119 Dimitri Tsitos, Matteo Mazzola and Koen van Seijen on agroforestry, agroecology and the role of finance

Koen van Seijen is joined by Dimitri Tsitos, one of the hosts of The Regenerative Agroforestry Podcast and founder of Mazi Farm, and Matteo Mazzola,  farmer and consultant, specialised in agroecological systems, and founder  of Iside Farm.

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

Join our Gumroad community, discover the tiers and benefits on 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. 

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

More about this episode on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/dimitri-tsitos-matteo-mazzola-koen-van-seijen.

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

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

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.

Support the show

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 0:01

Welcome to a very special episode of the podcast where we chat with Dimitri and Matteo. Dimitri is a farmer who co-founded Masi Farm, an experimental farm using regenerative approaches in Greece, and a fellow podcaster at the Regenerative Agroforestry Podcast. Definitely check them out. And Matteo we had on the show before. We'll link his interview below. He is the co-founder together with Paola of Easy the Farm in Northern Italy. We happen to be in the same place at the same time and obviously couldn't resist to have a chat about starting a farm, the context, the role of finance in small-scale regenerative farming, market selling, and so much more. Enjoy! Welcome to another episode of In March last year, we launched our membership community to make it easy for fans to support our work. And so many of you have joined as a member. We've launched different types of benefits, exclusive content, Q&A webinars with former guests, Ask Me Anything sessions, plus so much more to come in the future. For more information on the different tiers, benefits and how to become a member, check gumroad.com slash investingbridge.com. an egg or find the link below thank you

SPEAKER_02 1:40

thank you for accepting this invite and yeah we got a few questions and one of the key ones that came out out of three out of the five questions we received from our listeners. One of the questions that came out the most was starting a farm. A lot of people want to know about how to start a farm and possibly what tips we could give to a new farmer that doesn't necessarily come from a farming background and that wants to get into agroecology and regenerative agriculture, but also potentially from the finance perspective, how to get it started on the finance side. So maybe we start with that, Matteo. Do you want to go ahead? Don't do it.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

No. It's a very complex question because it's really connected to the context. to the country, to the region, to the climate, to our attitude. So it's very difficult questions. I would say it depends. Normally, the best idea is to go and volunteer and work in the highest diversified farms around the world for a few months, few years, in order to get a sense of what it means farming, even though farming from other people is not the same as starting your own farm, having responsibilities and having having your own operation going on and the stress and all the rest. So site analysis is extremely important and site analysis is not just about what soil, what climate, what crops I could grow. It's about neighborhood, it's about as the neighbors that are at the borders of the farm as well, a neighborhood in terms of the economy, the market, where I can sell, how I can sell, how I should sell, as well as if it's a touristic area or is an area where there are already lots of vegetable farms. or lots of grass-fed meat producers, it's very important to be extremely convinced in starting a farm. When you don't have to do it, you really have to want to start a farm because it's tricky. So it's very important, something I didn't say, to inform yourself, to go and ask to the local health and safety department, the veterinary health and safety department, the authority, that take care of the whole thing about food processing, about food production. And you really have to know what you should do, what you can do, because I know many farmers, many people that started beautiful, very well-working farms from agronomy and management point of view, but then they had big problems with health and safety issues. So this is very important. For example, in our case, the health and safety institution, organization A local organization told us that we are not going to have chickens for production. And two hours away from here, our friends, they started a farm and health and safety organization told them, why don't you start with eggs and grass fed chickens? So it really changes a lot.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

