324 Frederik Lean Hansen - Small individual farms are probably not the future of farming in Europe

A wide-ranging conversation with Frederik Lean Hansen, a regenerative farm business consultant who spent a year traveling and working on 12 farms alongside regenerative farmers across Europe. He is currently active as a Farm Finance genitor and is now starting his own silvopastured poultry enterprise on his parents' farm in Denmark. We discuss topics such as finance, CapEx, OpEx, income statements, and cash flow, as well as the myth of small-scale farming and whether economies of scale truly matter. Fred shares insights on how farmers can organize together to access better markets, run more financially successful businesses, and improve their quality of life. We also delve into the importance of inner work, which is often neglected in our sector—or any sector, for that matter.

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Chapters

• 2:20 Why are you doing what you are doing? Why Soil?
• 53:57 What should smart investors, who want to invest in reg ag and food look out for?
• 59:57 What would you do if you were in charge of a 1B investment portfolio tomorrow morning?
• 1:16:17 If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing in the agriculture industry from a sustainability point of view, what would it be?
• 1:22:11 Where do you think different compared to others? - what do you believe is true about regenerative agriculture that others don’t believe to be true? Inspired by John Kempf

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Finance, finance, finance, capex, opex, income statements, cash flow and more. But don't worry, this is all but boring. A wide-ranging conversation with someone who has worked on many region farms and alongside many farmers in Europe, not as a volunteer in his 20s, but as a professional with experience in his 30s and actually giving financial advice, Helping farmers to get clarity on their financials, which is so important. And we discuss the myth of small-scale farming Economies of scale do really matter and how farmers can and should organize together to reach better markets, run their businesses more financially successful and improve their quality of life. And we talk about the inner work needed and how that is often neglected in our sector, or any sector for that matter.

Speaker 1: 0:50

This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast, investing as if the planet mattered, where we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems, while making an appropriate and fair return. Why my focus on soil and regeneration? Because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land and our sea, grow our food, what we eat, wear and consume, and it's time that we as investors big and small and consumers, start paying much more attention to the dirt slash soil underneath our feet. To make it easy for fans to support our work, we launched our membership community and so many of you have joined us as a member. Thank you. If our work created value for you and if you have the means and only if you have the means consider joining us. Find out more on gumroadcom slash investing in RegenEgg. That is gumroadcom slash investing in RegenEgg. That is gumroadcom slash investing in RegenEgg. Or find the link below Welcome to another episode.

Speaker 1: 2:04

Our guest of today traveled for a year working on over 12 farms alongside regenerative farmers all over Europe and is currently active as a farm finance janitor, and now he's starting a silvopasture poultry enterprise on the farm of his parents in Denmark. Welcome, fred, thank you for having me, and there are a lot of things to unpack there, but definitely wanting to start with a personal question, we always like to start first, and that is I mean for people that I'm imagining you were born on a farm. But let's get into that. Many escape, let's say many go as far away from farm life as possible, which is actually one of the big issues in farming in Europe, north America, etc. Let's say the transition between generations. Um, how come you spend most of your awake hours thinking um, thinking on regeneration, thinking on the finance side, thinking about soil, acting on soil, planting, working, etc. Yeah, what path led you to what? What was your regenerative path?

Speaker 2: 3:00

yeah, yeah, good question. I actually did not grow up on a farm, I drew. I grew up, uh, outside farms though, but I think, uh, to answer sort of uh with a short answer, more from the heart I think it's. I spent my time with this because it feels like coming home. It just resonates. I connect with the topic at large, uh, the people that are involved with it are easy to connect with.

Speaker 2: 3:23

For me, it feels like this is where I can by far make the biggest difference essentially, and it literally seems to me like everything I've been through in my life up to this point kind of just makes sense as a preparation to make a contribution within this field of region ag, or responsible farming, if you will, or however you want to call it, I guess. So that's like from the heart, I think. If you were to take it from the brain, it's more like this is my icky guy. For the guys who are not familiar with that, it's essentially this Venn diagram of you know, the overlap of where my passion is, what I'm good at, what the world needs and what people would actually pay me for right and, and there you find uh, business and finance consulting within region ag. Um, but to give you, I guess, uh, maybe more what you're looking for, like the story behind or some context. Yeah I, I grew up.

Speaker 1: 4:19

You didn't grow up on a farm. How did you end up? Yeah, I mean, how did you and your parents end up with a farm, but it's a separate one as well. How did you end up at roomie and then traveling basically europe and meeting all of and spending quality time and real time alongside farmers like, how did that happen?

Speaker 2: 4:35

yeah. So I mean I did grow up around farms, right, and I never really understood, like, why they were struggling so much. Because I saw some of my friends from school, you know, their parents were farming and they were struggling. They were always talking about how hard it was and I saw them working so hard. So I thought I mean they must be making money because they're working so hard. That was the lesson that I was learning in in general life as I was growing up that work hard, you know, you earn money, do good, but it doesn't always seem to be the case. So I wanted to learn everything about money and I still don't know everything, I will say.

Speaker 2: 5:13

I started studying economics as I grew up, but I was also too restless to get a nine to five job. So even before graduating I started projects and my first company. We had a big urban farming uh project in copenhagen. I did an art broker platform which failed miserably, uh, but it taught me a lot of stuff. Um, I did an? Uh, an open source company within compact electric vehicles, which went well at but then ended up failing as well.

Speaker 2: 5:50

Eventually I returned to agriculture by co-founding a biotech play on rapid soil testing called Nordetect still exists today. I also did a vertical farming project with a startup. At the time we wanted to make the technology more accessible. But in all of this, it still felt like something was a bit off in the way that we approached it. It was kind of mechanistic and it was was a bit, uh, like we were focusing on kind of controlling everything, and it didn't really sit right with me. So so when I discovered sort of regenerative agriculture, um who, what you can say is a bit more like letting go of some control and more being the facilitator of the environment around you, uh, it really connected with me and and uh, and I immediately sort of do you?

Speaker 1: 6:47

remember how um, yeah, or it was like you said discovered. That really feels like I don't know, columbus not discovering that north america obviously I think the vikings did that before. Plus, it existed for millennia and was managed, and but let's say you hit the short. There was a moment like there was a moment you were on the boat and there was a moment you were on the land. I think it was in Cuba or something. But what do you mean by discovered?

Speaker 2: 7:10

Yeah, it's hard to say that one moment, but, honestly speaking, one of the things that really sort of made the light bulb go off was actually finding out about your podcast, and I saw your name. I didn't set up this question, no, but this is true, and because I saw your name and your name is Koen right, and in Danish that literally means the cow so I was like, okay, this guy is made for regenerative agriculture Once.

Speaker 1: 7:40

I had sort of Except that I'm not Danishish, but yeah, yeah, that's funny still that's in dutch. It means brave like that's, that's it, so maybe brave cow would be. A would be a good one, hey, the south braves is a breed, right?

Speaker 2: 7:53

yeah, yeah, makes sense. Um, it was. It was gradual, to be honest.

Speaker 1: 7:58

It was like I I encountered the topic, but if you don't know anything, about region, like the topic, but if you don't know anything about region, like discovering the podcast, not to, but it's pretty, it's not super accessible, um, like we use a lot of terms I try to really really be conscious of that, but I I often fail um, so it could also push you away. Like okay, like I think if you don't know anything on region farming and you're a farmer and you start listening yeah, to john kemp, for instance, sure, it's also way to, to deep, I think, like what on earth are they talking about?

