Audio QA Webinar Abby Rose, role of agtech in regen ag

This is the audio of the QA webinar with Abby Rose, regen farmer, agtech founder and co-host of Farmerama.

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Some topics we discussed:

• how ag technology should help farmers with observing their soil
• the power of beauty
• first exit of a regen ag tech company (PastureMap to Soilworks, see links below)
• going from observation to action (what does the farmer do with the data?)
• offering the farmer choice
• regenerative organic certification
• profitability of regen ag?!
• what is keeping Abby up at night
• what soil tests ranchers should use
• what about more complex systems like agroforestry
• balancing fast and broad data collection against slower and more detailed data collection

Find the video and all the link of the webinar on
https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/qa-webinar-abby-rose.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

we'll start sharing my screen for a very brief presentation and then we're going to open it up to Abby to share a lot of interesting things and go to play. So first of all, welcome to Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food. It's a podcast show we've been hosting for the last three and a half years. And we've been, especially since COVID, hosting webinars as well. We've been hosting smaller Q&A webinars, Ask Me Anything webinars, basically to try to bring the community together and allow you to ask the questions that I did not ask, which are always a lot. So very briefly, we're obviously today are at the Q&A with Abby Rose, who is on the call. As you can see, we've interviewed her a while ago. I think it's about a year and a few months ago. And I'm very curious on how things are going because I know a lot has changed. So we'll get into that soon. And she's a fellow podcaster as well. She's the co-host of Farmerama. So it's very nice to have her here. This we already discussed. And basically what we've so far done is interviewed probably over 90 and we're getting close to the 100 interviews with investors, farmers, scientists, fund managers, anybody in the space to scale, to grow, to replicate regenerative agriculture and food, and basically trying to answer that question, how to put money to work in regenerating soil at scale. And not because I think putting money to work is such an amazing thing. I think we are literally running out of soil and running out of time, and money and finance seems to be the tool that we can use to speed it up. It seems to be the tool we can use to destroy a lot of things, but it seems to be also the tool when put to work properly and appropriately, it seems to be able to speed up a lot of things. And if there's one thing we need, it's definitely speed up. So if you haven't been listening to the podcast, you can find it in any podcast app. Just search for Investing in Regenerative Agriculture. We chose a very simple name. One of the things we did well at the beginning. So just for anybody who's on the call who is scratching their head and think, what is regenerative agriculture? It's probably contrary to the term regenerative agriculture. to come up with a definition. I found a nice description of it. It's definitely any farmer that is deep into region ag will tell you it's a journey. They're never done. They always, next year I want to experiment with that. I want to go further there. I want to play with that. It's not a zero or one like you either are or not. No, it's a journey. It's a lot of steps and it really is place and it's context specific, but it's probably a system of farming principles and practices that increases biodiversity, enriches soils, improves watersheds and enhances ecosystems services so if you want to boil it down it's a farming system it's a system of principles that builds soil and if you are discussing with farmers that are doing this they will probably talk more about the soil than the produce they actually grow and sell which is quite interesting or about the earthworms i mean there's there's a lot around it I went up. And to just make it a bit visual, you can basically, what is the difference between regenerative and sustainable? Sustainable, as the word says, it basically wants to sustain a current system. And I think we can all agree that the current agriculture system is pretty, and food system is pretty broken. So why would we want to sustain it? And we need to go, we want to go, and it's a much more positive movement to actually go beyond and restore, regenerate soils to begin with. But people, planet, obviously fallen from that. And most of the current agriculture culture system is very extractive. And if you want to see more of that, I will show some follow up basically, if you want to dig deeper on that. I love this degenerative to regenerative. Obviously the colors are nice as well. It comes from an article that Ethan Soloviev wrote in 2011 already. I will definitely, I urge you if you haven't read it to find it on Medium. And I will show another picture from that one soon, but they basically just shows the, it's a continuum. It's never done. There's no easy yes or no answer. But you see some practices that come back a lot, which are the soil should always be covered. There are complex rotations, although there are some arguments about that as well. But monocultures seem to be very, very tricky doing in a way that makes sense for the soil. Very limited or no tilling and the integration of animals, which some people really favor and some other people less. But there seems to be a consensus that somehow, for especially advanced regenerative agriculture, that somehow animals are integrated into the rotation. If we then eat them or not, that's a separate discussion. But it seems to be, there's a lot of actually movement happening in regenerative agriculture, livestock space. This is a super way too busy slide from Ethan Soloviev. The continuum, it's very nice. I've seen investors use this actually to send it to a company they're talking to and ask the farmer, in this case, the company was a farm, to grade themselves. Basically to not take any position, this is good or bad, but okay, if you look at your farm, where would you see yourself? And they basically would put dots on the different characteristics, inputs and practices. So just to show, if you want to see some of these frameworks, they are there. out there to find. It's not a zero or one question you either are or not. No, it's definitely a continuum. If you want to dig deeper, I can highly recommend the article of Ethan, a number of books, Kiss the Ground, Growing Revolution, Dirt to Soil is very interesting. There are amazing YouTube channels. Abby knows a lot of them as well. There are amazing podcasts, I wouldn't say ours, but definitely a lot of farmer-focused ones if you really want to dig deeper into the soil side of things and the farmer side of things. And obviously our website as well. So with that, I I would love to, I will switch off the sharing because it's just annoying and basically want to point it to Abby to basically ask to give an update on VitaCycle. And first of all, welcome, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Thanks for having me again, Cohen. And great to be here with everyone. Welcome. And I guess, well, I know that Cohen shared kind of the last interview or podcast that we did together. So some of you may have already heard a bit about our company. But I'll give you a little brief overview in that VitaCycle, my parents moved to Chile. I'm based in the UK. My parents moved to Chile about 15 years ago now, and they started farming. And that was really the first time I'd ever considered that farming was of interest in my life, I'm ashamed to say. And it was kind of through being on the farm and recognizing the challenges of farming, we were farming organically, that we started to realize I have a background in physics, I started physics university and I learned to code. And I started to realize that actually I could create some quite simple apps that could really support managing our farm at the scale that we were operating in. And this is back in like 2014. So there weren't that many small scale farming apps or regenerative farming apps around. And so that's really where we started. And so today, VitaCycle apps, we have a few different apps that we offer. offer. And I guess the update really from where we last were is that we've broken out one of the apps or yeah, we separated out the apps and kind of rebranded. And one of our apps is called Soil Mentor. And another one is called Sector Mentor. And I think, you know, I've been thinking a lot about what brings all the apps together. And really at the core of everything we do, it's really speaking to what Cohen's just talked about, which is that really the farmer is the expert on their farm. To me, that is, in regenerative agriculture, that kind of has to be true. Like every single farm is different. So you, the farmer has to be the expert for their farm. And in order to enable that and to promote that, you know, observation and monitoring is really, really key to that so that you can learn as you go, try new things, see what works, what didn't, and really have your eye in for what looks good and what doesn't. And so that observation being the core, that's the basis of all of our apps, essentially. And so how do we make those observations more powerful? And how can we help farmers build on those observations year over year and really learn as they go? Can

