290 Chris Bloomfield and Daniel Reisman – We need animals outside to feed the planet sustainably

A conversation with Chris Bloomfield and Daniel Reisman, co-founders of Collie, a provider of virtual cow guidance system for managing production in grazing, about enabling regenerative dairy, how virtually fencing and cow guidance drastically reduce labour and boost production. To feed ourselves and the planet sustainably, we need to include animals as part of agriculture. We dive deep into going from vegan to grazing, animal welfare, and the state of our planet. How do we enable more farmers to hold complexity on their farms? How do we use technology to enable complexity instead of using technology to make everything mono, as we have done in the last 50 years?

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

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/chris-bloomfield-daniel-reisman.

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

We need animals to feed the planet sustainably. That's the driving force behind the company we spend time with today. But they didn't arrive there from a hardcore keto diet, savory or listed grazing fundamentalism, but actually from being vegan for a while, working deep in the animal grazing space and caring deeply about animal welfare in the state of our planet, plus the social unrest if we cannot feed ourselves anymore. They went on a months long deep dive into the general food and agri space and systems changed and both came to the same conclusion In order to feed ourselves and the planet sustainably, we need to have animals to be part of agriculture instead of separated, like is the case now, and the biggest lever is getting more animals outside as soon as possible. So what's holding us back? We've all seen the benefits of well integrated animals into agriculture. Managed grazing does wonders for pastures, biodiversity, let alone when you graze cover crops. Why aren't animals mostly ruminants, but also others not an integrated part of agriculture anymore? This mostly has to do, surprisingly, with labour. Grazing animals properly takes a lot of time, often moving them multiple times a day. We dive deep in going from vegan to grazing and building a hardware company. And how do we enable more farmers to hold complexity on their farms? How do we use technology to enable complexity, instead of using tech to make everything more mono, like we've done in the last 50 years? This is the investing in regenerative agriculture and food podcast investing as if the planet mattered, where we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems, while making an appropriate and fair return. Why my focus on soil and regeneration? Because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land and our sea, grow our food, what we eat 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 Regen Ag, that is, comroadcom slash investing in Regen Ag or find the link below Welcome to another episode Today with the co-founders of Coley, they are enabling Regendary, virtual fencing and cow guidance with drastically reduced labor and boost productivities and the Europe's first virtual cow guidance system.

Speaker 1: 3:20

There's so many things to unpack there and we're here in person, which I'm very happy about. So you might hear some background noise, but we're in a fancy, semi-fancy studio, which is a first for this podcast. So that's very, very cool and I'm here in person with Daniel and Chris. So welcome both of you to the podcast. Good to be here, thanks for having us, and we keep like moving around with our little chairs that it might make noise, but it's really funny to do this in person.

Speaker 1: 3:44

First of all, we don't get to do that very often, which we need to do more, and it's then very nice to do it. Of course, nice to do it on farm with all the background noise and the complexity, but it's also nice to do it in a soundproof place with a fancy mic in front of you. So that's a first and I'm going to ask you both and you can point at each other, because that's the easy thing of doing this in person who takes which question, who goes first, etc. And just full disclosure. First of all, we are a small investor with our syndicate in Coley, so I'm definitely biased here and I'm not sitting here as an investor wanting to know everything. How is it going? Because we need to unpack the story first. So let's start with that. And how did both of you end up focusing most of your awake hours on soil and everything that happens in that and above that?

Speaker 2: 4:30

So yeah, I actually have a commercial background and in that commercial you don't have to feel sorry for that. I feel a tone there.

Speaker 3: 4:39

I'm sorry, I actually have a commercial background. I wasn't focused on sober. That's amazing.

Speaker 1: 4:43

We need more people with commercial backgrounds in the space, so welcome Thank you Thanks.

Speaker 2: 4:49

I worked for Greenpeace a while and eventually, during my commercial working days, I missed a bit of my idealism where I decided to volunteer my time for Extinction Rebellion and I would say at both those places I've been learning about the food system and how crucial it is to change the food system if we all want to live in the next couple of years.

Speaker 1: 5:16

I'm amazed. I don't think anybody expected. Where you said commercial time, you went Greenpeace and Extinction.

Speaker 2: 5:20

Rebellion first.

Speaker 1: 5:22

So that was like, okay, people are like you're listening somewhere here and you're like, oh, that's unexpected.

Speaker 2: 5:26

So stay with us. This is an interesting journey.

Speaker 1: 5:29

And where were the commercial years then? Because I don't think Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion fall under that category.

Speaker 2: 5:35

No. So I decided in my early days to never go to university, because I'm a real doer and I thought what do I enjoy most? And that was, of course, talking to people. So I ended up in sales. I thought, in a podcast and from sales I got into leader positions quite quickly and from that I became a branch manager for a company called Van de Bron.

Speaker 1: 6:00

They do sustainable energy, the leaders in the space here, one of the earliest in the Netherlands, and they had this amazing website where you could click and you could select which one you want, which farmer you wanted, your I mean indirectly, of course your solar from, and it is very nice. So one of the first proper interactive websites to pick things, yeah, adventure.

Speaker 2: 6:20

So, and there I found my love for operations and really like starting something from nothing, set up a team, hiring, training, work culture, the whole operational side. So I did that worldwide also for a company called Nomads Business School and eventually also set up a branch for the company we're in, now the next web. So that's my commercial background.

Speaker 1: 6:50

And very personal question has it ever hold you back? I'm asking for a friend, a me, that never finished university as well, the fact that you never went to university, like in pitch decks. I've seen some examples in pitch deck somebody put like University of Life or something Like if you're next to very cool PhDs, et cetera, like had that ever? Has it ever pushed you, held you back, or is it ever interfered at all in the tech world? It doesn't matter, it works.

Speaker 2: 7:14

I would say the opposite. It has helped me a lot because where many with many job applications I've done the, normally you would say hey, do you have the paper? That's what people expect. But what actually people are missing is the work experience, and that's something I had. I gained six more years by not going to university.

Speaker 2: 7:34

You could say and instead of working a job in a restaurant or something and not super relevant for, but I would say that in writing an email takes me, I would say, a bit longer than maybe someone who did university and has been written a lot of reports, for example, but now with.

Speaker 1: 7:53

Gmail finishing your services?

Speaker 2: 7:54

Yes, exactly, so I think it was a very good choice.

Speaker 1: 7:57

for me, six years is a lot. Yeah, that's very interesting framing. And then you were triggered on food and egg in Greenpeace and Extension Rebellion.

Speaker 2: 8:06

Yes, yeah, because I really felt like if my biggest fear is not climate change, it's actually social collapse, and because if we, as people, need to feed our children and we can't, we'll do crazy things, and that's, for me, very scary.

Speaker 2: 8:22

So, and one reason we could have social collapse is if we cannot feed our children anymore or we cannot feed ourselves anymore, and the biggest chance of not being able to feed ourselves anymore is because of the upcoming droughts, water levels rising, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm trying to prevent that with Koli. But, yeah, that's that is a reason that during during my time at Extinction Rebellion, I felt okay, if, if I want to really contribute to changing the world, I need to change it at the food system. And that's when I decided to quit my work, to stop renting my house in Amsterdam and to go work and live on farms, which I did first in a nature restoration farm, where they combine animals and nature, and then to a regenerative arable farm, and then, eventually, I worked in. I wanted to go back to Amsterdam to my friends again.