I think it's a very good point of context and you need to take a decision what you want to do based on the experience you have around the world and volunteering and working Do you want to run it? I wouldn't say it as a lifestyle business, but do you want to run it? Like, how do you want to run it with you and or your family, depending on if that's there? Do you want to scale it as a business, which might be ending up buying a lot of land or managing a lot of land? Or do you want a highly diversified farm that mostly is on the homesteading side? You're selling enough to supply, to get enough cash in basically to manage your life. And that's okay. Like really, what are your choices? And do you need to own the land or not? Are you going to be operating on the land? like what's the smallest possible thing you can try somewhere and then the crucial bit like every farmer you always meet needs a market otherwise you're just living on the land which is great which is not a thing but you're not farming and farming is a business if you choose to make it like that meaning that it's extremely important to understand your market the prices the taxes the competition or other collectors you can work with the like it makes no sense to farm the most amazing regenerative farm chickens if nobody in your area is buying chickens and people underestimate that a lot and it's very difficult because you have to be really really good at farming really really good at processing harvesting etc really good at marketing really good at accounting really good at delivering and that's very difficult to have that in one or two people that's why we often see from a finance perspective it's really really difficult to invest in smaller ones because it's so difficult to get a good handle on the numbers and to understand the margins which probably are there but to understand the accounting because simply there's no time to do the accounting properly so it really depends where you want to run it as a business which means you need to follow certain business rules if you want to run it as a farming business and you want to sell you also need to follow certain like Matteo said hygienic rules and in business there are certain rules like certain accounting principles you need to follow if you ever want to get a bank loan or if you ever want to get an investor which we get to later like you have to be able to show that you're able to sell for a price that covers more than your costs very simply and you have You have to be able to show that you're counting your hours, which nobody does it in farming, almost nobody, and be able to say, okay, if I invest X or if I get more hours, meaning I hire somebody, I can do more. But you have to be, unfortunately, able to fill out a spreadsheet. And if you decide to go down that route, and I think we need a lot more farming as businesses or entrepreneurs in farming that are able to do that, not because we need to make a lot more money, et cetera, but we need to be able to do those calculations to really change farming, because for now, Most of the discussions in farming, in extractive agriculture, are about the yield. And we never ask the question, okay, what were the costs? Even apart from the externality costs and all the environmental costs and social costs, but simply what are the costs? If you look, most are, let's say, barely or not profitable. And if we want to have a dent and change something, we need to be able to show like this is at least equal, if not better. And I'm completely convinced we can do better and we can have the margins and more profit flowing back to the land. But we have to be able to show that if you want to go down that road, If you want to go the entrepreneurial route and you want to have, manage and manage a company, we have to run it as a company. And that's a choice you make at the beginning. And maybe you run a company on top of somebody else's land, which is like you run the chickens, not on Mateo's farm because he's not allowed, but somewhere else two hours from here. And maybe that's what you do. And you optimize for that in the context of the land and the landscape and the customers, et cetera. But without customers and market and without understanding your numbers, which can be super boring, I understand, it's very difficult to be able to convince others to just join you or to convince somebody to put money to work. So I would say really boring answer, market and numbers and understand your numbers context, apart from usually the hygiene, because if you're not allowed to do things, you're going to end up pretty quickly in a lot of trouble, obviously.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

I mean, what I see from all of this is, and also from my experiences, it takes so many skills to farm and it's just absolutely crazy. And that's one of the things that, you on my experience again it's it's go slow and train yourself really properly and that's something that I didn't do enough of and that I'm doing now but it's got a high cost just get started without being fully prepared and you have to be prepared as you said in business you've got to also be prepared in terms of your local context understanding it legally financially the economics of it the market but also in terms of all the many many skills that you need because mistakes in farming they actually cost a lot as much financially as emotionally and And you can easily find yourself with an overwhelming situation which you're not in control of. So I really like this idea of looking at the numbers to be in control of your business because being in control of your business means that you are able to adapt it to you and so what you want

