305 Scott Poynton – Crises drive change: stories from within the transformation of Nestlé's palm oil value chain

A conversation with Scott Poynton, founder of the Forest Trust, now known as the Earthworm Foundation, about supply chains, environmental regeneration and addressing environmental scandals from the forests of rural Australia to his groundbreaking work with major corporations like Nestlé on no-deforestation commitments. Scott’s experiences in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, Tasmania, and reforestation projects reveal the intricate balance between economic growth and environmental conservation. 

Do you remember a few years ago Greenpeace released a video with a kitkat chocolate with an orangutan' finger in it, which very clearly made the statement that much of the palm oil the Nestlé owned company were coming from deforested plots in Indonesia which were home to the orangutans? And before that, the scandal on teak garden furniture, which in the nineties suddenly a lot of European household had teak garden furniture on their balconies or on their terraces? A lot of that wood came from illegal logging in Cambodja smuggled over the borders by members of the Red Khmer and sold to furniture companies in Vietnam.

What do you do as a company when you are hit by a supply chain scandal like this? In both of these cases, the companies called Scott to help fix it. Not their public image, but the actual supply chain. Get traceability in, no deforestation rules and monitoring, social programmes, etc. Learn from the fascinating journey of this forester born in Australia who founded the Forest Trust. It's regeneration, both socially, economically, and environmentally at scale, and learn why he is so excited about biochar.

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

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/scott-poynton.

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/

https://www.landalive.co.uk/

Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:
https://gen-re.land/

https://www.freshventures.eu/

https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2023/02/21/bart-van-der-zande-2/
https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2024/03/22/chris-bloomfield-daniel-reisman/

Chapters

• 3:33 Why are you doing what you are doing? Why Soil?
• 1:20:37 What should smart investors, who want to invest in Reg ag and food look out for?
• 1:24:36 What would you do if you were in charge of a 1B investment portfolio tomorrow morning?
• 1:30:52 If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing in the agriculture industry from a sustainability point of view, what would it be?

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

Remember, a few years ago Greenpeace released a video with a KitKat chocolate with a orangutan finger in it, which made a very clear statement that much of the palm oil Nestlé that owns the company KitKat was coming from deforested plots in Indonesia which were the home of orangutans. And before that there was a scandal on teak garden furniture, which in the 90s, suddenly a lot of European households had teak garden furniture in their backyard or in the balconies, and most of that wood came from illegal logging in Cambodia, smuggled over the border by ex-Red Khmer into the furniture industry in Vietnam. So what do you do as a company when you're hit hard by a supply chain scandal like this? In both cases, these companies called our guests of today to help fix it Not their public image, but their actual supply chain, Get traceability in no deforestation rules and monitoring social programs, etc. Learn from the fascinating journey of today's guest, of a forester born in Australia who founded the Forest Trust, which is now known as the Earthworm Foundation Regeneration socially, economically and environmentally at scale. And learn why he is so excited about Biochar at scale. And learn why he is so excited about Viarchar.

Speaker 1: 1:28

This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast. Investing as if the planet mattered, where we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems, while making an appropriate and fair return. Why my focus on soil and regeneration? Because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land and our sea, grow our food, what we eat, wear and consume, and it's 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 gumroadcom slash investing in RegenAg. That is gumroadcom slash investing in RegenAg. That is gumroadcom slash investing in RegenAg, or find the link below.

Speaker 1: 2:41

Welcome to another episode Today with the founder of the Forest Trust, and he keeps inspiring businesses and NGOs to find innovative solutions. Welcome, Scott Gleikhan. How are you? I'm very, very good. I mean that intro is. I always like to do the short ones, but this is like an understatement and it's not covering at all what you have been up to in your career. What are you up to at the moment? So I'm very happy to have you here.

Speaker 1: 3:05

Intro came through fan of the show, Joram, so shout out if he's listening to this, which I think he will, and this is finally happening, which I'm excited about. We've had. So the Forest Trust for people changed names into Earthworm Foundation, which maybe many in the region I space have heard about as well, which we've covered with Bastien, which I will link below, but you've been at the birth of that a while ago. So I'm going to ask the personal question I always like to ask everyone how come you spend most of your, let's say, awake hours focusing on soil and trees, of course, Like, how did that happen? Did you grow up in a forest? Did you fall into that rabbit hole? What happened there?

Speaker 2: 3:46

Yeah, I grew up in rural Australia, just outside of Melbourne. I mean now where I grew up is the suburban. Sprawl has gone way past it. But when I was there it was a little country town with dirt roads and one small shop and surrounded by farms. There's a lot of horses there, horses and cattle, a lot of market gardens, actually very rich soils. We had a little, I don't know. We had a quarter-acre block where we had chickens and ducks and we had.

Speaker 1: 4:14

When you say market gardens, you mean also people were marketing that For vegetables yeah, we call them market gardens.

Speaker 2: 4:19

In Australia they're making big vegetable farms. Basically there was a big swamp, not so much where I lived, but further down. It used to be a big delta area, ancient delta area, and so there's wonderful gray sorry black soils, very rich soils, and there was a lot of vegetable growing there for the whole of Australia. Really it's a huge area and they still have. But so much of the soil was drained and the swamps were drained for the farming. But they have the world's largest earthworms there, would you believe, up to over a meter long.

Speaker 1: 4:52

And you care.

Speaker 2: 4:53

Yeah, it's an area called Southwest Gippsland Massive earthworms and they have in typical Australian fashion. We have places where you can go as tourists and we have giant lobsters, giant sheep and we have a giant earthworm not far from where I grew up. So, yeah, earthworms and things like that were pretty important, but some of it to me were forests. I spent a lot of time. We did move around as well as a family into other parts of that southeastern corner of Australia and forests just seemed to be an important place for me and I just love being in them and being in nature was. I just grew up. My parents in those days wasn't a lot of parental control, we just were allowed to wander freely. I had four dogs. I used to go out all the time just wandering about with the dogs and it was a lot of fun. So found a deep connection to nature and, yeah, famously tell this story about.

Speaker 2: 5:44

I don't know what I was doing inside, but it was one Sunday afternoon. I went inside and the radio was on, which was strange, and on the radio was this ancient forester, british forester, called Richard St Barb Baker, and there was this beautiful music coming on and there was his voice and he sounded like. I just heard his voice I thought, god, that must be like what an oak tree sounds like. And he just captured me with his story about a half hour broadcast on the radio of this old man's life. He was 89 at the time, traveling around the world trying to save forests, inspire children to plant trees. And this half an hour, two minutes into this half hour broadcast, I knew that I was not going to be a vet, which had been my plan at that stage. I was just turned 15. I was going to be a forester, like him, and so that was what set me off on my path wow, imagine the impact of of a short audio clip.

Speaker 1: 6:42

I'm not saying podcast because it was not at the time. Have you been able to find that recording?

Speaker 2: 6:47

I have. It's funny what you should say about that and it was one of these things that I listened to. I listened to it once and it literally just transformed my life on a scale, not just a little bit. It was one of those absolutely life-defining moments and it was broadcast on the ABC radio in Australia. And some years later, like 30 plus years later, I was listening, I listened. It was on the show called the Science Show and it was broadcast every Sunday. And of course, now they have the Science Show podcast where you can listen to it later.

Speaker 2: 7:20

And so I was listening to the Science Show podcast and this program with St Bar Baker was broadcast in 1979. And here was the host, the same host, Robin Williams, magnificent man, and he said, oh, we're going to go back into our archive and play a interview from 1973. And I'm like, well, if they've got 1973, surely they must have this interview with St Bar Baker. So I wrote to Robin Williams and I said, well, if they've got 1973, surely they must have this interview with St Bob Baker. So I wrote to Robin Williams and I said look, you know, this show changed my life. I was wondering if you've still got the recording. And he's a lovely guy and he wrote back to me and said well, you must be more careful about what we broadcast in the future, and he shared it with me and it was one of those things. I was actually with Bastien traveling to Milan on the train and we had a meeting down there, which passes right under you, which passes?

Speaker 2: 8:07

right under where you are. So it's funny and I had it and I'd had that recording for about two weeks but I wasn't courageous enough to listen to it.

Speaker 1: 8:14

I know because. Imagine if it's like completely different.

Speaker 2: 8:17

Completely different.

Speaker 1: 8:18

Like ah, okay, okay. So what made you decide to do it then to re-listen.

Speaker 2: 8:23

Well, you know, I knew I needed to. I knew I needed to, but I just was worried that a bit like a movie. You know, you see a movie and you come out and some years later you say, oh, I remember that scene. And you just get everything conflated and it didn't really happen. And I thought I've listened to this broadcast and imagine if I don't know, I don't know, I bought in ideas from somewhere else or I just made it up, and so I just knew I had to. And so Bastian and I had been on the train, We'd had our meeting, we were coming back, and I just thought, right, so I put on my earphones, opened up the computer and pressed play. And it was fantastic and it was exactly as I remembered it. It was almost like I was listening to it again all those years, you know, 30 or 33 years later, 33 years earlier. Just the same impact that it had on me. And I remember listening to it and just tingling all over like, wow, that was really amazing. So it really changed my life.

Speaker 1: 9:19

Fascinating. And what like was it the? No, of course we cannot unpack that, but was he outside somewhere? You said it sounded like an oak tree, but it was his voice. Have you searched for other, like other pieces of him as well, to to unpack that more like what? What do you think without going into like the, the pieces, because this is not something we can analyze, but what do you think was the, the trigger there, what, what really pulled you in completely, apart from the fact that the radio wasn't on very often, but so it was interesting to hear something. But what was the trigger or the hook, or what do you think later? Analyzing it is, of course, with our rational mind.