Speaker 1: 9:21

I mean, where were these farms?

Speaker 2: 9:23

Yeah, so the first farm is called Vault Life and it is in Trente. The second farm is called Bodmars, which is in Friesland, where I'm actually born and raised I'm a proud Friesian and and the third place was MoMA Liquid Landscape. It's a company bringing dairy products to the streets of Amsterdam and trying to educate the citizens about how it's being made and how you can make it more sustainable. So it's trying to build a bridge between farmers and people, to connect it more.

Speaker 1: 10:02

So much to unpack there, which we get to in a bit, but I want to welcome Chris as well to to hear because then your your story, I mean you let's, let's do one last bit of that intro story how did you find Fresh Ventures? Because that's how we all met and that's where you really took a deep dive. I mean you were working on farms, so deep dive has. I mean you were already emerging yourself, let's say, in food and ag. And then how did Fresh Ventures, where you had been incubated and think is the right word, but you were part of the studio part of the first cohort, then part of the studio and now an alumni, let's say part of the fresh ecosystem.

Speaker 1: 10:40

How did Fresh come to you, or you came to Fresh?

Speaker 2: 10:43

Yes. So that kind of came after that, because I was now back in Amsterdam and I had not only a commercial background, I now had a farmer background as well. There were two guys from the company called Vildaland amazing company as well and they said, hey, I heard about this program and I think it's really something for you. So I went checking it out and it was indeed for me. I really, yeah, there, I could combine those two, because what I really like about Fresh is that they really do a deep dive in hey, what is the food system, how does it work and how does system change work? And that was exactly the reason why I went into farming anyway. But I missed that bit Like how can I actually bring about that change I would like to bring? And Fresh gave me that and brought me to Chris, which might be a good bridge. You're doing the work for him, perfect.

Speaker 1: 11:36

Chris, I mean your story travels a few more kilometers, let's say your miles, ending up here in the city center of Amsterdam. So what brought you to farming in soil and what brought you back to that as well, because I think it's been a journey?

Speaker 3: 11:52

Yeah Well, yeah, so I grew up sort of in rural New Zealand. My parents weren't directly farmers but I spent a lot of time around the farming industry. My dad's a veterinarian, grew up with horses, grew up with a small farm, small block of land. It would be considered quite a big block of land here in the Netherlands actually.

Speaker 1: 12:16

Jess, jess. What about friends? How big are we talking?

Speaker 3: 12:19

Like a hundred or 80 hectares, something like that Significant. Yeah, not a vegetable plot.

Speaker 3: 12:25

Not a vegetable plot, but just with beef cattle, a few sheep and some horses, and I obviously grew up around nature, a lot going, did a lot of hiking, did a lot of swimming in the river and stuff like that and, yeah, working on farms and all that sort of thing. I think when I was young I became aware of the impact that farming was having on nature for sure. I do distinctly remember at one moment going to the local swimming hole and there there was two rivers joining up. One river directly came from the national park, essentially nearby, and one river came past a few farms and that river was brown and the other one was perfectly crystal clear. So it made me distinctly aware at an early age of the impact of farming had on our ecosystems, which is a fascinating insight.

Speaker 1: 13:20

I think I put a sentence we just re-recorded the video course for the financial sector. Let's say and there's a murky river, and I put the quote, I put there, or I put a sentence like that's your asset flowing away and it's very I mean, it's possible but very difficult to rebuild. And I want to even every banker, finance person, et cetera. If you see a murky river upstream somewhere, someone is losing topsoil and God knows what else is in that, but that's civilization flowing away. Basically, you had that very early on in a nice why? Moment, like left and right coming to you in a giant junction, then like coming from such as farming work, and then what or what happened? What led you to do that? Could be extension, rebellion could be green boys could be something else.

Speaker 3: 14:08

Yeah, well, I didn't really act on that when I was younger, but what I was also my main passion when I was young was building things, so I spent hours building tree houses and hey huts and all sorts of things, so that led me to actually study. Well, I was first going to study architecture, but they ended up doing engineering, which I'm very happy about, so studied sort of robotics engineering and then after that I also ended up traveling a lot and Doing lots of strange jobs, but also getting into startups as well. So I was part of like a startup yeah, what do you call it? A startup competition when I was at university, ended up winning that, and that really got me into startups as well.

Speaker 3: 14:57

Yeah, and that company didn't end up going anywhere, but as many startups do I learned a lot which was great, yeah, and then went traveling after that and did all sorts of weird jobs. For example, I ended up working on a Million acre cattle station in Western Australia case chasing cattle on horseback Literally being a cowboy for six months. Then I went to Canada and did something similar. Then I went to, came to Amsterdam and I worked in a startup. So kind of all of those things led me to this combination of skill set, which was like engineering, startups and animals, which is what led me to my previous company that I was working for, halter, which I think you've heard of, and it's a similar company in the space to what collie is, yeah, and because what led you back then to to New Zealand?

Speaker 1: 15:59

because the start of life in Amsterdam was and is buzzing, let's say quote-unquote easy to stay here, not cheap at all, but you can. I mean, if that's that energy or that life like pulls you in, it's easy to stay here and New Zealand is pretty far, yeah, start. Or to join a startup there and that began a scale up and to join something there. Like how did that pull you back?

Speaker 3: 16:21

basically, Well, the intention I actually have come into Amsterdam was never. I was never intended to stay here long. I just had a one-year working holiday visa, so that was, I guess, why my visa ran out.

Speaker 1: 16:34

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 16:40

Yeah, and I met a Dutch girl when she was also interested in moving to New Zealand as well, so that was. That was a, which is actually the reason I came back.

Speaker 1: 16:51

So and then like getting into the virtual fencing space in New Zealand. I don't think many people know how much more advanced it is. I think when we met you were saying, like on grazing, like the New Zealand atmosphere or the New Zealand farmers or livestock farmers or ranchers in general are much more advanced in grazing and Embrace this, this enabling technology Immediately, like just to paint a picture what is halter and and what is virtual fencing in New Zealand at the moment and why. Why is it so important? Because we hear this Stories of New Zealand farming and we hear the issues as well. I think if you dig deep enough, you see the pollution story is. Is is well hidden, but definitely there like what? What's the ranching or the dairy, not the ranching space now, like in New Zealand?

Speaker 3: 17:38

Yeah, well, I think, because the what's the word? The growing, the grass. Growing conditions, let's say, are Very good all year round, right? So even in winter you still grow grass. So therefore, I mean, it's you grow. You grow less grass, but it's not like in Europe where the cows have to be inside, so you have a natural advantage.