SPEAKER_00 10:28

to create. Because we see, we all know people that have worked at farms and have traveled see the complexity of starting farms using regenerative approaches which adds a lot more complexity compared to a a normal between brackets and People burn out very, very regularly and it's 80 hours plus. And if the cashflow doesn't come in and you're struggling to make ends meet, like there are only so many years you can do this. And I would urge everyone to think, okay, this is a 20, 30, 40 year journey. You're starting probably, hopefully, because we need you, but make sure you can make those 20, 30, but like, well, there's no, it's no use for anyone that after two years completely burned out, your body is finished. Your mind is finished. Your relationship might be finished. And then we're what are you going to do? And we in the movement need people that are going to do this for 20, 30, 40, 50 years, unfortunately, not fortunately, but we need, you're doing a marathon and be ready for that physically, mentally, financially, because you're going to, it's a long game. It's not something that in two years, suddenly boom, like stuff explodes and everything will be fine. This is a very long, slow in terms and sometimes very fast game. It sounds all quite negative. But it's amazing. I mean, if you are able to do it and against all odds, and we're so early in the sector, it's amazing. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 11:44

you really, as you said before, you really have to be clear with yourself if it's an alternative job that you want or if it's a lifestyle. It may be simpler to see it as an alternative job because you're going to be sharper, less in the air, less dreamy. And you start just with one production, one activity without thinking about too many things together. And you do that. But of course, it's not just like an alternative job because the amount of variables that exist in nature and in agriculture, they're just uncountable. Every year is something different. You thought, okay, next year I'm going to do it right. No, there will be another problem, but also other opportunities. There is something very important about this whole thing that we never take into account, which is not a financial thing. It's not a production or connected to something really touchable which is how farming can change people and it can change society because farming is a perfect substrate to deal with humbleness to deal with frugality to deal with all these very important things that makes us better people sooner or later if you don't give up of course and I think it's something that it can't be quantified from an economical point of view but at the end of the game if we are not just interested in money and actually we are speaking about regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture is not just a set of different techniques to make something different and be very good and kind with the planet. No, it's also to change the society. I personally don't really, don't care about changing the agronomy behind our production. The methods, if I don't change myself and the people that surround me and the society that surrounds me because I don't care to give food good food high quality food produced in a very good ecological way to people that are still behaving in the same way and I think this can't be quantified not yet but as we are trying to quantify and to give value to ecosystem services this is an ecosystem service

SPEAKER_02 14:07

yeah that's very interesting for sure and actually if we go down this kind of this path of looking at a young farmer or a new farmer that wants to get into this job, a big part of it is a big part of the conversation. And especially when you're a new farmer and there's quite a lot of idealism and et cetera, one of the big things that we have to deal with is complexity and diversity. And by diversity, I mean diversity of our production, et cetera. So, you know, it can often be very tempting to get into a huge world of diverse products and just a complex farm. You can imagine it, or at least I can imagine it quite well, maybe because we are in one of these farms here. but with somebody like you Mateo who has a lot of experience who can manage it and I struggled to manage that complexity at the beginning when we got started because there was just too many things to learn if I had simplified a bit my task and I had started with smaller and complexified through time and maybe not as much as I did right now on Maizi Farm I would have probably been better off so I think it would be nice to talk about that as well because that's something that people will want to understand better to how much to complexify and how much to diversify and I think I know that you had a really interesting point of view from the finance perspective there as well. And you're looking at projects that are trying to finance themselves and they're trying to communicate as well with investors. And what do you have to say about that?