Speaker 2: 9:57

Yeah, yeah. Well, two things happened. The first is when I first listened to it and my dad was a great fan of classical music. So as I walked in there, there was this beautiful classical music playing, and I've since met Robin Williams, the host and also the guy who interviewed him. A wonderful man called Barry Oldfield had invited some Barb Baker to come to Australia and he interviewed him and he also was into classical music. So Robin had this beautiful music and I just thought, oh, it just captured me. And then the voice came, and this ancient voice. I just thought, god, that sounds like an oak tree would speak. And of course we didn't have things like Lord of the Rings and the Ents at that stage. We had the book, but we didn't have the movie. And I just thought, wow, that's an oak tree.

Speaker 2: 10:40

And this old man just told these stories and I wanted to young fella, as I say, I was just 15, three days after my 15th birthday, I wanted to go overseas and he just told these incredible stories of his life in the Sahara Desert. And the really thing that got me. It was about 20 minutes into the interview and it's actually why well, it's one of the main reasons why Earthworm Foundation is now called Earthworm Foundation is that he told this story about planting trees in the Sahara Desert and in the Judean hills. And he would do, and he described this thing called stone mulching. And next to every tree that the community would plant, as they were trying to do reforestation, they would put one or two stones. And he told this incredible story about how, with the heat, the sun would bear down on the stone and it would draw moisture up from below and in the daytime the worms would go down and in the evening they would come up and enjoy the moisture under the stone. And, of course, because the worms were going up and down, they were bringing nutrients and water and their magical bacteria.

Speaker 2: 11:43

And he said you know, if you lifted up the stone, you were bringing nutrients and water and their magical bacteria. And he said you know, if you lifted up the stone, you would see one or two earthworms under each stone. And then he said but the thing is, if a goat got in there and knocked away the stone, the tree would die. And that was the moment when I'm thinking how tenuous. You know, this community's done all its work to plant, to grow the seedlings, to plant them. They go out there in this harsh environment, they put the stones, and then a goat comes in and knocks it away and everything dies. And I thought it was that moment where I realized. Well, firstly, the first thing that came to me was like where did the earthworms come from? You know, in the Sahara desert.

Speaker 1: 12:22

In the Sahara desert, in the Sahara desert Like where did the earthworms come from?

Speaker 2: 12:25

in the Sahara Desert, in the Sahara Desert, in the Sahara Desert, where do those earthworms come from? And in the Junaid hills? And that's baffled me to this day. But the second thing was like who's talking to the goat herder? Someone needs to have a chat to the goat herder, because if the goat herder keeps the goats away, we're going to have a plantation of nice new forest. If the goat herder lets the goats get in there, all the effort is wasted. So it started a lifelong journey of talking to goat herders not literally goat herders, of course, but people who are pivotal.

Speaker 2: 12:56

Yeah, disruptors people who are pivotal in making things work. And so when TFT started working a lot beyond Forest and we were thinking of a new name, I actually came up with Earthworm in about 2012, but we just couldn't get it through the organization. Half the people liked it, half the people didn't, but Bastian pushed it through when he became CEO.

Speaker 1: 13:40

Fascinating. There's so many pieces there. Like where do the earthworms come from? Yeah, and like are there small eggs just everywhere waiting for the right circumstances, like seeds are just waiting for sometimes very long time for the right circumstances to sprout. And like seeing people on farms and fields that have been doused in chemicals for three, four or five decades and then they stop and they, they plant some, some productive trees and they put a bit of maybe some drip irrigation etc. And suddenly, like the weeds explode and you're like where did they come from?

Speaker 2: 14:15

like where did that happen? How did that happen?

Speaker 1: 14:17

they were just waiting. They were just like not our time, let's not go, and. But earthworm like that feels a different category as in animals um, and and, but apparently they get dropped, or they get there and they wait and it was always fascinating and just all this concept of the earthworm bringing life.

Speaker 2: 14:35

You know that, bring, bringing nutrients, bringing life to the soil and to that tree. You know, it's just so the rock, the earthworm, the people, the goats the shade, an ecosystem of action to try and get those trees to grow? That?

Speaker 1: 14:50

fascinated me. How did people find out that the stone attracts the earthworm? Or the stones around a tree help with life, bringing life to the tree.

Speaker 2: 15:04

Ancient technology, and I don't know how St Bar Baker knew about it, but they've since founded on Easter Island, would you believe, and the agriculture that people were practicing there. They would use stones in the fields to protect the crops from the sun, to give the soil some cover, and yeah, so it's an ancient technology, so barb baker must have learned about it somewhere fascinating and then like you cover, like you cover the soil with something that reflects and heats up and not too much, and then protects the moisture the moisture protected, which attracts the earthworms, which cycle the moisture and the nutrients and and by doing so, create, do their magic and create soil, brilliant with that, giving the tree roots places to go and and um in in the desert.

Speaker 1: 15:54

I mean, I think we've seen some fascinating examples not not enough, I think. Unfortunately, many of those are not, have been, haven't been captured visually, let's say um, so I haven't made it into to, to youtube videos etc. I remember one of new spackman doing a fascinating permaculture um project in the saudi arabian desert, like if you didn't, if you wouldn't have seen the pictures, you wouldn't believe it that that's, with that limited amount of rainfall and that limited amount of that, what they were able to do, but showing that like plus ancient technology, like we know it's possible. The question is if we do it. And who talks to the goat herders, let's say so, from then you were 15.

Speaker 1: 16:33

What your life changed at that moment I mean looking back we know. But at that moment, what did you do?

Speaker 2: 16:39

Well, I realized I had to go and at that stage I didn't even know forestry was a subject that you could do at university. So I realized I learned that there were two universities in Australia that offered forestry. One was in Melbourne, one was in Canberra. So I said right, I've got to get the marks to get into that. So that gave me a target and got into forestry school. Didn't have any money. So I worked for a couple of years in Melbourne at a medical research laboratory, had a great time, and then went to Canberra. I got into Melbourne, got into Canberra but I decided I needed to get away. I'd grown up on the outskirts of Melbourne, needed to get away, worked in Melbourne. So I went to Canberra, did my degree there. I was absolutely blessed because and it was again a great believer in the universe I think by going to Canberra what I didn't realize in choosing Canberra over Melbourne was that they had a community forestry project in Nepal and so I went there to study forestry.

Speaker 2: 17:37

You picked it because it was not Melbourne I picked it because it wasn't Melbourne and because when I got there I learned that they had this amazing community forestry project and that there were opportunities for summer internships. One guy did it ahead of me and I was talking to him. When he'd come back, I said what did you do over the summer? He said oh well, I was in Nepal. How did that happen? And he told me so I'm like straight in to see the professor the next day. I'd love to do that next year and sure enough I was able to do it, and it was great because I had this dream of doing the work that Zimbabwe spoke about. But young bike from the bush in Australia, was I going to be up to it? Would I enjoy it?

Speaker 2: 18:17

So flew to Nepal for three months and just had another amazing experience there, working to try and understand the growth rate of fodder trees, because the farmers didn't have fertilizers, so what they would do would be feed the leaves from their trees on their farms that were growing on the terraces to their animals, to their goats, their buffaloes, and then they'd capture all the manure and put that into their soils. And so the trees in that ecosystem were really important, but no one really knew much about them. So the project manager said could you go out and measure the trees and take cores to see if we can see how old they are, because then we can work out how fast they're growing and we might be able to match that with some nutrient studies of the leaves. And so young bloke and I had a colleague with me we spent three months walking up and down the middle hills of nepal measuring trees and taking cores out, subsequently took them back to canberra and studied them and uh, I mean small drill, small drill, yeah like a little straw.

Speaker 2: 19:23

We'd put them in a straw, so so literally like a straw, so it didn't damage the tree. I mean, you know it was putting a hole in the tree, but it didn't really hurt the tree. And that closed up afterwards and, you know, sanded them off, counted the growth rings, worked out what were growth rings, because no study had ever been done on many of these trees before. So it was a real adventure of learning and, yeah, it gave them the results and they learned about how fast these fodder trees were growing and that meant that they could prioritize the faster growing ones in certain areas, ones with better nutrients. But what an experience. Young bloke from the bush, never been outside Australia. And here I am in Nepal and of course, got giardia, got all the stomach sicknesses you can get, but what? Because we had to go up into the high country. We lived with family, a family up there. We had to go down into the low country. We lived with a family down there. So we had all the animals, all the Nepalese food.

Speaker 2: 20:17

What an experience. Mate Just changed my life again.

Speaker 1: 20:28

And I think for many, many besides, that experience also the the tree fodder thing or concept is, is a bit foreign, I think, to many, let's say, industrialized agriculture countries like animals, like to eat leaves, especially fresh one from trees, in certain amounts, in certain with certain nutrients, certain moments of the year, not always at the same time, etc.

Speaker 1: 20:44

I see that pioneering farmers are starting to rediscover that, or in agroforestry systems and, of course, scared by damaging the tree, but this case the tree is a fundamental piece, um, for the nutrient cycle of of the animals, of course, getting a manure and that can go into the field so that that whole fodder piece, I noticed, or tree hay or whatever we want to call. It is something that I just wanted to double click on that and make sure people realize how important that is and how important it will be because you use the vertical space. Let's say, um, ruminants are not just growing on on grass and pasture, there's, there's a whole other vertical space. We, we should be, we ought to be using um, and and animals love it. You see them climbing to weird heights to get to certain leaves in certain moments. That's right, and that was studying. And then what led you to the trees?

Speaker 2: 21:39

Yeah. So I finished my degree, published it. Well, didn't publish it, but completed the study of the Nepalese work and then needed to get some experience in Australia, because the message coming from the project in Nepal and similar projects was that they were also sending their forestry students overseas. So it's not just some white guy turning up and sorting out these problems. They actually had some highly qualified foresters in their own countries and we'd studied with some of them. Some of the Nepalese foresters had come to ANU. So the message was get out into the bush and get yourself some experience. And so I got a job in forestry in Tasmania, which was another fantastic experience, but very different. It was large natural forest management but also plantation forest management in large natural forest management but also plantation forest management, large scale forest management, fires, all sorts of things. But living in a small community in a remote part of north eastern tasmania did that for a couple of years.