SPEAKER_00 8:42

you describe, because for the people that didn't listen to the podcast, how this started? Because it really came from a lack of observation and challenges there simply because of the relatively large size of the farm, if I remember correctly.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Yes. So we had 8,000 olive trees. That's where it started. And we were going out and observing the trees to try and understand how to best manage them. It was actually particularly around frost. Some of them were getting frost damage. Others weren't. And it was unclear if it was the same tree year after year that was just, you know, maybe just a weak tree, a bad spot, and we just need to take the tree out. Or was it actually like every year it was a bit random, you know, with 8,000 trees, you can't remember those kinds of things. So that was where we started. And we, we put in that case, we put NFC tags or contactless tags on every single tree so that you can just take your phone, go up, scan the tag. It tells you the whole history of that tree. And you can add photos and also add any new activities you're doing. And so it's in this way that we started to build up a real picture of how each tree was doing and where we were having you know where we needed to focus if there was going to be a frost event to really look after trees better unfortunately for us we had a super fire come through in January 2017 and so that's something that obviously there's nothing you can do about it and so we lost 90% of our trees at that point so we have replanted but and not all all trees actually that was an important learning for us is that diversity really is key and so we have a mix of nuts and fruits and olives now but yeah really that observation is where it started and what we moved into is we also have some vines and so we make sector mentor as mainly for vineyards so we work with a number of vineyards in the UK and some of the best regenerative vineyards in the US who are like super inspiring and And it's interesting that in the vineyard world, it's already a very well-established practice that observation is the key to having a well-managed vineyard. And so there, the adoption of observation has been very quick, or the adoption of using technology to support observation has been very rapid. And yeah, so we have a number of vineyards using our app like every day, all the time to keep track of what's going on out in the vines and to learn from year-on-year trends what works best in their particular vineyard to build soil health, diversity, and to improve their harvests and the quality of their grapes. And then on the soil side of things, that's very much, so Soil Mentor is very much focused on being able to go out and do very simple tests that don't require any expensive equipment. So literally getting a spade or a shovel and digging a hole and then how many earthworms are in that spadeful? How does the soil fall apart when you put it in water? And we have systems of grading that so that you can actually see. Last year, I went to that specific GPS location and I found that the soil got a six in water. This year, I've gone back, I had put a cover crop in and I started grazing animals in between. How has the soil changed when I put it in water? So that, and so our app allows you to take photos, to record the results, and then to start to see those trends over time clearly. And I'd say, so we just started working with a lady called Nicole Masters of Integrity Soils in New Zealand, and she's a real inspiration. So that's really exciting for us to be kind of the technology partner for what she's doing. And I'd say she is kind of one of the world leading experts in this very physical soil observation the way for farmers to understand their regenerative journey and to really see how they're moving forward into a more regenerative mindset and a more regenerative agriculture practice. And then what else have we, we also, yeah, since we last spoke on, we've introduced biodiversity monitoring alongside it so that farmers can, as they're out and about, start to monitor what it is they're seeing and where, because that also is part of this whole picture of understanding how, how the ecology is all kind of fitting together and then fostering it. And then the final thing I wanted to just share is that we've also, so we did some work with a group here in the UK who's not particularly regenerative agriculture focused called NIA, but it's the lady, a soil health expert in this case, a soil health scientist called Liz Stockdale. And what we worked with her on that was very interesting for me was we, took lab results so more conventional soil testing lab tests and then we started to put alongside that some of these visual tests so like there's a visual evaluation of soil structure framework and an earthworm count framework and we started to kind of put those tests alongside the nitrogen phosphate readings so so that farmers can start to see the value of those readings you know they are just as valuable as soil tests those kinds of observations observations. And then we also made it all kind of easy to benchmark against scientific benchmarks, but also against other farmers in the farming groups. And I think that that's a really exciting way forward because again, it's really allowing the farmers to become the experts through this kind of co-learning and farming groups. So they can compare to scientific benchmarks if they like, but also they can start to see, oh, you know, that field I visited last week at Martha's farm, you know, how does that compare to my field and why was that better? Oh, she does this practice. And so it's that kind of in-field learning, you might call it.

