Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Fireside Chat with John Kempf & Koen van Seijen @ Groundswell '24
Ever wondered how podcasting can transform the field of regenerative agriculture? This fire side chat with John Kempf and Koen van Seijen, hosts of the most followed and longest existing podcasts in the regenerative agriculture and food space, was recorded live at Groundswell 2024.
This is an intimate conversation where we dive deep in the the long-term dedication needed to engage an audience genuinely, the nerve-wracking journey of publishing the initial episodes and the relentless effort required to build a loyal listener base. We highlight the importance of mentors, the art of storytelling and how digital platforms can amplify critical ideas and drive change.
We uncover how the overuse of nutrients like nitrogen and potassium can actually harm crops, making them more susceptible to diseases and pests, and ultimately reducing yields. We explore the research on plant nutrition, plant health and fertilizer use and questions traditional agronomy practices. John shares about Advancing Eco Agriculture's fundraising experience within the farming community and the strategies for reaching wider audiences, including turning our podcast episodes into books. Plus, a sneak peek into the shared upcoming projects focusing inputs from innovative companies.
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Thanks for listening and sharing!
Very good evening everyone. We do realize we're in between you and the bar or maybe you already went to the bar but we're very thankful for coming into the Blue Sauna, which is not so warm anymore, so we're happy with that as well. And just to frame this conversation a bit, we both are a voice in Regen by accident, in my case, definitely, but we're going to hear more about that with John as well. And when I was chatting with Alex, cherry organizes all of this, so shout out to Alex wherever he is, and I knew John was coming. So just a bit of background.
Speaker 1:I'm Koen van Zijde and I host a podcast, together with my better half in front here, called Investing in Regenerative Food and Agriculture, which accidentally became a thing over 310 episodes now and we have the enormous pleasure and privilege to talk to many of you that are doing actual things. We just asked the questions and published that and have the pleasure to talk to you, to connect you to other people, to put the spotlight on all the people that are building things. So that became a thing. It started as a joke or as a way to hang out with interesting people, and now it actually yeah, there's 310 episodes in. We started investing as well with a small syndicate called Generation Re, and so we actually put our money where our mouth is, which is scary and interesting at the same time. All small tickets, small amounts, but still it's one thing being enthusiastic about a company on the podcast. It's another thing to actually wire money, as many of you might have experienced. So that's been amazing.
Speaker 1:And when Alex said, or when I found out John was coming, and Alex said, what do you want to do? And I said I would love to do a long-form conversation on stage and just chat. There's no agenda. We honestly haven't prepped, which is usually how I go into interviews. So this is going to be a conversation. We don't know where it's going to go. Feel free to stay as long as you want, feel free to walk out and vote with your two feet if you need some refreshments, et cetera, and so I would say let's go. Do I also get that?
Speaker 2:Joyce, you, you need some refreshments, et cetera, and so I would say let's go.
Speaker 1:Do I also get that, joyce? You, definitely, we have refreshments here, but if you don't like them, definitely we can take breaks. I can entertain them, Don't worry. So I actually want to start with a question. We'll see where it goes. I remember why I started recording conversations with people that I found fascinating and interesting, and that's still exactly why we do the podcast. But what happened for you? I just went back to the beginning, I think 2018. You started. Why did you put a recorder or a microphone? Why did you press that rec button and decide to publish? Because those two things are not necessarily the same.
Speaker 2:That was a scary decision actually, because from multiple perspectives. First of all, it may not appear obvious at this point, but engaging with people, particularly in a crowd, is an acquired skill for me. I am very introverted. I used to be very introverted. If I would follow my natural proclivities, I would be in the back corner of the room and nobody would ever know I was there. So going on the record and actually publishing was personally intimidating, and also coming from a culture that doesn't really express themselves strongly at all. So there were definitely some hurdles there. But I think the original inspiration was simply that I had the privilege of having some remarkable mentors who were simply walking encyclopedias of this very rich agronomic knowledge that was never recorded and that was never written down, had never been published, and several of my mentors passed away and took most of that knowledge and information with them, and I thought I can't let this keep happening. And so that was the original inspiration for the podcast was to share with others what I had learned.
Speaker 1:Or preserve more. And then did you record quite a bit before you published and uploaded it somewhere, or did you immediately like one after the other?
Speaker 2:We just started. We went one after the next.
Speaker 1:How scary was it.
Speaker 2:I don't remember.
Speaker 1:I do. I was terrified, but nobody listens to the first few, so that's fine. Like you have no audience, no listeners, no subscribers, et cetera. And then why did you keep going? Because I think that's when podcasting we see a lot of podcasts starting and shout out to anybody doing it. I think it's when podcasting we see a lot of podcasts starting and shout out to anybody doing it.
Speaker 1:I think it's a medium, but it's still very underrated. It's very intimate. You're in between the ears of people. You can do long form as we do we both do which is amazing. I think everybody thought five, ten years ago everything would be short and everything has to be 10-15 minutes, and actually you could do an hour and a half and get away with it. But that intimacy also requires time.