SPEAKER_00 15:25

I think there's a tension between complexity and finance because as soon as you are going out of your context, out of your farm, let's say looking for outside money, looking for bank loans, but probably your local bank has no idea what you're doing. So that's sort of a no-go area. So you might be wanting to go down the crowdfunding route or crowdlending if you talk about investing or speaking with a number of people that somehow, through a lot of luck mainly, have access to a lot more wealth and might want to invest in you or they might come and visit, which happens a lot in places because especially the lighthouse farms obviously have a lot of attention. As soon as you want to somehow get outside capital to be put to work on your farm, on your land or the land you're working, almost by definition, you have to write down what you want. You have to at least make a plan. Okay, I'm going to... is$25,000 or euros or whatever to do X, Y, Z. And as soon as you write that down, I think you automatically have less complexity because you sort of have to plan and you have to say, okay, over the next years, I'm going to use this freezer for X, Y, Z. I'm going to use this processing equipment or I'm going to plant a thousand trees doing this and that. And this is more or less the market. And you have to sketch something that in a very complex and very diverse farm is not clear yet. Like it's something that over the years you will figure out because every year is different. just like Matteo said. So there's that tension between managing on the go and wanting to take a loan for 25,000 euros to do X, Y, Z, or 50,000 or a lot more, depending on your context and your space. So I think there is a sweet spot and it really, really, really depends. And I would say probably the easiest to get around is to raise for specific projects, to not try to raise, okay, we need 2 million to do everything on this farm to the perfect level, saying, no, we start small or we start, we need a freezer and a built six tractor, chicken tractors, and we need to buy X amount. And the chicken operation, let's imagine it's a separate operation is going to yield in five years time that the loan has this and this and this. And then we know we can pay it back. If it exactly comes from the chickens or not is not necessarily the point, but you need to know at least from the beginning that you're able to pay back that loan or able to pay back the investor, if it's a profit share, et cetera. So it forces you to also plan, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe you do the numbers and you, do some calculations and figure out, oh, it's actually not such a good idea at the moment. Or maybe it just pays back almost, it pays back the principle, but it helps the land a lot. And then it's okay. That's a different investment in different time, but in itself. So I think it's a good process, even if you're not interested to do it, is to go through a few of those exercises and to see, okay, what could it yield? Could it go faster with outside money? But if you say, okay, I want to do the most advanced in tropic agroforestry system with 30, 40 different types, that's going to be a very big spreadsheet. to imagine all those variables, it's impossible for sure. But so you have to sort of get it out. Okay, these are the five cash crops out of that system. There are more. We know that maybe one year we sell a lot of that. Maybe another year we sell a lot of that. But let's see this as extra. That's nice insurance. But if we can pay it back with these five over 10 years or five years, whatever, then we're good. And then the other is extra. So you have to start thinking more in boxes, unfortunately, because you have to explain it to an outside person that can never understand your complexity, why you need that money and how it's going to flow back at some point plus return. And

SPEAKER_02 18:43

that seems to be quite a lot in tension with what you're doing here, Matteo, as well, which you have a very diverse farm. And actually, the way that you're selling it has a big part to play in that, you know. So, I mean, how do you... But I'm curious, how did you do it at Mazi? Well, this is interesting because, I mean, on Mazi Farm, we were in a position where the selling directly, which is what Matteo does here, and that enables also huge diversity. Selling directly to a local community. On Mazi Farm, we don't have that. So we have to either send to Athens or go further and so we had to plan yeah but we didn't plan enough at the start and we found it already complex to plan for like five core species even that it's interesting because that's the same as number you mentioned earlier on but even that was actually just random to sell because you've got to you've got to consider okay who's going to buy that are they going to want to buy if we sell for example to organic shops around are they going to want to buy just one of our produce or they want to buy a kind of a brand set of so all these considerations that we mentioned earlier on we're trying to work them out I wouldn't say we have like an economically running system yet but we're working out by testing you know we've sold in different places we've interacted with different types of sellers and buyers and intermediaries we've also tried direct selling and so but further out you know not just in not in our local island which doesn't have a market for us and so yeah it's been testing to see where we could go and actually it's actually in tension with what I was saying earlier on because sometimes you can't plan from the start sometimes you have to do and then it work things out, test, probe, throw things in different directions, see what comes back, and then you can create a plan. But if you don't know exactly what you're getting into because you're a new farmer and you are trying to work things out, you can't know it all from the beginning. So yes, you've got to get started and that's going to have a risk, but also you can't do too much of it because otherwise you're going to sink.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Which is completely normal from a company starting perspective. You write a business plan, you start, and they always joke like you throw it away with the first customer because it's completely different than you wrote in your business plan. And then it's to your quality of, can you pivot? Can you change? Can you find the niches that work? And can you stay alive? Like, can you keep going, keep eating at least because you need like somewhere on that journey, you're going to find the niches that work could take five years, 10 years could take, but at least you need to make sure that you're still there because otherwise you can find the best niche in year six. But if in year five, you went bankrupt and you lost the land, So it's also there. It's like, okay, how many tests can I do? What's the risk of every test? And is the risk taking down the whole thing or not? Or are there small calculated risks that you can keep going? Okay. And this apple variety is going to work for cider. And actually there's a cider market and then year five and year six, and suddenly it goes, but you need to be from the get go, know, or at least have an idea how to get to year five, six, 10, et cetera, because it's going to take what I hear from you and what I'm seeing. It's going to take a couple, it's not year one, you figure out, okay, this is the golden key. And now we're, it's going to take time, which is okay, but be ready.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