Speaker 3: 17:59

Yeah because it's really like the perfect Environment to grow grass there's a lot of sun and there's a lot of rain, which is grass growing Heaven. So from, I think, from that kind of natural reason, that there's been a focus on grazing from the beginning, and Because there's a focus on grazing grazing being grasping the biggest resource people have put a lot of effort into how can we get the best out of our grass. So, yeah, and I think for that reason also, because you know there's a lot of effort in being put into grazing they were very quickly to take up a virtual fencing technology when it started to emerge because it was such a big Labor, labor save for them and value gain for them.

Speaker 3: 18:53

And still it's so. Yeah, but still there's problems with as you alluded to, and hence why the river near me was brown. Is that? Yeah, you still have nutrient runoff, you still have cows going and getting into waterways and that sort of thing. So Not all is perfect, but there's, I think, a lot that can be learned from that style of Graging.

Speaker 1: 19:20

So what? Just for people to. We've had some virtual fencing Companies on here before fence, which I will link below as well, and no fence, I think two or three interviews, but just for people that haven't listened to that or like Mentally don't have a picture. And I had what virtual fencing is and of course it's a wide variety of applications at the moment. But if you had to describe what you have to do for sure ten times a day, what is virtual fencing and why should we in the region space care?

Speaker 3: 19:47

Yeah, virtual fencing is a way to manage animals, I guess, without the need of human labor. So by training cows or not just cows, animals in general to respond to sounds and vibrations. It means that you can. You can guide cows around a landscape at the cost of zero, at the With, using a finger on your phone. So yeah, but technically it works by training the cat, the animals, to respond to sounds and vibrations. So, a sound being kind of like a warning, it gets louder and louder and louder until there's a small pulse, which is a pulse that's much, lot smaller than a normal electric fence.

Speaker 1: 20:30

So it's very important to mention here for any animal welfare. People listening like if a cow touches her nose against an electric fence it's painful and very painful. That's why you see them sometimes break through or backwards. This pulse they get after the sound warning which I think most cows, is more than enough for most cows to back From from a waterway or from whatever virtual fence We've put in there and they get a small pulse, but yeah, it's way less. And then then the what they would get if they touch Yep and the electric fencing that for most places we use now or we try to use when we do adaptive grazing.

Speaker 3: 21:03

And there's a lot of research out there already showing that, at a minimum, virtual fencing is no worse than the current status quo. It's not better, and it makes sense when you think about it, right, because you're kind of just Reassociating a cue, right? So the cue now was before a visual, tiny little visual line very. And now the cue is a very clear sound that gets louder and louder and louder before and gives the animal plenty of time to.

Speaker 1: 21:30

React and you see that as well under data like the cows you like get, quote, unquote better, or start avoiding, like the louder sound and does the potential pulls, or like are there still a few that just I want the green grass over there and I will get it.

Speaker 3: 21:45

No, it's, it's. You have, of course. You have a range of cows, or animals in general, that respond in different ways and there's always kind of like a certain mix, a certain percentage that are push, tend to push a bit more, but they always learn, and there's also tend to be a group that are bit smarter. Right, they learn. Oh, you know what, if I? I know that if it gets to this certain height, what's coming, but I, if I can just push it just before and then react just in time, I can get a little extra bite of grass, for example. So they're very smart creatures and they can, they can learn. These, these systems are very and learn to work with them in a very calm and you know easy way.

Speaker 1: 22:27

It's probably Cameron, and then a cowboy shouting on a, on a horse, that yeah. Or fencing around with cats.

Speaker 3: 22:33

You into shocks, yeah well, and that's one thing that I always say actually about using technology to guide the animals, because I think the one thing that haven't touched on also is we use the vibration to guide the animal, so moving from A to B. So the cow kind of learns that if she responds to the vibration, she follows the vibration, she get more food, so more more grass or more food in the cow shed or etc. Etc. So they they quickly learn to yeah, oh, if I follow the vibration, I'm going to get a reward. Um, so it's a positive yeah, focus, exactly, um, and and one thing about using technology to guide, guide an animal is that technology has unlimited patience. So humans don't have unlimited patience. Humans get, farmers get annoyed at the animals cows they get they.

Speaker 3: 23:28

They actually scare the cows. You know they've been fit, they, they, they have their own timelines. They get stressed. Um, technology has none of those problems. We can actually give the time the cow as much time that it needs to do what, what we want, what it wants to do, what we want it to do. Um, if you want to walk slowly, you walk slowly if you want to learn slowly.

Speaker 3: 23:50

You learn slowly if you want to yeah, exactly, exactly, um, and there's no need for that which is also great for limping cows, the cows that have, uh, sore feet or problems physically.

Speaker 2: 24:02

Normally the you, when you drive, when you drive the cows forward, you go from the back and you hit them on the bottom. You go up, up, up, up you're trying and then the back, the cows at the back are kind of pushing the cows at the front, which is stressful for the cows, but also, if you have a limping cow, it's also more difficult. And what? What you see with our system in which which has amazed animal welfare organizations as well is that they all get their own vibration.

Speaker 1: 24:33

They all get their own time to go to the milking shed, for example because you just explained like the pose you mentioned before is for when they go somewhere you don't want them to go, like they're going to sound, which gets louder and louder, and then there's a pose, and now you're saying we guide them to work somewhere with vibration. How does that work, or how should we imagine that?

Speaker 2: 24:52

yeah, so where the sound is a warning and when the cow hears the sound, it she will move away from the sound, making sure that because when it's louder she eventually, after five to fifteen seconds, she will get a shock. So she actually wants to prevent that and with the vibration she knows, ah, I'm gonna get nice feet.

Speaker 1: 25:09

So when she feels the same as a shock.

Speaker 2: 25:11

Obviously it's totally different, yeah and with the vibration she will like your phone vibrating yeah, it's like she'll get excited because she knows she will get feet either super new, super fresh green grass etc or something, and especially in milking, I will get to that in the dairy space, of course.

Speaker 2: 25:28

So everybody has their own vibration and their own speed, because there's nobody running behind them with like a whip to to get them as fast as possible to the milking shed or somewhere which creates, which gives the cow all the time in the world to take her time, and also limping cows to have all the time in the world to slowly go at her own pace to the milking shed, which is, of course, a big uh uh enhancement for the animal welfare yeah, because otherwise I imagine you end up calling them, and and because there's no you don't have time literally to wait for a limping one if you have to milk 100 or 85 cows, and we've done it many times.

Speaker 2: 26:05

They're very slow. It really works on your patience, I can tell you that. Then, master, by herding cows, yeah and so you met at fresh.

Speaker 1: 26:14

You go into this deep dive of um, oh, we actually didn't get to you, because how did you, how did you hear about fresh? How did you end up in in the old swimming pool blue city teropikaner in rottendamm?

Speaker 3: 26:26

yeah, so I was obviously working at halter and I moved back to the nilons. I was working there for a wee while, um, remotely from the nilons, but I ended up just wanting to um, yeah, to do something with my skills that was more focused on helping the world solve its problems, I guess, um, and you didn't feel like there was in.

Speaker 1: 26:52

I mean, you didn't feel like you were doing that.