Speaker 1:You don't go viral in podcasting Maybe not with YouTube, but before in Spotify, etc. You need to be found. Somebody needs to subscribe. Hence I think we have the two most uninspirational names in podcasting. But it's really good Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and the Regenerative Agriculture podcast. But I knew I picked it without really thinking about it. I needed a name because, being you upload, you need a name. Luckily, because if you pick something super inspirational and vague. You will never be found. But you also have to keep going Like. This means you need, I would say, three years at least to get to numbers and to, because you need to be on your phone, subscribed, and then you get back into the podcast loop, et cetera. You don't go viral at all. So what made you? This is a very long question which I'm known for.
Speaker 2:What made you keep going? Well, when I got to I would say, around episode 20 or 25, I wasn't particularly enjoying it. Being behind the microphone was still quite stressful at that point.
Speaker 1:You got far, 20 is far.
Speaker 2:Well, that's already a long time ago. Feels like half a lifetime ago.
Speaker 1:Which would make you like 12. But yeah, you're young, he's very young. Just get out of here.
Speaker 2:What have you been drinking? Purely water until now, I can guarantee you.
Speaker 1:No fermented cider.
Speaker 2:I mean I've seen it Didn't taste it If I were to bring that question up to the present moment of what keeps me going today. What I find so inspirational is the emails and the messages that I get every week from people all over the world who I have never met and, in many cases, may never have the opportunity to meet, who tell me that they implemented what they learned from the podcast and completely revolutionized their farming operation. They are much more, they're making more money, they're producing healthier, higher quality food. They've resolved their disease and insect problems. It's like that is incredibly inspirational. What better reward and what better fulfillment can you have than that?
Speaker 1:No, no, it's the same for us. I mean it is very lonely in the sense, the one-on-one recording. We both use the same software, but it's like a screen and a microphone, that's it and the other person, and then X thousand people listen to it and do things sometimes and then write about it, which is amazing, because when we get those messages like I quit my job at whatever big food company and now I'm setting up X, those are the best messages ever. So if you have those stories, please email. I read them all and I get for you. I mean, how many times I've heard people say like I religiously follow Jon Kemp, take notes and like every. And you had somebody on Timer Malik recently, like in the episode. I don't know how many times he said he was listening to it and what he learned from it, but it's true, like it's out there.
Speaker 2:You can listen to it when you're on a tractor or you're doing chores and you can get amazing like knowledge through audio. Yeah, I was at a conference a couple of years ago where a farmer came to the conference and he brought three thick, college-lined tablets filled from cover to cover with his notes from the Regenerative Agriculture podcast. It's like that's pretty incredible. And then, of course, the next piece becomes the implementation and the inspiration. So, yeah, that's what keeps me going.
Speaker 1:And how have you managed that fine balance I mean, we talked about it in the past as well between running EAA like a big company or medium-sized company by any means now like significant company, and the podcast, like the tension between selling things as well to farmers and, of course, giving advice and working with farmers and being one of the figureheads in terms of regen knowledge, like what you say. Many people listen to that.
Speaker 2:Well, still to this day, people reach out and say I've been listening to your podcast for years and I had no idea that you sold products and that makes me a pretty abysmally poor salesperson. But at the same time, I very much believe that your ability, our ability to influence and to create change, is a reflection of our internal state and where we are coming from within. And when you come from an internal state of wanting to sell someone something, then that is going to influence your ability to actually facilitate change. So to answer your question, I think the first of all, I don't run Advancing Ecoagriculture. We have an incredible executive team and I am not involved in the day-to-day management of the operation or the organization at all, which I'm very grateful for the team that we have and the culture that we have.
Speaker 2:The mental math that I'm constantly evaluating is I have a four-year-old daughter and family at home. I have 100 hives of honeybees as my sideline hobby, which my wife says is no longer a hobby, but I could travel and speak at events probably almost every day of the year if I wanted to. And relationships are important. The face-to-face connection is important. I have met so many people here today who I've had conversations with on social media and have had email exchanges with, and having those relationships is very powerful. It's a powerful facilitator because it accelerates change. It accelerates the exchange of ideas and the implementation. But yet I have to evaluate the math constantly of how many events can I attend at the expense of the podcast, because with a podcast episode, one episode reaches tens of thousands of people, and so there's a constant evaluation process. How do you find that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the same we used to do before our oldest daughter was born. I used to do a lot of brainstorming calls. I would say yes to pretty much anything, calls-wise, et cetera. Events maybe less because we're a bit more picky, and then after or I realized that that time was not going to be there. Basically, still very thankful for anybody that proposed those calls and asked for advice or suggestions, which usually end up me sending a list of emails with this.
Speaker 1:What I should, what you could listen to, this is books you could read these are amazing other podcasts etc. And so we decided to do a video course and made it free, available, pay what you think is worth, simply to save me time to not have the same one hour conversation and the same follow-up email and the same with the podcast. An hour and a half of time plus, of course, pre a bit of prep, scheduling etc. Reaches two and a half, three thousand people. Who knows what the impact of that would be? And an hour of me one-on-one with someone, even online, that's a pretty high bar, and so we constantly evaluate that. We constantly try to be very conscious of recording another one, because we have, I wouldn't say, endless stories to tell, but we have a long list of ones that I don't get to, even though we do 75 a year and you do one a week, plus a short one now, like in an experiment, and so you're going to do a week. I feel it Are you stalking me?