We have to be good in giving value to the fact that we are actually reinventing landscape management. And how do we give a value to something that people don't even perceive as something concrete? So in your case, at Massey Farm, probably the most, let's say, spontaneous thing to do, which is normally connected to the fact, when you don't have a normally that you're in a remote rural area. Remote rural area is what people from the city seek for. Actually, you are also in a beautiful remote rural area with the sea and in a beautiful island. So sometimes we have to be more flexible and throwing away our dream of being like the producer that goes to the farmer's market with a hay head and say, no, I just set up my system to be a regenerative system in order to change the ecology of this island and to stop desertification, to stop erosion, to sequester carbon, to lower down local temperature and ta-ra-di, ta-ra-da, ta-ra-da. So from one point of view, you are creating the basis to recreate a society in a desertic island? At the same time, you're using what you can use, which is like the tourism potential, which someone in the peri-urban area around Milan is not going to manage to do. Nobody's going to come on holiday to spend some time in a polluted and ugly concrete district. And little by little, you will be creating a new community. It's just like we do what nature does. There will be no life if there is no photosynthetic potential. And by biomass production and animals. Once the animals start to arrive, once more plants start to arrive, the system gets more abundant, more productive, and it will attract more and more species, more and more people, more and more plants. But we have to start from somewhere. So yeah, I think this is very important. Discover and use the potentials that your land has rather than trying to mimicry something that is happening successfully somewhere else. Eventually, our farm is going to become like a workshop for appropriate technologies and low-tech tools for gardening and terraforming Mars and all sorts of activities that apparently they are not connected to farming, but regenerative farming makes them possible to happen in a farm where before it wasn't possible. So we have to be more disconnected to agriculture

UNKNOWN 24:22

you

SPEAKER_01 24:23

how to say, you have to be more flexible. But flexible, it doesn't mean to grow pumpkins or tomatoes. No. To open a B&B or to have fish in tanks, like aquaponics, or to attract people because you are planting a beautiful forest which is not going to produce any food, but it's producing oxygen, sequestering carbon, is the only shaded spot in 20 square kilometers. So, really, you have to create a new idea of not farming, but landscape management.

SPEAKER_02 25:14

That goes back also to your context, right? And to define a bit what's your... I mean, there needs to be some flexibility, but there also needs to be some deep thought about how you want to lead your life and going to see different farms and different projects that are running things in different ways to experience them oneself.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

And ask for the numbers. And ask for the numbers. And see how long they work and see, do I want to do that or not? Or what's... it's a very deep decision on lifestyle and what you want to do. And it's a very big commitment you make to your landscape. If you decide to put roots down there and you're going to be there, you're going to be there for a long time, probably. And that's, it's not something to take lightly.