Speaker 3: 26:54

Enough at halter, uh because it sort of seems like you were in the center of at least change and a big lever yeah, I I felt I could do that more on my own, um, so, yeah, that's what led me to fresh um. I actually also just ended up getting a, a message from bart in my inbox at linkedin or um, but I'd already I'd already was moving on from halter at that time. I was searching for what I wanted to do next and then this came, fresh ventures came up, and I was like, oh, this is perfect for me. I'm really interested. I know a lot about the agricultural space. Um, I have skills here that can um be of use. Um, so let's do it, and that's uh.

Speaker 1: 27:40

Yeah, that's where me and daniel met and you went into a deep dive on the food system. I mean, you've, you were already deep into that, and was it logical for you to start another? Or to to start another virtual fencing company from scratch, because halter, you joined later. But um, I'm asking an open question. I know the answer, but, um, was it logical for you to jump in the animal space again?

Speaker 3: 28:03

well, actually I my initial attitude towards it was I'm gonna try and avoid it I'm like that, that went really well now we're looking basically next year where we're recording.

Speaker 1: 28:15

We're looking at all the hardware stuff and and some early models and some later models and a lot of people building things.

Speaker 3: 28:21

So, yeah, congrats with that no, but I I wanted to, I guess, keep an open mind and explore what I think was the best um route for me to take or best way that I could have influence, and I was trying not to be blinded by necessarily going back into virtual fencing and and my animals in general. There was also for me personally, there was a phase where I was unsure about the animals role in I remember it in the in the agricultural system.

Speaker 3: 28:48

We've emailed and had conversations about that yeah, yeah, exactly, but yeah, the more I dug into it and the more research I really did and the more kind of arguments I listened to, either either the way I I became more convinced of that animals do have a positive role that they can play in the, in the food system and um, and I think that positive way is significantly different the way we do it a lot of it now yeah, let's say it very clearly 99 I don't know what the number is, but they don't play that role at the moment and we rewrap them from that opportunity, which is horribly wrong.

Speaker 1: 29:26

what, what convinced you? I mean, then you can make a really good case, but who, what convinced you? Who convinced you, like, why? Because we had those conversations when I was hanging out of fresh and with the first cohort, which we happen to be around a lot at the time, and I remember those conversations and I remember you really trying not to get pulled in back into the animal side and the virtual fencing piece. And I remember asking you is it as magical as it sounds? I think at that time we might have done no fences and investment, I don't remember, but at least we were looking at it and I have done fence before as a personal small investment and you said, yes, if done well, it is that magical. And you build another one.

Speaker 1: 30:04

There's so many, there's so many rumours and still and you were really trying not to what, and I brought you back into that, apart from the convincing skills of Daniel, Well, they helped, of course for sure, but I think at some point.

Speaker 3: 30:21

I think the first question for me was what is animals role in the future of our agriculture system and is it? A positive one. Is there a role for them? And I finally came to the conclusion that, yeah, I think there is. And the second one was like well, you know what, how can I best use my skills and knowledge to have the biggest impact on the food system?

Speaker 1: 30:45

And then, when I answered that question, I realised, well, it's clearly doing like using all of these skills that I've developed in the last five years and, yeah, not too many people I can say they have built cow guidance systems, and no, I mean there are many people, I think, that would recognise the potential, quite a few, to recognise the potential, like you did, daniel as well, on virtual fencing, but then actually building hundreds and thousands of those devices and getting rumours to do what we think they should do, which different than they might want to do, but that's another, is very, very different. So then now I mean we've been talking about Koli for a bit sideways, let's say present or not saying pitch. I mean you're raising funding, but what is Koli and what makes it different than others or what makes it having already an interesting impact, even though you're still very young I think you're almost one year in, or just one year in.

Speaker 2: 31:43

We are officially one year, since Friday, since 8th of March. So we're recording this D11 just for people to say congratulations on.

Speaker 1: 31:50

The Swedish champagne glasses are there now. They're the worst people. They're clean. This is Monday morning, so what is Koli one year in? What is Koli now when you describe to? Somebody here in an elevator because we're in a tech incubator. Of course, everybody's having an impact quote unquote but you're doing things a bit different and you're doing hardware. So what do you describe when you have to present yourself here, or you're on the stairs or at the coffee place?

Speaker 2: 32:14

Well, so yeah, chris and I met at Fresh, where we learned about the food system and saw that really needed to change, and we also learned that if we want to feed 10 billion people sustainably in 2050. We need to bring back the balance between animals and plants. We need to restore that balance because otherwise we cannot feed.

Speaker 1: 32:39

Let's double click on that, but I think that that relationship has been broken.

Speaker 2: 32:43

Yes. Literally separated yes.

Speaker 1: 32:46

And that's one of these. But why did you decide to focus on that relationship? Because it could be soil and trees or food and people. Like all of those relationships have been broken in the last 50 years or more.

Speaker 2: 32:57

Well, I guess Chris and I both have a certain love for animals. I have my own border, koli, for example. We've both worked with animals Chris more extensively than I did but, and especially during my time at MoMA and at the nature restoration farm, I learned how big of an how impactful the industry is in a negative way, but also, if you look at nature restoration, how important animals are in building soil, in creating biodiversity, in improving the landscape. So that's where I felt the urge, like it's such an impactful industry. I even been vegan for a few months.

Speaker 1: 33:39

So you're going to say for a few years, what brought you now that way? Because I think I was going to be in a question. I was going to ask before, like that, your friends if they're still friends and ex colleagues at Greenpeace and extension rebellion. There is this tendency and I think it's. We talked about it as well, daniel, before, but there's this. It's starting to change a bit, but this tendency, by definition, especially ruminants are bad and white meat is better, and even like, though, we only look at the efficient ratio. Don't start writing people. I know those are wrong, but what do they think now of what you're doing at Koli?

Speaker 2: 34:13

I cannot read mine, so I'm not fully sure.

Speaker 2: 34:16

But from what you see, what you feel but yeah, I guess the first reaction is often like whoa, ok, intense, a bit like a surprise is that, I think, the right word?

Speaker 2: 34:29

And but also when? And I think that also was with me with the reason I decided to become vegan is because the industry is so impactful and so bad for both the animals and the environment. But when I explain what Koli can bring to that industry and how it's disruptive to that industry and how it's letting cows graze outside more, making them more grass fat in corporate and more with nature, that's when they understand that it's actually a real good thing to like the first reaction people have about, for example, the dairy industry, dairy animals it's bad and they take off their hands. But I think we need to do the total opposite. We need to grab it and see OK, it's such a big industry, it's so impactful, we're going to eat meat and drink dairy, dairy products, if we like it or not. So how can we actually change that industry? And I think that's where Chris and I both felt with virtual fencing and cow guidance, we can really bring that change we would like to see.

Speaker 1: 35:34

OK, so let's talk how does Koli do that? And in the dairy industry in the Netherlands, to start with, which is known to be super efficient, extremely intensive. If you look, if you're in a train, somewhere you go from I don't know, amsterdam to to the south, you see a lot of green fields, green pasture, which is mostly monoculture grass, very heavily fertilized. So there are some some issues. Let's say there is very also energy and fossil fuel use intensive and you're coming in there sort of as a wedge and say, ok, it needs to be more grass grass, fat grass use as pasture use. How does does Koli? How does Koli do that? Or enable that as an enabling tech?

