Ask Me Anything Recording - April 29th

The second Ask Me Anything webinar was an opportunity for the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food community to come together and ask Koen van Seijen and everyone else on the call their burning questions regarding building a regenerative food system.

Find the topics discussed and the links on www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/ama-webinar-4-29-2020/. 

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

Welcome to Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food.
Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits here: www.gumroad.com/investinginregenag. 
Other ways to support our work:
- Share the podcast
- Give a 5-star rating
- Or buy us a coffee… or a meal!
www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture. 
-----------------------------------------------------------


For feedback, ideas, suggestions please contact us through Twitter @KoenvanSeijen, or get in touch through the website www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com.

Join our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P. 

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.

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

Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more here

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And then we get started. So a very welcome, it could be early morning, it could be okay morning, could be late in the afternoon, depending where you are. After the success of our previous Ask Me Anything webinar, which was two weeks ago, three weeks ago, about three weeks ago, we decided to do another one in a different time zone to give some people also the chance to call in and not just watch the recording. I'm gonna share my screen for a few seconds, as I mentioned, just to set the stage and give a short introduction. I think most of you know who I am, but if you don't, and if you just found this invite somewhere, then I'm more than happy to briefly introduce myself. So let me go to, move this

SPEAKER_01 0:45

around.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

So basically, welcome to this Ask Me Anything webinar. Obviously, you can ask me anything related to food and agriculture and investing. I don't pretend that I have any of the answers, but I've interviewed a lot of people in the past, so maybe I can point you somewhere where somebody has thought about your issues before. And feel free to jump into the questions of others as well. We've seen that last time it was very helpful. People were putting things in the chat, books, et cetera, other resources. Just to give a bit of background, I'm the host of a podcast we've done over 80 probably 85 interviews depending a bit how you count with investors with farmers with scientists with fund managers and a lot more always to see how to put money to work to regenerate soil at scale not saying that we should scale every single farm but we should definitely let's say repeat the process and regenerate a lot of soil regenerate people we focus a lot on the nutrient density of food regenerate local communities which we know in the many places are in a very bad shape. And I think primarily because the agriculture system isn't working, plus many other reasons. And obviously regenerate ecosystems, which was the original reason why I get into the space, because I got very interested in the carbon side of things. And then obviously discovered all the other extra or the other impacts that regenerative agriculture can have when done well and when done at scale, while generating a fair return, which is obviously leading to a lot of debate. What is a fair return? Is that even possible? depending on how degraded your land is, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I think it's the quest we're looking for. Can you invest in a way that makes sense for the investor, the soil, the farmer, the land owner, local community, et cetera, while generating a return? So that's sort of the North Star we're pushing for. You can find anything, obviously, in your favorite podcast app. It doesn't mean you have to listen to it on SoundCloud, which is our current hosting provider, but you can find it anywhere, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, If you use one app and you cannot find it, please let me know because it means we have to make sure it gets listed there. So what is regenerative agriculture? We got quite a few questions last time on that. So I pulled a general definition. We can have probably one hour, ask me anything about this. But it's a system of farming principles, very important. So there's no one recipe. Focused on increasing biodiversity, enriching soils, improving watersheds, and enhancing ecosystem services. And I think this gives a nice overview just to set a bit the stage. Then obviously, usually the next question is, what's the difference between organic? What's the difference between biodynamic? What's the difference between sustainable? And it really depends. It depends. Organic is not always regenerative. Even biodynamic is not always regenerative. And sustainable agriculture for sure is not regenerative. And I think the next very brief, very simple, simplified overview overview gives that quite clearly. Extractive is the current system we're in. We've been discussing sustainable agriculture for a long, long time. And we see a shift to regenerative. Why? Because sustaining the current agriculture and food system is probably something we don't want to do. Why would you want to sustain a system that has depleted aquifers, that has depleted soils, that has created enormous debt zones in the Gulf of Mexico and actually in many other places and So we really started searching for it actually a number of farmers a number of years ago for a system that can restore, can regenerate. So if you say, what's the difference between organic? Organic can be done regeneratively, but you would have to ask the questions we saw before. Like, is it increasing biodiversity? Is it increasing soils, improving soils? Is it improving watersheds? And if it's not, it might be sustainable or it might be actually extractive. I've seen organic systems which are definitely not sustainable and not regenerative. So it's not a replacement of organic It's just a different set of questions that we should ask. And I think the easiest question always to ask is, does it build soil or not? Is it measurable? Are people actually measuring the improvement of soils? And then we get into a discussion how to measure that and so on. If you want to learn more, if you're completely new to this, definitely jump into a number of these books. There are great talks about them as well. You don't have to buy the book if you're not a reader per se. You can get great talks with David Montgomery on YouTube. Kiss the