope again. So I'm totally happy. In Yugovo in Poland, four or 5,000 farmers a year are visiting there how we do it. So we are a great example and there are a lot of such culture islands in the world, what makes a great example for other people to do the same. So I'm totally hopeful.

Speaker 1: 29:26

And now, when you get requests, what are exciting ones, like a transition of 500 or 1,000 hectares You've done quite a few, you've been working with quite a few, but what is like like in terms of is it a difficult like landscape, or maybe it's integrated into a food company or it's extreme, I prefer, is like what, what is our exciting request? You get and what are once you're like yeah, we've seen that, we've done that.

Speaker 2: 29:55

You mean in sense of what works and what don't work.

Speaker 1: 29:59

Yeah, but also what excites you, know what makes you pick one over the other, a versus b, because you must get a lot of requests and what are ones that are exciting, maybe super difficult terrain or super extreme weather, like what are what excites you in the, the ones you're working on now and versus the ones you've obviously said no to. So what are? What are ones that Catches your caught your eyes that, okay, this is. These are ones that I really need to step into, because you get a lot of requests and you can choose and you pick certain ones, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:28

I'm totally enthusiastic and I love Andy Cato friend of the show it's such a great guy.

Speaker 2: 30:35

So I, andy Cato, is in London and he have he have to in his different wild farmed and he told his story on some meeting I have when I was working on sendering him and and after his speech I go to him and say hi, I'm Sebastian, and I'm so happy you share your story because I recognize you. Your story is the same like my story when I start my first farm in Germany. Yeah, a lot of suffering and a lot of lot of difficulties, but it was totally great to see that it works. So, and then we start somehow a friendship and are now in contact and that is something I would love to support and work with and I work with them now, and so it are different projects where I like to work with and I think that specific one, because wild farmed is very specific, full disclosure, where small investor they will be on the show coming, but the friends friends of the show, let's say.

Speaker 1: 31:44

but they also very specific in going, not necessarily certified organic, not necessarily going to say all the way, etc. But very specific and is about getting as many grain farmers as quickly as possible on the first few steps of regeneration and getting them off a lot of the chemical and fossil fuel based inputs as soon as possible. And so what excites you in those in those transitions like beginning of very conventional grain farmers to a very different system compared to, maybe somebody says, ok, I want my full estate or my full farm in Germany to go as deep by dynamic as he possibly can. Can Can imagine what draws you to wild farmed and the indicators of this world.

Speaker 2: 32:29

I think what, what, what I really like of that initiative is that they try to build a bridge between conventional, not organic, agriculture and Andy is no farmer, so he's, he's, he has not from a farmer from heart, but he wasn't, he wasn't a completely other business and also ads and also George, and they somehow make a mind shift in that direction and they are somehow, they're totally realistic in the market, so they're really good in the market, so they try to build that association with the market so that they can pay the farmers the right price. So that's I think it's a good idea, and especially that you don't let the conventional farmer lost or are only contact in contact with the industry, but you give them an alternative, you give them a way out of the system. And we have to, we have to, we have to be much, much quicker. So I lost my farms and I still love them and I think it was really important to do it and are great examples in the world where people and neighbors can learn something. But I think we have to scale up with to be much, much faster.

Speaker 2: 33:52

And what I don't like maybe and I think we will work on that is that they cannot spray. So that's one thing, but they can use some fertilizer and but I'm I'm sure if we make good compost and we make good, good crop rotations and they are quite good in it, because I've never have manure in Poland, they have zero to you livestock units a hectare, so that's nothing, but we did it. So you don't need so much cows but you need a few cows and you need your compost, these and your compost extracts and your compost. But you also need a good crop rotation and a bit of luck, and then you don't need any vitalizer. So I hope the true cost of fertilizer coming to the daylight and it starts now to be because the energy prices rising because of a terrible war, of course, but that's something. What maybe I hope is that the true cost come to the daylight and it's not any anyhow make an economical sense to use synthetic fertilizer anymore. So yeah, going in a direction and help them to do the transmission, but I will still always be, I'm an organic farmer. I will never do anything else. I know I don't need any industry at all, maybe only at the beginning of a farm to bringing the soil into life again, because I have to.

Speaker 2: 35:26

You see a conventional, so it's like a somebody would use a lot of drugs and eat a lot of sugar and I have to bring the soil away from the sugar and give them a bit more wild, farm good bread and bring in the microbes, and that is a that you cannot do with only, let's say, homeopathic medicine. I don't believe in that. So we first have to really try to bring this, the micro elements, in it, and we bring in the, the chart and the magnesium and the manga and the ball of the man, all the elements you need to rebuild soil fertility, because it's an, it's an ill body. It's the same like somebody on intensive care. You cannot give me only homeopathic medicine. I think it's good to do it, but maybe also he needs, he or she needs something else. So that's the only thing where I need the industry and afterwards I don't need them at all, so it's, it's not.

Speaker 2: 36:32

so that's great, so it's, it's, it's the next set, say bow and the fray on as a Freedom of the farmers. Yeah, so farmers.