UNKNOWN 15:12

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

So that was, yeah, kind of my update.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

I think a lot has happened. And in general, I mean, the ag tech space seems to not have slowed down since we talked. I mean, the interest is pouring in, the money is pouring in. And what, as an insider and a bit outsider observer, what have you seen there that excites you and maybe also a part that worries you?

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Yeah, so I think there are some reasons really exciting things going on. I've mainly seen it in the US, actually. There's things I'm sure you guys have heard of, like Open Team, Regen Network, obviously Pasture Map. And it was interesting to see that Pasture Map got bought out by, I can't remember what that

SPEAKER_00 16:38

is. So it works. We're interviewing them in probably a month or so.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Okay, yeah. So that was interesting to me because I'm not particularly interested in that kind of exhibit world, but it was interesting to me to see that that was the first time that a regenerative agriculture tech company had really like taken that step. So that was, yeah, so that's, and I found it promising also because when I went and looked into Soilworks, it was really exciting to see what they were committed to and it felt like they were the real deal. So that was cool. So yeah, that kind of thing is happening. And then I think, yeah, with Open Team and Regen Network, what I think is really interesting there is that open team also are quite you know they have a good focus on uh on farm very practical observations as well they uh they work with land pks i think um who similarly have this kind of observation some of the observational focus as well and that they're really trying to bring together many different teams and work together to I guess, yeah, how technology really support regenerative agriculture rather than trying to build lots of different tech companies. They're all competing for the space and not talking to each other. In a way that seems counter to the ethos of regenerative agriculture in itself, that whole mindset of like competing against each other to win the space. Like if you look at the regenerative farmers, they are all working together all the time. Even if they are in competition with each other to sell food, still working together. So I think that that's really exciting to see some of the regenerative principles very much reflected in the technology space. And also they're trying to really sew up the whole thing so that you have like the monitoring on the ground, which then feeds into the markets, which, you know, then potentially brings money back to the farm and also helps with carbon sequestration. And so that, yeah, that seems like an exciting project. I was also excited to talk to the region network people because I do have concerns around the abstraction of what a farm can offer. So I guess I'm like most comfortable in the soil basically and seeing very physical things. So as soon as soil becomes like a unit or a carbon equivalent unit and then is sold on a market somewhere, that to me, you're starting to abstract things. And so I do have concerns around where the markets could start to really abstract or everyone knows they can have really adverse effects if you don't stick to as close as possible to what we're really trying to achieve. And so I think that Regen Network, it was great to talk to them and realize that, you know, they're very aware of that and they're really trying to build technologies that will allow for kind of more of the whole picture of ecosystem services to be kind of packaged up and abstracted. But I think, yeah, I guess I find it risky, the idea that we would just do a carbon audit of a farm, abstract that and sell

SPEAKER_00 20:19

it. That'd be fine,

SPEAKER_01 20:20

yeah. Yeah, that to me is really, really really dangerous ground and I if anyone still believes that's true then I really advise you to go start trying to farm and see the reality