Speaker 2: 8:28

and and so it got you hooked somehow, which is good, but it also could have pushed you away I mean to be fair, the, the, the seed was planted much earlier, right, um, like back at the time when, when I was part of the co-founding this, this company called no detectect. We were part of different conferences and things like that, and one of the conferences there was a guy I think Joel Williams, if I'm not mistaking, was actually speaking in Denmark and we were at this small sort of pharma conference there and it was the first time I started understanding about sort of root exudates and all these different things and we were, you know, we measuring soil, uh, and so nutrients and that. So I got really interested. Okay, there's much more uh, it's not uh, it's not just uh, like a grown growing medium. So it's not just a growing medium, it's actually this that's a pretty big realization, yeah because I, I mean, I was very reductionist back then.

Speaker 2: 9:24

I was like thinking, okay, why do we even have soil?

Speaker 2: 9:26

Why don't we just like do vertical farming all over or, you know, do greenhouses with growing mats made of bamboo or whatever right, I didn't really understand it, but then the, the penny, sort of dropped a little bit that one day and I thought, wow, okay, there's a whole world that I had never realized and that really, really, you know, led me on to, to read about it and to to, uh, to watch, you know, read all the books that you could imagine, right, uh, the, the dirt to soil and the, the um, you know, the holistic management and and all these different kind of classics and Joel Salatin books and whatever, um, and, and, you know, watching all the documentaries that you might also imagine, right, and so, sort of, step after step, it sort of got me onto that journey and I felt like I was going a bit in the wrong direction at the time.

Speaker 2: 10:14

So I sort of took a break from trying to build things myself and I went into design consulting for bigger European projects under an organization called Danish Design Center and then I was part of operating the Danish national state-sponsored startup incubator, actually called InnoFounder, before I sort of yet again returned to the field of agriculture. And this is when, now we're up to the roomie time, right, this is my whole life. Shout out to your honest, shout out to your hand is to patty, to danny and all the great folks at the team.

Speaker 1: 10:54

Um, yeah, we I will put the link below we've interviewed you on this a while back actually, and we invested with with jan re, with our syndicate, in in their round as well.

Speaker 2: 11:02

So we're super biased, but it's uh, it's interesting quite a few.

Speaker 2: 11:06

And then we met at groundswell last year, 2023, in the train back mostly, yeah to london and you were about to, so let's unpack the roomy part, yeah first and then, and then your journey rooming was great in so many ways of of uh, allowing me to learn so much more about the tech role in, in region, ag and what it can and cannot do, and and the supply chain that needs to, you know, transition and all these different things.

Speaker 2: 11:31

But I also had a realization, which was that actually, you know, most of my adult life I've been, I've been working within agriculture and farming and food, but I've never actually spent one full season of farming. There's so many details I don't really have a clue about, like I I know the theory, but like I've never really, you know, had, you know, dirty nails to that extent. So so I decided to rip um 10 months out of the calendar to to go travel around, uh, different farms, and that meant that I had to say goodbye to Rumi, but yeah, they've done well without me. So I don't know whether this says something about them or me.

Speaker 1: 12:14

So but let's not go there.

Speaker 2: 12:17

Yeah, that's okay. But yeah, so I traveled, I traveled around, just I made essentially a CVv right like a one pager explaining to farmers. You know why the hell am I doing this at the age of like 35? You know, ripping out a year and you know you're not.

Speaker 1: 12:35

You're not a woofer at 22 and a volunteer here and there, like there's a difference and and how easy. So what did that cv, that world pagers, say? And then what was the reaction of farmers?

Speaker 2: 12:47

yeah, I mean it just said uh uh, hi, I'm fred, I it's still the head at the opening of your website.

Speaker 2: 12:55

Yeah, exactly, and like, um, I'm traveling around europe to work on maternity farms and then, like, basically presenting the deal I work, you know, for free. I want to learn, uh, this is what you can expect from me, this is what you cannot expect from me. I, I expect to be working, uh, you know, some hours per week consulting still. So you have to think about that too, and just spent very little time actually just on the on the side of the of that cv, essentially just listing up what I've actually done before. So they kind of knew a little bit.

Speaker 2: 13:31

But I think one key thing is that is what you mentioned that, um, I wasn't this, this, uh, young woofer which had zero work experience or whatever. So like, like, okay, shit, this is a guy who has experience and who really wants this, is super motivated, motivated enough to leave a nice job and to go live in a caravan for a year, and so I think that resonated quite a bit. So it wasn't too difficult to find farms and I even had, you know, farmers calling me after making a linkedin post, literally saying, hey, you should come to our farm, you know. So that was that was great.

Speaker 1: 14:13

Um, you think that finance piece was a pool as well, like you literally say.

Speaker 2: 14:19

Like I provide clarity in farm, farm finance, which I think is is often missing, and but it also depends, of course, if farmers recognize that as well, like, yeah, we're actually missing clarity yeah, I mean that that sort of came on the backhand, like that came after the, after the fact of starting to travel, right, because that was kind of an organic thing, literally just stemming out of being super curious and perhaps asking almost too many questions, like, but it could be, it was just simple questions really. Um, hey, okay, so with with all the farms I visited, I was asking, okay, so it all looks great, beautiful farm, amazing animals. How is it actually going economically, like? How how is it looking financially? And some had had better answers than others. Right, mostly they were actually coming to me and saying listen, I don't have the clarity that I would like. I have some clarity but like I'm not really allowing myself time or spending enough time with it to really really get into the depth of it and, plus, most of them don't really necessarily have have the background to do that really quickly and easily.

Speaker 2: 15:33

So it's also like one of the the first places I went, she kind of compared it with being a young adult and moving out from your parents' place and then perhaps you're not as good as you want to be in sort of doing the dishes, so the dishes kind of rack up, and so the longer you wait, the bigger job it is. And then it's just oh, it's an insurmountable task. And then you feel uncomfortable doing it and you know, at the same time, it's like you know you have a choice between staying in the office and you know, at the same time, it's like you know you have a choice between staying in the office and you look out the window and there's like a cow dying. What are you going to do? Like you're going to go and save the cow? Oh, you know, there's always a fire to put out. So there's plenty of reasons why they they perhaps don't take the time that they would like to right.

Speaker 2: 16:20

So in one of the instances, we literally, uh, I sat down and said, okay, I mean, if you don't have this clarity, we take a look at it. And I got full access to like the accounting software and all the books and so on, and we sort of updated a very basic version of a cash flow forecast, if you will, and you could just see that, hey, we are actually running out of money in like three months. This is actually a problem with the burn rate we currently have. We need to change things. Luckily, they kind of had that in mind and there was an investor involved, and it was just a case of them saying, okay, wow, this is actually a bit sooner than we thought.

Speaker 2: 17:03

So it was not a terrible situation, although I guess it's really good that we did take a look into it. So we actually were able to not be panicking about it and more like, okay, we can prevent panic and we can actually do this in a more sophisticated way, if you will, and spend some time figuring out what do we do, way, if you will, and like, spend some time figuring out what do we do, right? So that's kind of led me on to to start, uh, to start working as a, because I said, okay, I'm, I'm happy to to work for free with something I don't have a lot of experience with and I'm really really learning, but I do have quite a bit of experience with, with finances and and business development and all these different things. So you know, if, if I'm going to do this, which is actually a quite a big job, you're going to have to pay me, and I said, fine, I'll pay you.

Speaker 2: 17:49

And then that's kind of how it all started with the, with the what, so you started working with the ones you were visiting yeah, a few of them, almost naturally yeah, it kind of just came about naturally, yeah, and it's just also I guess it's a a consequence of I think once you spend time with them on the farm you start to develop more trust. It does take some trust to just you know, hey, here's all the access to my books, you know, I mean, not everyone wants to share that so openly and I can kind of understand that.

Speaker 1: 18:22

And so now are you still working with them? Like, how does it look like? Is that recurring thing? Is it a yeah, a one-time um?