Speaker 1: 22:35

Great experience, um, just for people to make it visual like what does tasmania look like? I don't think many people has have been, unfortunately, not saying there's not a bad thing, but just do okay. Nepal I don't think many people have been, unfortunately, that's not a bad thing, but just do you Okay. Nepal I don't know, somehow I can imagine it, but Tasmania not really Like. What kind of trees? Hilly, not hilly what does it look? What does it feel and smell like?

Speaker 2: 22:56

Yeah, so quite different from the Australian mainland, it does have the agricultural land that we're used to seeing, pictures of Australian sheep farms and things like that. Yeah, so in the west of Tasmania they have these amazing, it's an incredible wilderness area. I don't know the highest mountain I used to know that but I can't remember Maybe about 1,500 metres, not sure, hundred meters, not sure, but beautiful wild areas with the winds hit Tasmania from tierra del fuego. Basically it's at such a southern latitude that it misses the southern, misses the South of Africa, and just comes right across. So they've got a air monitoring station on the west coast of Tasmania to monitor the cleanliness of the of the world's air, because they feel that that's the cleanest air in the world, because there's no pollution and let's think, from mountains around west Tasmania.

Speaker 2: 23:50

But on the east coast it's a little bit more. I mean, there are some mountains, sort of singular mountains, and a bit of high island country, but all covered in the mountains eucalyptus forest, so big trees. In the south west there's some massive trees, tallest hardwood trees in the world, eucalyptus regnans. There's rainforest on the west coast, a lot of temperate rainforest, beautiful rainforest, wow. So just a magic place. And in the middle you you have the valleys where you have the sheep farms and the cattle farms and things like that. The more traditional austral Australian landscape from the mainland, but a microcosm of its own unique little place, tasmania.

Speaker 1: 24:28

Very much worth a visit, I guess it's the longest piece, and so you said I spent a few years there, like what did you do and how? And what made you leave? Actually, because this sounds sound, I mean, it sounds like a magical place and and there was a moment to leave and and to to go into, I think, the rest of the world, because I don't think you stayed in Australia. What made you, what did you do there sorry, as a first question, and what made you leave?

Speaker 2: 24:56

yeah. So you know, st Barb's words were burning in my heart, basically about, you know, working overseas. So Tasmania was great. I spent a lot of wonderful times there, great friends. I also learned that those foresters from Nepal and other countries were now getting masters. So if I wanted to get a job overseas I had to get a masters. And again, I often talk about fate and the universe. Well, one day I came in from being out in the bush in Tasmania and on my desk was an application for a scholarship to study a master's in forestry at Oxford and I applied. It was only for foresters working in state forest services, so I was one of only seven applicants. In the whole of Australia People say, oh, you must be clever, you must be smart, you got a scholarship to Oxford. I was like, no, I was just lucky, it was a nice criteria that not many of you believe yeah one out of seven.

Speaker 2: 25:49

I was one out of seven and of course I was able to get a reference from the professor at ANU Forestry for the work that I'd done overseas and that helped. So I got a master's, went to Oxford, had an incredible experience there, met my wife. She was on the same course, also a forester, and did that course, came back to Tasmania for a short while but was burning to get overseas and applied for the job in Nepal to be a forester on that project again. Didn't get it because one of the people who had been on that project decided that he wanted to go back. And of course he was great, he had the experience, he spoke the language. So I didn't get that. But the company that was running the project at that stage it was no longer the university realized that he was a young forester keen to get overseas. And about a month later they rang me up and said, well, we've got a project in the Mekong Delta, a research project, a reforestation research project. Would you be interested? I'm like, absolutely yes. And they said, well, we better tell you a bit about it first. I'm like, okay, go and tell me. And so they did tell me and it was just. It was the opportunity to get started as a young forester quite difficult to get into that work.

Speaker 2: 27:00

So it was in the depths of the Mekong Delta, right near the border with Cambodia. The Vietnamese government after the war in 1975, had sent the South Vietnamese Army into the Mekong Delta re-education camps, basically to clear the swamp forests and to plant rice, and that had largely worked. And today Vietnam is is, I think, the second largest rice exporter in the world. But in the area where I was it hadn't worked because these were acid sulfate soils, the potential acid sulfate soils, and so when they drained them, they cleared the trees and they built the drains, they exposed this layer of now I can't remember it such a long time ago gyracite, I believe. And when they expose this tiny little layer of gyracite that existed at various depths in the soil, usually between zero and a meter it would oxidize and became pyrite.

Speaker 2: 27:58

It may have been pyrite becoming gyracite There'll be soil scientists out there that know more about that than me but in that process it would release sulfuric acid into the soil. And so this incredible Garden of Eden, which was forests and fish and birds that the Vietnamese army sorry, the Viet Cong had been in to fight against the Americans and had been bombed mercilessly, was now cleared and everything died because the ph dropped from you know beautiful seven garden of eden place down to two, two and 2.5. So all of the rice that they planted in that 150 000 hectare area died um. They tried and tried, they didn't get anywhere. And the vietnamese government asked for a project to try and get the trees back and um the aust government Because they realized it was the trees, or like what was the realization.

Speaker 2: 28:47

They just realized that if they were going to have an economic benefit there, economic farmers were moving out there, but they couldn't grow rice. And they realized that in time the soil would ameliorate, but it might take 30 years. So what are the farmers going to do in the meantime? Well, what about planting some trees? And this could perhaps ameliorate some of the soil conditions too. But they couldn't get the trees to grow back either, because of the acid, because of the flooding. Every year the delta would, the Mekong would flood. So they were looking to plant eucalyptus because there's timber to be had, but they couldn't handle the flooding, and in some areas the flooding was over two meters.

Speaker 2: 29:27

And so, as a young forester, it was my job. I was replacing another young forester who had started the project and I was asked to go out there because he needed to leave. He wanted to go back to Australia with his family. So I went out there and just experienced this amazing working with the farmers, understanding what were their problems how do we get trees back? What was happening with their rice? I wasn't doing anything on the agricultural side. It was all trees, but that was trees very much linked in with what they were trying to do on the agricultural side. So it was my first taste of this was 1993, so it was my first taste of this was 1993. So it was my first taste of um, of um, agroforestry in those days.

Speaker 1: 30:07

yeah, quite fascinating and what like, what happened or what did you manage to to facilitate there in terms? Of in terms of change or in terms of, um, yeah, differences. What? What did you experience?

Speaker 2: 30:22

yeah, the farmers were busy planting eucalyptus wherever they could, but when the floods came and they were planting eucalyptus species that could cope with a bit of wet feet, but what we realized was they just had to go back to the natural forest species the malaluca trees that were there swamp forest and they could plant eucalyptus on the mounds of the canals and that would get them up out of the water. So they could plant eucalyptus, but they needed to plant Malaluca, and so we did some trials on some different species that they could look at, but ultimately it was the Malaluca species that grew there before they chopped it all down, that seemed to be able to cope with the acid. It struggled a bit, but we really established that. You know, here's how you do it. Here's how you can get the trees established. This is what you need to do to help them get up and running. Here's what you can do for some eucalyptus and just mix that in with your farmland. And so, yeah, it worked and basically became a new model for that landscape, that 150,000 hectare landscape of mixing trees in with the rice, and it seemed to help the farmers get up and running.

Speaker 2: 31:35

But again, another amazing experience of, again, all the sicknesses you can imagine. I was out working with farmers all the time, drinking a lot of rice wine, you know, staying in their houses because I had to go out and measure the trees every few weeks. And what a rich experience of learning about the Vietnamese people and their culture. And so you know, the project was a success. But what it really meant was that my career in overseas forestry, which is what I'd wanted hard to leave Tasmania. It was so beautiful, but that was my path. And so when I finished the project there in September 1995, instead of going back to Tasmania I went to Canberra again, where the consulting company was who'd run the project was based, and they said we'll give you a job and you can work again in these projects. So that's how I ended up really moving into that overseas forestry.

Speaker 1: 33:02

And how normal was it at the time to look at the, let's say, the traditional trees or the natural trees that used to be there? Was it a big step or was it very like in forestry that if everything else, if the eucalyptus doesn't work because of the flood and other species are struggling because of the acidity, it was a natural step to to go there, to that type of trees, or was it quite a stretch?

Speaker 2: 33:28

it was pretty natural. What we did do was look at other species. We bought some species from australia that we could plant. We could try that might have been able to go better than the local species. Some of them did grow faster but ultimately the hardy after a few years. Those trials showed that the local species might have grown a little bit slower, but it was very, very tough and resilient. And so that's ended up what happening. And so I think foresters, we get excited, we think we can bring something in, and there's big question marks about whether that was a wise thing to do now, bringing another species in from Australia. That was. It was the same genus, like it was Malaluca, but it could have turned into a. I mean, if it had turned into a weed, the Vietnamese probably would have been happy have covered the, the, the, the areas that had been deforested, and they could use it for timber. So there wasn't so much worry about that.

Speaker 1: 34:24

But ultimately the, the local species, just proved the best yeah, I mean there's a fascinating, I think, philosophical discussion on weeds and invasive species. That's right and like. Does that even exist? And if there's a role for a species not from from there that does thrive and provide timber and cover, etc. Like, should we be the one thing? Yeah, but it's not originally from here. But it's the same family, yeah, but it's different circumstances, because we actually chop down everything and release an asset and make the fundamentally change the soil so there might be another species. That's right.

Speaker 1: 34:58

So there's um, I have no farmer saying, yeah, we don't really mind the weeds because it's the only thing that grows there. That's right and and my animals can eat it. I'm also fine, even though everybody else freaks out when they hear this and this, this and this weed, or this and this term, or this and this eucalyptus. Of course there are places where they're actually banned, um, even though with the right management, they thrive, the right types. I mean, it's always the context, but it's very interesting the mental frameworks we have around weeds and invasive species that somehow make us freak out constantly. That's right, yeah, and so what led you to found then TFT and the Forest Trust? Because you could have said I don't know how long you stayed, but in the consultancy company for sure. Many interesting projects around the world. Quote-unquote. Easy, I'm not saying easy, but a smooth path. We could have been talking now and you would still be there. What made you to start your own thing?