SPEAKER_02 25:54

And also think that, you know, just to give a bit of a, without creating big principles out of it, but the experience on, on Massey farm has been an evolution where you arrived, we tried, we tested lots of things and we, you know, we're in very tough conditions with a lot of winds, very, shallow soil a big drought I mean it's serious the conditions there but you know what we're finding out is that there's a local fig called the Kimi fig which is firstly an amazing tree but secondly there's a market for it and we're starting to see wow wait we can also start to go more into the traditions of the area look at what's done there for a reason it's done there not far from us actually we're on the southern limit of this of what they call the Kimi fig producing region and then we're seeing okay with the sheep around the place and lots of sheep it's kind of our region's more known for sheep and goats and we're seeing that okay so we started we tested out the market with the figs we're seeing that there's a demand we can make different products with it and we're seeing especially that the tree it has the capacity to deal with our conditions it's very resistant to the wind it doesn't the fruit don't get damaged the fruit don't fall in the wind it's just very adapted and you know the less water you give it the sweeter the fruit so you know it's starting to tick some boxes and so we were focusing on this suddenly

SPEAKER_00 27:08

and how many years is that in like how long did it take like just to give a perspective like from first idea or from starting to starting to see oh that's an interesting line of I

SPEAKER_02 27:20

think it's like three years for us and for some it could be quicker and maybe for some as you guys are saying it could be slow but it took us three years to realize that you know there's something that we can we can do with this and that the and also maybe at some point we're gonna you know transform a lot of the trees we planted for forage for the sheep who knows and then copies them regularly and then we'll have a civil pasture system with figs and sheep roaming underneath and that might be so it's also about that flexibility of also taking the system where it kind of wants to be taking and letting the land feed us information and adapting to it I think rigidity is a bit of a problem and especially in agroecology where you're trying to not base yourself on huge inputs and chemistry which is a very powerful tool so you've got to be I think it's another argument to be flexible.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

And then comes the question, okay... Let's say you're starting to see the... Do you then see potentially, I'm not saying now, now, but potentially a role for finance to speed things up or not?

SPEAKER_02 28:26

Well, I think that the timing in our context, again, the timing would have been key because if somebody came a few years ago... I

SPEAKER_00 28:34

mean now, because you're talking about, okay, this is emerging, we're observing the land, we're seeing where it wants to go, we're seeing what makes sense, what starts to make sense from our context, the business, a land perspective, a social perspective, our perspective like do you are you comfortable now then to have a potential discussions like that is that or is it still it's still a bit too early like I feel

SPEAKER_02 28:57

yeah

SPEAKER_00 28:57

I think that it's or is it not useful at all I mean it could possibly be

SPEAKER_02 29:01

no that the financing is key but it's also it's the right time when it's the right time when you have the ability to use it efficiently and not to put yourself in danger or also the investor or the funder or whatever in danger because at some point you know when you're a new farmer it might not be the right time for that and then there's a trick I mean it's tricky in that position because where do you get the funding then and you know how many years do you need to train yourself before you gain some credibility but it's only after and even if you've trained yourself and you arrive in a new context you know you need to experience the context to be able to make the right decisions so there's a timing thing and I think that now it could be entering a phase maybe now in the next year where we could be thinking okay let's we could be efficient and we could be smart with money coming outside and we could plan a business to create a serious business plan one that's based on reality on a reality of we know where we're going to sell our figs who we're going to sell them to what price we can sell them to we've done tests to know how much it takes us to process it what labor we need we know where we're going to find it these are all things we know now I'm saying them because we know them and they're key now to really make a solid business plan and to really be able to either scale or change or just get a living out of it and yeah to speed up the objective which is to sustain a family from farming So yeah, I think that's what I would say to that. Matteo, could you use investors from outside? At what point would it have been good for you? And especially now, would it help you? Do you see a place for investors on small family farms like yours?