Speaker 2:No, you just told me this morning.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, I asked you, I pay attention and so it's a constant, like we have that stage and a responsibility as well, like to. I feel it as taking our audience on where we find it interesting. We think there should be more attention. Water Cycle Series is one of them. How do we have the conversation with people that are in the space I hope the listeners are mostly investing entrepreneurs, farmers, etc. That really want to move to bigger impact and bigger scale, and how do we expose them to the next wave or the next things? How do we expose them to the edge of things and not just do the standard people that show up everywhere now, and so it's a constant there. It's a constant to how to pick, how to, because, yeah, time is limited.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think one of my challenges is the list of people that I want to interview is several hundred people long, which is going to take me four years at the current rate.
Speaker 1:In the meantime, the list keeps growing longer rather than shorter, and you go back to people as well Occasionally.
Speaker 2:But you know, one of the satisfactions that I have from the podcast to build on something that you just said, is that the before to the best of my knowledge, before I hosted Dr James White on the podcast there was one YouTube video clip of him with less than 900 views and within 12 months of him being on the podcast, he has all the speaking engagements that he could possibly desire. He's turning them down all the time.
Speaker 1:What does he for anybody that didn't listen to that episode? What does he bring? Why did you pick him for your spotlight of that week?
Speaker 2:So, for those of you not familiar with Dr White's work, his work is foundational. He's a professor of microbiology at Rutgers University who has established the scientific foundations for plant nutrition from biology rather than plant nutrition from simple ions in a fertilizer bag. And his work his initial papers were published 17 years ago and yet he was largely unknown, and we hosted him on the podcast, and his popularity has exploded, as it should have and as it deserves. And so when I'm specifically like, I believe that everyone in this room knows something that I would benefit from knowing, and I love to figure out what that is and draw it out but also there are some people who know things that everybody needs to know, not just that they would benefit from knowing, but that everyone in the farming community needs to know, and so my desire is to find those people who are relatively unknown and help them gain a large audience and help their work be more widely known, because in some way, it's a pathway for facilitating significant change.
Speaker 1:And how difficult is that? As I'm imagining but I'm imagining here that some of them are not the best storytellers or the best how do you not draw that story but facilitate that story to make sure it's as clear as you have it in your head that you would love your audience? I'm saying backward or in front of you to hear, like, how do you facilitate that? Very carefully, don't scare them. You can edit.
Speaker 2:Don't worry, this is not live. I struggle with that still to this day. Cohen, I'm not sure exactly how to answer that question, because I've interviewed some people who, if I let them, they would answer every question with yes and no.
Speaker 1:I know those people, yeah, and some go just for 10 minutes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I have had interviews where I know the knowledge the person has in their head and I would love to have this conversation for three hours but I struggle to get to the 40-minute mark because it's just like trying to find false teeth for chicken to get anything out of them.
Speaker 1:And what do you do with the ones that keep going? Like I get some time. I mean I get a lot of fan mail. Thank you very much. I also get some comments sometimes that I interrupt and I try to summarize answers of people because I also know, or think I know, what kind of story my audience would like to hear. Our audience would like to hear. So I'm like this could be do you mean this and this instead of that, or do you mean clearer ways of communicating? What do you do when people just go communicating?
Speaker 2:what do you do when people just go. Well, you can listen to the podcast and find out what I do, but the Edit Unless very seldom do I interrupt. For the most part I let people go Because usually when people are really passionate about an idea and they really want to get into it and get it all out, usually there is a lot of gold in there, and so I've gone back and checked and I think the longest that I've gone of those that I've checked has been over a 15-minute monologue where I just let people go, and that's from a podcast hosting perspective. It might appear that that is way too long, and yet there is gold in some of those monologues. So I seldom interrupt is the answer. Sometimes, when we're really going down a rabbit hole that I don't perceive to be useful, then I will redirect the conversation, but that's fairly seldom.
Speaker 1:How much do you prep in that sense Like how much of a story you have of a person already in your head when you hit that bar? When, let's say, the conversation starts Maybe not the recording, but the conversation starts how much of that is already in your head like what you want to have after the 40, or one hour, or one hour and ten?
Speaker 2:Less and less so when I started hosting the podcast, initially I would often prepare in advance very intensely in the case of when there wasn't somebody that had already had a pre-existing relationship with. But as time went by and this was particularly true for non-farmers there were some scientists, like Gerald Pollack, whose work I knew would be difficult to access for many people, where I wanted to be deeply and intimately familiar with his work so that I could make it readily accessible. But I've actually found that the less preparation that I do in specific preparation specific to a particular guest, like you could argue that I have a great deal of general preparation just from the general background and the nature of the work. But the less specific research I do, the better the information comes out in the podcast itself, because I am now learning and discovering along with the audience and I get to guide the conversation wherever I want to go. So if you go back like I, don't go back and listen, do you listen yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't go back and listen, but I still remember what the first 10 episodes sounded like and I know that I'm a much better host and interviewer now than I was in those first 20 episodes.