Speaker 2: 18:30

clarity exercise yeah, I had initially thought it would be more like a one-time thing, but then it just turned out that actually, you know, um, it's not just making a cash flow and trying to, you know, fix different situations. It's also understanding, making an actual model, like, okay, if we're making this decision on the farm, what does that mean financially? And that seems to be a clarity that most farmers sometimes don't even know that they could have, let's say, or not realize that they oh wow, I could actually have this clarity. It does take some time and it does take some effort to get there, but, like, it's possible, and especially if you have good record keeping et cetera, then you can really have a nice process and a nice system to really understand okay, if you're basically no matter how long you are down the regenerative journey, if you will, if you can model, okay, we're going to invest in this fencing or we're going to start a pasture poultry enterprise. What does that look like?

Speaker 2: 19:33

Like, what kind of volume do we need to get to in order to actually have unit economics that look healthy? Can we test out whether people actually want to buy it, which is kind of important? Do we have sales channels for this? What can we sell it for. You know, kind of testing out the assumptions and understanding, okay, this is how we will impact the business right, and it doesn't have to be rocket science. It can also be much harder than that, but it usually isn't. But it usually isn't Like it's just looking at the records and kind of setting up the assumptions and kind of proving or disproving the assumptions one by one, really in a prioritized manner.

Speaker 1: 20:46

And looking at the financial state or situation of a lot of these farmers, what was your biggest surprise?

Speaker 2: 20:55

My biggest surprise was probably that.

Speaker 1: 20:59

How super profitable they are.

Speaker 2: 21:03

I guess that I was surprised, that I don't know actually why that was such a surprise, because they have assets, right, usually. So one surprise was actually, okay, they actually do have access to finance, they can leverage their assets, of course, I just didn't even think about it. And one other surprise was I didn't even realize that in many cases you could almost finance the purchase of extra land with the subsidies you get and so on. So there's so many different things. Wow, actually I didn't think of that. That was a big surprise.

Speaker 2: 21:37

But I think one thing is that I would take for granted having gone through trading as an economist essentially and understand accounting and the different categories and things like that and the different categories and things like that is that most farmers are not that clear on what's the difference between, let's say, an income statement, profitability analysis and, like cash flow versus balance sheet. Right, these things are not necessarily super clear. It doesn't take that much, I think, to explain it and once you do it, they get it and it's easy enough to work with it and it's, you know, it's easy, easy enough to work with, but it's just that initial piece of like kind of putting those sticks in the ground. It's not always there, and I understand, you know.

Speaker 1: 22:25

There's many things, obviously, that I didn't and still don't understand about farming, right, but uh but yeah, but as a small company, it's especially dealing with with the financial world and potentially investors and things like that. It's quite it's essential to have that clear overview. Where are you at and and why? What are the levers and and are you running out of cash in three?

Speaker 1: 22:50

months or not. It's quite a yeah, quite a fundamental business, uh, business side. If we, if we treat small farms or farms in general as businesses, then we need to, yeah, we need to get financially literate, basically, yeah, and understand those, um, yeah, those metrics and those statements definitely, definitely, yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:09

So I think I mean another surprise. I think, uh, which was, uh, I guess maybe less on, specifically on the on the financial side or the business management side, if you will. It's more like you know, I've been used to the startup world where it's like, okay, we all are wearing so many different hats. I might be like business development lead or whatever, but I'm also helping out on, you know, assisting in figuring out something about the methodology we're using, or I'm also helping to onboard farmers on the app or whatever, right? Uh, you know there's so many uh hats you're wearing, but I've never seen a profession that is wearing so many quite intricate hats at the same time.

Speaker 2: 23:51

You know this has probably been mentioned quite a few times in your podcast as well, but it still struck me how much and to which extent that is true within agriculture. You know, having such depth knowledge of a deep knowledge about biology and, uh, you know, um, agronomy, uh, you also need to be a bit of a mechanic. You also. You know you also need to, uh, be strong enough to lift things, you need to be fit, you need to understand animals really well, you need to have a basic business acumen, I mean the list goes on right. I mean you need to. Is that one of?

Speaker 1: 24:32

the limitations as well.

Speaker 2: 24:33

I think so. I think so, and I think, especially with this whole narrative, this is one of the things that I've really discovered, because I was also, I guess, guess a little bit romanticizing this idea of the thousands of of small farms. Right, that's like okay, yeah, we just need, uh, you know, the antidote to the, to the big corporate farms, or to the, to the quote-unquote conventional farms, and we can discuss how we define that, right, but, uh, but, but, um, but, like I really had this idea that, okay, actually, you know what the small farms are, the way forward, mixed of course, yeah, it's just super diverse, yeah yeah, super diverse and all the thing, but it just seems like, you know, it's really hard to make the economic stack up on the small.

Speaker 2: 25:15

It's really. I mean, I've seen so many people now that are really struggling with it and have been sort of I'm not going to say sort of lured into, but they've definitely been romanticizing this idea. And it's not just that there are small farms that can. I mean, it's not to say that small farms can't work, they definitely can, but it's difficult to to follow this narrative of then you need to be the solo entrepreneur, really, you need to do everything yourself, right? Okay, you need to have a market garden. You also need to have, like I don't know, ducks or you have, you know, that are eating the snails, or you know like there's all kinds of things you need to manage at the same time. And you also need to be the sales guy. You need to be the accounting guy, like there's so many different things, right, that you need to do in a small enterprise that doesn't necessarily allow for the overhead.

Speaker 1: 26:00

There's a reason we, we, we started the slightly bigger, like small and medium-sized enterprises with specialization and economics, definitely economies of scales and and or scale. And yeah, I think that narrative is very dangerous because you burn out like in in probably two seasons, yeah, um or less. And we've had a conversation it might be out when this is with with anders jada, a market gardener close to amsterdam. They very deliberately are running it in five and he can take two months of holiday in the winter and, like this is set up as a small sme and we share our responsibilities and we we get a salary out of this and we run it as a company and not as a solo person, because that's just not going to be sustainable and and but it's. It's an exception, I've seen, unfortunately.

Speaker 1: 26:49

So what, what is an antidote to that? Or what are some of your yeah, thinking and things you've seen that could? Because still, the diversity of the farm is amazing in terms of ecology and the quality, etc. It just doesn't seem financially super viable and we've seen that as well. We had a, a duck enterprise, that decided to. I mean, they went through salmonella, but they decided to focus on the genetics and focus on and not on the market garden and the blueberries and the ducks, and this and that in two. That just doesn't work, and I think we've seen that many times. So how do you, how do you manage that then, if you don't want to go to the quote unquote conventional mega monoland, because that's what we don't want, but anyway, in that size there is space for, uh, specialization, there is space to raise capital, there's space to basically pay an accountant.

Speaker 1: 27:36

Well, yeah and to actually run the books. Um, so what? What is a what? Our path forward in that, in that?

Speaker 2: 27:43

I guess the the first thing is probably just consider scale. Right, be big enough. You don't have to be 500 or even, you know, a thousand or whatever hectares. It doesn't need to be that large, right, you could be smaller, but just big enough, just, uh, that you can afford some overhead. I think that's just really.

Speaker 2: 28:03

Uh, you know that would be context dependent, right, but I've been pondering this question quite a bit. I haven't, I think, found the perfect answer. I think it's probably impossible to find the perfect answer, especially across the board. Right, you would have to really get into each context, etc. I almost get sick of that answer, right, oh, it depends on the context. Yes, it does, right, it's just true.

Speaker 2: 28:27

But, um, I'm quite inspired, uh, by this one book, uh, that I've read relatively recently, called first generation farmers.

Speaker 2: 28:37

Uh, you know, shout out to Shout out to the author Now, I forget his name, actually, put it in the show notes, yeah, we'll find the names later. But he speaks about his journey right from having started a small farm and just like burnt really out on that, and then looking and saying, okay, okay, what can we do, what can we really do here, and then, I think, you know, there's possibly not the need to reinvent the wheel. I mean many, uh many, farms, even from the 1800s, right. They they gathered in cooperatives, and there's a reason why that worked. You share the resources. It allows for specialization to some extent, without having to, you know, give up on biodiversity or even multiple enterprises etc on your own land Right. But you can take a bigger piece of the supply chain that you kind of co-own with other farmers, etc. Right. And it's not a coincidence that you have quite big, even corporates today that actually are cooperatives, right. Arla is an example we can discuss about.