SPEAKER_01 30:31

I don't think I'm the right person to answer to this question as people would expect. I'm saying I don't need money. I don't need money because anytime that I wanted to do something, I started very little or i started and if it was possible to start it and if it wasn't possible to start it and i really wanted to do it i created the substrate in order to start it to me the finance thing it should go mainly into pushing institutions creating movements in order to change policies which are the very big problem for farmers and for the development of regenerative agriculture, of different techniques, different approaches. So we really need to change the policies because if you look at European policies on so many things like food processing, on, again, animal management and animal husbandry, it's a problem. I mean, we are either in different situations, you find yourself in an illegal position, or in a borderline position, which is not good because you are already stressed by the climate, you're already stressed by the market, you're already stressed by so many things when you're farming. If you're already also stressed by the fact that someone can come to the farm and check and see that you're not doing things properly as policies are asking, it's not good. It's not good for you. It's not good for the movement. It's not good for the stability of the system. So policymaking, it should, not come from farmers. Farmers should require, because they don't have time, they don't have the head, they don't have the energy, they don't have the contacts, they don't have the knowledge. So policymakers are policymakers and they should ask farmers what they need. So if a policymaker comes to me and asks me, so I can't change these rules, these laws, what should I change? I tell him, I want to be able to manage my chickens in this way. I don't want to have the same rules in my commercial kitchen processing facility that the industry is having. Can you change it for me? Yes, don't worry. I'm going to find who's going to invest in an advertisement campaign and this and this and that.

SPEAKER_00 32:55

But that's not investing. That's granting. I think I have a different take. I think we need the issue with the movement now that it's made of too many farmers that are stressed out and don't have the time to engage in policy. I mean, the first time we saw somebody engage in policy in the U.S.,

UNKNOWN 33:10

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

actually in the House of Representatives was a few weeks ago when Gabe Brown spoke. Why? Because he got to a level that he had time for that as well. So what's missing, like we're against a lobby that has a lot of money, a lot of time to lobby. And in order to get to, that's why I'm thinking if there's a role for finance, it's to get to farmers and farms, the successful farmers to a level where there's maybe 10% of your time going into policy because we need more successful examples for policy. policymakers to look at and to engage with. And if we rely on overstressed, burned-out farmers to engage with policymakers, we're going to be in the same mess 10 years from now. We need you, Matteo, to have more time to engage with policymakers. And if you don't have the time, you don't engage, which is perfectly fine, but it means policies are not changing because people in the city have no clue, and rightfully so, and they come and visit, etc. But if we have farmers that are getting to a level where they can have the dedicate a bit of their time, I'm not saying a lot, but just a bit to start engaging, start discussing, start nudging. It also means that these farms need to get to a level where their time is available and is not absorbed and that everybody's working 80 hours a week. So I'm scared if we don't take the timing part serious, this policy is always the last thing on Friday afternoon that, wow, we should also do policy. And it never happens because we're against a lobby that has time and creates time by a lot of money, simply, and has the lobbyists in Brussels. And I think with the movement, we need to get to a level where we also have the lobbyists in Brussels. Because these rules you can change. We've seen it in renewable energies. You can actually change these things with time and money and focus and people that are doing that and feeding them with the right things. Okay, this is the context we need to understand around chickens and this is the context that we need to understand around vegetables and these are all the rules that really limit us now. But getting a proper overview of that and what needs to change is a very time, it's, yeah, it takes time.

SPEAKER_02 35:07

Isn't that where we need to convince people that these alternative ways of farming, agroecological ways of farming are viable systems to feed the population, because I feel like that's one of the biggest arguments that goes against it. Absolutely. So I think that that's also part of the issue, is that we really need to start creating systems that are functioning and that are productive. That we can see and visit and taste. Yeah, that are productive per hectare, that are also productive per labor hour. And per landscape. Which is not the most interesting part of farming

SPEAKER_00 35:38

at all. Keeping records is horrible,

SPEAKER_02 35:41

but... it's you know the interesting part of farming is understanding the ecological I want to say that for myself not for everybody but for me it's understanding the ecological interactions between species and seeing how we can use a tree to produce as much as possible for us and you know this this is what's fascinating it's not fascinating to sit and do the spreadsheets or to go out and find the market to sell whereas maybe for some this is