Ground, the book is great. Kiss the Ground Community is very interesting as well. If you want to really see the farmer's version, definitely read Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown. And any of these three books will give you a very good introduction into the subject And with that, I will stop my screen sharing and we'll get to the Q&A. There we are. And I actually want to start with the question of... Connie, who cannot be here because she's in St. Louis, but I think it's quite a technical question, not on the food side, but on the investment side. So I will type it into the chat. And for anybody who has questions, please type them into the chat. So Connie is mentioning that she's been digging into alternative equity structures, which is something we've discussed a few times on the podcast. And I think it's interesting for a number of different reasons because we probably need different investment structures to invest in regenerative agriculture and food, both in the food side of things, so the food companies, but also in the agriculture side of things. And the traditional either debt or equity probably is too rigid for many of this. So she was asking very specific on safes and convertible debt. What is possible there? What are the different, what are people doing? And I already answered to her, so I will actually put it in the chat as well. But there are a few It's not an easy question, but there are a few places where you can look for alternative investment structures and they're not necessarily food and egg focused so far. So I would just put them in the chat. for you to see. But there is stuff happening, basically. So the first one is Indie VC, which is not software focused, but basically puts money to work in growing software companies that are making money. So they're only putting money to work in companies that actually have sufficient cash flow. And they're very successful in that. And they're really creating this revolution in the software world where they're not going for the IPO exit. They built the exit into investments structure, et cetera. The second one is Purpose Capital. We've interviewed them, the founder Armin, I think two years ago or a year and a half ago on alternative buyout capital. They've made a long way, they've come a long way since then. And one of the deals they did actually was with Organic Roam, which is a large organic distributor in the US. And they provided together with RSF, social finance, the alternative buyout structure for that. So the company Organic Roam moved to a steward ownership model and needed to buy out the current investors and Purpose and a number of other players provided that capital but obviously didn't get the control of the company because the company moved to steward ownership. So there's a very interesting tension between steward ownership and still wanting to raise money and in this case being able. ShareTribe is not focused on ag tech whatsoever but is focused on software as well but they did a crowdfunding for equity but with a buyback in build-in to it so they actually the crowd could invest purpose was behind this as well they moved to a steward ownership model and they managed to raise quite a bit of money but again without giving away control of the company and the investors the crowd investors could be any of us are being bought out by free cash flow over time I will if you're interested in this definitely check out that link because they explain all the terms they explain the full thing why they're moving to steward ownership and also why they're raising money in this way and they were successful they closed around relatively quickly. Another example is more in the ag space is the Perennial Fund. We've interviewed Brendan and they will definitely come back on the show. There's a lot of interest in their skin in the game, profit sharing or free cash flow sharing model while they're helping farmers to go to regenerative organic. It's a pilot still. They will close probably the fund in I think September and then we'll see they will start working with about eight farmers and we've done a Q&A with Brendan and Phil actually in the past on this channel so there there are these small experiments but predominantly people fall back to either depth or very rigid depth or or equity and there's one more which is actually let me see if I have it as well I will put that later in chat so there's the impact terms platform which is part of tonic where I spent part of my my day job where we look a lot at alternative exits as well and how do you build in the terms the impact terms into the term sheets. Not just nice words when you're signing any kind of contract, but actually build them into your term sheet. So there's a lot of experimentation happening. I would love to see a lot more in food and ag because we don't have enough yet. We see some in software, we see some in other places, but we need more creativity in terms of deal structures also here. And that could be a good segue to your question, Thomas, if you want to jump in or you want me to copy paste it into the chat. You're on mute at the moment. Okay, so as a food entrepreneur with a proven product market fit in regenerative almonds in Spain, where do you look for current active angel investors who are seeking fundable seed stage businesses to impact the regenerative food, agri-food space in Europe? I think the first question would be, why are you raising capital? What is it for? You're still on mute. I muted you.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

Hi, Conan. Thanks for everyone. Well, I'm based in Spain, where we are working on the largest regenerative almonds agricultural project. We are aiming to restore a million hectares of land in southern Spain. And there are a number of players involved here, such as the Common Land Foundation Havelal and others and what I'm working on is a private company that aims to capitalize on the market opportunity is identified in the fast growing food spread market almond spread this is the category and in order to move into this space we need to raise some funding mainly for the production, the equipment marketing, branding and so on and And so the ideal investors we are looking for are those who understand the benefit of regenerative and they are looking for a long-term impact investment space, which is actually already something we are setting up with other partners. But what I'm working on is a separate project. So that's why I'm super grateful for you and keep on doing your great work Thank you so much for this. So any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

And in terms of size, because this sounds like, do you need to set up a spread factory, which could be quite expensive? What is the size you're thinking of? Is it 10 million, 400,000? What's more or less the range we should think about?