Speaker 1: 29:44

Frisandkampiner yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:46

Another one, right.

Speaker 1: 29:47

Rabobank yeah, we can discuss about the largest ag lender in the world. Is a cooperative yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:52

I mean we can discuss about. Maybe one could put in some, let's say in in the bylaws that you know, kind of uh prevent from going uh to the extent where too big, too big, where the right arm doesn't really know what's going on with the left foot or whatever, right, but I think that, the notion of organizing yourselves and like that, even with going from one to ten or like different enterprises on the same land, yeah, governing the land differently as well, it would probably figure out a big piece of land acquisition or land access in a way.

Speaker 1: 30:27

And because if you're big enough you can afford different prices, different overhead, different management, you can actually put a bid in for things, you can raise maybe some money. Not saying that land speculation is going to be fixed by this, but I think there's the sharedness, or the sharing of resources, processing, et cetera. I mean, we've done that, farms have done that forever. Insurance a lot of insurance companies started as farmer-owned co-ops. We just lost a bit of that and made every farmer, I think, partly deliberate, almost like an individual unit, and then it's way easier to play it. It's way easier for input companies etc.

Speaker 1: 31:01

But if you're a co-op, and actually quite a significant one, you can cut deals for, uh, for feed, for, for machines, for financing, for a lot of things, and and so it's, it's probably the antidote somehow. Organization in whatever context, and governance, of course, done smartly, yeah, um, but but yeah, joining together in that and it's really, it sounds really like an interesting answer join together, we'll stand strong, but it's needed because individual farmers are just never they're going to be played. They are like completely Most likely, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:33

Most likely. So, yeah, I think you're right. I'm not saying that it's the perfect answer, but I think it's definitely a path worth pursuing. And I think also, I mean, one big learning is that you actually don't need. This is also a part Daniel Newman is his name, as far as I remember from that book.

Speaker 2: 31:58

I mean, when I read that book, I was like he's saying exactly what I've been thinking. Thank you for formulating this. Uh, I can't say that. Uh, my thoughts have been nearly as sophisticated or or formulated in in the same way, and perhaps we don't agree on every point and so on, but that's besides the point, right, it's like really good thoughts.

Speaker 2: 32:16

I think, and one of the things that he also emphasizes that that you don't actually need to buy a farm or even start a farm or start farming to get into regenerative agriculture. Right, why don't you start selling other people's produce that you agree with how they're operating? Right, it doesn't even have to be that they're operating, let's say, 100% how you would. Maybe they've gone 70% of the way and by helping them reach perhaps a better market or whatever, you can show them the way. Actually, if I go the last 20%, 30%, whatever percent there's a reward for that and I can see that I can serve a market in this way, can see that the that I can and I can serve a market in this way, you know it also serves, you know, kind of a classic um, I guess it's kind of a classic startup mentality as well I kind of sell everything before you produce it, right.

Speaker 2: 33:09

I try to really uh, I really try to emphasize that when, when I work with with farmers as well, because it's something that it is quite unusual for most farmers to think about you know like, okay, so if I'm going to, um, if I'm going to to start, uh, you know, uh, let's say, pasture poultry or pasture pigs or whatever, like some kind of new enterprise market garden, you know they start to sell it beforehand yeah, and they start thinking about, okay, how I'm going to produce it, well, how I'm going to plan it, you know, but how about just ensuring, actually, that people will buy it and at the price that you would, you would need the, the profit margin that you would need, right?

Speaker 2: 33:48

so so that's, that's really something I try to sort of hammer into into into the heads, if you will. Uh, because it's just not a usual way of doing it, despite the fact that we have something like, you know, csa's, which kind of is similar to that right it's interesting how that landed and how that somehow really so for anybody.

Speaker 1: 34:10

The consumer or customer supported agriculture, basically pre-selling in the winter or in the non-producing months, usually around vegetables. There are exceptions, there are many others, but somehow you pay a fixed fee per week or per head or whatever. The rhythm is that you get what is being produced in that year and you share the risk with the farmer, which is very interesting to think about it, like how it took off and how that's been enabling many people to get into this on on relatively small scale. In terms of market card. This doesn't make it easy, but at least you have the income upfront in many cases to to make the investments in the seeds and your time. You know more or less like it's, not depending on the next cucumber that you squeeze out of your soil, which, which is a a preserve, prefers incentive. But coming back to the point I think you made, just to hammer it again, we need so many people in the region space that are not farmers, that are going to do financial planning, they're going to build things, they're going to sell things, that are going to help farmers to organize in 10 different enterprises on a thousand hectares somewhere, that are going to figure out how to do processing in a time efficient way, as Richard Perkins keeps hammering. This is about timing. This is about seconds, counting seconds and making sure you do that efficiently. This is about selling your stuff before you produce it and bringing some of that knowledge that we've learned in the startup world and in the software world and testing things as well.

Speaker 1: 35:39

What sells? Does the regenerative, whatever narrative sells really well? Or we discovered with wilder land which should be out. When you're listening to this, uh, they say, yeah, biodiversity doesn't really sell, but nature restoration if we put that on our packaging, sells like a charm. So we went for that like who cares as long as it goes? And and that kind of almost a b testing is that we launch a product. We want to launch a product a month and sell it and try it just to see if it works, and then we go to the distribution etc. But direct to consumer is our testing ground. We just keep trying different products and keep trying different recipes and if it goes, it goes if it doesn't kill it, and keep moving and that kind of energy and the kind of knowledge and that kind of um, sometimes a bit frowned upon as well, like we have to do.

Speaker 1: 36:23

we have to get this salesy. Yeah, we do, because the ultra processed food monoland is is is really good at it, so we need to at least match that with way better food, of course, yeah, um, but there's, I think, people that this dream of everybody starting a farm, I think is honestly nonsense and for most people shouldn't, because it's not there. Like please go and do it for a year, like you did, and spend seasons in a farm and see if it's your path. If it is absolutely amazing, we should back you with everything we have. But if it isn't, don't feel deeply depressed. And now my life in Regen is over. No, there are 10,000 other jobs to do.

Speaker 1: 36:58

That's it, don't worry.

Speaker 2: 36:59

I guess I'm going a little bit against my own.

Speaker 1: 37:01

Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now.

Speaker 2: 37:03

No, that's great, love it. I guess I'm going a little bit against my own advice then now, because I'm Because you're starting a farm. It's a very small operation.

Speaker 1: 37:13

Why that? Like what's the and I think the combination is interesting as well. I think Philip Birker of Climate Farms mentioned it somewhere, like, how do you combine land? You were mentioning pre-recording you mentioned. I often spend the mornings on farm and then the afternoons consulting, like remotely, or with the farm itself, and so we'll get back to other stories. But what led you to come back to Denmark and to start a silver pasture or, in the planning phases now, the silver pasture poultry operation? Why is that, in your context, the best thing to do or the most interesting thing to do?

Speaker 2: 38:04

I think quality of life, to be honest, uh, that's one thing. That's an answer I didn't expect, because I just learned that, uh, through you know, as we talked about in the pre-recording conversation, what people I do prep for these things.

Speaker 1: 38:19

It seems like we're not, but no, no, I'm joking, but I I like. The best podcast in my mind that we get back are always the ones where you record a conversation you anywhere having and you wish there was a microphone yeah that's sort of the and this really feels like that. So keep, keep going. Quality of life, really.