Speaker 1:Do you enjoy it now?
Speaker 2:Do I enjoy it. Most times I get done with the podcast recording. I close the recording and close the window and I do a fist pump in the air Like I'm so excited about the awesome information that came out. Yeah, literally no exaggeration, that is exactly what I do. It's become a protocol.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. And what are you excited about now? Or what are like stories you would like to tell or that you're going to tell maybe in the next weeks or months, like what's on your mind from the storytelling podcast perspective Spoiler.
Speaker 2:I have no idea. It's very much in the moment, like. I know the guests that I want to interview because of, perhaps, the work that they've done that I'm familiar with, but the reality is I don't go into these conversations with an agenda other than to help them reach a broader audience and their message to be more widely known. So that's primarily it. In many cases, I don't know what's going to come out of the conversation.
Speaker 1:And, like the next months, is there something like what are you specifically looking at now, what are you reading paper-wise, et cetera? What is on your mind?
Speaker 2:Well, pieces that I'm thinking about that need to be more widely known. I think there are. There's an individual at a university in California who has deeply studied carbohydrate partitioning and carbon partitioning within plants and how plants particularly how fruit trees and nut trees move sugars around, and I've come to the realization that many of us, we don't interact with plants like we interact with livestock, because we perceive that livestock are sentient, intelligent beings who are capable of informed decision-making, and we don't associate that same…. We don't associate that and we don't associate that same pattern with plants, but yet they are exactly that. Plants are sentient beings, they are capable of informed decision-making. They have a neural network that in many cases is larger than our own. They can process more data than we can, and if we could hear them scream, I'm sure they would let us know how much they dislike some of our management practices occasionally.
Speaker 2:So I've come to the realization that our relationship with plants tends to be and I'm speaking collectively of humans generally and farmers generally our relationship with plants tends to be much more mechanistic than it is with, let's say, livestock, when the reality is the opposite. When you have a close, engaged relationship with plants that is conscious, deliberate and intentional, then those crops respond in ways that I mean. I have so many stories of farmers consciously communicating to their plants what their desires are and what their intentions are. And the plants respond they overcome disease resistance, they overcome insect resistance, they overcome hail damage. And we tend to not think about or not be aware of what plants, what the inner life of plants, actually looks like.
Speaker 1:Bless you.
Speaker 2:Where are you going to go with this one?
Speaker 1:I'm pondering on the different directions of this one. Where do you think most pushback comes on this specific? Where do you feel most resistance when you share something like this, not necessarily in a room here, but more the traditional or the current agriculture world, when you say plants are sentient beings, where do you lose people Already, there or in?
Speaker 2:Well, there's a few answers that come to mind. It's not possible to please everyone.
Speaker 2:And you shouldn't try, and so I pay no consideration to I don't care what people think.
Speaker 2:A part of that is also a reflection of I very seldom get pushback of the nature that you are wrong or that this idea is wrong.
Speaker 2:There might be nuanced disagreement to say, well, you should think about this differently, or think about that differently, or perhaps there are pieces or elements that I've missed. But very seldom do I get direct antagonism, if you will, and that hasn't happened in years, and I think that I'm aware of at least, and one of the foundational reasons for that is because when you go far enough down the earthworm hole of science, you end up at a place that is energetic in nature, and so the conversations that I have, even around plant intentions and plant neural networks. There are dozens of peer-reviewed papers in the literature on this topic that most people are completely unaware of, and so by immersing myself deeply in the literature and then referencing that literature and referencing the information that is readily available out there, the nature of the disagreement changes, where all of a sudden, it is like, instead of saying no, you're wrong, it's like, oh, I haven't read those papers and I didn't know about that. So perhaps I'd better check my sources first.
Speaker 1:I remember I'm not going to call it an incident, I don't think it was. But on LinkedIn I don't know if you remember I think you called out somebody of Yara who is here no, not here, yara has a stand somewhere there and said something on a paper. And they responded no, you said something and the business developer of Yara I think I emailed you about it Like this is the moment you were like yeah, I'm not done yet, but you were referring papers and like what was that about? Because it was very interesting for me, not that I'm not bashing anybody, but that a large corporate in this space felt the need to respond, with all due respect, to you on LinkedIn, and that was just interesting, it was fascinating.
Speaker 2:So at the time I had this growing realization, like we had observed for some time, that over-application of nutrients was causing disease and insect susceptibility. Like we could directly tie disease and insect susceptibility back to over-application, particularly of nitrogen and of potassium. Those two are two major culprits. It can also happen with other elements, but those two are very common. So we'd established that for quite some time. But what I hadn't fully appreciated was that over-application of these nutrients at early plant growth stages, which is what is most common, actually creates a yield drag effect and it reduces yield. So we think about applying fertilizer to increase yield but in reality a lot of the fertilizer applications, because they're over-applied at the wrong stage, create a yield drag effect and reduce yield. And so I wrote a blog post and the title was Are Ineffective Fertilizers Snake Oil.