SPEAKER_00 20:33

yeah I think for a lot of people in the ag tech space unfortunately my question is always when is the last time you visited a farm or talk to a regenerative farmer or where's the farmer on your team slash board and you'll be surprised by the answers or disappointed mainly like it's really for them talking to them and talking with instead of actually partnering or actually and it's yeah it's it's way more complicated and more interesting probably if you actually do partner so it's for two people that don't come from the farming space i think we can we can agree on that

SPEAKER_01 21:06

yeah and i think i have one thing to say about on the more um another concern i guess actually is i think there's some really exciting stuff happening from a satellite perspective and you know using um algorithms to auto automatically kind of categorize fields or soil types and that kind of stuff. So there's some really great tech companies out there doing that. But what I've started to realize is that those algorithms are trained on categorizing essentially monocultures. And I don't know where they could go to learn Or, yeah, so I guess what I'm saying is that we're building technologies that, you know, they may be focused on soils, but they're focused on the soils that are the basis of monocultural systems. And actually that's not regenerative agriculture in my mind. It may be the start of it, but so I do have concerns that we're gonna build categories. So I can give you an example, like there's a company that they automatically they reckon that they can automatically categorize almost any field from a satellite image. But the categories they give you are like corn, soy, basically all the commodities, but where's the space for like companion cropping or an agroforestry field? You know, like none of that's in there. And I, so yeah, that's another tension.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

Can they deal with agroforestry? Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

It's way more

SPEAKER_00 22:44

complex. Yeah, yeah, no, it's... It's what we can measure. I remember, and a shout out to Francesco who's on the call. I interviewed Dr. Elaine Ingham last week and she was mentioning the soil food web and how we see what we measure. And she was explaining that for a lot of the soil scientists, they basically have the substrate where they grow, they take a piece of soil and they put it on the substrate and the substrate is very limited food. So only two or three types of bacteria actually grow on that. And then you put it on a microscope and you see those bacteria. don't see the other 75,000 that are normally living in it. And that shows, I mean, if you're, if you only have six categories of your satellite, I'm just naming a number, then obviously you're going to see only six and you're going to see a lot of unknowns and it's, it's going to be tricky. It's very good. I mean, I think the overview and helping with observation is very interesting, but outsourcing it completely to a satellite algorithm is going to be tricky. And it's just not going to help. It's going to be, okay, you have cover crops, so you get paid or, oh, you didn't, but what type or mixes 15 types or two or one is going to be very, and people are going to figure out ways to trick it, obviously, which is, which is always the case if we wait long enough. So I just put two links in, I put region at network. We interviewed Gregory completely at the beginning. I still need to do an update with them because they came an enormous way. And so heroes, which is a company based out of the Netherlands, I'm actually advising and they will be, I will be interviewing them hopefully soon as well. So there will be more of these, ecosystem, marketplaces. Everybody hates the word ecosystem, but there will be more interviews coming hopefully in the near future to dig deeper here because we had Nori on the call, which was great. And there's more there to explore and to explore these tensions that you mentioned. Can we quantify nature and how do we sell it or not sell it? And what is the marketplace? And all of those we need to dig deeper in. And with that, I think we're going to open it up because we said a Q&A and we actually have a question already marked Marcus sent us a question who is on the call or I saw before. And so I'm going to type it in the chat so we don't forget it in the show notes, but you can actually ask it, Marcus, if you're still there at life, if you want to. Oh, you are there actually. Marcus Link, are you listening? Or it's just a picture. I mean, you can read the question of Marcus of New Foundation Farms and just have a stab at it. And for anybody else with questions, I saw your question, Nisha. We'll get to that. And then we'll basically open it up from there. And next time, if you're interested and you have questions beforehand, definitely send me, shoot me a message when you have them.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Yeah, so I can speak to Marcus's question. So I mentioned that we had worked with NIAB to create this soil quality dashboard. And that was a little bit about comparing. The other aspect to it that I didn't talk about was that it also allowed farmers to like kind of click on a result and their outcomes and then to see exactly trend lines as Marcus said but also to see it's it's what we called it was considerations. And it was questions that you might ask yourself at this point, if you've got like, for example, you've got your earthworm number is two, and it's showing a red on your scientific benchmarks, you're showing you're the lower quartile against all your peers. Now what? What does that mean? And so I think that is the point where I would say I don't think technology can provide all the answers. I do think that you have to investigate the situation at hand. Probably you need to talk to other people and bring in different knowledge. But what I do think you can do there is help people ask questions that prompt them to find information more quickly. So that's our approach at the moment. So we're just built like, that's what we're working on with Nicole Masters Integrity Soils is tailoring that to a regenerative journey as opposed to right now, it's more based on like how NIAB would advise people at that point, which is slightly different than a regenerative approach. So for example, yeah, you know, he said, can it help me work out how I might stack enterprises for best effect? It could ask the kind of questions like, you know, have you thought about introducing pastured pigs into your system to improve earthworm numbers? And, you know, here's a case study of someone who has. So it's that kind of that's the approach we're taking and I would still look to have it be either through conversation with your co-learning group and often those co-learning groups have like soils advisors they work with biodiversity advisors they work with but yeah I think that's kind of the extent that we would go to. I wouldn't want to say you should do this because I don't think you can actually say that automatically.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Yeah, at the end it's the choice and the interest and curiosity of farmers that leads them to the most interesting pieces probably. Yeah, and