SPEAKER_02 13:44

So I'm working with some partners. So we have outsourced manufacturing, so that's not a problem. It's mainly for a long-term brand building and really to address the consumer needs. So what I'm looking for is an offer in the range of 150,000 to 200,000 euros in exchange for equity in company so this could be a great opportunity for investors looking for a long-term value generation in a space that is already well established in southern Spain supported by many partners and if you know I think you have done many interviews with Commonland so they're working on a 20-year base and so this also can give a confidence because I personally know everyone involved there. So this could be another value add to this.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Yeah, definitely. I will link the interview with Michiel, which was completely at the beginning of the podcast. I think Michiel of Commonland, which was probably, I don't know, number three or four. We did on the project in Spain. They are the landscape they're managing. In terms of the early stage investing, the seed stage is often the most difficult because it's by far the most risky even though you're in an established landscape that is moving forward and for many I would advise to find it as local as possible you need someone especially angel investors need to have a connection or at least in my experience with the company and in this case probably also with the landscape or with they definitely need to be convinced obviously and they need to understand regenerative agriculture they need to understand the length in this case you're asking them to invest in a food company and they either need they probably need some kind of connection with the land because why would a German investor or a Dutch investor unless they really really know the landscape well and have been there etc why would they invest so far away as they can have probably easier or closer investment opportunities and it's annoying but it's like with every kilometer you're away from you it just gets more difficult in terms of cultural and differences in terms of language, in terms of distance, literally. And there are not very few that are super comfortable with, okay, I'm based in Greece and I'm going to invest in Spain, just like that. Larger deals is different because you have the space or doing due diligence or visiting. I mean, as soon as you get to a different size, you also need different experiences on board. And then there are usually a number of players. I players that are interested in the food space of this. I mean, Triodos is one with their organic growth fund. Quadia is another one. But they all look at sizes, million plus, et cetera, simply because of the diligence costs. So if you look at smaller examples like that, usually you end up with, I mean, you mentioned what kind of angel investors would be interested in that. And the chances of finding someone outside Spain are not so large. Obviously, anybody listening interested, please get in touch with Thomas. This is not investment advice, but it's usually the closer the better because they will have a connection with the space. They will have a connection with the landscape, with the land. And especially for slightly smaller deals like that, you will need that connection because it's going to be a difficult due diligence process because there's not too much to do due diligence on. And so there needs to be that easy social connection now it's difficult obviously because we're in a in a covid world where where even if you're nearby you cannot build that relationship but i would really see like what is already happening in that landscape and and what can you raise even could be partly crowd could be partly or smaller tickets i'm not saying it should be 100 euros each but smaller tickets of 5k 10k obviously depending on the country where you're at can you easily find a platform to handle that that really depends i don't know spain that well um but trying to see if you can embed it as much as possible Thank you so much. And with that, definitely, I mean, we're a small group this morning or this afternoon. So we last time we had so many people that it was the chat was filling up constantly. Please unmute yourself if you want to be on video or not. Let me know. But ask your questions if you if you have them. Don't be shy. Magdalena. Oh, there's Matush. Let's do Matush first and then we jump to Magdalena. Sorry, Magdalena. Please go.

SPEAKER_03 19:22

Thank you. And thank you, Kun, for the work you are doing. I don't have any particular burning, you know, specific question when it comes to investing in regenerative art, but I am

SPEAKER_00 19:30

curious. Questions about hay, I think, or not.

SPEAKER_03 19:33

I do. And carbon credits. No, but I'm curious to know what's your greatest challenge in the work you are doing, right? What what what are you struggling day to day personally in building this community and informing and encouraging investment flows into regenerative act

SPEAKER_00 19:53

that's a very good question okay let me um let me think about that while we're answering the question of magdalene and then we'll come back to that because i have a few but probably you'll be um yeah i i will i will come back to that so i