Speaker 2: 35:58

Part of it was what I saw in Vietnam. Just as I was leaving Vietnam, a big Taiwanese company came in and said well, we're going to plant all these eucalyptus here, we're going to plow up the soil and make mounds and plant the eucalyptus on mounds. And I was like, well, no, you wouldn't want to do that, that's not going to work. No, no, we're going to make massive mounds, we'll get the trees up out of the floods and, of course, when they did the mounding, they released more acid. The trees weren't out of the floods and the trees died. And here was this opportunity. And for the few months literally it was months that they were there, they were pumping a lot of money into the local community, local economy, and what a great opportunity. But they didn't listen to the research and the whole thing just was a disaster which messed up the landscape even more. And I saw that and I thought, golly, you know, I mean there was a goat herder right there. You know, if someone had spoken to that, well, I did speak to them, but the goat herder didn't listen. What if we could help companies do better? And that was the sort of thing that I held onto as I left Vietnam and a lot of my consulting work was with companies, trying to help them do better. And as part of that I met some forest managers who, in the FSC system, had just emerged the Forest Stewardship Council for Certifying Forest Management had emerged at that stage. Certifying forest management had emerged at that stage. And there was a forest manager in Asia who complained bitterly to me, saying well, I've just had an audit and they've told me all the things that I'm doing wrong, but they can't help me solve it. And the perception was he was a forester who was just chopping down the trees, wasn't interested in good forest management. He was a forester who was just chopping down the trees, wasn't interested in good forest management. This was not the case. So again I thought, well, here's an opportunity to help this person do better. Amongst all of that so these are some of the threads that were coming together. Amongst all of that, the company that I was working with in Canberra wanted to open an office in the UK. Because I'd been to Oxford, I'd been to the UK. They said, well, you're the best qualified. So my wife and I moved back to the UK and what happened in that was in 1997.

Speaker 2: 38:06

What happened in the summer of 1998 was that there was a massive campaign against garden furniture that was made in Vietnam. But all of the timber was found to be trucked over the border, ripped out of the forest of Cambodia, trucked over the border, over the mountains, into Vietnam, made into furniture. The tick scandal yes, that's right, it was huge. And I had already been working on that as a consultant for a British do-it-yourself chain called B&Q. They had wanted to get their forest certified and I said, well, not easy. And I discovered the fact that the logs that were being used in their furniture this was in December 1995 were coming from Cambodia, with all sorts of destructive links, you know, environmental and human rights abuses, and the NGOs only sort of reported that three years later, by which time I was working a lot on this. And that led to the start of the TFT where people said, well, you need to talk to that Scott Poynton person, he's doing something on garden furniture. And so again it came this thread of helping companies do better.

Speaker 2: 39:11

And at the time when companies found that something was wrong in their supply chain, they, oh, that's my supplier. They just blamed their supplier. Well, you know, I'm just buying the furniture, I'm the good guy here, I'm the victim too, and it's like no, you need to find out where that wood comes from and make sure that it's not linked to bad practice. And that's what happened and that's what I was working on. And when the garden furniture campaign exploded, I was able to say, well, let's set up an organization that can help companies do that.

Speaker 2: 39:47

And it was really pioneering what people today call responsible sourcing. It didn't exist back then. We really pioneered this idea of you need to know what's going on in the upstream, far distant upstream reaches of your supply chain. You are responsible for it, you can influence it and let's make it good, let's make sure it's coming from well-managed forests. And so that was the impetus to set up TFT, and we set it up A lot of discussions at the back end of 1998 and launched it in March 25th 1999. So TFT just turned 25 years old. Now it's Earthworm Foundation. But yeah, theft just turned 25 years old.

Speaker 1: 40:18

Well, now it's earthworm foundation, but yeah, the organization just turned 25 wow and just a fascinating thing, that the I'm not saying there wasn't like sustainable supply chain management before, but that it came through wood and garden furniture like that. That was the trigger. I mean, this wood was in a lot of other things as well and we know a lot of other supply chains, especially from tropical countries cacao, coffee, to just name a few. Palm oil are troubled and somehow it triggered something when it was about our garden furniture. Have you thought about why that was?

Speaker 2: 40:53

Yeah, look, it's funny too. It's a great question and it's funny. The NGOs had been working hard to raise concerns about mahogany, mahogany furniture. But 0.01% of the maybe less of the population have a mahogany table right, and so in the back end of and do they care? And do they care Exactly? And so all through the 90s there was 80s and 90s there was a lot of reports from NGOs around mahogany. It just didn't touch the consciousness of the masses.

Speaker 2: 41:25

But what happened was around 1995, the world's largest garden furniture wooden garden furniture company, scancom, was born it wasn't the largest then and they saw that they could go from teak, which was very expensive, high quality, high price garden furniture. They could do exactly the same designs but they could use other tropical hardwoods that were beautiful not as beautiful as teak, but it would drop the price down to about 30 or 40%. And that started in 1995, which meant that there was this incredible explosion of demand across the whole of Europe. So just about everyone had one of these garden benches or chairs. Even if they lived in a flat, they had a little chair on their patio or whatever. And so when the NGOs realized they saw this explosion and said what's going on? And Global Witness, for those of your listeners who've seen Blood Diamond they were the NGOs, realized they saw this explosion and said what's going on. And Global Witness, for those of your listeners who've seen Blood Diamond they were the NGOs behind the movie Blood Diamond. They focused on how conflict can be exacerbated through natural resource destruction, and they looked at timber coming from Cambodia and it was all being done by the army, by the remnants of the Khmer Rouge, and they were trucking these logs over into Vietnam for making garden furniture, which landed in everyone's home, and so it was a magnificent opportunity. When they hit the stores and the press, it touched everybody, and so suddenly it was this.

Speaker 2: 42:56

It was really, and up until that stage, all the companies were going to meetings around. Oh yes, we've got, you know, global forest and trade network. We've got to be thoughtful about these things. And when I set up TFT, it was like no, you guys have got to pay. You know, it's the same way.

Speaker 2: 43:10

If you've got a problem with your computer, you invite someone in to fix it. If you can't fix it yourself, you pay for that service. Well, you've got an environmental and social crisis in your supply chain. You need someone to come and fix it for you, and we're not going to go to the EU and ask for donor money. This is your business. You have a business problem, and that was the key turning point, and in the first year of TFT, the founding members put $800,000 into the kitty to say get out there and sort that out for us.

Speaker 2: 43:41

It was the first time any company had ever spent such a significant amount of money on sorting out environmental and social issues in their supply chain at such a scale. I'm sure individuals at companies had done it here or there, but only out of the goodness of their heart. But this was the birth of the responsible sourcing movement and companies just had to go down that path. And so the NGOs were saying well, you're doing it for your wood, what about this, what about that? And so it came, it grew and eventually you know that led TFT to be working in palm oil and other commodities.

Speaker 1: 44:15

And it's, yeah, it's fascinating the moment it hits your, your balcony or your terrace or your garden, like you literally have, uh, basically blood on your balcony, like then you have something to to push and at that time because you said this was, you discovered it two, three years before, like the time the, the, the scandal hit and and people started to to, to realize and started to to knock on your door and then, of course, you found a tft um and the deforest trust.

Speaker 1: 44:47

Like, were there I'm not saying solutions, but were you deep enough in it that you could at least discover or find pathways? Because trucking um teakwood even different quality, but over the border with the army and all of that, it doesn't sound like an easy fix at all. But did you have enough potential pathways and options there to say, okay, these are the points to work on, these are the most difficult, these like, let's go and get to work, because when you're you need to get to some solutions now that you can say to these companies, yeah, we have also no clue. Like we're going to go there and maybe find out that it's impossible and we should all stop with teakwood um, like, what were? What was your answers to to their questions?

Speaker 2: 45:31

well you're. The last thing you said was exactly the first place. I started was like we might not be be able to sort this out, but we're going to go and have a look. And so I was unusual in that sense where most service providers or consultants come and say, well, here's the 10 steps to sorting this out for you. And I was like, well, it might not be possible, but we're going to go and have a look.

Speaker 2: 45:50

What had happened in December 95, when I started this process by going to visit a forest around Ho Chi Minh City where I learned that the logs were coming from Cambodia and that was with a UK company, as I mentioned, B&Q and they were like, oh okay, we've got to stop, we've got to stop. And I said, hold on. There's a factory there in Saigon which employs quite a lot of people and you're 80% of their business. If you cancel your order with them, all those people are going to lose their job of their business. If you cancel your order with them, all those people are going to lose their job. And you know what? You don't have to be taking wood from Cambodia. There are other forests, there's forests in Vietnam that they're not certified, but with a bit of help, they could become certified, and this was the birth of the TFT model Find someone Like the one you talked to, the one that was very frustrated that he just got an audit.

Speaker 1: 46:39

I'm assuming it's a no.

Speaker 2: 46:40

no, it was yeah it was a different person. But but you know, what I said to b&q was don't cancel your orders, let's just find another forest to anchor your supply chain. So we, and so so the solution started to emerge like let's find forests that you can buy wood from with confidence that it's not coming from destruction and human rights abuses. Number one. Number two is let's then put in traceability systems that we can be sure that that's the wood that's getting into your furniture. And so they said okay, fine. And so they said okay, fine.

Speaker 2: 47:15

So from 1996 to the crisis of 1998, I spent my time talking with the Vietnamese government, trying to find a forest that we could use to anchor that supply chain for B&Q. And in April of 1998, just as the campaign was about to start, I visited a forest in the Central Highlands and they were like yeah, we're keen, we can supply that timber into that sawmill, into that furniture factory in Ho Chi Minh City, and if you could give us some support, we can try and get ourselves better managed and certified. So, and then the rains came, so everything stopped. So I said to B&Q you know, when the rains finished in November, let's go back. And of course, in that intervening period the garden furniture campaign absolutely exploded and because I'd been working with WWF in Vietnam to identify this forest, people went to see WWF in Europe and said, you know, because the companies who were being attacked saw WWF and said what can we do? And they said I don't know, but maybe you should talk to Scott Poynton. And that's how the companies found me.