Speaker 2: 36:14

So even though, like in New Zealand, it's more grass focused, here it's very milk focused. So how many liters does my cow produce? But there are many farmers in the Netherlands that are already grazing their cows outside as much as possible, doing strip grazing like regenerative grazing practices. So there are already, are, I would say, the early adapters of the right way of farming.

Speaker 1: 36:38

I remember when, when Joel Salating came to you to the Netherlands for the first time and there was a lot of interest, there is a lot of interest. I think there has been always a branch of farmers that have been like Denying this energy and input intensive way like that doesn't make sense, because there is a limit somewhere. And how do you? And do you target those specifically because they are the most advanced bit, like in New Zealand? They and they do, they embrace that easier because it can make them do something that they cannot do, or more difficult to do without.

Speaker 2: 37:08

Well, regenerative farming and regenerative grazing is just very complex and a lot of work and I think, with Koli, we want to take away that complexity and take away that labor, making it more simple and easy. And if the idea is that if we could can help these farmers now already with making the life more easy with improving the grazing practices, there's also a lot of farmers that are signed up for a product that are not doing strip grazing. We're doing strip grazing or regenerative grazing now, but they will want to have our system.

Speaker 3: 37:41

so yeah, I think one of the reasons that northern Europe, the Netherlands and northern Europe in general has become so non grazing focus and input focus is because of the labor savings that having your cows inside actually.

Speaker 3: 37:56

Yeah, exactly, it actually makes it possible to to manage those farms with low labor. But when we come along and we take away the labor need to the labor requirements for actually grazing in a good way, we believe we unlock the possibilities for that to happen. And also I think there's a big push towards more grazing in the Netherlands and Europe more widely, because People are starting to see the downsides of, you know, bringing in soy from Brazil and Over fertilizing and all of these, these issues and yeah, we've got also the wealthier side of having animals locked inside all the time.

Speaker 1: 38:36

I mean it's sort of Crazy if you think about it. You're fertilizing your pasture, which many farms still have. It's not that they only rely on soy they bring from outside. You're fertilizing your past year. You're Harvesting it with machinery to take diesel and compact your soil. You're bringing it into cows that have perfect for likes and if they're not limping they can do that themselves and fertilize by themselves. Plus methane we now know is way lower, when they're actually on past year, like all the other bent, like Simple, because we we optimize for one thing, which is milk, and reduce the labor input, which was the most expensive in this system. And we disconnected all of that and Getting that out there again, because I remember having an interview with Rumi and how much trouble they had, if talking about grazing with farmers in Germany, because they originally from from Denmark and Germany and they Went to the UK at the end because there was much more of a grazing culture compared to Germany, like we have.

Speaker 1: 39:32

Our cows need to be inside, by definition, of course why not? And they just couldn't break through that yet something, what happened, etc. But that mindset of inside bringing the feed in and the pasture is for dumping, manure, more or less. That's a very disconnected world view, and so you're targeting ones that, of course, want to do more if labor would be less of an issue. And and, colleague, I mean just to describe it visually it's a color around every, every cow, plus what, like? What does enable me to do if I'm already, let's say, an advanced dairy farmer? Here in the Netherlands, I get 50 of those for my cows. What, what does enable me to do that I couldn't do before?

Speaker 2: 40:08

Yeah, so you can now with from your smartphone anywhere in the world, but let's say your kitchen table. You can grace your cows and do strip grazing practices, which is a good way of of grazing, because if you grace your cows, you want to have them move, rotate a lot, and you want to rotate them every few hours and you want to make sure they're dense together and and then make sure that they don't go back to the grass for a while, because that's the way nature intended it. That's how how cows used to to grace.

Speaker 1: 40:40

Which is absolutely not how we graze.

Speaker 2: 40:41

Now let's be right here. Leave the cows in the open space and they can overgrace whatever they want.

Speaker 1: 40:46

What we want to do is concentrate, concentrate as much as possible, have the herd mentality and the herd impact and then don't come back to the same spot for a while. But if you're saying every couple of hours, that's like a time suck. If you have to move the fencing, even with electric fence and there even I've seen some rolling advantages, some things like but it's, it will save you up to three hours a day, which is a lot, which is massive, apart from all the other benefits of grace etc. And then how does it fit into? Because we often talked about an offense of the fencing and the virtual fencing and not having fencing in the livestock situation. Why is dairy different? Because you need to come to a dairy shed every two, three times a day how does?

Speaker 1: 41:24

that integrate into the dairy part of of the room and inside.

Speaker 2: 41:28

So with dairy you need to move your cows at least two times to a day to the milking shed and with the milking robot you need to do three times a day and this is also a lot of labor work which you now can do with cow guidance. So but to get to get a bit back to the to the grazing bits, that if you see your neighbor now grazing their cows strip, grazing them regeneratively, they can see they get happier and healthier cow, they get more grass. So you can see that my yield, which is saving on feed, and then indeed with milking robot for example, where you can increase your milk yield also up to 15% by 15 people, not 5, 0. 15% just by having them going more often to the milking robot, then for the neighboring farming farmer that is not grazing their cows properly. So it's a no brainer to start doing their regenerative grazing practices and we see that as a as a first step. So first we want to have cows outside grazing regeneratively.

Speaker 1: 42:32

And how much more can they be outside compared to the standard? Just to give people an understanding, how much is a cow on average inside versus outside in in the Netherlands and how much is actually possible if you take away that labor piece.

Speaker 2: 42:44

So in the Netherlands 25% of cows are inside 100% of the time.

Speaker 1: 42:49

So that's not the farmers you're talking about. That's not not yet.

Speaker 2: 42:55

That's what we would love to have those cows outside, because that's what we're trying to do, of course.

Speaker 3: 43:00

But even the farmers that do put their cows outside, they don't put them out for very long. No there's a for 80%. 80% of them put the cows out a minimum of 720 hours, which is not very many hours. So in order to get like the stamp of the cows that they go outside on the milk. They only have to be out of the outside for 720 hours.

Speaker 2: 43:23

Which is nothing.

Speaker 3: 43:24

When they could be outside for more than 3000 hours At least, at least over Wow Okay that's 5x.

Speaker 2: 43:31

Okay, yeah, and you're saying labor is the biggest headache, there too, so a lot of farmers don't put their cows outside, because of the labor, because also less control, because if you feed them in the barn you know exactly what they eat and how much.

Speaker 3: 43:47

And also in Europe. The farmers have lost that knowledge as well.

Speaker 1: 43:51

Grasing knowledge, Observing past your understanding where and how Exactly.

Speaker 3: 43:56

How do you enable?

Speaker 1: 43:56

that with, yeah well.

Speaker 3: 43:58

I think that's also where we see our application coming in being able to actually guide farmers and visually show them data and visually give them suggestions, etc On how to graze more effectively as well.