Speaker 1:Because you know how to write them as well. Come on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so everyone you know the snake oil label is historically applied to the biologicals and biostimulants space, but in a conversation that I had with Pam Marone, she pointed out that the rigor of testing and the performance standard for biological inoculants and biostimulants in the regulatory framework, at least in North America, which was the context that she was referring to is much more stringent and there's a much higher level of performance expectations with biological controls than there is with pesticides and than there is with fertilizers. And so who's the real snake oil? So this was the title of the blog post our ineffective fertilizers, snake oil, and I focused specifically on potassium and a set of papers that was published by a group of scientists out of the University of Illinois, and they conducted a meta-analysis of puzzling now was it 600 or 900 papers, but a very large number of papers on the effectiveness of potassium chloride as a fertilizer, and they concluded that, of the entire body of literature around potassium chloride, they produced a positive yield response 6% of the time, 6% of the time. So….
Speaker 1:Snake oil.
Speaker 2:Snake oil, and so when that blog post was published on LinkedIn I think it was the head of agronomy or the head of technology for Yara felt the need to respond to that.
Speaker 1:In a very nice way, I have to say, but still.
Speaker 2:And he attempted to. I forget exactly how he worded it, but he attempted to tell me that the blog post was wrong or inaccurate, but never directly refuted any of the statements in the original paper. And so there was one key sentence in the paper that described the overall lack of effectiveness. I lifted that sentence out of the paper, posted it in my reply and said this is the original quote and citation. Are you saying that this is inaccurate and I never received a response.
Speaker 1:What does it tell you about the state we're in? I mean, you've been deep in this space, deep, active in this space, for 20 years no, close to 20 years. Is that a sign, or what does it tell us about where we're in this movement? That somebody feels the need to respond and then doesn't respond anymore, which is fair, fine enough. But what do you did you? Because I emailed you. I think it's a sign. I said what do you feel? And you said yes, what triggered you there?
Speaker 2:Well, I Kind of alluded to this point earlier. But if we like, we have the incumbent. Agronomy system has the benefit of history, the benefit of being the status quo and the benefit of being easy. If it were not for those things, it would probably be illegal.
Speaker 1:Which one of the three is the get out of GeoCard here.
Speaker 2:A combination of all of them. But the you know when you think about a fertilizer having 6% effectiveness. If there were a brand new product being introduced to the marketplace for the first time, do you think the regulators would approve it at 6% effectiveness? No, if there were a product introduced to the marketplace that was known to pollute groundwater and pollute waterways and cause algae bloom and do all the other things that we know free soluble nitrogen and phosphorus do, do you think it would be approved in today's regulatory environment? The answer is no. But because they are, in essence, kind of grandfathered in and are assumed to be the default standard practice that everyone must use, because that's what everyone is familiar with, they enjoy the luxury of not having the level of scrutiny applied to them only because and there is a key element here this is partially also true because people are unaware of the alternatives that exist and or, historically, were unaware. But as we are clearly describing this very different model that not only exists but supersedes and exceeds the results of the previous model, you know, I'm reminded of the quote from Buckminster Fuller that the best way to create change is not to fight the existing model, but to replace it with something that's better and that is what is happening with these regenerative agronomy models is that the results and the performance is so significantly better from every dimension that of course mainstream agronomy suppliers and contemporary agronomy suppliers are terrified and are reacting to that, and they react to that in different ways. I mean, in the case of the instance that you're referring to, a few individuals were very defensive, but the large ag chem corporations are buying up biological and biosimilant companies left and right every opportunity they get, because the handwriting is clearly on the wall.
Speaker 2:We see again, in some ways the change has already happened. The change hasn't happened in the field yet to the full degree, but when you look at the where R&D money is being invested, there is very little next to no R&D R&D money is being invested. There is very little next to no R&D money is being invested in the development of new pesticide formulations, because the regulatory hurdles are so difficult that it's very difficult to bring a new pesticide to the marketplace. So the majority of the research is all in biological controls, biocontrols and biostimulants and for multiple reasons the hurdles are easier to bring those products to marketplace and they're now identifying and discovering that they can be equally or more effective than the pesticide applications, so it may take another decade. Well, there's another point to this, of course, which is that of course, these chemical companies will continue to sell pesticides and make as much money as they can for as long as they can, but in the meantime they you know it's fascinating.
Speaker 2:I know the inside stories of a couple of these because of individuals that I know that are highly placed within some of these ag chemical corporations, and there are many cases where large ag chem companies have biological products that are equally or more effective as a pesticide, but they are. The ag chemical is still much more widely sold for a number of reasons. It's more profitable in many cases, it's better understood by the marketplace and it often is slightly easier to use. If you want to use a biological, there is more nuance in understanding how to use it, how to position it, how to apply it effectively, and that nuanced information often doesn't transfer and doesn't flow well through the distribution chain, often doesn't transfer and doesn't flow well through the distribution chain. Chemicals are comparatively easy, it's like the easy button, but I think there's an element to which the foundational pieces for the future of agriculture moving away from pesticides and fertilizers has already happened. It just still needs to fully manifest itself.