Speaker 2: 38:34

Okay, let's go down a repertoire yeah, I mean, as I was traveling around the different farms and I got into the rhythm of of, just you know, getting early up right and and doing farm work, uh, for for the for the first half of the day, until maybe some sometimes until one, until two pm, right, uh, but then a proper lunch. And then a proper Spanish lunch, or you know the UK version with tea, without milk. By the way, I never got that.

Speaker 1: 39:05

Okay, now we lost Harvard. Yeah, just as a background, you spent this year in the UK and mostly on the Iberian Peninsula, right yeah?

Speaker 2: 39:15

Well, I started off in France. Yeah, I started off A bit of France. Yeah, I started off in Strupture, at Plants and Farm in the UK. Shout out to Claire and Annie.

Speaker 1: 39:26

Maybe there was a seed planted on poultry. I'm imagining Actually. Even we just recorded yesterday with Annie and Claire.

Speaker 2: 39:33

In that case we have to talk about the secret pigs. We'll get back to that, that's amazing.

Speaker 1: 39:38

Okay, Kuhn is taking a nap.

Speaker 2: 39:41

I mean that's a really funny thing. We'll get back to that. Where were we at? Oh yeah, the quality of life. So, you know, I got into the habit of doing quite physical work in the morning, walking around, lifting things and just like being around animals, being around plants, and I really love that. I really really enjoyed that division of the day and kind of getting all this kind of like borderline adhd energy out of my body. And then, um and then, or let's say, full-scale adhd, whatever you know, it's getting that out of my body and then gave me much more calm to be, to be more focused when I was then doing office work, right, uh, and, and, and and. It just made me more sharp, like I'm able to do so much more work in a short amount of time than I was before, just because I have done, uh, you know, physical labor in the.

Speaker 2: 40:35

It just works for me in that way. So I wanted to see, can I continue that? And I was looking for, okay, should I continue? You know, being in the Iberian Peninsula, I was connected to a project down there Shout out to Inigo down at Laína and Elena and the rest and ended up actually thinking, you know what? I want to spend some time with my family.

Speaker 2: 41:02

I've been away from them for a long time and so, and at the same time also meeting a woman who, out of all places, was from my hometown, which I had been away from, you know from for what 16 years or so I barely spent any time in my hometown, which I had been away from you know for what 16 years or so I barely spent any time in my hometown, right, and then you know, coming here and then realizing, oh actually, you know, I couldn't see the forest for all the trees, right, I mean, here you go, there's a perfect little piece of land you could start on. My parents have a little piece of land. It's three hectares, right, it's not massive, but hey, you can do some stuff, you know you can do, uh, and there's neighbors you could expand possibly later on and you know, in conversations with that. But but, uh, you know, step by step. So I think you know, quality of life really uh, made a difference. Um, but also just because I really want to share all the learnings, as as I've been kind of doing in this farm log as well, I want to.

Speaker 2: 42:04

You know, as I, as I alluded to earlier, I've been very sort of uh into and involved with the idea of open source and sharing things, and I think it's a it's a big shame if we don't actually learn from each other's mistakes and we keep making the same and reinventing the wheel and so on. I mean, let's perhaps not do that. So I want to share everything, like all of the thoughts behind the finance sheets that I'm using for myself. I'm sharing those, I'm sharing the templates for free on my resources page on my website. You can go and you can find a template for, okay, let's say, you want to do just a quick and dirty calculation of you know what would it take to be profitable with a patch of poultry? There's a bit of a template for that. There's a bit of a template for a cash flow forecast and stuff like that. It's not necessarily rocket science, but it's just.

Speaker 2: 42:57

I found that many farmers, and especially new entrance farmers, don't necessarily know where to start. So it's just a bit of a kind of a checklist, if you will. That that helps, I find, uh, to to kind of navigate that, that those decisions along the way, right. So so, yeah, I want to share everything, um, and I don't mind you, you know, please copy paste, edit. The only thing that, uh, I really would like is that if you make improvements which I hope you will to the the C share, please share them back, you know. So I've put a license on them, like a creative common license on, essentially, google sheets, right, I mean. But uh, yeah, just to kind of formalize that as well.

Speaker 1: 43:40

So, yeah, it's yeah fascinating. And, and just to the book, it's by chris newman, actually not daniel newman oh sorry, first generation farming and we have chris so we need we need to get him back on here actually, because it seems like a lot has happened there, but I I will get the book and we'll try to get Chris back on here as well.

Speaker 2: 44:00

So bad at names, sorry, chris.

Speaker 1: 44:03

No, I was thinking it sounded like something I've seen passing by, but I haven't read it yet. But coming back to the quality of life piece, what have you seen in the regenerative farming space? Apart from that, people are very busy and don't have time for um, for accounting or admin, necessarily, um. But have you seen some interesting examples, some some lessons you've seen there, because it's something we don't discuss often enough? Yeah, um, from from people that compared to not the conventional side, but just to see like, yeah, how, how are people shaping that? What are some lessons learned? What are things you've seen that that maybe don't burn out farmers?

Speaker 2: 44:39

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I think I've seen a lot of people struggle quite a bit, especially on the social and sort of emotional side, and it's something like you know, the culture around farming is not necessarily uh, your average uh, yoga culture. Okay, you know, you, of course you get that uh, you know, kind of wild minds, community, kind of uh vibe, uh to some extent in some cases, but mostly you know it's it's not necessarily people who are, let's say, uh, that into self-development and like dealing with their own emotions in the same way and so on. That's at large, right, this is a very generalizing statement, of course, but I think it's a lot of social backlash. I think I've seen and trying to trying to kind of manage that and it's just I've been pondering why is it so much? Like people get excluded from you know, people look funny at them at the pub, whatever, right, it's really it's a lot, and like people don't understand it and they kind of get a bit angry at them for how they do it.

Speaker 2: 45:48

And I think, you know, maybe this is obvious to some, but it's just dawned on me a bit later than others perhaps, that if you are farming in this way and you are kind of advocating of how to do it. You could, one could argue that you are indirectly saying to all the, the conventional farmers you're doing it wrong, you have been doing it wrong your whole life, everything you stand for is wrong, right, like that's how you could interpret that. And I think it is being interpreted to some extent in that way, and it's because people are very attached to their own ego and to the way that they've been doing things and their identity is kind of born by the fact that they're farming many times in a certain way. And I think that creates a lot of problems, creates a lot of closed minds, and I see, actually it's not quote unquote just a problem on the sort of regenerative, on the, on the sort of conventional side. It's also on the, on the on the region side.

Speaker 2: 46:48

We're really quick to demonize, right, I say we feeling a part of it, right, but but we're really quick to demonize like, okay, you're spraying, what are you doing? Or or you're spraying, what are you doing, or you're not, wait, you're set stocking, ha ha ha, you know, like, okay, maybe people need to be met where they are, and then you can kind of respect their journey and say, okay, fine, there might be some alternative ways of doing things which may have a good impact on your land and on your business and so on, both long-term and short-term, et cetera. Right, but just this kind of pointing the fingers will not work. I just don't see that working, and I think a really good example of someone doing that so well I mean as in not pointing the fingers is this um documentary I, I, I was lucky enough to be at the, at the screening in london, uh, just before groundswell, uh roots roots so deep you you took it out of my mouth, right um, I saw you going there and I knew peter was was coming.

Speaker 1: 47:55

we did the european or we did the non, basically the outside North America premiere in Rotterdam before Peter came to Groundswell. So when you said before Groundswell and documentary, there was yeah yeah yeah, but anyway, what did you take away from that? And, by the way, it's seeable with a VPN everywhere and if you're in the UK and the US also, normally you just pay 20, 20 bucks and you can see uh, all four episodes of roots, so deep, um, for a month.

Speaker 2: 48:20

So definitely go out and see it I would definitely say, even if you feel like you're very well versed, uh, in in region and now this is going to teach you a lot definitely, but, and even quote unquote just not just to diminish the value of that, but quote unquote just on the social side, like what they did yeah, I think it's a combination, like it's the deep science and actually peter of um johnson land and we were talking insects before.