Speaker 1: 36:42

Second time, the second time. And what's holding that back? You said we were not going fast enough or we need to go faster and we need to scale. What do you think are the big blocks? Apart from the real price on fertilizer and many of the industry, the chemical industry products, what else is holding back the scaling?

Speaker 2: 37:05

Now it's all about risks. I think one problem we have now we are facing now because all the money needs to invest, especially in times inflation is growing, so a lot of not a non, non farmers are buying land and they are not interesting in life living systems, most of them. They are not living very interesting in living systems. So that's one problem. And the other problem is that people have fair for change. They're afraid to make a change. Also if they know that the system they're doing now is not that optimum for earth, people and and healthiness, or also maybe not for the money side. But they go on like that.

Speaker 2: 37:47

Farmers die really slowly Because they have a lot of capital. So they they will not buy a new tractor for 10 years and then after 10 years then they they realize that that that the machinery don't work that well anymore and then they start selling maybe a bit, but they are dying very slowly. So the process is not that well Showed up. And of course there's a lot, a lot of lobbyist thing lobbying, lobbying I think I don't know the word against A transmission, because all the fossil industry and the chemical industry and the food industry and all they want to have cheap, they want to sell as much as possible and they want to have the food as cheap as possible, to sell for the highest price as possible after they process it in a bad way, and then the farmer industry in all parts of the let's say, animal husbandry, but also afterwards if you eat the food. They have a good business model.

Speaker 2: 38:56

So why they should change that? So there's a lot of money going on in the other side. What don't like to change? And maybe there's also changing now, something there is more consciousness for. I've talked with them, known with Nestle, with Ali and state, start to change their mind Because they also have children. They have children.

Speaker 1: 39:20

So that's always good. So I think that's the but, that's the difficulty.

Speaker 2: 39:24

So there's a lot of capital. Farming is a very, very expensive hobby, so you need a lot of money to start a farm and if you have all that money, take over. So if you don't are lucky, like me, that you can ground a foundation and get give money to buy it, then you have a, you have a high interest to pay each month, so and then to make a transmission in such a situation it's very difficult. And then, of course, most landowners are quite conservative in their thinking.

Speaker 1: 40:04

So it's a lot of education and getting older and getting older and whatever, so I don't want to blame somebody else. But it is a reality of the space.

Speaker 2: 40:14

Yeah, there are a few owners I know, very rich owners, I know and there are great people and they do everything, everything to make a system change. So there are also a lot of good examples and what we need. We need a lot of good examples like acupuncture point and also in the landscape in the world on earth to make a change. And although Sharma says if we have 10% change, willing people, nobody can stop us.

Speaker 1: 40:45

That's a tipping point. And then. So what would you say? I was like to use the example of let's say, we do this in a. In real life, we're doing this in a theater in in Berlin or in London or in Amsterdam or somewhere, and orange Zurich and we have an audience very in Zurich is a good example and audience full of finance. People like either investing their own wealth or are responsible for other people's wealth pension funds, insurance companies, etc. What would be? I mean, they're excited about the evening, they've listened, they've learned a lot, but we also know that people walk out of those things and usually forget most of it the next day when they shop for work. Yeah, if we can plan one seat, what would you like them to remember from an evening with with us on stage?

Speaker 2: 41:32

Good question. Yeah, sometimes I asked my. I make quite a lot of speeches and always ask him Okay, everybody with children In the room please stand up, you know? And why we are doing that, why we want to have a change in our agricultural system, why wants to save us? The best argument is the next generation. So that's the first tipping point.

Speaker 2: 42:08

I think they people, you have to touch them in the heart. I think that's that's always when they come in, you go win the farm or the other farm, one of the farms. They always have something different here at the cows are somewhere, somewhere, somehow happy. Yeah, so you have to touch them by heart. And then they start thinking, yeah, I don't think, I think we'd think without our heart and we think with our stomach and we also think a bit here, but we should go more downwards. That's part of you. So I think, yeah, tell, tell him. Tell a beautiful story is, I think, is very important. Tell them the. Tell them about.

Speaker 2: 42:49

I think one really good idea is to tell them about the true cost of food, tell them about all the costs. They nobody pays, but the next generation or the now already we pay them and tell them that it is an economical system, what works. So we have maybe not the maximum profit, but you have a stable profit. And in times of climate change, we need a more resilient system in our farm because I am now farmer for 28 years already and I see the weather is changing. I see the weather extreme situations takes over. So if I have a healthy soil with a lot of rain or air farms in it and I have my attention lakes and I have hedges against wind, then my system is much more resilient against weather extreme situations. So it's also risk management. I think alliance I don't know, I'm not sure I should ask, I should ask other people for that. We have no facts for that, but I know the alliance don't like to give an insurance for credits if the farm what, let's say, grow the coffee in Colombia is not on that way.

Speaker 2: 44:15

So people start to understand people start to understand that if you don't build any hummus, you don't build any resilient systems in your farm. You are bigger risk as before.