Speaker 2: 44:11

Yeah, so first step, grazing. Second step impact data and incentives through their app, because they're using our app on a daily basis, several times a day. So that's also a great place where we can try to incentivize the farmer to go beyond grazing cows regeneratively outside. That's where we hope to incentivize them to also apply for certain subsidies or ecosystem services you have now the big topic is nitrogen. Right, everyone's talking about nitrogen In the Netherlands.

Speaker 1: 44:42

Sorry. Yeah, nitrogen is a hot topic because we for a few decades, just as a bit of context, ignored some very important European rules and laws about nitrogen. I thought we could get away with all kinds of technology fixes and it turns out we can't.

Speaker 2: 44:59

You can't act.

Speaker 1: 44:59

smart nature At some point, the levels just get too bad and somebody will literally bring you to court and stop it. So nitrogen is a big issue in dairy. Just in two sentences. Why is it such a big issue? And what can Koli? Or virtual fencing or more grazing outside? Why can it make an impact on nitrogen? Why is it such an important one for you?

Speaker 3: 45:23

Well, I mean, the reason that it's an important one, I think, is because, yeah, it's one of dairy's areas where it has the biggest impact, especially when cows are grazed, not grazed, and are inside a lot. So what happens is when manure and urine mixes together, which happens in the basement of the shed, you get a reaction that causes a lot of ammonia, which is actually quite an octrous gas. If you go underneath there, you die basically, yeah, it's this male we all know you want to stay away from.

Speaker 3: 45:59

And that breaks down into well, first can cause over fertilization of natural areas and also breaks down into nitrous oxide, which is a highly potent greenhouse gas.

Speaker 1: 46:11

So you never want to mix manure and urine Exactly, which doesn't happen when they're grazed yeah.

Speaker 3: 46:17

When the cows are in the field, it happens very little. The cows pee and piss in different times and different spaces, and if the soil is healthy, it's also absorbed very quickly into the soil.

Speaker 1: 46:30

Is that notion getting more known now, like it's not just about getting a better filter or separator in my barn and my shed so that the urine doesn't mix with that, and the notion of if the soil is healthy, which is a big if, and they're grazing outside. Actually, you take care of most of this.

Speaker 3: 46:49

It's starting to get more traction. I think you're starting to see more and more research like Wagner University starting to kind of really promote this kind of thing, which is ironic because they were the biggest promoter of everything inside feed as much imported corn and soy as possible and get bigger or get out. Which is great.

Speaker 1: 47:09

I mean I'm a shout out to Wagner for changing some of that practices now.

Speaker 3: 47:14

And in the Netherlands it's a huge political issue right. There's even discussed in parliament this.

Speaker 2: 47:19

There's even a minister of nitrogen. Does he or she like?

Speaker 1: 47:23

that's the question, but it's like is that knowledge again of healthy soil plus healthy grazing takes care of most of that? Is that also discussed in parliament, or it's more like oh, this nitrogen headache issue needs to go away, yeah.

Speaker 3: 47:35

I think it's not there yet. Yeah, I think a lot of people are saying we just need to remove the number of cows, which I think it would be good if we reduce the number of cows, for sure, especially in the Netherlands, because the land actually can't support the amount we have. But if we have a healthy amount, then it's going to be good. And yeah, by having cows outside the maximum that you can, you're reducing the nitrogen emissions by more than 60%, so that's massive. It can have a huge impact on the environment, climate change as well, not just the quality of the water, but also the actual global warming issue.

Speaker 1: 48:22

And you're saying like potentially integrating that more into the app or into the service as ecosystem services, as more of these things are going to be rolled out, not just buying out farmers, but reducing or some kind of grazing plus premium more than the 700 hours you mentioned before.

Speaker 3: 48:40

Yeah, so utilizing grazing is what we see as our first big step to really making an impact on the dairy industry or the animal agriculture industry in general. But what we see as our vision, as Daniel alluded to earlier, is bringing back that balance between the plants and the animals, bringing that back into the way more like nature intended it, let's say, where the animal was part of the whole system, where a natural forest is like the most productive land that you can have, basically, and that's because of the diversity of all the different organisms in that right.

Speaker 1: 49:24

And because of disturbance of large animals, mammals, etc.

Speaker 3: 49:28

If you take that out.

Speaker 3: 49:29

Yeah, they play a big role in that. So our vision is to kind of, I guess, get as close as you can to that that's realistically possible. We see, yeah, a vision for our application, our system, to actually enable the integration of animals into a more diverse agricultural system, beyond pasture, basically Beyond just pasture, yeah. So, for example, agroforestry or crop rotations, natural areas as well, having natural spaces within the farm. So keeping the animals away from the waterways is another one that you can do very easily at the push of a button with our system right. So, yeah, grazing being the first step and kind of unlocking complex, diverse systems where animals are integrated into that food system, kind of grand vision.

Speaker 1: 50:30

Yeah, because fencing there, I think, is a big fencing and labor Like. I think there are many arable farmers doing complex rotations, cover crops and then having actually massive issues of pushing the cover crop down or not spraying it and killing it, all kinds of rotor tillers and whatever we invented to do that. Well, it's sort of a natural feed for ruminants if you would be able to keep them on the field and keep them like strip grazing over a cover crop field and that's like with a push of the button, of course more complex than that, but it's much easier than getting a bunch of fencing in, and animals as well, into an area where or into a place of a farm where they're just not used to handle animals. It's a very different quote unquote, literal beast. Then, if you're doing a normal crop rotation, so the integration of that would and for sure dairy farms or livestock farmers would be interested in that, if it's nearby, if it's logistically possible, et cetera. You don't have to pay for it. You might get paid for the grazing and the manure you bring in a certain way, for sure that all kinds of laws and regulations don't allow you to do that.

Speaker 1: 51:39

And coming back a bit to where we are, which is the city center of Amsterdam, let's say we do. We're going to the Zoutas, which is the financial heart of this tiny country, and we are on stage there. We do it in a similar fashion as here, but then with a larger audience, and they're all financiers. They're people that work with their money or other people's money. What would be the main message you would like to give them? Of course, they're enthusiastic, they're interested. Now they have an understanding of virtual fencing, et cetera. But if we also have a short memory and attention span, if you want them to remember one thing, if there's one seed you would like them to remember the next day when they go to work and they maybe change something, what would be the main seed or the main thing to remember from a fun evening talking about the role of animals in agriculture?

Speaker 2: 52:27

So the role of animals in agriculture right.

Speaker 1: 52:30

Or in general, like we've talked about. Let's say, we've done this on stage, we talked about an hour plus, we maybe seen the documentary or something like that. So we were enthusiastic about the region, enthusiastic about the space, but of course you cannot remember everything from the evening. If there's one thing you want them to remember from that and one thing you want to give them to bring home, let's say, what would that be?

Speaker 2: 52:50

So I would say we need animals in order to feed the planet sustainably. So we should stop taking our hands off animal agriculture and we should put all our money, time, effort into making it more sustainable and making it more regenerative and making sure that animals are used in a way that is symbiotic with plants and nature, to make sure that we go from monoculture to a diverse, regenerative landscape where both nature, crops and animals can thrive and enhance and support each other.