Speaker 2: 48:23

And then, talking to them, we said well, let's try, let's get this forest up and running. You can put your, we can fund some technical assistance in there. We can fund some technical assistance in there. We can get some other forests, all the wood can come into the factories, we can put traceability systems in place and you can send wood furniture to your customers in Europe that may not yet be certified but we can show is on the path to becoming certified and eventually will become certified. So that was the dawn of the TFT model, which has been sort of carried through even to today with all of these commodities. Like, let's find, let's anchor the supply chain in a place that we can work with. Maybe it's already certified it wasn't back then, but maybe today it could be and then let's improve things and let's put traceability in place to make sure that that's the raw material that ends up in that product. That was the dawn of the TFT model.

Speaker 1: 49:13

Yeah, and I think it's underappreciated. Let's say the role of traceability. We hear it a lot, et cetera. But in many supply chains, at least back in the day, and still we see now the forensic activity around the deforestation law in Europe.

Speaker 1: 49:30

Many supply chains are quite complex and it's not like you cannot guarantee, or you couldn't at the time, that none of your wood or none of your furniture that you sell in your shop in Oxford or Liverpool wasn't trucked over the border in Cambodia, not because you didn't want to, but it just was never a question. They never looked and never looked. But I think people might find it surprising how many of these things we actually don't know or or just haven't connected it all the way back to the source, and that's in eggs and that's in animal protein and in soy and in wood and in many of the other things like it's. It's not run like an apple computer factory or something where they know exactly which bit goes in where, because it's just a different value in the supply. But most supply chains are pretty messy, to say the least. That's right.

Speaker 2: 50:19

And back then they were just outrageously bad and people would, you know the furniture company would go to the factory to check the furniture. The fact that it was made of wood didn't seem to occur to them. To ask where the wood came from, it wasn't their business until it was made their business by the NGOs. And, of course, the same thing happened years later with the palm oil industry, where it was made their business because they were proven to be. You know, palm oil was so linked to deforestation and it was really that work that you know TFT from. You know, when we started in 1999, we worked only on wood and we went worldwide, we got forest certified in Africa, in Asia, latin America, and we put in traceability systems, all of these things.

Speaker 2: 51:06

But sitting in the back of a Hilux bouncing across Cameroon with Bastion in the front in 2007. A Hilux is a car Hilux, sorry, a big four-wheel drive Hilux. One of these big pickup, big pickup. Bastion was in the front talking to this guy. We were going to visit the forest, that they were working on the other side of Cameroon and the Stern review had come out in December 2006, and what it had identified was that deforestation was, in fact, second only to the energy industry, of being the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. And this was a big shock to me. And even worse, even a bigger shock, was that the wood industry counted for very little of that. Most of it was, of course, deforestation for soil and palm oil. And here's this young forester following in the footsteps of St Bar Baker, thinking he's going to make a difference to forest conservation. And what the Stern Review showed was that you know it, really, the wood industry, yes, sort of important, but really just a tiny little drop in the ocean compared to what was happening in the agricultural sector.

Speaker 2: 52:13

And I'm sitting in the back of this Hilux bouncing around and my French wasn't so good back then, sebastian was chatting away with the fellow from the company and I had seven hours of reflection. I'm like we need to. You know this is not good. We've got this model of helping companies understand where the raw materials come from, with traceability. We've got technical assistance to improve the management of where that comes from. We could apply this model to palm oil, we could apply it to soy. We could apply it to any product. I used to say we could apply it flippantly. I used to say we could apply it to cheese from the moon. You just need to know where it comes from, what's going on out there, how it's sourced, what's happening in the factories where it's processed. Because we weren't only interested in the environmental, we were interested in the social as well. No good having beautifully sourced raw materials if the workers in the factories were slave labor or child labor. So we looked at both and that was how we ended up moving into palm oil.

Speaker 1: 53:15

And I mean mean it's fascinating that realization that forests, or forestry is, is such a small part. Um, partly maybe because there is an incentive there to keep the forest at least somehow standing in some kind of production way. Of course, plantation forests are very different than the natural forest, etc. But there's an interest in the trees if the agriculture pressure rises, that the interest is just to get rid of it as soon as possible. And then there's a land use change. Of course the carbon of the trees might get released, plus all the soil carbon, or much of it, gets released at some point through the plowing or disturbance, et cetera. And so what was the first project then, in terms of, let's say, agriculture supply chains that you, um, you managed to, to, to start or to to kickstart? What was? Where did you go after that seven hour realization? Okay, we need to do something. Yeah, where was the something, the first something to do?

Speaker 2: 54:03

yeah, so we decided we'd look at both palm oil and soy and and we went to see supermarket um supermarkets and look there's a scandal coming.

Speaker 1: 54:11

We can guarantee you we know what to do when a scandal comes Exactly right.

Speaker 2: 54:14

Exactly right. And so one of these supermarket members of TFT who we'd sorted out the garden furniture for they said okay, why don't you have a look at the palm oil? And so we went out into the palm oil. We looked at soy as well, but of course, what we found was that I think it was something like 80% of the soy coming into Europe to feed the chickens that ended up in the supermarket shelf as chicken breasts and things like this was GMO, and this wasn't good news, obviously, for the supermarket chains. It wasn't a problem for the US, of course, but in Europe, gmos is so just horrific for people that it was like, okay, let's not look at that. If people realize that the soy is GMO, then they'll stop buying our chicken breasts. What a crisis. And so let's look at palm oil instead. Did that?

Speaker 2: 55:07

All the palm oil industry guys were like go away, go away. You're the forest people, you're the furniture people, you're the timber people. We don't need to talk to you. What do you know about growing palm oil? And we said, well, we don't know anything about growing palm oil, but we do know about deforestation and we do know about human rights abuses and we know about traceability and we think you've got a problem coming and you might want to start acting on it. And we didn't really get very far. We learnt a lot, we learnt a lot. And then, of course, what happened was again another campaign the Nestle Greenpeace, kit Kat campaign, the fingers of the orangutan, the fingers of the orangutan exactly March 17th 2010,.

Speaker 2: 55:50

The video went global at 12 o'clock and the office worker, you know, shredding the paper, opened the KitKat. There was the KitKat the orangutan's finger munching blood coming out everywhere. Crisis Nestle handled it very badly, threatened legal action, which only made the video go more viral.

Speaker 1: 56:11

Why do companies still think that you can? You can do that especially, I mean, they may be severely underestimated viral virality, let's say online but that that gets you anywhere. Like people love to share stuff that's going to get banned maybe at some point. Like that's like sort of like a, like a child, come on for green peace.

Speaker 2: 56:31

For green peace it was, it was a gift, you know. And off they went and the whole thing just exploded and Nestle continued to handle it badly. And I'm watching this. And one of my sort of rules with TFT had been was we don't chase ambulances is the sort of term that's used Like when someone was getting beaten up by the NGOs, we didn't ring them up and say we can help you. We didn't do that.

Speaker 2: 56:55

But in the case of Nestle, they were bunkered down over there. And because I live 45 minutes from Nestle's headquarters, I know a lot of people who worked there and some senior people and I said to them listen, you are handling this so badly. If someone there wanted to have a chat, I'd be happy to go and do that. And like about they said, okay, we'll check. And they checked and about 30 seconds later the phone rang and said could you come over? They were in trouble and it was great and they were good people. And I went over there and we spoke to the people there and they were like okay, what do we need to do? I said, okay, well, let's set up. You're getting beaten up for being linked to deforestation. Let's have a no deforestation commitment. Okay, okay, what should we put in it? And it was great. It was a wonderful back and forth process.

Speaker 2: 57:44

And Greenpeace they were meeting Greenpeace in about a week or so and they'd had a couple of meetings with Greenpeace which had gone very, very badly, very badly, because Nestle were speaking Nestleese and Greenpeace were speaking Greenpeaceese. They were both speaking English, but one was businessese, one was NGOese and they just missed each other completely. And the Nestle guys sent me a presentation that they were going to use with their presentation with Greenpeace. I'm like, oh my God, don't do that, do not say that, do not say slide one, slide two, anyway, help them with that.

Speaker 2: 58:17

And wrote the world's first nerdy forestation commitment. They said, if you think that's what we should do, we'll do it. And I said, okay, well, let me just check with Greenpeace, send it over to the guys at Greenpeace. They added a bit here and there, but it was effectively just five dot points Be legal. Protect high conservation value forests. Protect this concept called high carbon stock forest, which was interesting because we didn't really know what that meant, don't clear? Did you make that up like that? We made it up right there With Greenpeace guys and asked them, it's like, because what it was was.

Speaker 1: 58:50

You know when a forest is a forest, which is hilarious, like that moment of crisis. You sneak in something exactly. Probably we should do that. Probably nobody checks at the moment.

Speaker 2: 58:57

Everybody's in panic mode so that's right, that's right, and, and, and you know, and, and. So then that's like everyone's like. Well, what does that mean? We don't know yet. But basically what we were trying to do is trying to find a threshold by which, if you have a, you know, an untouched forest, down to grassland, there's a gradient right of how much the forest is degraded. And the concept of high carbon stock became where do we draw the line in the sand, as it were, and say beyond that, you can clear it because it's really not functioning as a forest anymore. But on the right side of that, it's still functioning as a forest, let's protect it and it'll come back. So that was the concept of high carbon stock for us, but we didn't have a number of where that line in the sand was yeah, but it's interesting you introduced a concept like not all forest is the same forest.

Speaker 1: 59:43

No deforestation, if we want to continue to eat palm oil might be impossible. So there is a line there. There is a yeah there's a continuum and it's it's 50 shades of green or forest cover, etc. Like to you and to understand also that this, this commodity, is going to grow, and it has grown and exploded since then. So what, what to do, where and why, and what makes sense in this very full planet we're in, and and to introduce that with an interesting name is, of of course, fascinating.