Speaker 1: 48:44

Before recording is uh is the bug guy of uh of peter basically oh nice and so I think the science piece is out of this world because it's so um so rare to see like holistic science on farm to farm, next next to each other, measuring as much as you can possibly imagine, and it's weird that we don't do that more often. And I'm not saying it's the solution and we find of course, it's nice to see the carbon numbers and et cetera, but it also shows we need to repeat this science in this kind of way, like infield next to each other for multiple years with an okay budget, um, in in many other contexts. So let's, let's park that like we need to do that. But the social pieces are almost more interesting, like the pharma psychology.

Speaker 1: 49:23

Yeah, is the neighbor interested, the conventional neighbor interested in in regenerative grazing? And they are. They're curious. Why are they not asking any questions? And what is the trigger to actually ask a question? Is it the, the science piece and all the data, or is it missing of birds and, like I, yeah, and how peter films it and with the respect for for all of his interviewees and all his characters is just mind-boggling it's amazing.

Speaker 2: 49:46

I really applaud that in so many ways, uh, but as? But? I think that the yes, you're right, the science is is great and all these things, but I think the biggest piece is the social like. It's really really how we need to meet farmers with respect. They are doing an honorable job, they are doing their best and, you know, we can definitely we can all learn a lot from each other. There's no question about that.

Speaker 2: 50:10

And I think the way he and the team obviously meets these farmers by being non-judgmental, by understanding and being curious about their issues and not saying, oh, you should do this. It's like asking, okay, what do you think about this? Like, what is your take on this? And and lo and behold, of course. Then it's like they are thinking about it as a business and they're saying, okay, actually, if I can avoid fertilizer down the line, if I can wean myself off it, that's amazing. I spent a lot of time doing it and when spreading it, and I spent a lot of money, and sometimes it just so happens that it doesn't actually create the reaction in the grass and the different things that I would have expected because of different circumstances, right, and so, um, just being less judgmental, I think, is just ah, that's such a key piece, honestly, uh, and it's.

Speaker 2: 51:08

I think it can be hard to be that you really need to sort of be, I guess, almost at peace with yourself, not to not to sound too yogi or whatever, but you have to kind of do some self-work in order to not try to point fingers at people and try to still be working with a conviction and self-confidence in the way you're moving forward, especially within region. If you are in a region that doesn't doesn't really do region right, then then you really have to be working with a lot of conviction and not be taking the sort of social side to to too harshly, because it will probably come right. I mean, the neighbors will be like what are you doing? And so meeting them with respect, as I see many of the of the farmers actually, luckily that I've been lucky enough to visit, they are doing it in this way, which is great, right, but it's just not always what, what I, what I see, generally speaking and where are you still, if any?

Speaker 1: 52:46

judgmental, like what are things that trigger you, in a sense?

Speaker 2: 52:50

that's a really good question. Uh, I wish I could say nothing I'm gonna have to party.

Speaker 1: 52:58

You just see him floating out totally.

Speaker 2: 53:00

I'm just like meditating on a cloud and like so, in equilibrium right surrounded by chickens definitely.

Speaker 2: 53:07

Yeah, no, what do I judge? I guess I do judge a little bit, uh on on, uh on people who don't uh, who, people who are just closed off and not curious at all. Um, I think I I do kind of judge that a little bit. I I try not to, I think, but uh, I think that's probably, I find it hard to understand, I guess, being extremely curious by nature, uh, I think it's it's it's kind of like it can be hard to empathize with when people just don't have the headspace to do it or whatever. Right, and I think I probably judged that a little bit. Uh, that's the, that's the. At least that was the first thing that came to mind. I'm sure there are other things I'm not even aware of oh, it's good, I mean it's.

Speaker 1: 53:53

It's a good um conversation to have in that sense. And yeah, so, with all these travels and and all the experiences on farm the financial side as well um, what would be your main message for investors and for people in the investing or investment world either investing their own money or other people's money what would be a seed you would like to plant that they should remember after this conversation?

Speaker 2: 54:19

Good question. I mean, I guess it depends a bit like what kind of investments are they looking for, right? So I think if we go into the bit more like quote unquote, classic venture funding or venture investments, I just think that from what I've seen now, it's really important that on the team, and probably not just on the board, you have people who have done and probably are doing actual farming, because the devil is just in the details. There's so many things where you could easily build like a piece of technology, for instance, that looks great on paper and like even logically makes a lot of sense. But then, once you get you know, into the nitty gritty of the everyday life of the farmer, maybe what you are, you know, with a piece of technology you are, you know of the everyday life of the farmer, maybe the what you are, you know with a piece of technology, you are, you know, replacing the act of the farmer looking out the window, being, oh yeah, that looks great, you know like and what, while they're on their their daily, uh, you know, farm walk or whatever they're doing right. So, uh, there's so many, I guess, smaller things that really make a big difference in how the you know the value will actually end up being created for the farmer to take that perspective. So I think, really be eminent about making sure that the farmer's voice is really represented well and has a say in the decisions that are being made, because I think it's I'm super guilty of this as well, especially in the past like being a little bit in love with a product and then thinking, oh yeah, this is just great, right, I mean, it really makes sense.

Speaker 2: 56:03

And then sometimes it's like, on certain aspects, my experience have been that farmers are not that happy about technology, even the, even the, the younger ones, because it's just basic things, like it fails them sometimes, like they're standing out in the field and they can't get connectivity so they can't lock a certain thing or they can't access certain information or they forgot their login or you know. It's kind of simple things like that even. And so sometimes people just kind of prefer pen and paper and not to say that that's the future. I definitely don't think that pen and paper is the future, but I think, you know, having technology plays that is a bit more. Where the technology is is kind of working in the background, and then the, the, what the farmers interact with, are almost as kind of analog as possible. It's probably one place to start, um, I would say. So. That's kind of like on the on the I guess venture side, on the venture, I guess Venture side.

Speaker 1: 57:11

On the venture side. I think in general it's funny you call it classic because if you look at the, I'm so biased.

Speaker 1: 57:16

I think at the graph or no, like if you look at the pie chart of the investment world, you wouldn't even see it. I mean, it's not. It's small compared to the debt world or the private equity world, or the, the, the publicly listed stuff, etc. So if you for if you had to talk to the non-vcs in general terms of course everything depends on context but what would you? What would you tell them?

Speaker 2: 57:41

yeah, I think, um, so, if you were to actually want to move the needle, I think that, uh, you know, paving the way for education to happen in some form or another is a really important piece. Maybe we can talk about that a bit later, but I think, like one piece of of kind of a of model that I really think are inspiring is this idea of, like new supply chain models, often with, like healthy offtake agreements that you organize together. It's a little bit along the line of what we talked about. It doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, organized in the way of a cooperative or so on right, it doesn't have to be, it could be, but it doesn't have to be right, like so, in Denmarkmark, for instance, to take an example, we have a company called slow forest coffee.

Speaker 2: 58:33

Shout out to sebastian and the crew um, so they, they've, you know, they, they've co-invested in in coffee farms, uh, in some parts of the world, and they start, they start planting trees and converting, you know, them to agroforestry, right, and creating a supply chain where they are, you know, gathering the demand on one side, right by, by supplying, well, office coffee for many, uh, for many, uh, sort of bigger danish companies, and then on the other side, making sure that you know you can sort of vet the supply chain by actually being a co-owner or in some cases even you know, fully owner of a farm and and you can, you can take responsibility for paying fair wages and all these different things right in a much more direct way.

Speaker 2: 59:18

So I think of you know that also kind of rings a little bit towards a model like the wild farm model. You know, I'm also not saying that that model necessarily is perfect or so on, but I think it has potential to some extent and that can help bring more scale, if you will, to reach an accurate thing. So these kind of cooperative inspired, if you will, models of organizing a supply chain, I think that's really a place where I would be keen to look if I was an investor.