Speaker 1: 44:26

Yeah, just for background, alliances one of the probably the largest or one of the largest insurance companies in the world, and they're often the first. Like I did. Them or the reinsurance companies are the first to start to model everything. They look at all the trends because they will pick up. They will pick up the bill.

Speaker 1: 44:42

That's very simple and we will then pick up the bill because we have to our insurance, like fees go up. And if we would flip the conversation and say what would you do if you would be an investor with the tape, a large amount, a billion euros, to put to work? I'm not looking for dollar amounts and or your exact year months. I'm looking for what would you focus on? Would it be by land? Would it be freeing up land? Would be technology or brands like wild farmed? Like what would be your, your top priorities, if you had to put that amount of money, which is a lot and nothing at the same time, to work?

Speaker 2: 45:17

Education.

Speaker 1: 45:21

For farmers, for a general audience, for children. What would be?

Speaker 2: 45:24

starting with the children, starting by food, starting with cooking, starting to have each school should have a own garden, that that that the kids starts to build consciousness for soy, for a living organism, because that's one of the problems I see that the kids get more and more lost in a system but maybe don't help them to grow in a normal, healthy way. And I think we need good universities. What are not depend on. You know, my dream is that all companies have to give two or three or four percent of the profits away in an anonymous way, without name it For, let's say, independent university and school system. And scientist, because all the side, a lot of scientists are paid by the industry, so they don't. They do that what industry wants to know and if the results are in another way, they disappear.

Speaker 2: 46:36

So, I think that's quite the important thing, because there's a brainwashing going on on. Not all universities, of course, are a lot of good ones, but somehow the industry tries to in, to be involved in that system because they want to. Yeah, they want, of course, that the new customers by their products and, and then I would really free up land, I think, and make young farmers, young people, give a possibility to start new models and help the researchers to to, let's say, don't have a theoretical research project, but really, on farm research, make like that. So the questions the farmers have in their situation they are working with, to help them, to support them and to documentate that. Yeah, and and and looking on, if you make an organic, holistic approach, of course is always the problem that your costs are more high, as you can, if you can cover. So there's one project, what I really liked and the one is from Patrick Holden is a good friend of me it's the global farm metrics. And there's another model going on in Germany at the moment that is from Christian, his another friend of me. He makes it. That means something like counting the right cost and counting the right product.

Speaker 2: 48:14

So a farmer have, of course, if you working as a holistic, organic farmer. You have a lot of coming goods, producing a lot of coming goods like biodiversity, climate saving the climate, education, social aspects and so on, and that you can value that somehow and that's a product you could sell maybe. So make it visible. What is the outcome? What are the true cost? So putting money in such systems to To try to change the payment of the of the EU, for example, in not on on on the base of fields, of a skills, of a hectares, but on the base of the, of the outcome of a farm, and not only in form of products but also in form of common goods.

Speaker 2: 49:10

I think that that that could be a big change maker and in England and already in the UK, he has the SFI and SFI is a new program. I discussed that with somebody in London. There also was implanted that in a way and that pays already a lot of that common goods. So if I make my business model for my farm in England and then look, okay, where I can get the patient for that, it was a lot was covered with it. So that that that's, I think, the politic. We have to work with the politicians to change their mind, to help them to be strong enough to get lobby? Yeah, I think. And then I think the billion is gone. Young people to start some things, little initiative, it doesn't matter, does really doesn't matter. For me always, one of my motivation to do this job are the children, the next generation. We have to do something.

Speaker 1: 50:16

And what if you could? So we are no longer in charge of the, the fund, the investment fund, to put to work, but you are. You have some magic power where you can change one thing, but only one thing, overnight. What would you do?

Speaker 2: 50:38

What I would do. One magic thing I think I would. Maybe it's all about land ownership. There's a little book of Indians and I get it as a present, and the question is on the, on the, on the on the book is how can you own air? And I think it will be beautiful if the world is like that, that we cannot own life, we cannot own life forces, we cannot own land. So the land is a common good, air is a common good, water is a common good, and I'm at the moment afraid that the next war will be not about oil, the next war will be about water, and food Was dictating us a system. So maybe, if I can wish that, I think that will be a big as wish. You can, of course, our little little wishes like that is a big one is a big one.

Speaker 1: 52:04

That's exactly why we ask that specific because People able to taste quality difference based on agriculture, project, all of that, like. We've had very big ones, like the small ones, depending on the person, obviously. And this conversation for now, I don't think it's the last time we talk and I want to thank you so much for coming on here and share on Friday late in the evening or late during the day, and I want to let you go back to your family and dinner. So thank you so much for coming here, for the work you do, for the journey and for coming here to share that with us.

Speaker 2: 52:55

Yeah, and thank you for the time for your time.

Speaker 1: 53:04

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 regenerate agriculture dot com. Forward slash posts. If you like this episode, why not share it with a friend? Or give us a rating on Apple podcast? That really helps. Thanks again and see you next time.