SPEAKER_00 36:04

and we need those those as well like if you are a seller and isn't it fascinating that until I think a year ago there was only one proper paper written about profitability of regenerative farms one which is hilarious but very sad if you think about it now there are a few more but we need like the very dry numbers sometimes and in Brussels and in Washington and in Milan and Rome and in the other policy places we need unfortunately sometimes also the dry numbers we shouldn't forget about the record keeping and to show

SPEAKER_02 36:37

it seems from what you're saying that just bringing it back to the earlier conversation numbers and all these this economics not the economics but the it is the economics but understanding and recording and planning the financial aspects of a farm is one of the main ways that we can communicate with investors and it's one of the if that is important for a project and for somebody that wants to get started etc that's looking for funding this needs to happen

SPEAKER_00 37:05

absolutely and I think I mean you can absolutely communicate with anybody by bringing them on the land and showing them the examples, bring them to other firms that are successful, et cetera. But if you're looking for somebody's money, you need to be able to explain what you're going to do with it, that you're able to put that, to put it to work and that it comes back at some point. And that's very, I mean, it needs to be clear and you need to be able to have a good feeling, not just being able to handle animals and handle trees and handle complexity, but also handle again, if you want to the business side, if you want to run a business. And if you're not comfortable with that, make sure you find yourself in a position that you working with people that are that really love the accounting and that you create a context that is big enough to support multiple roles and multiple people because again as we came to the beginning it's crazy to think like nobody else in a company thinks in the rest of the economy thinks that you can be a great accountant a great farmer a great processor a great marketeer and a great delivery guy or girl all in the same person like we don't expect that from a company that sells doors and has 20 50 200 people they have the different roles for a reason and they might switch and change and to keep everybody happy and they might manage themselves holacracy and they etc etc but they have different roles and different qualities so why do we expect that from farmers that they are like superman and everything or superwoman i think that's and i said it's super difficult at the beginning because you have to do everything because you cannot pay anybody but keep it in mind like when you're going through that like okay am i going to do this accounting forever or am i going to do delivery or am i going to do processing or am i and also imagine the cost cost if you are good at accounting you take a hundredth of the time to do it or maybe a tenth and much less frustration or if you're good at processing or good at it's we specialize in certain things for good reasons and economies of scale exist in many cases and if you want to go down that route make sure I mean we have a lot of experience how to run businesses on that and it would be amazing to see with all the extra benefit that obviously regenerative farming and practices and approaches create all the buy that slowly we start to measure more, which is all great. But in itself, it needs to be able to sustain itself. It needs to be sustainable as a business. So we can do this for 20, 30, 40, 50 years and find amazing markets and find how we can actually regenerate landscapes to scale because that's what I'm after and Matteo is after. How do we do this? Not on two hectares, 20 hectares, but on 20,000.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

And that's actually, interestingly, something that the previous agricultural model that we often call conventional ag, which is a big generalization of this, has been pretty good at. It's creating business models. And it hasn't always been to the benefit of the ecology nor of society, but there is definitely some things that are to take and some things that are to learn from these systems. And that's something that I'm also quite interested at the moment in, is to look at what can be taken from there as well, be open-minded, not just be limited to our alternative models which often you know so we I think that's also another aspect of the conversation but I also think it's a really nice place to stop the conversation and to end this chat there's been a lot of things that brought up and I hope that it's been able to somehow clarify or inspire or or you know set things at least put some different elements on the table for people to think about and to consider when they want to start farming which has been the big topic of this talk so thanks a lot thank you for sitting here with us and with me and for chatting let's go back to pruning olives and taking care of babies and all of this

SPEAKER_00 40:42

beautiful location if you found the investing in regenerative agriculture and food podcast valuable there are a few simple ways you can use to support it number one rate and review the podcast on your podcast app that's the best way for other listeners to find the podcast and it only takes a few seconds number two share this podcast on social media Thank you so much and see you at the next podcast.