Speaker 1: 53:33

I think it's an interesting, as we're. I don't know if we're coming out. I don't know if you feel that too. I mean, you mentioned it off. I was going to say off camera, but we don't have cameras Off microphone before that. We are coming a bit out of this. Oh, animals are bad face. Do you sense that as well? Is it like because for five to 10 years, like it was really really strong, even though not all the evidence, but a lot of evidence suggests that there is a role? But it really depends if we take that role properly and guide and facilitate? Do you sense it's slightly changing as well? Because I'm imagining you have to explain this 10,000 times a day Like, is it changing or are we still early on?

Speaker 2: 54:13

It's early, but it is changing. I would say I was, for example, in an event, a regenerative egg event a year ago, where I was, together with one poultry farmer, the only animal representative. So, and then what is it? Two weeks ago I was at RFSI in Brussels where it was really at the forefront like hey, we have been ignoring the role of animals and we really should start bringing the animal back into Region. Ack, and that's for me very motivating as well, because I see this shift now going from animals are bad to hey. Actually they bring also a lot if used right.

Speaker 1: 54:56

And we can't ignore it. I think the role it's too big. Like you said before, it's not that we're going to change our diet. We've tried over time in a few next few years, which we have to if we wanted to reach that. So either we embrace it and really start changing because it needs drastic change, or what are we doing?

Speaker 3: 55:13

Yeah, I mean. The thing is, animals are bad as they are as their way, as the animal. Agriculture as it is now is horrible.

Speaker 1: 55:21

Yes, so the intention of the vegan community is not like the solution. It might not be the solution that's going to fly, but the intention is very.

Speaker 3: 55:28

Yeah, but I think there is a role for animals in a positive way in the food system.

Speaker 1: 55:35

Would there be your message as well if you would sit in front of an audience. Let's do another message. What would be your main seed you want to plant in front of a financially minded, focused audience if we do an evening on Koli?

Speaker 3: 55:48

Yeah, I think it would be similar to what Daniel said, in that I think it's really important that we unlock that diverse system and, yeah, animals and plants can support each other symbolically, right, like you mentioned already, when you eat cover crops, when you put the cows on the cover crops, they put biology into the soil and that improves the soil for the next round of crops and then, as a result, you get this bonus extra production from your animals. So, in that way, the crops and the animals are supporting each other and it's a win-win for both, and I think that's how the system can look in multiple different areas. Yeah, so I would say, but the biggest problem with that, I think, is that it's labour intensive. The problem with complexity is good for the health of the system as a whole, but it's bad for the humans managing it, and I think when? Yeah, we need to come up with solutions that help us manage that in a labour efficient way.

Speaker 1: 57:09

It would almost be like an investment strategy. Like what is the role of technology in regionally? A lot of people ask some of these myths are regions anti-tech or anti-science? I think that's absolute nonsense. But the tech piece makes a lot of sense if it enables farmers to hold more complexity on the road.

Speaker 3: 57:29

And I think we've so for the last 50 years. We've used technology to do the opposite right. We've used technology to Decomplexify it. Decomplexify it, make it more mono culture, and I think it's important that we now make sure that the technology is doing is bringing back that balance rather than taking it away.

Speaker 1: 57:53

There are two super fundamental pieces there the decomplexification or the complexification, with more and better and more suited technology, and the animal piece you made of. I think we shouldn't underestimate Benedict Bezos, one of the farmers on stage at RFCI the first day which he worked at, but he opened with that exact point. Animals are part of my rotation. I have about 300 of them and actually not only they bring biology. It's very different than passing with a tractor that costs money instead of an animal that actually, if you do well, I can sell for money and has flexibility in cash flow, because when I need I have a bad year and bad moment, I can sell 30 of the cows and I'm fine. Like it's also a walking, increasing asset, but it's a walking asset and a bank account and I think for finance people it's like thinking in those models or thinking start to imagine it's very different than a real estate asset. It's very different than a car. It's very different than like soil, animals, trees etc. With the right management, facilitation etc. Grow over time and get, while you're actually harvesting, from a system which sort of soon makes sense in our economic system but it should fit in an Excel sheet at some point. But we have to change some accountancy rules.

Speaker 1: 59:07

But that brings us to another question. I love to ask that you know, if you've been listening to the podcast, if you had a billion dollars or billion euros in Europe here, what would you focus on? I'm not looking for exact euros amount, but I'm interested, especially from operators like yourself in the space. Of course you would finance call me, you're raising money, I understand. But beyond that, what else would you do if you had a significant amount of money to put to work? So it is an investment amount, but what would you do if you had to put quite a lot of money to work in the space In, let's say, the food and egg space as a whole could be very broad as well.

Speaker 3: 59:44

Yeah, well, I think, following on from my previous answer, I would invest a lot of it in technology that unlocks and makes it. Unlocks complexity and makes it, do you?

Speaker 1: 59:56

have any ideas, I think, beyond virtual fencing, what are other technologies that you, as an engineer, get you excited?

Speaker 3: 1:00:04

Yeah, I think one big one is the whole circular nutrients problem. I think at the moment we have a very linear way that we look at the nutrient cycle and that's in and out the other end. I think if we can find ways of bringing back all of the nutrients that goes to waste in our system whether it's from food waste or from animal waste or from food yeah, exactly, I think that's really interesting and incredibly important. I think, being an engineer also, I think I'm probably technology that helps on the farm directly. I'm thinking like nuts picking machinery and machinery that helps you manage a farm that has a lot of different productive systems going on, like you've got nuts here, you've got fruit here, you've got grains here, you've got animals here, blah blah. Anything that can help make that more labor efficient, I think is very interesting.

Speaker 1: 1:01:24

Very, very important. We just spend might be out at this time, maybe not. Anyway, on syntropic agroforestry and the biggest issue there is manual labor issue, potentially biggest opportunity, because we're going to figure out machinery to harvest, to prune, to. We can put a device on the moon. We could do this. We could harvest walnuts in a certain way. We could, if there's enough demand, if there's enough smart engineers. Building that kind of machines are not just bigger, heavier tractors that drive themselves, but get way I don't know how much to compact soil.

Speaker 3: 1:01:57

Yeah, well, they need to be able to deal with the complexity. That's the thing, and that's why human labor is so good, because it can deal with complexity right, do you think?

Speaker 1: 1:02:05

we're getting there now with the advances of technology and also getting cheaper and image recognition there seems to be there's a virtual fencing boom because of technology makes it possible. Do you see a similar thing like okay, in a few years, more of this complex machinery should be able to. We see some robotics with Clint Bauer on the course as well on the podcast before, because you come out with robotics originally Do you get excited, or are you still?

Speaker 3: 1:02:34

I'm very much an optimist in this sense. So, yeah, I think we have to right, I think we have to build those things because, yeah, if we don't, we don't end up with what the food system that we want.

Speaker 1: 1:02:51

It's not necessarily like is it possible now, but I think a lot more is possible than a couple of years ago, I think if you look at like batteries even, and just cloud-based connectivity and it's hard to predict these things, because I think it can.