Speaker 1:What does it keep them from? I mean, you've raised some funding, mostly through the crowd. Actually, was it a deliberate choice to shield you from potentially being bought or potentially getting a knock on the door with a lot of money because they're pretty profitable? What's your feeling with these biologicals being bought, the companies behind them, left and right, which were colleagues, competitors, other people in the space We've seen that also in the energy transition partly. What do we sense about that? Or what do we feel?
Speaker 2:Which question are you asking exactly?
Speaker 1:Are you scared of being bought? And then that that's like is there? How do you protect yourself, let's say, from incumbent buying this and shutting stuff down?
Speaker 2:Well, I actually don't see them. I don't see them buying things and shutting them down. I see them buying things and seeking to commercialize them and succeeding very poorly.
Speaker 2:Succeeding very poorly. Why are they succeeding poorly? Because the foundation, the very foundation. I keep repeating this mantra because it's so meaningful to me, and perhaps I need to do a podcast episode describing why it's so meaningful. But the outcome of an intervention has nothing to do with the skills or the knowledge of the intervener. It has everything to do with the place within from which the intervener comes.
Speaker 2:Well, these enterprises are not coming from the correct place within they are coming from. They tend to have a very extractive relationship with the grower. A couple of years ago, I was on Jason Mock's podcast and just off the cuff I made the comment that the farmers are being farmed, and that was a viral moment. But we recognize that on both sides of the farmer relationship both the people who are contributing inputs to the farm as well as the people who are buying from the farm in many cases and this is in reference to the supply chain in many cases, both sets of those relationships are very extractive. They're seeking to extract as much from the farmer as they possibly can. And when these large corporations bring on biological products and biosimilar products and attempt to bring them to the marketplace, there is still a desire to price those products at the maximum value that the market will bear, not a reflection of what they cost to produce or what the R&D costs were. And there is still this extractive relationship mindset, this place that they are coming from within and as a result, and that manifests itself in many different ways, not just in pricing strategies, but it also manifests itself in the type of relationship that they engage with through the distribution supply chain and with growers. So how are we different at AEA? Well, we refuse to go through distribution.
Speaker 2:We tried that model early on and we found that what growers really need is not just the in-depth agronomic information, it is not just the agronomic consulting, but it is really the coaching and the hand-holding. That transition doesn't happen in the field first. It happens first between our ears, and that transition in our minds and our hearts comes about as a result of trust in a relationship. You cannot develop trust in a trusting relationship with someone that you know is getting paid a commission to sell you things, and so this distribution model inherently creates distrust and it inherently creates conflicted relationships. So if you want to ask farmers to make a transition in significant changes, then that means engaging in deep, authentic relationships and as a result of that, and also in parallel, we found that the nuanced agronomic information that was needed to implement these systems well did not transfer through a distribution network, that you needed to have that direct relationship, and so it was.
Speaker 2:It was as as a result of desiring to constantly deepen and strengthen those relationships with our growers was one of the reasons we went in the direction of doing a community fundraising campaign, because I wanted the opportunity for our farmers and growers and supporters the people that we work with to be able to participate in the company's growth and success, and we looked at different alternatives and options. We had explored stock option alternatives for our employees at one point and this was an administratively easy pathway for us to accomplish that, because we don't want to just participate in the farmer's success, we also want them to participate in our success. That is the foundational essence of a symbiotic, synergistic, collaborative relationship rather than an extractive relationship.
Speaker 1:And how did it go? Because it wasn't the easiest, but we talked about it on your podcast. Actually, you've for sure had a lot of knocks on your door of investors that wanted to invest, et cetera. You went through the crowd, which is a lot of admin, it's not cheap, it's a lot of work. I mean people think crowdfunding or crowd investing, it's a campaign to run. How did it go? And just for people that didn't follow that process, which was fascinating to see, I'm a very proud investor with $500, which worked, which is getting in the game, but it's interesting because you put your numbers out there as well. It's very open, which fits exactly in what you just said, but still most people won't do it. Most companies won't do it, especially not at your size. What was that process like and would you do it again If you needed to? Of course?
Speaker 2:Well, first, I mentioned a bit ago that I'm not active in the day-to-day management of the company and I was also not active in the day-to-day management of the campaign. We had an incredible team who managed all of the legal and the regulatory aspects and the accounting aspects, of which there were many. I had the very good fortune of being able to make the decision to say yes, we want to do this, and the team did it, so I can't comment on how difficult it was, did it, so I can't comment on how difficult it was.
Speaker 1:You asked somebody in the team Some of them are here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, some of them are here. Would you do it again?
Speaker 1:I see a thumbs up or a thumbs down, chris, yes, no, chris is saying no. No, I'm joking. Anyway, it's okay, but you know the what you're feeling from the sideline. Let's say what do you observe?