SPEAKER_01 28:34

it's a whole picture. If you think about the whole holistic management framework, they start from what are the goals of the farmer. And that is a really important place to start from to then think about how you're going to implement your regenerative practices. Because, I mean, another huge benefit of regenerative agriculture that I've heard farmers talk about is that they literally enjoy their life more. And I I mean, we can't underestimate those kinds of things is a big part of what regenerative agriculture is about. It's, you know, I started saying it's about diversity and health. And I think, you know, health on so many levels like soil health, family health, mental health, ecosystem health. It's just, yeah. So that's why I think, yeah. You can't be super prescriptive at that point. There are many, many options of what someone could do. And it's sort of like, again, going back to the farmer is expert on their own farm. They've got to figure that out for that exact location on the planet Earth and for their exact paradigm, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

And we got a question from Mia. Oh, let me scroll up. What tests do you recommend for ranchers? It's a very broad question. But is there, I mean, from the grazing people you work with, if you are actually, because I'm not- Yeah, we do. What are the tests they use the most? Actually, I think that's a sharper question. What do they- Yeah, like

SPEAKER_01 30:07

what do they benefit from the most? So I think actually, if you're just starting, one of the very best things to look at if you want to see the quickest return or the quickest changes is actually to what we call a rise of sheath test and you can go on our website soils.vetacycle.com and all of our tests are there like totally open and you can see how to do each one and how you would grade them Yeah, so I think the razor sheet test is actually the best place to start if you're starting out because that is just involves digging up, pulling out the plant and looking at the roots and seeing how much soil is stuck to the roots. Because if you see the root as the place where Root is the place where good soils are made, essentially. And so you essentially are looking at a healthy soil factory on the roots. And if your roots are white and they aren't helping to produce this healthy soil, then that's a sign that essentially the biology or your plants aren't interacting with this soil web below. So what we've noticed, especially with grazers, is that can start to change within six months. So that's a really nice one to start with. And I think the other one is the slake test or the wet aggregate stability test. It does depend a little bit on where you are in the world and what your soil is. Like if it's a super heavy clay soil, it can be harder to learn from or you just need to leave it to dry more. But the wet aggregate stability test is a brilliant way to start to understand And again, how well does your soil hold together in water? And really, you want it to hold together really, really well because it's been built biologically and therefore it's covered in slimes, which mean that the water can't break down the soil structure, essentially. Which I have to say, when I first learned about soils, that was counterintuitive to me because I would think you don't want something that doesn't break down in water, but actually you do. because then it retains structure, like in a flood or for example, it retains its structure and it allows for oxygen and water to kind of move through it and around it and be stored, but it keeps air and water kind of throughout the soil profile basically. So those are my two faves. I guess the other one is like a visual evaluation as well. So digging a hole and then there's kind of a framework for scoring that. And that is also, if you can get your eye in for that, just go dig. Well, in the UK we say, go dig under a hedge, but essentially we're saying, like an untouched area nearby and then go dig in the middle of the field. So you can assume your soil types are relatively similar and just look at the difference in those soils visually and that starts to give you a really good idea of what the potential of your field is.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

In terms of biodiversity. I saw a question of Jeffrey, which Mark has answered. Thank you for that. On the NEC or the regenerative agriculture certification. There's a lot of different works happening there, but mainly it's Rodale together with Patagonia and Dr. Bronner's who are launching or have launched actually regenerative organic certification, basically an add on or the next level of organic. And the jury is still out. That's going to be the solution. But there's a lot of effort being put there and I just put the link in in the description, there's actually a lot of work being done this year. And they don't have many farms. Actually, I don't even think they have one in Europe. So they work with a lot of different test farms. They work with vineyards, coconut producers in basically a lot of different geographies, but Europe is still underrepresented there. So for some people, maybe interesting to get in touch or to engage. I see a question from Ethan Steinberg. Hi, Ethan. Congratulations with the raise. Propagate just raised one and a half million. And what traction have you had with farmers using the software and what are the barriers to keep them from being comfortable with utilizing your tool?