SPEAKER_03 20:06

like that thank you

SPEAKER_00 20:08

in the chat magdalena wrote what's in your opinion the argument that most convinces farmers to move to regenerative as they operate on very thin margins and increase profitability or the aspect of reduced climate risk. So there are a number of, I mean, if you, for instance, read, what's the book called? The Call of the Reed Wobbler of Charles Massey. He is a farmer based in Australia. He documents a number of, I think, seven or eight case studies of farmers moving. And Actually, it's the same with Gabe Brown. You see many, maybe of the earlier ones, the earlier ones that made the transition or are in the transition because nobody's done. 10, 15 years ago, they moved out of necessity because they simply hit a wall. Their margins run out and they couldn't buy the inputs anymore. They couldn't buy all the inputs anymore. So they were forced to figure out, okay, cover crops are cheaper. Let's experiment with that. Their hands were forced. Now we're in a different world, I think 10, 15 years later, and there's a lot more information, first of all, online, you can discover and learn and you can dive deep into many of these. Obviously, it's not the same following a Gabe Brown or Richard Perkins or somebody online as doing a course or actually having an experienced agronomist on your farm. But I think now it's becoming more the pull factor. And previously, it was much more the push factor of people literally, farmers not being able to change and not being able not to change because they had to either you were going bankrupt. Obviously, very place dependence this so now i see more farmers that are seeing their yields be starting to top or starting actually to go down in many of the most let's say advanced commercial agriculture lands and they see their input costs going steadily up so they see those two lines are somewhere hopefully um connecting they're they're not touching yet but in some cases they are and and they start to think okay how can i if how can i either improve the yield or push the input cost or inputs down. And that's a long journey. You cannot do that from one day to the other. But it's often out of necessity. But I think many more farmers now start to see the business opportunity. They start to see the specialty crop markets, depending a bit on their size. They start to see, I mean, we're in a huge food crisis at the moment where anybody that sells directly to consumers is doing amazingly and everybody that sells directly to restaurants and food services is having to change overnight. So there are a lot of opportunities as well. You see big companies, General Mills, they're known actually doing long-term contracts with certain farmers. So I think now the opportunity becomes more interesting. And then obviously the carbon part, the water part, and the biodiversity part aren't there yet, the markets, but we see the first movements. So I think we're switching now sort of, I have to change because of out of necessity to I see a better opportunity. And I think there are a number of ways we can learn from from that. I think one of, obviously for anybody, it really depends on the crop type. It depends on where you are, but speak to your farmers locally, like find farmers, spend time with them because that's where you learn by far the most. I think the wine industry is funny enough somewhere we can learn. I mean, if there's any industry where they're really good at selling soil, in this case terroir, it's definitely the wine industry and the higher end ones built that story around place. And you know that this type of grape grown in different region Everybody knows that it doesn't taste the same, but somehow we think that a tomato should be. So there's a lot to learn there. And you see a lot of them have been working the soil very differently and pure for quality, maybe not for the carbon part, maybe not for other reasons. But I think there's a lot to learn there. So we definitely talk to a big group of grain farmers if you want to know more about that. Talk to a group of vegetable farmers or produce and try to figure out. But I think, I hope at least, that I see the first signs we're starting to switch to a more opportunity pool than it was a push before. But I mean, I heard stories where in this, I think, third year of drought in the Netherlands and in Germany. So a lot of farmers will be pushed, unfortunately, as well, because it's, yeah, we're in literally in crazy times. Does that answer your question?

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Yeah, that answers the question. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

And then to Mateusz, the biggest... I mean, time is an easy answer, say... the biggest struggle but I think bigger because I showed it yesterday to someone like I have a list of more than 200 interviews I would like to do and it doesn't include the check-in ones that I would love to check in back with Michiel on Commonland and see how XYZ is doing so I think a struggle but it's a luxury problem because I know many podcasters that have an issue of finding new stories I don't have that issue at all thanks to many of you that have been suggesting great people to interview so it's more a figure out what to focus on and which ones to interview than it is to finding interviews etc and that's a good struggle to have but it's also I mean we're probably going to release an episode a week over the next months because there are just too many that I need to do and I would like to do to stick to the every two week schedule so I hope we'll manage to scale it up and it simply means more time obviously some time some investments in terms of editing. But that's okay. I mean, we have the pipeline. So one struggle is, I think, selecting which ones. Another one, a lot of people are asking for investment advice or asking, where do I find investors like Tomas is doing? And I don't really have a perfect answer. It would be great if I have a list and say, okay, of course, these people are interested in that. These people are interested in that. The truth is that there is interest. There's definitely interest. It's not all public. It's not all easy to to access. There's not a nice public directory that's up to date. I mean, there's some small lists, et cetera, but it's very difficult to answer that question. And I would love to. I can make introductions and I mentioned people, but the flow of capital would be nice if that speeds up. But it's not easy. I mean, people are raising capital for something in Australia, which is very different from an ag tech investment in Germany. And it's all falls on the regenerative agriculture and food hat or umbrella. So it's not so easy to do that. But I think Yeah, that's sort of, it would be easier if that flows faster, but I think it shows where we are in the sector. A big struggle for me personally is the number of times I get approached from someone in selling an input base, like a biological that could replace some other input, chemical input. And I had a discussion on that with you yesterday, actually, and a lot of people, yeah, it would be great to do this interview about this one ingredient that can help millions of farmers to replace X, Y, Z. I have no idea if that's true. It usually sounds like magic, so probably it's not. I don't have the background or the context to understand the biological side of things. So to understand if this input company is actually doing something interesting or if it's just a lot of blah, blah, blah, and they're trying to build a big input company. So I'm always trying to be friendly when I answer to that. I don't know. And if I do one, I have to do more. And if I do one interview in this space, in the biological space, like the input space, I probably need a framework to decide which one, because if I get 10, I cannot do all of them. So that's, that's a personal struggle. Like the input space, I really don't understand enough about to, to, to make a judgment call of let alone to invest. I mean, I'm obviously not investing in this space. I'm a retail investor, but let alone to, to interview someone in that space. It all sounds amazing. It all sounds like magic. Like they can replace all the chemicals you want and the plants grow twice as fast, et cetera. And, and I just don't have the, the context to decide on that. Apart from that, I think in this space, we see enormous growth. I think there are enormous opportunities now. There's still a lot of discussion. I mean, with the podcast, I try to both focus on the soil people, like people that are working the land, people that are setting up businesses, people that are making regenerative agriculture grow. And I'm trying to focus on the investor side of things. So the finance people, the London City people, the Milan people, the Wall Street people, et cetera, to get them enthusiastic about soil. I think the challenges on both sides are pretty much similar like it's very difficult for wall street people to imagine what is possible with agriculture unless they've seen it so they need to go quite deep and they need to read the books but visit the farm spend a lot of time on the land to see what's possible and when that happens they go but until that moment they they're stuck in yeah but organic yields less and and they're stuck in these pieces that that are very difficult to to answer so to get finance people to understand the potential here but also the limitations and the flexibility we need and That's definitely a challenge. And the other challenge on the other side is to get soil people to understand finance a bit more or to at least trust or to at least be interested in it is also a challenge. So on both sides, I've tried to be that bridge and that it's definitely a challenge to see what's possible with money when handled well and to see what's possible with agriculture. So both worlds need to meet a lot more. So my usual answer is always go and visit some farmers, especially the more advanced ones. Spend a lot of time there and you you will learn a lot. Anyway, I've been talking a lot. Does that answer your question, Mateusz?