Speaker 2: 1:00:12

Yeah, and that's what happened and it was signed off.

Speaker 2: 1:00:15

Nestle announced it two weeks after I first met with them and then the work to actually implement all that started.

Speaker 2: 1:00:23

And so we were going out to the same companies who had more or less told us to go away in very firm terms before Nestle, and now we were sitting in the room with the world's largest food company saying we've got this policy, we need to implement it.

Speaker 2: 1:00:39

And they were saying, okay, and, to their credit, golden Agri Resources, indonesia's largest palm oil company, which had been the company that had triggered the KitKat campaign. They said well, we want to meet that policy, we believe we can meet it, because the policy was no clearing peatlands, protecting human rights of the communities acting in a legal way, high carbon stock forest, high conservation value forest. And they said we don't think we're doing any of the other things. But what do you mean by this high carbon stock forest thing? And we're like, good question, we don't know. So, to their credit, again mediated the dispute between them and Greenpeace, which was a big, ferocious campaign at that stage, and we said let's get some research out there into some of these degraded forests, because the Indonesian forest landscape had been marred by the plywood industry since the 50s, and so there was a lot of degraded forest.

Speaker 1: 1:01:33

So wasn't that all of this was like pristine, full of orangutans of life, like a lot of this was that's right?

Speaker 2: 1:01:39

There was forest that was pristine, that was being chopped, but there was a lot of forest that had been mangled and brutalized by the plywood industry going back again and again and again and again, five or six times. By the time the palm oil industry came along, these forests were a lot of them were just destroyed anyway, and the palm oil company would come and clear it, but in doing so, they would also clear some pretty nice areas, and because these concessions were just being handed out from Jakarta, they didn't really know the condition of the forest, and so the companies were expert at knocking it down and planting palm trees, and so Gar said well, we said to them why don't we do some research? Let's go out and measure some of these trees and find out where this threshold line could be. And they went for that, and really it was two years of research that led to this sort of line in the stand. Meanwhile, the rest of the palm oil industry was dismayed and outraged by this. This was terrible.

Speaker 2: 1:02:38

Gar again mediated their no deforestation commitment forest conservation policy, which was launched in February, the 9th 2011, just after, so a few months after, nestle's, and this set things in motion, but most of the companies just ignored it and said we don't want to work with that. That's not no, we've got RSPO, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil Certification Initiative, and they sort of blocked progress. But meanwhile Gar, Greenpeace and the TFT teams were out in the bush measuring these trees, getting some good science behind where this threshold number could be, and it was a fascinating process that eventually led to the release of this high-carbon stock forest concept. You know, 35 tonnes of standing carbon seemed to be a threshold that we would. Most people would agree that beyond that, just clear it, it's really destroyed. But anything above that needs to be protected.

Speaker 2: 1:03:37

Then social issues started to come, because a lot of the smallholders were saying well, we've got this forest, this is our community forest. We would like to clear it and grow palm oil because we can make money. So this whole process started which became the high carbon stock approach, sort of multi-stakeholder forum, and that's still going. The company's piled in APP, which was Asia Pulp and Paper, which was the sister company of GAAR. They came to us they said well, you've sorted out GAAR, can you help us? We've got Greenpeace hanging off our building. That took quite some time but that worked. And they had a native forestation policy. They got 2 million hectares of bulldozers out of 2 million hectares of forest. Then Wilmar, the world's largest palm oil company, said they were being attacked by an NGO Out of Singapore.

Speaker 1: 1:04:25

I think yeah, out of.

Speaker 2: 1:04:26

Singapore, wilmar, world's largest palm oil company they trade about 45% of the world's palm oil and Glenn Horowitz, who now leads Mighty Earth, campaigning against well, certainly, the beef industry, but other industries.

Speaker 2: 1:04:43

But Glenn led this campaign against Wilmar back in 2013 because the fires in Indonesia for establishing palm oil was choking Singapore and there was a whole campaign there and we already knew Wilmar because of the Nestle connection.

Speaker 2: 1:04:59

We got in there, worked with Wilmar and December 5th 2013, they launched their no deforestation policy, which was the first time a trader had committed to stamping out deforestation in their third-party suppliers. So a big process, a massive change process, was unlocked from that moment of talking to Nestle through to the end of 2013, where we had the biggest palm oil companies in the world, pulp and paper company in the world, and then in 2014, everyone had to follow because Wilmar was taking the market, because they were a big player and they were moving towards no deforestation, and so all of their customers who bought palm oil from them and others moved their orders to Wilmar because they realized that they didn't want to be linked to deforestation as well. So Wilmar did pretty well business-wise but, to their credit, they worked very hard to implement the policy as well and and so where does it leave us now, in 2024, what do you see in the palm oil?

Speaker 1: 1:06:02

mmm, we'll get to other places, but see in a palm oil industry, what gives you hope, what gives, what scares you, what's the, the current state?

Speaker 2: 1:06:11

and if you, if you can say that, yeah, well, amazingly and glenn, who's, as I say, he's with mighty earth now did a bit of a. They did some studies on this and basically you know, there's monitoring of deforestation and way back in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, up until that point where these no deforestation commitments emerged, deforestation in Indonesia was 800,000, 900,000, 1 million hectares per year, and earlier this was it earlier this year, last year I think. Actually it was last year around the time, because last year was the 10-year anniversary of the Wilmar commitment it had dropped to about 15,000 to 20,000 hectares a year and for those of us who are following in St Barb's footsteps, that's 20,000 hectares too much. But what an incredible turnaround. And a lot of that was because the government in Indonesia saw that this was good for industry and that they actually then made laws to level the playing field. So there was a period after Wilmar where there was a lot of outcry from the palm oil industry saying, oh, these people aren't buying our oil anymore. And Wilmar and the other companies that were starting to follow in their footsteps were able to say to the Indonesian government look, it's just not good for palm oil to be linked to this deforestation. It's not great, it's certainly not good for palm oil in Indonesia because everyone just goes to Malaysia. We need to, and there was deforestation in Malaysia too, but Indonesia was the frontier and so the government put in place laws that really did bring it under control. And so you know, I'm sitting here thinking that's pretty amazing, you know, to go from around a million hectares, 800,000 to a million hectares a year, down to 15,000 to 20,000 is quite extraordinary. So that's something that feels good.

Speaker 2: 1:08:00

On the scary side is when governments change and we've just had a change of government in Indonesia policies and laws can change. I don't think we've seen that yet. I'm not watching on a day-to-day basis, but we saw that in Brazil with the Bolsonaro government, who weakened a lot of the controls that were protecting and reducing deforestation in the Amazon. So we haven't seen that. I haven't heard that happening in Indonesia yet with the new president. But let's see fingers crossed.

Speaker 2: 1:08:27

There are very, very important forests out in West Papua, amazing areas there that haven't been deforested yet. So fingers. But there's a lot of companies out there looking to do that and some deforestation has happened and Mighty Earth have been putting that out there. So people know the campaign. The EUDR now is another wonderful lever to force companies because people say, oh, we can sell the palm oil to China, but what if the palm oil then finds its way to Europe in a product? Of course there's a lot of palm oil used in China and India, where they don't have such regulations. But most of the companies who are growing palm oil don't just sell to China and India. They do sell to Europe.

Speaker 1: 1:09:11

And if they, they and the company not just you're hopeful for this deforestation law that just came into I hope so europe for a number of, yeah, supply chains, a number of products.

Speaker 1: 1:09:20

Yes, you have to start showing full transparency which, to your credit, probably wouldn't been in the table, uh, 20 plus years ago, and if you don't, and if you are linked to deforestation, the fees are pretty intense on the your revenue in europe, which, for some of these companies is, it seems to have teeth. From what I hear, it seems to have teeth and I see everybody scrambling for that's right, like okay, let's show which farm we get our cacao from. Let's farm like, because people, I don't think we understand that we have no clue that's right in many, many cases how these work. And it seems to have teeth, which is good, because a nice law without any teeth is not going to go anywhere, but it's going to influence, hopefully, markets outside Europe as well. As you said, these companies also sell their products in India, et cetera. Are you going to separate those streams Like, what are you going to do, or are you just going to work on?

Speaker 2: 1:10:07

the whole thing, they work on the whole thing, they work on the whole thing and that's why it's got teeth and that's why it's exciting. And I think you know before these companies came along to, because when we started in the palm oil industry there was no traceability. The ships would just go up and down the coast, stopping at a port where there was a mill, taking the oil from the tank, go to the next one, and they had no idea what was happening in land from that tank, was their deforestation, was their human rights abuses? And so this push for traceability. In the TFT we developed what we call this. We developed it in hindsight. We didn't develop it going in.

Speaker 2: 1:10:45

But first off we'd say to the companies what are your values? Do you want to be linked to the death of orangutans? Do you want to be linked to human rights abuses? No, no, that's not who we are. Well, who are you? And that's why we've come with these policies, these no deforestation, no exploitation, no peatland policies. So that was the sitting out of their values. And the next thing was T T for transparency, t for traceability. Well, how are you going against that policy? These suppliers are doing well, but these suppliers you've got no idea about. So then comes T for transformation. So get in there and help those suppliers who aren't doing well, meet your policy and people will say, well, shouldn't we just disengage from these people? It's like, well, no, we want to keep economic development happening out there. So it's really the balance. But let's transform through engagement. Let's not think that if we just disengage with these people they're going to suddenly transform their operations. They need help. This was the founding principle of the TFT, right. Let's help companies. Let's not assume they're all evil, not divest.

Speaker 1: 1:11:44

Yeah, let's not Exactly.