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Yeah, so I would say one of the key barriers is actually it is a paradigm shift to think that the farmer is the expert. Like, so even today we find that most people who are using our app, they use it with the soils advisor of some sort or, and the soils advisor will come in and do the tests and the farmer will kind of accompany them. So it's only the most like pioneering, confident farmers who will actually go do the tests themselves and feel confident in that. So that, I would say that is in a way, the biggest barrier we found in using the software. In terms of being comfortable with utilizing the tool, that's why we're really starting to focus on the farming groups because we've found that I can't speak for the United States so well actually in this, but certainly in the UK, there are a lot of different farming groups and the farm cluster has actually become a really prominent feature in the farming world today and very effective way of bringing together many different farmers who farm in different ways, but they're all kind of local to each other. They're kind of in the same watershed, you might say, and they're all working together to transform that landscape for better biodiversity and soil health. And so we're really looking to work with those groups because they are already, you know, they're always sharing pictures about the biodiversity they see and they're excited together. So that's kind of the approach we're taking to try and engage directly with farmers. So we'll see. That isn't proven. And that's where we're going.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

And in terms of the, what do you think, the second part of the question of Ethan of making more complex systems like our first three, which I touched upon that very very briefly. What is the role of technology there to make that more accessible? Because that's a huge step. The moment you add trees or any complex animal to your system, you basically add a layer of complexity. What have you seen there?

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Hmm Yeah, I think Well, I guess I would ask Ethan back in terms of is it do you think it's that the farmers aren't understanding Agroforestry and like how to manage their trees for example, like where does the complexity lie? Is it the idea of introducing trees into the system? Is it that they don't know how to care for trees? Because I guess I, we do work with a few people in agroforestry and they, it seems to be a relatively natural evolution. I have to say here in the UK, there is a lot of like government help for that kind of stuff as well. So it's maybe not as big a jump to start in that sense. Cause you don't have to put out as much money, but it seems to be a relatively natural evolution. Once you start to see what helps build soil health and you start like even with a cover crop and that diversity and you start to see like these riser sheets forming and you know you're in conversation with your soils advisor it sort of all seems to follow it's like once you get going the you know the boulder kind of just keeps rolling rolling rolling and gets faster and heavier or not heavier but obviously but it's just it's going so my experience is I wouldn't start someone on agroforestry because I think that just placing trees in a field is actually quite difficult it's a really difficult place to start trees do die a lot and if you don't understand what's going on below ground and how you could foster that soil web and the biodiversity and all the beneficial insects then you're probably not gonna have much success. So yeah, that would be my answer to that. It's like starting with things that you can really see in a shorter time period, I guess, and start to like embrace that complexity in those situations. And then you can start to, work with agroforestry systems that you don't have to understand every single interaction that's going on, but you can understand the basics of the complex web that's happening around it in a sense. I have to say, I want to add one thing here, which is that, so our company, we say we're committed to ecology, profitability, and beauty. And a lot of people really cringe at beauty because how do you measure it? But what I have found is that a lot of farmers really identify with the word beauty. You know, even the gruffest farmers can understand what beauty means to them and why, you know, that's part of why a lot of people go into farming is because they get that feeling of, Um, of being on the farm. And that is part of what regenerative agriculture is. It's that great feeling of things. And I've had a few conversations with some regenerative farmers here in the UK about that using beauty as your guide through complex systems. And I know that sounds super esoteric, but it was interesting. I mean, these farmers aren't particularly like spiritual or anything like that, but they really got that. They were like, yeah, it's like, you know, when it's right and you can start to feel it. And so I think, yeah, developing that feeling is

SPEAKER_00 40:16

part of it. Trees help with that. I think that's the, trees absolutely help. Francesca has a question. Abby, are you considering adding a feature for soil microbiology to SoilMentor? For example, monitoring the evolution of fungi, bacteria ratios and the co-related with other good regenerative practices?

SPEAKER_01 40:35

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think that's definitely the direction we're going in. It's how can we have these very visual practical tests you can do in the field alongside like fungal to bacteria ratios, which my understanding is those are more elaining and based kind of protocols. So you look down a microscope and you can learn to do that yourself, but it's slightly more difficult and requires a bit more equipment. I think often people will ask, other people to do it for them. But absolutely, those are the kinds of measurements that sit alongside your slate test and your rhizosheets. And it's all part of understanding how everything's evolving. So yeah, I think absolutely. And I think again, like working with Nicole Masters, those are the kinds of questions we're gonna be asking is what lab tests should we have alongside the earthworm count and the vest test to really allow for the full picture.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

And Nisha had a question. What do you think about the soil microbiometer?

SPEAKER_01 41:45

I don't know what that is.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

Can you put a link in the description below, Nisha? Maybe

SPEAKER_01 41:51

I've come across it before. I think it was an automatic.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

I'm imagining it's maybe the.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Automatic microbiology, the microbial life.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

Maybe it's Dan Kittredge's meter.