Speaker 1: 59:54

What a perfect bridge to the one billion question. Actually, it is a perfect bridge, but it's interesting. You mentioned that. Coming back also to the conversation we had before or the piece on, there are a lot of off-farm things that need to be done, and a big one is sales and a big one is gathering, and a big one is need to be done, and a big one is sales and a big one is gathering, and a big one is processing to a certain extent. A big one is packaging, a big one is X, y, z.

Speaker 1: 1:00:16

I mean there's so many steps there that of course we want to cut out a lot of the middleman. We don't want 16 steps and all the kilometers, but there's some role there and not everything, or maybe actually a lot of things shouldn't go to the farmer's market, and coffee might be one of them, and many other things go through some kind of distribution channel. The crowd farmings of this world, or the slow roasted forest coffee, or the wild farmed, all of them have a very important role in the decommodification, let's say, of this space. And so if I would ask you that question of what would you do if you had a billion euros to to put to work and what would be the buckets you look into, what would be the big if you had to cut it in pieces, let's say, and not down to the euro, obviously, because what would you? And none of this is investment advice, let's be very clear. But what would you focus on, what would be your priorities, if you suddenly had that, um, that kind of resources?

Speaker 2: 1:01:12

obviously I've given some thought to being a keen listener, right, um, and I thought I'm mostly interested in putting that money to work in in you know, two ways around half just feeding the funnel for new people in the ecosystem and then half of funding the outcomes of feeding the same people in that ecosystem. Uh, so yeah, around five in the middle uh put into more education, like we need more. Uh, we need more of that. And, and you know, out of the, I think I read it was around 50 000 people each year that are educated within agriculture. I I wonder how many of these are really sort of getting uh into depth with regen, right, it would be great if we could get all of them to do that. So that's one thing. And and then you know, more sort of um, even farm business or business incubators doesn't have to be even like, let's say, like the what's the one in the Netherlands, like the one that you always mention Fresh Ventures.

Speaker 2: 1:02:14

Fresh Ventures right. Doesn't have to be exactly like that. That's one example, right. That's more on the sort of startup side, but it could also be, you know, an incubator for how to do processing or how to gather people or farms around value-added products and stuff like that right. Different kinds of agribusinesses right. And then, I think, probably a program around land access still, but maybe not in the form of investing in land and in soil specifically.

Speaker 2: 1:02:51

But what I've seen is that you know it's not that easy, particularly in places like the UK, to actually get farm workers, and especially farm workers who have a good level of experience, or even buy-in to the region space right or to sort of the principles behind it. So perhaps a good way is to make joint ventures with people who want to start agribusinesses right. And there's an example of that also by chance in the UK an event called Pitch Up right. Whether you have some estate owners or landowners that are inviting people to basically pitch and then they put in a little bit of money into to a project. It's like the kind of dragon's den I suppose.

Speaker 2: 1:03:39

You know it doesn't have to be that right, it doesn't have to be a dragon's den setup, but you get the point like um, there's a lot of, I think, opportunities in in matching up landowners and farmers, farmers with agribusinesses that can work closely together, and then, once you have that sort of funnel running, it would be great to have a significant amount of money to perhaps in some cases it might make sense to do equity investments. In some cases it might make more sense to have a loan structure and things like that. And I guess also depending on, is it a cooperative right, it could be a cooperative, then probably equity investments doesn't really work.

Speaker 1: 1:04:20

So loans are still a great option in many cases, there's a lot of opportunity for the revenue share side or loan backed by actual assets.

Speaker 1: 1:04:30

I mean, a lot of these things are paying for real things and it could be a virtual fencing system or real fencing or compost facilities and training around that Like these are things that cost a lot of money, might be difficult to finance, but really move, if you do the right analysis, could move the needle financially, like if you can reduce costs drastically. Or a certain processing equipment, like grading equipment, like a lot of these things cost quite a bit of money, but I mean we're used to buying tractors on loans, et cetera, and a lot of these other facilities not so much. So I think there's a huge opportunity for funneling productive money into productive things on or around farms, and it could be financing trees, it could be financing certain renewable energy, it could be financing compost facilities, it could be financing, I mean, education maybe is trickier, but I think a lot of these things yeah, will acquire assets and real machinery on farms that, in case stuff goes wrong, still have a value not all the value, but they have.

Speaker 2: 1:05:34

And and I'm yeah, there's there's a reason where there's so much egg lending going on and not so much egg equity, um, and, and probably we have to use that yeah, definitely, and I think you know if we, if we're good at at really, uh, understanding the farmers and and bringing them to the table in terms of or even landowners like, okay, what would you need in order for your, for your, your farm business to really thrive, right? Maybe it's actually that you need a much lower chicken feed cost, right? Maybe it's a problem in this area or in this country to get it, you know, to get it, maybe soy free, or to get it an organic chicken feed at a kind of reasonable cost. Okay, let's start milling it ourselves, right? I mean, let's get together, whether it's a cooperative or whatever it is like, let's do it. We're going to be able to get you know a piece of the supply chain as well in that if we do it right, and so on.

Speaker 2: 1:06:35

So I think these kinds of ideas and like how do you say, even needs for region farmers are yet to be met, and I think there's so much infrastructure like you mentioned processing or or whatever like it's just not exactly there yet and the ones who are really doing it well are doing a hell of a job, like they're really doing everything themselves mostly, right? I think it doesn't have to be that way. Like you know, again, doesn't even have to be, let's say, fully open source, or you share all the resources and your documentation, or whatever right, but if you're actually just sharing some resources, uh, that's probably enough.

Speaker 1: 1:07:15

More shout out to project camp in portugal, um, more project camps on the farming side, like, okay, how do you build these things? How do you open source, how do you share the, the drawings? And we have the richard perkins, etc. But it's still really limited. The amount of context, specific solutions is super limited and the more brains and hands we get on farms, the more these things are going to pop up, because people realize that maybe running a market garden is not necessarily their thing, but coming up with organic tools the company in Austria is might be their there, they're, they're thinking, okay, this could be smarter, faster, better with a, a smart tool or a smart flow chart or a smart whatever. But in order to do that, we need people on the farm and actually um doing things and realizing how inefficient many of these things are. Like, like you realized as well actually it's funny.

Speaker 2: 1:08:09

You mentioned the camp. I believe it's the same people behind the camp in portugal that is from precious plastic, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 1:08:17

yes, yeah yeah, so, and I've you know I, um, I'm hugely inspired by, by precious plastic in so many ways.

Speaker 2: 1:08:24

I think you know they've done a lot of things wrong and, of course, no wrong done a lot of things right and and, uh, in terms of how they thought about and how they package this whole.

Speaker 2: 1:08:33

I don't know if everyone is familiar with that. So precious plastic is as I would call. It is essentially like a, an alternative recycling system for plastic. Right, have full scale from like collection hubs to to, you know, shredding plastics from that collected plastic, making use of it in different ways, and then a marketplace and so on in different ways. Right, so, all along this kind of, you could say, supply chain, essentially, um, you have different types of machinery and you have different roles that have been defined, like in packages of machinery, and you have different roles that have been defined like in packages and, and, whether you want to be a machine operator or you want to have a marketplace or you want to be, you know, making products like chairs or whatever out of recycled plastic, there's a role for you in that, right, and there's all of these different roles are essentially defined in terms of okay, here's a full packet.

Speaker 1: 1:09:31

Somebody has done that work for you.

Speaker 2: 1:09:32

Yeah, somebody has done. I mean, here's the full operational guide, here's the building guide for the sheet press to create these different tabletops made out of plastic and it looks like plastic marble and it's beautiful, right. I mean, there's so many different things that they thought about and really done. Well, I would say they've done several iterations of that project as well, right, um, so like, for each of these roles you have descriptions, you have, uh, you know, standard operational procedures. You have even, like business case, uh, calculators and things like that, like what would the equivalent be of precious plastic for regen ag? Right, and I thought that was what I wanted to build and I think that's a really grandiose thing to do.