Speaker 2:Well, the one piece that I observed that I found intriguing and mildly disturbing was that the foundational one of the foundational reasons for going down this pathway was to facilitate the opportunity for growers and for our customers to participate on the equity side of advancing eco-agriculture, and I was disappointed by the large number of farmers who did not have the financial resources to be able to participate. That was very disappointing.
Speaker 1:Even though they are growing with you.
Speaker 2:Even though they are growers. With them, I mean, we have growers that utilize our products to the extent of multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars per year who were in such a difficult financial position Like they can justify the use of large numbers of a large volume of product. They're farming thousands of acres but they are using operating loan money to purchase products. But they didn't have the available cash to make an investment, and even a very tiny scale, like we were allowing people to come in for as little as $100. And that is a sad reflection of economic reality of farming in the countryside, Because there's no judgment on my part of individual farmers for the position that they were in, but it is a reflection that there are many farmers in a position that they are so cash constrained that they could not make a capital contribution to an enterprise at even a tiny level, and I was dismayed to observe the extent to which that reality exists in the countryside.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is fascinating because there's so much money in farming mostly locked in land and being paid in loans and circling around, but not in your pocket as a farmer, which we all know. But then when you see not in your pocket as a farmer, which we all know, but then when you see it in your face it's so a campaign was a success.
Speaker 2:It was a tremendous success.
Speaker 1:You raised, but not from, necessarily only from the people you wanted to.
Speaker 2:Well, I wasn't limiting it to only a certain group of people, but it would have been wonderful to see a more diverse group of farmers be able to participate, and the reality is again we had, so it wasn't all bad. I'm describing the piece that it was dismayed with, but on the other hand, we also had farmers that invested well into six figures that we had worked with for a number of years. So we had that occurring as well and that was very wonderful to see. But it was still interesting that we didn't get broader.
Speaker 1:Participation from the farming community that we were actively working with, and so would you do it again? I mean, of course you just decide, just decide yes, no, let's say there will be another Fundraising needed or it would fit. Would you consider consider that route again or potentially other routes or other?
Speaker 2:It would depend on the position that we would find ourselves in, the amount of money that we were hoping to bring in, and or there could be different pathways or different reasons and mechanisms. But if I think the one piece that would really motivate me to raise additional money from the farming community is if the farmers themselves approached us, either individually or a group of farmers over a period of time, and said, hey, we want to put more money into advancing eco-agriculture. There is we did a simultaneous Reg CF and a Reg D. So Reg D is for accredited investors, of which a surprisingly large number of farmers, at least in North America, qualify for because of their tremendous asset base.
Speaker 2:And there's kind of a toss-up in my mind about whether we would do another Reg CF or Reg D round. I'm kind of leaning towards. Perhaps we would do a Reg D CF or Reg D round. I'm kind of leaning towards perhaps we would do a Reg D. But the one piece that was very clear through the exercise or through this process is that successfully raising funds through a community fundraising round is not a reflection of the appetite of the marketplace for investing in small companies. It is not a reflection of the company that you partner with to bring your offering to the public marketplace. In our case, we use Refunder. It is, to a large degree, a reflection of your existing network and the relationships that you have.
Speaker 1:And switching gears a bit on content. You published a book. When was it? Two years ago? No, in COVID four years ago.
Speaker 2:It's been a while I don't remember. I know exactly the question you're going to ask.
Speaker 1:No, how did that go and are you going to do more? Because we've been thinking on, this is still audio, only most of it. I mean, you published it, but most of it is audio. How do we get this knowledge of how profitable I'm not saying easy profitable agriculture could be, how environmentally friendly and how healthy Again, none of this is easy. How do we get that into the hands of more people? Other types of media would be interesting. What are you exploring there and what are you planning there beyond the audio piece?
Speaker 2:if yeah, I'd like to ask a question of the audience how many of you prefer to read over listening? There you go. There's the answer.
Speaker 1:It's roughly half we're going to publish books, yeah, long form, short, long form or like long form.
Speaker 2:How many of you prefer to read books versus listening to a podcast? Okay. How many of you prefer to read articles and newspapers? Okay, about an equal blend between the two, I would say. So what I realized is, as the podcast started growing and its impact and its reach started growing, the original genesis, the original reason for founding Advancing Ecoagriculture in the first place was to be an engine for change, to drive change purely as a result of doing business, and that same foundational idea was also what drove the podcast, one of the reasons for being of the podcast itself.
Speaker 2:But as the podcast started taking off, I would go to events like this and smaller in audience size than this throughout North America and I would ask people how many people were listening to the podcast, and, particularly in the early days, 5% or 10% of the hands in the room would go into the air.
Speaker 2:And I realized that there are many people, particularly the older generation of farmers. This has shifted because the podcasting world is a very different world today from what it was even five years ago. But what I realized is that there are many established farmers who are still in the decision-making role, who might be older, who not only do they not listen to podcasts. They have no desire to ever listen to podcasts and that we're actually reaching only a very small segment of our audience if we limit ourselves to audio only. So for the first book, I simply took a selection of our first 20 podcast episodes that were particularly impactful and transcribed them, edited them, cleaned them up to make them easily readable and turned them into a book, and it's been quite popular. The second book was completed and needed a forward to be written 12 months after the first one, and that has now been the status quo for the last three years.