SPEAKER_01 42:04

But that's by a nutrient, which is more about like once you've got the vegetable itself. I

SPEAKER_00 42:09

know, but there was soil. in that. I remember they did, they do, but it's mostly soil organic matter, I think, for now. Anyway, we'll see it in the chat. Matt Smith asking, how do you think about balancing fast, broad data collection against slower and more detailed data collection?

SPEAKER_01 42:27

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

We can spend an hour on that, probably.

SPEAKER_01 42:32

I think that's really... I think that is an important part of how we're going to move forward. You know, I was being a little bit critical of some of the satellite imagery work and how that can't really deal with the complexity on the ground, but I do think it's also super helpful for just, you know, like if from the earth, you can just track the percentage of bare soil, for example, you know, bare soil is a problem in many situations. It's not always the problem. So I think, again, you could do a tracking of bare soil percentage, like, across the fields. And then you would have to kind of ground truth where there are huge amounts of bare soil. Maybe that's a farmer who has plowed their field for the first time in 10 years because they needed to do some intervention and that's part of a regenerative agriculture regime or a practice. So yeah, I guess it's about finding a way to have the two kind of dance together. And I haven't actually, I guess in a way that's what I think that open team are trying to do to a certain extent. I don't know. I haven't, but I think that that's a really good question to ask in terms of like for myself as well. Like who are we collaborating with? Who's doing some of that more fast, broad data collection that we can then allow for some of the slow data collection to be brought together. Like that would be a smart collaboration for us. I would say.

SPEAKER_00 44:07

Let's keep moving because we're getting close to the hour. What's the name of the farmer group that's working together? I think there are farmer groups throughout the UK, if I heard you right, like the farmers. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 44:17

that's right. So they're called farm clusters. That's what they call them here. And

SPEAKER_00 44:24

basically they're organized throughout the country. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 44:27

Yeah, I can try and find a link for that.

SPEAKER_00 44:29

Then we can put it in the show notes after. Then Margaret had a question. You want to unmute yourself? I cannot meet you. I think you can talk.

SPEAKER_02 44:41

It's great to meet you, Abby. I find these seminars very helpful and interesting. So my question was just much more broad. You're sitting at the intersection of technology and agriculture. I'm not in the field, business and background in business. So if you could just kind of up-level what keeps you up at night, I'm kind of thinking about if there's like one issue that just really top of mind, hard to limit, I'm sure, it's even a lot. But you know, at a really high level, yeah, what is that one or two things that really? Yeah, I guess,

SPEAKER_01 45:23

I really do care about soil, is the truth there. And I think soil health, it can't be like, we can't underestimate how valuable soil health is to all of us every day in so many ways. And I think that so building soil health across the globe does feel like a really positive thing to do. aim. But I guess I would also say that I do think that what keeps me up at night is the worry that we're too black and white about things, that we're too, this is the answer. No, this is the answer. And that kind of the dichotomy, the thinking in dichotomies or that something's right and something's wrong. And I think that actually, truthfully, maybe that keeps me up more than anything. And that's why I'm really pro these very physical visual tests is because you have to be there. You have to look. and you have to make an assessment as a human being on the spot rather than something that's... pre-programmed, predetermined and embedded with all sorts of issues that someone decided this was right and this was wrong. But actually in your situation, it might be completely the opposite. And that's, I think what I, that was my main learning from farming and from visiting many different farms is that there is no right way, basically. Like you cannot say this is the way to do it. So we really have to build systems that iterate, respond, and work with individuals or localized scenarios, in my view.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

And Martin had a question or has a question about what about regenerative farmers that are not certified organic? They are still part of the regenerative movement, right? I can take a stab of it, but you please go first.

SPEAKER_01 47:25

A hundred percent. Like I, so however idealistic some of my speaking may sound, I absolutely, I work with all types of farmers and I definitely think that whatever a farmer is doing, that that's absolutely okay. And And that, you know, if they're still, if all they're doing is starting to look at their soil health, then that's brilliant. And I would say they've started their regenerative journey. And who knows how long that will take. And that, yeah, I guess that's another thing to say is that I really think it's important not to judge farmers for whatever they are doing or not doing. That I would say that farmer's decisions are based on the system they're part of. And very infrequently does a farmer make a decision like, oh, I really wanna go out and kill loads of bugs today, cause it's fun. They're doing that because it's a business and they need to make money and feed their family. And this is the system we've all created for them to do that in. So I think it is really important. And I almost think this is part of a regenerative agriculture paradigm is to, it's not about dogma and it's not about judgment. It's about, letting people start the journey wherever they are at, and then gradually kind of start that rolling and learn things as they go. So yeah, it is, I'm open to it all, I guess. And I actually think like there's some organic farmers, certified organic farmers, who are less regenerative than non-certified organic farmers, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 49:01

There are quite a few.