Speaker 2: 1:11:45

Let's not assume they're all evil. Let's assume that that's just the way the industry is running. And if we came in and said, well, listen, we could do it differently, that can address these issues and you can be in business, they'd be like, okay, okay, help me, show me how to do that. And so we've seen this transformation unfold through engagement, not by boycotts. And the last V was V for verification. Let's make sure it's working. Let's not just listen to what people tell us, let's make sure it's working. Let's not just listen to what people tell us, let's make sure it's working. So, this sort of VTTV model that TFT developed through our work and is now. I don't know, when I stepped aside as TFT CEO, we were working in 25 different commodities I don't know how many they're working on now and, of course, they're looking a lot at soil regeneration and things like this, which is Bastian's strong passion, whereas mine was forests. His is the soils.

Speaker 1: 1:12:37

But they still do the forest work we discovered today.

Speaker 2: 1:12:38

They're intimately connected, intimately connected To stones and earthworms and goats, exactly, that's right. So you know that's at least part of the journey and it gives me a lot of joy to see these things come. Because you see these things come? Because when I first started, people just saw the businesses as major, major part of the problem and I was like no, no, they are a big part of the solution and of course, we need legislation to bring up the laggards and everything, but we need leaders and I think our work in those years was all about helping these companies move away from being considered to be pariahs and actually become leaders. And they have done and they continue to be, which is good.

Speaker 1: 1:13:15

There's so many rabbit holes, but I also want to be conscious of your time. So, okay, let's see how we're going to do this. A short question, but it might lead to a massive answer. Have you been following the health side of things, like the human health we see ultra-processed becoming actually coming out of brazil and now a massive book in the uk like there's a lot of? There seems to be a lot of bubbling around um, unhealthy food, which ultra processed foods, which has, in essence, a lot of palm oil in it usually, and a lot of other things that are commodities, hugely processed, etc. Do you have you ever looked into that? Do you see, like with your emergency glasses on, because you've been really good at seeing that not running healthier, let's say environmentally and socially better change, value change, but actually healthier products in the end? Long answer. I don't know if you have long questions. I don't know if you have any thoughts on the health side of things.

Speaker 2: 1:14:24

Yeah, well, it was one of the sticks that the NGOs used to beat the palm oil industry with way back, you know, in 2007, 8, 9, 10, even beyond. Oh you know, actually palm oil is, you know it's really bad for you and of course there are plenty of studies out there to suggest that it really wasn't the worst oil that you could use. And I always talk about the palm oil dilemma because, having been out into places like in rural Indonesia and in Africa, in Latin America, palm oil has been an economic miracle to lift millions and millions, or tens of millions of people out of poverty, deep entrenched poverty, and that's a good thing. And it's bringing infrastructure, health, school education, sanitation infrastructure into places where they didn't exist before. But of course it's had this environmental and social problem and the social problem being around slave labor, forced labor, things like that. So the palm oil industry has done a lot of work to protect itself.

Speaker 2: 1:15:21

And in those days I looked at those health issues and I'm like that's sort of number 10 down the list. Let's not worry about that. You're just beating the palm oil companies up for another reason, right? There's far more other things we've got to worry about than that, but it sort of lingered and to the point now, of course, where, yes, the ultra processed food discussion has emerged, with some pretty scary data associated with it and health problems for people. And, of course, yes, so much of that food has got palm oil in it.

Speaker 1: 1:15:55

I'm not saying that palm oil is the issue in that food. I'm saying that the ultra-processed part of palm oil is the issue in the food, but yeah, it's interesting that it's usually among like one of its derivatives is among the ingredient list of 35-plus things.

Speaker 2: 1:16:08

Yes, absolutely right, and that's a concern. It's a concern for me, for the palm oil industry in a way. People will say you care about the palm oil industry. Well, you know, putting my glasses on and looking ahead five to 10 years, there's so much research now going into alternatives for palm oil around bacteria or oil from bacteria, algae, all of these things. And of course, if you go out to these places in Africa and in Asia in particular, you see all these old well, we did for a long while old rubber plantations. Natural rubber has made a bit of a comeback, so rubber plantations are coming back.

Speaker 2: 1:16:46

But you saw these communities going up and down in terms of their economic livelihoods with the boom and bust of these raw material cycles and I think that the palm oil industry has cleared so much forest. What a disaster if the palm oil industry is laid low and can't continue to function and give people work, economic development, because an alternative comes along, particularly in places where they really have done the work to reduce the deforestation, you can't really beat up on palm oil from that perspective. Now what a shame if something else comes along and destroys the economic livelihoods of those millions and millions of people who depend on palm oil. So I think it is a risk, and the ultra processed food question is a risk. But at the same time, the amazing thing about palm oil and I don't know what the figures are now, but when I was looking at it back then 10 years or so ago, it was average industrial yield of a palm oil plantation was around eight tons of oil per hectare, whereas soy and rapeseed oil and these things canola oil these are like 1.2. And so to feed the billions of people we have on the planet, we need palm oil, and I suspect it's higher now as they've done a lot of research and development on it. What else could they use it for? Of course, now it gets used in biofuels.

Speaker 2: 1:18:12

Is that a good thing? I'm not sure. If it leads to more deforestation, that's not great. If it can help us with our carbon problem, perhaps it is good. But what about feeding people? Because if they're not, there's so many things that are intertwined right. So that's not a really good way of answering your question.

Speaker 2: 1:18:30

It's just I would say that I hope that the palm oil industry we don't need it to massively grow and clear more land, no, but if they can become more productive and lift more people out of poverty. This is a good thing, but for that we need a market for the palm oil and smallholder farmers in Asia, Africa, Latin America. They can do with having a market for palm oil because it does lift them out of poverty, and if they're out of poverty they may not go back and chop down other forests and do things like this. So it's all interlinked. So, yeah, I mean I personally eat as much of a whole food diet as I can because of the health issues around ultra processed food. This is something that I've seen for years. But, yeah, I hope these industries can weather that storm and maybe even be part of the solution, Because if it's not ultra-processed palm oil, maybe that's not a bad thing. It doesn't seem to have those negative health things.

Speaker 1: 1:19:24

Yeah, I think the question is that Can it be part of a healthy diet?

Speaker 2: 1:19:28

Yes, that's the question.

Speaker 1: 1:19:29

And in what way and with how many other ingredients? Yes, but it's, it's. It seems like there's a storm building yes, that's the the feeling.

Speaker 1: 1:19:39

I think you're right. Um, I get and there might be, yeah, I think, how you grow the palm oil, what kind of um? It's an interesting fat and we need fat. Um, so that that one of reasons. But it also has been ultra processed in so many different forms and shapes unrecognizable to the original oil. Um, and it turned out to be a cheap filling for many places and then it goes wrong um.

Speaker 1: 1:20:04

So it's going to be very interesting how that unfolds, because regulation will come, because the health issues are just getting completely out of control now yes already for many years, but somehow I don't know why, but it's hitting a nerve, uh, nerve now, just as we discussed before with uh, with the orangutans and and with garden uh, garden furniture. I want to be conscious of your time and ask a few questions. We always like to ask um at the end or through the interview, but in this case at the end. If you had no like, let's start with with a question like that's like looking at the investor side, people that are managing money and managing wealth, maybe their own, maybe other people's money.

Speaker 1: 1:20:44

Let's say we're in the city of london, in the theater, or in geneva, close to where you are, and we have an evening around regeneration, forest, earthworms, supply chains, et cetera. But if there's one thing you want them to remember after they walk out, of course they're inspired and they're fired up, but next day they go back to work and you would like one seed to be planted in their mind of financial professionals, people managing resources and money for work. What would that be?

Speaker 2: 1:21:12

professionals, people managing resources and money for work. What would that be? Due diligence? Go out and have a look in the bush. Too many decisions are taken with glossy reports coming in from someone who probably hasn't been to the bush themselves, and billions of dollars go into projects that aren't properly thought through, aren't properly designed. They sound all pretty exciting, they can have a great ROI rate of return and all these sort of things on them, return on investment but they just don't hang. They don't hang together.

Speaker 2: 1:21:42

And the key thing and we haven't got to it, cohen, but I've been working the last couple of years on a regenerative agriculture project in Ghana with smallholder farmers and the investor and the company that's leading that work have gone in absolutely focused on trying to have a regenerative approach on soils and very much on the communities there. These impoverished farmers have been destroyed by our traditional agricultural system and their soils have been destroyed and their lives have been destroyed. So if you go into those situations, you don't just need a one or two page prospectus and so many. And that's the tragedy of it, because I think there are investors. There are a lot of impact investors out there who put impact in their title but don't really care. It's all about ROI. But for those that do, worst case scenario is that they invest in a project and lose their money. But not just lose their money, they lose the opportunity to bring change.

Speaker 2: 1:22:37

And I think what I always say when people say how was TFT so successful? How has Earthworm continued to be successful today? My new foundation is Pond Foundation. How did you get things happening in Ghana? Got to go out into the bush. So I used to as the TFT CEO. I was in the forests of Indonesia, I was in the farms, I was in the plantations, I was in the factories, as were all my team and colleagues.

Speaker 2: 1:23:04

We knew what was going on. So when we got into those discussions with the boards of the companies way downstream in the supply chain or their investors, we could say X, y, z, this is what's going on, this is what you need to do. Boom, boom, boom. And I think too many of these investors who want to get involved and want to do good things don't get that information in a good way. I say you know, from the bush to the boardroom. You've got to get information from the bush to the decision makers so that they can make wise choices about where they put their money, how they put their money, who they put their money with. You know, all of these questions are really important and so much money gets wasted and also opportunities get lost and people get hurt in that process. I've seen it in ghana the farmers they're saying why are you guys going to be any different from all of these other?

Speaker 2: 1:23:51

job guests that have come along, and it's a pretty good challenge and it's a pretty valid challenge. I'm like, well, let's just see. We hear you and we're going to try to be different. We can make all the promises that you've heard before, but let's see what happens. And so that's what I'd say to investors get someone and this is not just a plug for work for me but get out in the bush. Get someone to go out in the bush and deeply understand what's going on out there. Of course, you'll never truly understand it until you put a spade in the soil and start working. Then you'll learn so much more. But do more due diligence so that projects have a greater opportunity to be successful. And we need these projects to be successful. The world needs them to work.