Speaker 1:Let me guess who had to write the forward. Yeah, it's coming out soon, I guess, right.
Speaker 2:What is your definition of soon?
Speaker 1:This year, 2024? That's not my definition of soon, by the way.
Speaker 2:So the intention is to release a series that are edited, concentrated transcripts of all the golden stuff that comes out in the podcast interviews, translated transcripts of all the golden stuff that comes out in the podcast interviews. And people have been on my case for years to write a book of my own. At one point I was ambitious enough to think that I might take that on, but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to figure out where to begin and where to end, and maybe that's why some of my mentors, who had such encyclopedic knowledge, never wrote much of it down. It's like where do you start and where do you stop? So I'm not saying it'll never happen, but probably not soon. I'm hosting a podcast. People can get the information there.
Speaker 1:And transcribes and series of books coming out of that. So why bother? What do you feel that's missing in this space? Like content-wise? What would you love to? I don't know. Listen to read, look at sense. I don't know what other media we can come up with sense I don't know what other media we can come up with.
Speaker 2:Well, what is missing in the space generally broadly is good citizen science. We have peer-reviewed literature, and then we have what some derisively like to call anecdotal evidence, and they're discounting the fact that anecdotal evidence is still evidence, and then we have almost nothing between those two and one of the challenges, frustrations, that I experience quite regularly. Well, I've kind of gotten over it. I've just changed my expectations. But there are many times when growers have incredible, incredible experiences and they tell us about how awesome their yield was or the fact that they have larger ears of wheat with no empty kernels at the bottom and this happened to me just last week have larger ears of wheat with no empty kernels at the bottom and this happened to me just last week. This farmer was…sends me this audio message and he is dancing up and down about how awesome his wheat crops look and his wheat has looked, and said do you have a photo? Can you send me a photo of the treated section versus the untreated section? Oh, no, I don't have that. It's like this is so easy and this is so simple, but I think there are many growers who have remarkable information experiences who are not doing a good job of sharing them and actually this is very important.
Speaker 2:All of you are here at Groundswell because you care about the nature of the conversation that is happening around regenerating agricultural ecosystems and so forth the nature of the conversation that is happening around regenerating agricultural ecosystems and so forth. I'm less familiar with the UK and the European landscape and context, but in the US and in many parts of the world we are reaching a threshold where, when you look at the psychology and the psychological and sociological profiles of the people who are involved in the regenerative agriculture space at this point they largely show up as a…. Either they enjoy being innovators, they enjoy being dreamers and constantly trying new things, they enjoy being first or they came about the regenerative agriculture pathway as a result of significant pain, either financial duress on the farm or health stress with someone in the family. But that landscape is changing. There is now the next group of people who is already beginning to come into the regenerative agriculture conversation and transition is a group of people who are arriving because they are observing and learning from other people's experiences.
Speaker 2:They're not particularly innovators. They don't think of themselves as being innovators. They don't necessarily have particular significant stress or duress that is driving them, but they are observing the success that other people have driving them. But they are observing the success that other people have and that is what is motivating them to change. And because of that dynamic, that cohort of people represents 20 to 30 percent of the total population and because of that cohort coming in, it is more important than ever for farmers and growers to share their success, to share their experiences, to share the joy with the progress that they're making, making and also the failures and the things that happen when they fall down. It's sharing that journey is. We are now at the stage where it is those pieces that will draw people in in larger numbers than ever before. It's very necessary.
Speaker 1:Which means get your phone out of your pocket when you see amazing things and please take pictures and document and write down the most powerful pieces on social media and in other places, and also it happens on social media.
Speaker 2:It happens often. The most powerful pieces are simply grabbing your phone when you're out in the field and taking a 90-second clip or I don't want to limit the size. It can be as little as 30 seconds and as long as 10 minutes just showing what it is that you're excited about and describing why you're excited about it and sharing it. It can be that simple and the reality is these are conversations you're probably already having. You're already having them with people Like this farmer I was mentioning was very capable of recording an audio message. How much more difficult would it have been to turn on the camera? So please do more of that. Share widely.
Speaker 1:And I think it's a good way to end this conversation. I want to thank you, first of all, for agreeing to do this and a few before we clap To household, like we'll release the audio of this. We're not filming this for obvious reasons. You asked to not do that, so be aware of photos. Social media, please don't. You can take a photo but don't share it. And second, we're going to release an input series. The two of us we're going to experiment If we can find a time in the agenda, which, between the two of us, is not the easiest thing, but we're going to look at some input companies not AAA, but some others and we're going to have some fun with that. So keep your ears out there for that, and maybe book series, whatever comes. And thank you for joining us between the slightly cooler now outside between here dinner, if you brought it here, drinks, et cetera. Thank you for coming in here and listen to a chat without a fire, because it would be too warm.
Speaker 2:But still in a sauna.
Speaker 1:CHET HAASE Chat in the sauna. That's a very different kind of event.
Speaker 2:Thank you all.