SPEAKER_03 30:01

It does. Thank you. Thank you for providing multiple perspectives on that one question. And as Thomas had mentioned previously, thank you for the work you are doing in being the bridge. And you've also mentioned in this call a three-year drought. I can only agree with that. That's exactly what we are experiencing in Poland. Very tough year, another one. Good for the hay, of course. but you know for everyone buying that hey things are not not looking nice but

SPEAKER_00 30:49

what's your biggest challenge at the moment

SPEAKER_03 30:53

Our biggest challenge is...

SPEAKER_00 30:57

So just because I know who you are, but just a very brief introduction. Who are you? I mean, you are in Poland, you mentioned, but for anybody who doesn't know

SPEAKER_03 31:08

you. So I am a farmer being involved in the family operation of 700 hectares of organic grassland. And I am also working as an investor with a VC fund based in in Poland dedicated to agtech, and I'm involved in a set of agricultural projects all around the world, mainly in emerging markets, which deal with bridging or bringing capital to those projects in the forms of debt or equity or both. And then on the farm level, the biggest challenge, and it always was like that, is predictability of government policy, both the Polish national national government, which is a translation of common agriculture policy of the EU, and kind of figuring out your way within that. And as much as we are, let's say, happy with where the EU policy is going and how it is being shaped, there are always fine details in translation of that policy into the national law, which sometimes surprises us, let me put it that way.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

which is an understatement I think

SPEAKER_03 32:27

yeah I mean let's not get into that because anyway and then the biggest opportunity that we see or maybe I see within our family business is placing the carbon that we are storing on the market and of course you know short term the idea is okay let's make more money on that but in the let's say more advanced scenario more ambitious one I would like to use that as a tool for let's say reshaping both the Polish agriculture scene and more broadly European to more regenerative agriculture because once you start measuring okay how are we doing with carbon flows and how we can improve then things will move in the right direction and you've interviewed Chuck from Soil Capital who's doing wonderful work in that particular domain. Yeah, so that's the logic.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Yeah, they just released a nice research. Let me see if I can get it up in two seconds. Farm must go on.

SPEAKER_03 33:37

Yeah, I've shared that on LinkedIn as well.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

Yeah, it's quite interesting. Let me put it in the chat for anybody that wants to read a bit more on profitability, farming, regenerative agriculture. It's a question we always get, obviously, like, is it more profitable? Does it actually work? And they've been showing with a group of farmers in Belgium that the farmers they follow, the most profitable ones are actually also the most regenerative ones, which doesn't mean that you're more profitable because you're regenerative, obviously. But it does signal something interesting that at least it's possible. Just to get to a question of Chen, sorry, I missed that one before because there were two questions coming in at the same time. Are there critical technologies that would enable regenerative agriculture to be more widely adapted? And if so, what are those that are promising very good question i think we do miss a number of crucial technology parts and one is definitely i mean matthews mentioned it um an easy reliable way to measure soil carbon on a farm level so not just on one piece of like one square meter and we have a lot of different ways they all give different answers and we're going to figure out how to model that and how to make that into one um one number but it seems that the level of carbon in your soils is a good proxy for a lot of other things, a good proxy for biodiversity, both in your soil and a lot of other interesting things. We definitely have to measure other things, but if we could do that structurally and consistently, that would be great. So there is an investment case there, an ag tech case, let's say, on the soil organic matter. It's very tricky because it flows during the year. So it goes up and down. It's literally the soil breathes, I think we can say, as an analog to the human body. So to get that stable and to get a good number that you can actually pay out on, like, look, you stored X tons of carbon. You removed it from the atmosphere. It's still there. We can measure it. And now we can pay$15,$20, et cetera on that. So that would be really, really nice. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Yeah, go ahead. It's very insightful.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