SPEAKER_01 49:02

Yeah, so.

SPEAKER_00 49:04

From an environmental point of view, you can ask a lot of questions with a number of the organic farmers and a lot of questions with a number of the conventional farmers. It's not so black and white. Let's keep going so we can actually try to answer all the questions, but you keep typing, which is great. Thank you all for that. Nisha's asking, actually, she put the microbiometer in a link below and we can follow up on that after. What's your biggest challenge?

SPEAKER_01 49:28

It's my biggest challenge. I love these massive questions.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

To the end of the call, which is really good. We started with the very practical ones. What would you suggest to a rancher?

SPEAKER_01 49:41

That's the biggest challenge.

SPEAKER_00 49:43

Top of your head. I

SPEAKER_01 49:46

do think that one of the biggest challenges is... is the mindset shift that's required. And I'm actually working with a, I've been working with a regenerative farmer called Fred Price here in the UK. And we've been doing phone calls with many different farmers who are at different parts in their journey to really understand what are the barriers to change. And I definitely, I'm losing my thread here. But okay, yeah, I guess what comes up time and time again is there's so many different things that are locking them in. the other mindset and the other way or the chemical mindset. So I think the biggest barrier to change is to... allow people to gracefully move into the new paradigm right and that that's sort of the challenge is like how can we do that gracefully without some like massive knockdown of everything that farmers have done for the last 60 years or 50 years because you know that's that's the age bracket most farmers are in and we need to work with that and not say every you've done your whole life is terrible, but instead say, wow, this is a great opportunity to move forward. How can we support you in that? And what are your barriers? So yes, I do think it's a huge challenge to allow a graceful transition, basically.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

I see a number of comments actually on the beauty part, which is great. And thank you, Matthew, for putting farmer clusters in the chat. And I think we're up to our last question of Glenn. Are you working with any livestock farmers towards managing their grazing planning? And can you see a way of linking this to the biological monitoring of their paddocks?

SPEAKER_01 51:44

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so we do work with a number of farmers who are actually starting to graze where they haven't before. So it is somewhat early days, I guess, We haven't... we haven't like created any visuals that really make those links yet. But I think even in the level of kind of grazing outcomes in terms of, you know, like just how quickly does your grass grow back? What is your total grass crop from the field? Those kinds of things can change quickly if you're starting to graze in a more like holistic grazing way. And then you could start to link that, you know, allowing grass to grow longer are taller, that provides different habitats for different butterflies. And so we are collecting the data in the same location and in the same app, but we haven't actually created the visuals that bring the two together yet. But absolutely, that's something we're looking to do. And I think Pasture Map do a bit of that already. I think they already have some biological monitor, or sorry, ecosystem monitoring in their app as well, along with all of their grazing plans. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00 52:58

they're completely revitalized. I just talked to the new CEO and as they were brought by Soilworks and as the team wanted to move on to something else, Soilworks who started by actually two investors, one of them owns a big ranch and was using Pasture Map and didn't want it to die basically and set up a specific entity to start doing more of these. And they're going to completely revamp Pasture Map and move on to that. And I hope to have them on the show soon because it's such, you have so many paddocks and you need to follow that in some way or form and obviously also looking underneath but most of the the current grazing planning is literally paper and maybe some excel and that's pretty much it which yeah there must be enormous inefficiencies or time spent there um just to see i saw a few more questions popping in we have a few minutes i see jeffrey asking a question about the profitability i just put an interview down below jeffrey with jonathan lundgren who's one of the few people farmer and academia actually wrote a paper on the profitability of regenerative agriculture and showing that at least in their grain studies, and they're doing the same with almonds and ranching actually now in the US that it greatly outperforms any extractive side of agriculture. So I think it's an interesting myth. There are two myths there. One is that conventional extractive agriculture is very profitable, which I would argue it's not. And two is that regenerative agriculture cannot be profitable, which I would argue it can definitely be. It happens on, it really depends on the system, context, the farmer, the history, the farmers, the choices they make, obviously, as well. But I've seen very interesting examples of people having a very healthy life, let's say, also of their farming business. So I hope that answers your question. And then just scrolling down, let's see if Francesco had a question. Quickly trying to read because we're getting on top of the hour. Otherwise, I will try to add that into the show notes. I think that would be it. If Francesca doesn't have a, it's a very specific field question. I will try to get into that in the show notes. I want to thank first of all, Abby for joining us today, spending a bit of time and sharing your story, your updates and your insights and answering questions. And then obviously thanking all of you for calling in on, what is it? The 2nd of July today. And I hope you have a great evening, a great day, depending on where you are and hope to see you on the next one.

SPEAKER_01 55:27

Thanks so much.