Speaker 1: 1:24:36

And if we would flip the question and put you in charge of an investment fund, let's say a billion dollars or a billion euros, a significant amount of money, not unlimited, obviously, but a lot of money. What would you focus on? What would be high prioritization areas? Would it be satellite monitoring? Would it be supply chain work? Would it set up brands? What would you, what did you focus on if you had to put this money to work for a very long time could be long time, horizons return horizons, but it has to be put to work um to to generate a financial return at some point.

Speaker 2: 1:25:17

I would go to particularly Africa, sub-saharan Africa, but not just there. I would go to the tropics and I would invest in biochar. I would invest getting biochar up and running.

Speaker 1: 1:25:25

I have the feeling we need to do a second interview. Yeah, this is going to open a whole other rabbit hole.

Speaker 2: 1:25:32

Absolutely, and I have seen the impact of biochar. When I got to ghana in february well, no, I got there first um november, end of november 2021 and all of the people were burning their peanut shells and their corn cobs, just burning them. I'm like why aren't you making biochar? And they go buy what? What are you sorry? Do you remember?

Speaker 1: 1:25:49

the first time you encountered biochar like basically burning trees, partly.

Speaker 2: 1:25:55

Yeah, well, of course, charcoal is a pyrolysis process. It's exactly the same.

Speaker 1: 1:26:01

But when did the light bulb go on?

Speaker 2: 1:26:03

The light bulb went for me at the end of let me now just be accurate on that. I'm going to say it doesn't have to be a day but also the moment no 2019.

Speaker 2: 1:26:13

No, no, no, no. I had someone call, contact me who was making biochar in cambodia and, uh, and they said, we want to talk about I don't know what they wanted to talk about, quite honestly. Uh, they contacted me and I'm like, and I knew about biochar, um, but I saw what they were doing with their project in cambodia and I'm like, oh, my god, you know, this is amazing. Not only are you helping farmers increase their yields, you're really reducing the amount of fertilizer that they're using, which has all sorts of benefits to the soil and the aquatic ecology around these farms and emissions. Oh, and, by the way, you're putting carbon back in the ground, where it's going to be for probably at least 100, if not 1 years. This is extraordinary. How do we take this to scale? So when I got to africa and I and so I then read about it and husk venture husk is the is the company in cambodia social enterprise. They became our first pond foundation partner and, um, we were selling. They'd never sold a carbon credit and I'm like you need to sell this stuff, make money out of and they've now gone to scale, selling carbon credits and investing in a whole new factory. To go to scale, I bought their first ever carbon credit. And when I went to and so I read about it, I learned about it. I'm like, oh my God.

Speaker 2: 1:27:21

And when I went to Ghana and saw these farmers who were, who were some I mean, I've worked in India, I've worked all over the world, I've traveled to 60 countries, I've worked in 30. These are some of the poorest people I've met in my entire life and they can't afford fertilizer and they get ripped off by traders. We could really talk about this a lot, but they're burning their peanut shells. I'm like, why don't you make biochar, guys? And the soy thrash, the corn cobs? They're just burning it, putting it up into smoke, not even in their fields. They would bring it from the fields and burn it in their community. I'm like, oh my God.

Speaker 2: 1:27:59

So we did some tests and sure enough we saw with our Bambara beans project that we were growing. In the first year we just did some, quickly put some biochar, 26% yield increase just with biochar alone. And then last year we did a trial with Bambara which unfortunately we didn't end up being able to harvest it for various reasons. But in the meantime we did a little corn trial corn with biochar, corn with chicken manure and on these desperately impoverished soils. We saw what was it now. I think it was a 20% increase on the corn yield with just biochar and a 98% increase with the biochar and manure just on a little corn plot. Wow, I mean this is extraordinary. There were no other regenerative agricultural practices. I mean they didn't spray any fertilizers, any chemicals, no weeding, no herbicides 98% yield increase. I mean talking about feeding the population. It's just an incredible achievement. Now, let's it's not. And we're looking at now what we can do with the project.

Speaker 1: 1:29:03

It's not a magic solution. It's not a goal.

Speaker 2: 1:29:04

It's hard work we talked about that before. Let's not go down that road Exactly. It's not magic. It yeah, it's not magic. Go down that road Exactly. It's not magic, it's hard work. It's needed, it's hard work and there's all sorts of logistics and you know, getting the biomass in and all of those things.

Speaker 2: 1:29:17

So you know, my goodness, it's not just like the world needs biochar. But, mate, if I had a billion dollars, I'd be out there in strategic places trying to plant the seeds of getting some biochar machines up and running and working with the farmers so that we can demonstrate and learn, because there's so much learning to be done about biochar, because it's like a forgotten technology ancient but forgotten. Let's learn about it and let's see what we can do here. That would be what I would do.

Speaker 1: 1:29:45

And there are probably some others. We're going to do an input series soon, um, little plug for us, but, um, together with john kemp, um, and, and we're going to explore because there are so, so many of these ancient and new technologies, like, literally in the broadest sense of technology, around, around fascinating inputs that can really make a huge difference. And and the compost tea, and the extracts, and the, the bio fertilizers, biochars, like there's this massive opening world. It seems like, um, and and just putting a stone, as we learned at the beginning of this, this, this conversation, like a massive potential when you start replacing chemical with, with biology.

Speaker 1: 1:30:26

That's right understanding and we only literally scratch the surface pun intended, um, but there's so much else there, with, with new lab technology, we can see, we can understand, we can start to, to see, okay, how do we speed this up and how do we bring extremely pulverized soils? Let's, let's not forget, most of the world is is in that situation, unfortunately, for various reasons. Um, how do we bring that to life at speed? Because we don't have time, and, which is a nice bridge to my last question. If you had a magic wand and you were able to to change one thing overnight, what would that be?

Speaker 2: 1:31:02

I would get rid of all the chemical fertilizers and um, overnight overnight you know why, and I thought about this. Of course, overnight it a bit traumatic, but we don't change until we have a crisis. That's the underlying lesson of my work. None of these companies that are now leading the way in no deforestation commitments would have done that unless someone hung off their building and shamed them publicly.

Speaker 1: 1:31:27

We're only humans. So for any investors out there I loveists we can make fun of it, but this is also fundamental work that needs to be funded. I'm not saying, go out there and fund Greenpeace, I'm not advising. But Mighty Earth, greenpeace there's a whole slew of companies. This kind of disruption is needed. It's critical. Sorry for the plug.

Speaker 2: 1:31:43

Absolutely correct and I'm glad you did mention that, because, of course, at TFT we worked with companies who weren't being campaigned against, but when we moved the needle and we were part of a process that transformed the entire palm oil industry, indonesia's pop and paper industry, the garden furniture industry, the teak furniture industry in Indonesia we haven't touched on that we got 4,000 semi-automatic weapons out of the hands of rangers that were regularly used to kill people. These are all, and the Congo Basin Forest industry. It wasn't until Greenpeace went ballistic and campaigned against them that they changed these NGOs, agents and Glenn Horowitz. I don't know what's happened to Greenpeace they seem to have disappeared. But Glenn Horowitz, with Mighty Earth, they are still rattling cages and it makes people uncomfortable. It's only when people are uncomfortable that we have an opportunity to change.

Speaker 2: 1:32:32

Of course, if, overnight, the chemical fertilizer industry disappeared, it would be probably a crisis. I do acknowledge that. However, my golly would it accelerate the changes that we really do need, and that would happen quickly. A lot of this technology, as you just mentioned, ancient technology it's there, but it's been pushed aside and lobbied out of the way by the part, the, the chemical fertilizer industry and the pesticide industry. Do you want?

Speaker 1: 1:32:59

to starve everybody. That's the narrative being used, exactly you must be in favor of starving.

Speaker 2: 1:33:04

What is wrong with you? You know and honestly my you know some of the chemicals that I'm seeing sprayed in Ghana. These are just awful, Illegal in most cases Illegal in most cases.

Speaker 2: 1:33:15

They are illegal and this is an outrage. And the farmers are sick for three days after they spray them. And these products end up in global supply chains, not just in Ghanaian stomachs, and I see the suffering of the Ghanaian farmers and their soils. And so for me, you know, regenerative agriculture, regenerative I don't just talk about agriculture. Regenerative supply chains are all about. For me, I start with the people, because you know, the soils are obviously fundamental to the whole process. But if the people aren't supported and motivated, inspired to do it in the right way, you're not going to get there.

Speaker 2: 1:33:54

And when I see these farmers and the gross exploitation that has impoverished them and has them living in starvation, let's work on that and support them to bring regeneration back to their soils. And so there's so many forces that are operating against that, and all led by money and lobbyists from the chemical industries. So there's so many forces that are operating against that and all led by money and lobbyists from the chemical industries. So there's my magic wand moment let's just get rid of it quickly, quickly, quickly, work hard to get more regenerative practices in place, and by golly, of course, there'd be some suffering. So we don't want that. But let's uh, let's basically wave the magic wand and say, in the next six months, it's all gone, give you a bit of time, but get ready, um, because it's gone. Well, that would.

Speaker 1: 1:34:41

That would transform our planet I think it's a perfect end to this conversation. So many other rabbit holes to go into, which we'll do in another episode, but let's bring it to a close now. I know I want to be conscious of your time. I know you have to go to another call. I want to give you a few minutes to prepare for that, because this was a long one, but very, very, very interesting. Joram was absolutely right.

Speaker 1: 1:35:06

We had to talk and record well, thank you, so we did so thank you for the work you do, for sharing fascinating insights, and people will be here until the end. I hope they had a cup of tea in the meantime, or a nice long walk, or run or commute, or we're cooking or gardening or whatever people are doing when they're listening to to this. Definitely write me. I always love it when people write where they're listening, but I want to thank you so much for coming on here, scott, and share your journey.

Speaker 2: 1:35:30

Thank you very much for asking, mate. I've really enjoyed talking with you and traveling that journey again and again with your interesting questions. Good on you.

Speaker 1: 1:35:44

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 investinginregenerativeagriculturecom. 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.