Speaker 3: 1:03:08

yeah, all of a sudden you have a big breakthrough and unlocks a whole bunch of stuff. But I think in general you have the process where there's kind of like a whole bunch of excitement about a technology and then it, and then you have the bit of a bust about it and then actually the technology comes and really makes waves. So I think we're probably for many technologies we might be in that bump.

Speaker 1: 1:03:29

you know that whole Disappointment, or is it a straff of disillusion?

Speaker 3: 1:03:33

Exactly when, like actually soon, we might have technology starting to actually do stuff, do good stuff. So yeah, but yeah, like you say, battery technology, obviously AI is something that is able to deal with a lot of data and simplify that from high complexity to something that's manageable, which I think is probably a key unlocking technology in that sense.

Speaker 1: 1:03:58

Yeah, we had an interesting conversation with Abby Rose I will put it on of a sector mentor, a tech entrepreneur and farmer, and very skeptical on tech in general and finance, but raised money and building a very interesting tech venture in the space and had an interesting insight on AI. I will link that below as well. And you, daniel, you had a billion to put to work.

Speaker 2: 1:04:20

Yeah, I would invest it in mission driven founders that have a disruptive technology in the pre-seed phase, probably because it's a difficult phase, because I think we need more purpose driven people bringing disruptive technologies and it's fine if, like, half of them fail, but it would be great if half of them succeed and we're really changing this agricultural system from mono to poly and bringing back the diversity in the landscapes we desperately need.

Speaker 1: 1:04:52

You specifically say tech. How broad is your definition of tech? Like what would be things? Even they don't exist yet, but what are the things you would love to invest in if you had that capability?

Speaker 2: 1:05:03

I have like two things in my head. One is the motor data side. I think I hope that the satellite data will improve immensely, because I think it would probably could also use that a lot with, for example, deciding how much grass is in the field and making sure that cows get exactly what they need, or making sure we have more herb rich grasslands. I think you can do a lot with satellite data, for example. The data side. I think we need more data that incentivizes good behavior. So that's on one side, and on the other side, what Chris said is the labor saving, taking the complexity out of diversity, making things more easy, because I think that's what keeps us from actually doing the important work. It's just very complex and very labor intensive, so we need to solve that part in order to bring back the balance between animals and plants we desperately need.

Speaker 1: 1:06:09

Yeah, so please reach out if you're building that Not saying we have a billion here to spend, but we might have some investors that are interested in that If you're building tech to enable and to bring back complexity and to connect the relationship that have been broken, definitely reach out. And then there's a final question, which is never a final question, but if you had a magic wand and you could change one thing in the food and egg space could be as broad as it was, like I've heard answers might have been me, but like better tasting, but so we can actually taste the difference all the way to all subsidies gone tomorrow to farmers that actually understand their soil or get out of their tractor, to anything. And so feel free to go very wide or very narrow. What would it be if you had a magic wand? You could change one thing overnight?

Speaker 3: 1:06:56

Yeah, I think you might have heard a similar answer before, but for me it's like if we could account for every you know externality or every actual impact that we're, that we're causing, both positive and negative in a way. Again, the problem is it's so complex that when you try and account for every data point, you just end up with too much information.

Speaker 1: 1:07:19

But you have a magic wand so you can make it happen. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3: 1:07:22

So if I had the magic wand, I would make it possible that we could account for every external factor and then actually bring that into. You know our actual accounting. Because if you started to measure that we're able to measure that stuff and actually reported upon it to externals, to public, et cetera, et cetera, I think there will be a huge motivation for people to actually start changing things, because you know when you think that transparency, like look under the hood, would unlock a lot.

Speaker 3: 1:07:56

Yeah, I think so, because I don't know if you've ever built a financial model or something. But then when you, when you start to actually put numbers in, and then you realize where you're spending things on, where you start to go, oh actually, wow, that is something that can be changed.

Speaker 1: 1:08:13

Yeah, I remember Puma I think the fashion brand did this is quite a few years ago did a financial loss statement or a profit and loss statement and then including externalities and they were horribly unprofitable but they published it, which was very courageous to say like actually we accounted for all the costs.

Speaker 3: 1:08:31

Yeah, but if everyone had to.

Speaker 1: 1:08:33

Yeah, so you would probably. Yeah, your magic wand would force everybody, Whatever way you can figure it out, like figure it out, but you have to publish.

Speaker 3: 1:08:41

Exactly, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:08:43

And you.

Speaker 2: 1:08:44

Daniel, yeah, I'm a real people's person and I say power to the people. I think that we, as the people, can really shape the world.

Speaker 1: 1:08:53

So I would say I see the extinction of rebellion and creepy.

Speaker 2: 1:08:56

Is voice coming back?

Speaker 1: 1:08:57

Very good, we need that because I think we're not activist enough.

Speaker 2: 1:09:01

So I would say that we, as people, should want grass-fed butter, grass-fed cows.

Speaker 1: 1:09:10

And finished, and finished. I hear the people in the back Not just like a few days, yeah, okay.

Speaker 2: 1:09:16

And also fruit and vegetables without pesticides and food from farms like Mark Shepard or the biggest little farm where nature, animals and crops are integrated in a symbiotic way. I think if we all as people want that and we want to fight for it, and we want to eat it and we want to pay for it, then the system has to change.

Speaker 1: 1:09:40

And so what's holding us back Because I think we've seen many places or maybe we've seen the documentaries I feel it's also almost like a narrative, or almost like we cannot believe food could look like that, like we sort of are in this mindset of like that can never be productive enough or it can never like, that can never scale or it never feed the world. And all of that Like what's holding us back to believe that a food system actually could look like that.

Speaker 2: 1:10:05

I think, several things. Firstly, and maybe most importantly, what you eat is very important to how you feel and how healthy you are. So I would say, like if people can see that if they eat food without pesticides and that's with lots of nutrients in there and very from healthy soil, it really will change your personal health, and I think health is important. So that's one side too. We indeed need proof that it's possible, and I think we need we can arrange that by making it easy, like a system with like golly, like making it easy to to graze your cows outside, having them in a diverse system, making sure your neighbor that you can see it at the neighbors.

Speaker 1: 1:10:49

I think that's the performance at least, because otherwise there's always the argument which is partly true. Like I have a different of different circumstances, my context is different. Of course it's nice what they do in Canada, it's amazing what they do in Australia or New Zealand or in Italy, but I can never do it here because X, y, z, etc. But if your neighbor does it, suddenly that argument, disappears.

Speaker 1: 1:11:09

Fascinating. Thank you, guys, both of you. So much, 10,000 other questions, but we're getting up to lunchtime and we're getting up to time as well. There's been a fascinating interview. Thinking for the work you're doing in the space, for going through the pre-seed and getting into hardware, getting back into the animal side of thinker is and putting your most of your awake hours into getting animals outside and doing what they should be, is not the right word, what they ought to be doing or what we would like them. We meaning the general, we as humanity and the planet want them to do, which is grace and add a lot to biodiversity and our ecosystems. So thank you.

Speaker 3: 1:11:44

Thank you too. Thank you for having us.

Speaker 1: 1:11:55

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 RegenderEgrCulturecom. 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.