Yeah. And the second piece, I would personally love to see, I don't have the prototype here, but next versions of the bio-nutrient meter and other devices that measure nutrient density. So to really make the case, healthy soil, healthy produce, healthy gut systems, and healthy people, and then obviously healthy ecosystems. We see the experiments there from Teak Origin, which is actually the best listened episode on nutrient non-density because because most of the episode was about what's not in food. We see other pieces with Jill Clapperton. We see Dan Barber making moves. We see, but it's still all very, very early stage. And to be able to measure also as a farmer during the year, if you're having annual crop, like what's happening in the crop and what's happening in the leaves, what's happening in the fruit, what's happening in whatever you're growing, would be very interesting in connecting that back to the soil management. And obviously as consumer, I would be super interested to know what's actually in the food and then get that connection Would this food be nutritious for me or not? Which very much depends where you live, which very much depends on your own microbiome. So we're going to see a lot of that soil microbiome, what's in your food and your gut microbiome. And there's going to be a lot of new superfoods, but I think that that's sort of a useless term because the superfood really depends on where you are and what kind of soil management is there. So there are also technology, measurement, good protocols, good software to translate that into something that we as consumers or the farmer can use to change their behavior. That would be another piece that I would love. And then the third technology piece, but I haven't seen too much on that, is on the landscape size. Like how do we get this, even on big farms, how do we get this from a farm to farm level? Like we're going to change this farm more regeneratively, et cetera, et cetera. How do we get that to a landscape level? And I think Commonland is one of the few organizations working on that, not really with a technology angle, mostly with a social angle, like what's happening in this landscape in this river shed watershed what's happening in this bioregional system and I think we're going to hopefully see technology helping us to make decisions of what to plant where and why like which almond trees should be where and do we want that to help clean up a river do we want that to grow almonds like to make these fundamental decisions on a landscape level not just on a farm level and there I have not seen I mean we're going to see for sure climate model satellite using but can we use technology to to answer that very fundamental question like what to plant where and why especially if we're dealing with trees they're going to be there for a while like they're not animals you cannot move them and next week if if that happens to be useful no you plant them for 20 years or plus and and that means you need to be very sure where to plant them as we are in a climate that's changing as we are in the landscapes are changing and i think technology won't replace us in a sense like i think they're very good regenerative designers they're indigenous peoples that have an amazing amount of knowledge to how a landscape should look or could look, but I think we can augment that with a lot of the climate models and with a lot of technology over the next years to help make better decisions.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

That's very helpful. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

Thank you so much for the question. And then, do you have any startup companies in region X space? Macalena is asking that you're particularly excited about right now. That's a good question. I mean, I'm biased towards one in the Netherlands as I'm an advisor, which is Soil Heroes. I'll put it in the chat. I will interview them over the next few months, at least once or twice. I'm excited about that because it might trigger this market of carbon biodiversity and water. I just interviewed another player in that market, Nori, in the US, which I'm actually a customer because I bought last year my soil removal credits or my carbon removal credits through them and they reached out. So I'm definitely enthusiastic with them as a customer. As an investor, I don't know. I haven't done any work with them or as a potential investor. Other companies It's a good question in terms of ag tech. I think any company, honestly, that's starting or trying to tackle this food piece, like companies, new food startups that are really going after the nutrient density and trying to explain that to consumers, which is not easy whatsoever, but I would love to see more experimentation there. Like how do you, how do we as a sector explain this very complex, but very interesting soil story to a consumer in a supermarket or consumer in a shop? Like how much time do you have? And I think Thomas has experience with that actually in terms of elements, but how How do you explain this goes beyond organic and how do you explain with every package of almonds you actually, or with every spread you buy, you actually build soil? That's going to be a very important piece of this puzzle to make sure that the general consumer is interested in good food, better food, et cetera, but doesn't have the time to go very deep, pun intended, into the soil. How do we explain that to them and how do we make sure that we get buy-in from from the general consumer. Because if we don't, we can never reach the impact we want to have. So I haven't seen too many food companies that really proudly say soil on their packaging or start to explain that. We've seen General Mills doing something in the US, Danone doing something, but it's still very, very nascent. And I think we're going to see interest from the super foodies, the ones that are really interested in nutrients. I hope to see some movements there to see if we can get consumers to to buy into this. Which we sort of do when you buy locally and you buy at your farmer's market, you buy for taste, etc. But in the processed or more processed space, I haven't seen too many companies that are really tackling that. So I would be excited to see that. I haven't seen too much. In terms of He's forming a company, so I would say the bio-nutrient meter, like the Dan Kittredge is on the journey from a foundation to a for-profit. When that happens, I will be very excited about the company. Until now, it's a foundation, so I can, I mean, I'm also excited about that. But that, again, comes to the nutrient density measurement part. Teak Origin, definitely on an interesting journey on the measurement of mostly in larger supply chains than the nutrient density. And then, I mean, it's, It's geeky, but I'm very excited about the perennial fund as an investment structure. I'm very interested in carbon yield, which is a similar structure that people are experimenting with. I'm quite excited about a number of crowd investing platforms. I still have to interview Go Stewart, but there's one in France I would love to interview to give people, normal retail investors like me and you, to invest in a local farm that's in transition. I would love to be able to do that it's one of the reasons I'm doing the podcast because I can't invest in any of these things like where can I put a hundred euros to to work to actually help this transition so any crowd investing democratization of impact investing in this space I'm following very focused just because I would love to see that blossom because I think we need it not too many interviews I've done yet but there are some on the roll over the next months to explore that a bit more like what does this mean for you your average investor that can put a few thousand but cannot put 100,000.

SPEAKER_01 43:33

Okay, thanks. Can you just repeat the name of the Teak Origin, you said?

SPEAKER_00 43:38

Yes, Teak Origin. I will put it as Teak Origin. And it's the interview. Let me find it. It's actually the most listened interview. And we didn't understand why. Because suddenly, just before Christmas last year, it went up in the streaming data, basically. And we were wondering what was happening. And it's the interview with Greg Schumacher, a put it in the chat. And it turned out that John Kempf, who we interviewed as well, of Advancing Eco Agriculture, mentioned it in his newsletter as an interview to definitely listen to. But I saw the newsletter like a few months later because I was checking it and I suddenly thought, ah, okay, that's why he suddenly picked up. So it has over, I think we're at 2000 streams or something, which is by far, or which is the most listened episode so far, which shows, I think the interest for people in nutrient It's more than 2000 actually. And they are mostly on the larger supply chain. So they work with big supermarkets to measure in their supply. If you buy X tons of apples, normally a supermarket doesn't just mentions the sugar level they're looking for, but don't mention anything about nutrients because they don't have the capacity to measure. And they are introducing that capacity to measure when your apples are arriving to actually see how fresh they are, to see what kind of nutrients are still left in. And he made two very interesting thing which i keep repeating all the time like in terms of we looked at apples and spinach they mostly looked at and they mentioned in terms of spinach like how many days does it take for the nutrients to be gone basically after you harvest your your green leaves mostly spinach but they this is in general for green leaves and it takes about seven days meaning that if your green leaves your spinach is harvested in california if you live in the u.s and it's shipped to new york the moment it arrives there it's pretty much empty which makes a very interesting case for regional local fresh mostly like freshness of food apparently for the nutrient density for how many nutrients are in it is is very very important the same with apples if you eat apples let's say they're harvested in fall and you eat them now we're in April now and you can pretty be pretty sure whatever way they stored that it's pretty much water and sugar and Greg made the joke like it's better than the Snickers but it's pretty much water and sugar it tastes nice I mean there's sugar in it but if you want to eat it for the health reasons and benefits it's probably you can eat something else and and so i think we're gonna with them we're gonna discover a lot of things we probably didn't want to know about the food system that many cases we buy something and and it's just mostly water and there's not too much nutrient in it anymore and and they are now slowly they're a small company but they're slowly start looking into the management side of things as well so how does the soil management changes the end nutrients in the supermarket or how does it first of all and then the second question is obviously how and so that will be very very interesting something i'm definitely going to check in with them they've mostly focused on normal supermarket organic versus non-organic but normal traditional commercial large-scale industrial agriculture and just showing the differences between them. They're onto something quite interesting. Based in Boston.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thanks. I will definitely check them out. That sounds super interesting. I haven't heard of them yet.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

Yeah. Yeah. They're quite in stealth mode, honestly. They're, they haven't been too open. I think they, they launched a database recently, so you can see actually they've been measuring, um, I think the top 20 fresh produce you could buy in the U S in the supermarket and they've been measuring different supermarkets against each other. Like who actually had over the different weeks, like who had, um, which apples in which supermarket had the most nutrients. It's quite interesting what they are up to.

SPEAKER_01 47:27

Which company is that?

SPEAKER_00 47:28

Teak Origin. So it's the one, it's the last interview I put in the chat and it's the name basically. And Teresa is asking, let me see if I didn't miss anything. Oh, no, Thomas, sorry. Speaking of investments, I lately recognized a lot of miscommunication and misinterpretation between startups, SMEs, and investors when it comes to raising capital. Have you heard, if you hear about Indie VC, I would like to know your thoughts about their alternative investment model. And could it be applied to region egg? So Indie VC is the one I mentioned before that works in the software. So they mostly invest in software as a service companies that basically need money to grow, but they are generating cash. It's not they're looking for a business model. I think the short answer is yes, we're going to see a lot more. What I think about their structure, I mean, I haven't invested with them and they haven't invested in me, but I've been following them for a while for the reason that they are innovating on investments. They are challenging the normal Silicon Valley way of investing. We invest a lot and we hope for an IPO. I'm paraphrasing here, obviously. They are investing companies that are actually generating capital can actually pay back the capital out of free cash flow, out of profit sharing, out of something. Their terms are completely public. So anybody can go to GitHub, can go to their website and actually see how they invest, which I think is very, very interesting. And what I think is very interesting and what we can learn in terms of region ag and food is that they have built an exit in the investment. So from the beginning, the moment we enter into an agreement, the exit is already built into the investment structure. So there's no way waiting for a big fund to buy us. There's no waiting for an IPO. We know that if we hit these milestones, we'll pay back that. That goes back to the investor and we up to a maximum of a certain return, which is also discussed in advance. So I think those type of discussions to build in the exit into the investment is something that's very, very important and very interesting for the region ag and food space because it sort of solves a lot of the issues of traditional equity and traditional debt which is not flexible and traditional equity which obviously needs an exit and and i will put another link in the chat which i just found also because it's similar to the question connie was asking impact terms which is a project of tonic actually where I spent a big chunk of my week and the impact terms project or platform and we have a quite a big database of alternative exit structures there so please dive into that have a look and definitely let me know if you have any questions so does that answer your question Thomas You're not, okay, perfect. Then Teresa was asking the question, which country or region is the most advanced in regenerative agriculture? Ooh, that's a tricky question. I think it seems, but I'm saying seems for a good reason that obviously Australia and the US is more advanced. My hunch is that because of communication and because of most of the books are written in English, most of the information comes from there. I don't know if, if you look at the acreage, if they're the most advanced, if we look at, for instance, if we take organic as a, um, as let's say a step in the right direction, absolutely not perfect. Then maybe Austria is the most advanced because they have the percentage wise, the largest organic acreage or hectares in the world compared to how many, how much land they have. Um, maybe Sardinia in terms of, uh, in terms of Island, because most of it used to be organic. I mean, partly, obviously that changed. So it depends a bit how you define it. I think they did a research that less than 1% of the agriculture land in the US you could call sort of regenerative or on the way to regenerative, which is obviously very, very low. So the short answer is none of the regions are super, super, super advanced, maybe some small countries. And a good way or maybe a way to look okay where are they considering soil more or have considered soil longer is probably to look at organic sales and local organic grown so how many what's the percentage of land that is organic doesn't mean that that's perfect but at least it provides a platform to go beyond because you have a group of farmers that at least thinks differently in terms of input and output and thinks slightly differently in terms of in terms of soil management Maybe Cuba. I mean, there are some countries that were sort of forced to not import because the input costs were just simply too high or didn't arrive anymore. In the case of Cuba, when the Soviet Union disappeared, they couldn't import many of the inputs anymore and they were forced, which wasn't a fun process, but were forced to mostly be self-sufficient, also in terms of fertilizer, et cetera. So they made a huge shift and actually are still, I think 75% or something, is growing on the island itself. I see, I see. It's an interesting study, an interesting case study.

SPEAKER_01 52:50

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 52:59

Any other questions? We have a few more minutes. I mean, we have as long as we want, but the Zoom line is open. And if not, I... I'm going to thank you. I will definitely follow up, obviously, on this. I will put all the links we shared and the notes coming out of the chat and we'll share those with also the people that couldn't coin because this is obviously a horrible time for the US and Latin America, but it works well for us. So I'm planning to do more of these. I don't know when yet, maybe in a month or so, but definitely will let you know. You can find more on the podcast on investing in regenerative agriculture You can find more on LinkedIn if you find me as well. And do send me a message with any questions. I try to get to them. The influx of messages is increasing a lot lately, but they're all interesting and good. So I get to them. It might take a few days, but that should be okay. If they're very, very urgent, put urgent in it, and I might look at it a bit before. Thank you so much. If that's it, I wish you a great day, a great evening, depending on where you are, and thank you for your attention.

SPEAKER_03 54:15

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 54:15

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 54:16

Thank you. Bye bye.