Speaker 1: 1:10:21

So I I think I started a bit more simple but like but it's a really good ambition and and I love I'm more I've been following Project Camp more, also from the storytelling side and if you haven't been following them on YouTube, definitely do. They build a serious following. They have a full-time video team. They have many volunteers and non-volunteers coming and they're taking a piece of land in Portugal and really regenerating it and discovering it and monitoring it and sharing how they build their wood fire over and how they're doing their compost toilets, how they're taking an animal trailer and turning it into a house. All of it is documented. All of the failure, the challenges, as they call them, all of the they just got scammed out of, I think 14K for a digger, which I found really disturbing, but now they documented that, of course raised 26,000, I think, on the crowdfunding to buy a new digger following hunting down this scammer somewhere in Ireland, and so it's really. You're there basically with this group of people, but it's well documented, it's shared and I think it's so relevant to follow these processes and to see the financial statements as well and just to actually be able to avoid a lot of not the mistakes but just speed up a lot of developments. And yes, I think it's.

Speaker 1: 1:11:33

I never thought about it. But now, as you stated, now it's like with their precious plastic and this project camp, what's the region equivalent of that? How do we um spark this movement in all the different contexts? Because of course, it's not going to be the same, but a lot of this work doesn't have to be repeated 10,000 times, like we like, after somebody has thought about it or somebody is thinking about what the rules in what are you saying poultry? Okay, in the north part of Europe, if you want to do pasture-raised poultry and this silver pasture, it will look like this, this, this more or less, and you can see if it makes sense or not. Okay, how do you sprout the grains? How do you clean them? How do you mill them? How do you? And, yeah, we miss those blueprints, we miss those. And it doesn't mean you have to do exactly that and there's no creativity, but it just saves you two years of work probably.

Speaker 2: 1:12:20

Hopefully. Yeah, I mean, that would be the point, right? Actually, before I even sort of ventured out on the journey, I did register a company called Humus Sapien, right, because I thought that was going to be the end game. Somehow I just kind of manifested okay, I'm going to end there one day I don't know how, but you know, I'll end up making, or at least being part of moving things in that direction of the equivalent of Precious Plastic or the camp for Regen Agate, right? What does that look like? And it's, just for now, obviously turned into a slightly different monster, which is a bit more, you could say, simple, or or like one-to-one kind of projects with helping farmers to, to you know, thrive financially.

Speaker 1: 1:13:05

um, yeah, but you're gonna see so much in that You're going to see I mean, you're going to see the biggest levers in certain contexts that might be virtual fencing, or it might be compost, or it might be the offtake side as we're discussing, like, okay, how do we get this stuff with good margins back to the farmers, onto plates of people? And it might be all of the above, honestly, but to be conscious of your time as well, and and with a few final questions and we get to the secret picks um, but if you had a magic wand and you could change one thing overnight, what would that be?

Speaker 2: 1:13:43

yeah, what should I say here? I think if people were able to kind of distance themselves from their own egos and take full responsibility of their own mental health especially farmers, but not, but essentially everyone like and started the self-development journey with their whatever therapy of choice, I think we would have so much more common ground to work from. We would have so much more common ground to work from. We would have so much less friction, because if we're working with our own egos, your success doesn't mean that I am less well-off, or it doesn't hurt my ego that you are doing something. That's kind of contrary to me. And, yeah, I would be totally fine with that right, I would be happy. I would even say, oh, what can I learn from that right? And I think there is a lot on all the sides of the equation. There's a lot of really good intentions, but there's also a lot of sort of just kind of doubt, self-doubt. There is in some cases, like even self-worth. Well, in most cases I mean most humans you know are, are, are not perfect in any in any way, shape or form Um, unless you're Jesus if he existed, I don't know. But uh, but like there's so much to to be said there.

Speaker 2: 1:15:09

I think that if we can start with ourselves, then I think that's a huge step forward and be open to working with that and kind of change the culture around.

Speaker 2: 1:15:23

There's a little bit of how do you say, like a culture around resistance to that kind of work in many places and and uh, well, not just a little bit, a huge amount, right, and and uh, if we could get away from that with the wave of a magic wand leviosa, whatever we call it that would be awesome. That would be, I think, a huge step in the right direction, because it also means if we are less, uh, sort of obsessed about our own ego or or or, or lack of self-worth, or however it may be, then we, the need to control things would be less and you are more open to, to, to kind of, uh, let's say, being a facilitator rather than controlling everything, right, so it automatically drives things a bit more in the direction of, of, uh, well, region act, for instance, right. So I think, yeah, maybe it's a slightly alternative answer, but I really think that's a key absolutely fair, fair enough and um, a good fit, I think, here as well.

Speaker 1: 1:16:33

And we, I mean, we've covered um quite a bit on the mindset side, with with the region mind series, we've done with with emma chow and uh, but not enough. I mean, I think we need to do way more there to uh explore what. What is the mindset that enables regeneration? Because the most difficult real estate is probably between our ears, not only for farmers, but for anyone Probably. What is it? Gabe Brown had said something like that, or somebody. And now, as a closure, what about the secret pigs?

Speaker 2: 1:17:06

Oh yeah, that's true. I guess it goes into one of the great joys of working with farmers that are really passionate about what they do. Even if you make a great analysis and you find out, actually you know what it doesn't really work to have pigs in this way on this farm. Then sometimes, just because the farmer really really loves pigs, they'll be like don't tell Fred, don't tell Fred, we're going to get pigs. Yeah, because we love pigs, like they're going to do it anyway and somehow I just love that. You know, it really is kind of heartwarming in many ways and okay, fine, we're going to see what we can do to make it work as well as we can. Then you love pigs Great.

Speaker 1: 1:17:52

Let's not lose money on it.

Speaker 2: 1:17:55

Yeah, let's try not to lose too much money on it and see what we can get of sort of, I guess, ecological or like land improvement benefits you know from that. That's fine, but like it's just, Don't tell Fred, Don't tell Fred Don't tell the admin, the financial guy, that we got pigs. Essentially, are they hiding things for you now.

Speaker 1: 1:18:14

That's the thing, basically.

Speaker 2: 1:18:16

That's the only thing that I found out. They were kind of, I guess, jokingly hiding so far. Other than that, I think we're, you know, pretty open terms. I terms, I mean really, uh, you know, have access to, to everything, really all the books and the accounting systems and stuff like that, right? So you probably, as a business, don't get much more naked if you will, right? So, yeah, I mean, I say this is jokingly, right, but it is still true, like, fine, you, you, you know, have this passion to you, love pigs.

Speaker 1: 1:18:50

Okay, do it, fine, we're gonna make the best of it, right, I mean I mean many, many other medium-sized enterprises are sponsoring things or they have a sailboat team or like there are many hobbies we use, uh, we we somehow manage to do within uh with within our business as well. So I don't think it's it's odd at all. Businesses are meant to play as well and are meant to. Of course, if you have the overhead and you can, you can afford it, but are meant to do, to do, to do other things and just extremely productive margins, et cetera, and I think that's a good way to this up and thank you so much for your time. Actually, no, I want to go to sorry to John Kemp, I'm curious. We've discussed many things already, but it's a question I don't always ask, but I try to. Where do you think different compared to others in, let's say, our bubble? What is your yeah? Where do you think contrarian? Where do you see yourself thinking pretty fundamentally?

Speaker 2: 1:19:54

different.

Speaker 2: 1:19:58

I guess that we kind of spoke about most of this stuff where I feel a bit contrarian to some extent.

Speaker 2: 1:20:04

Right, like going away from the farming first approach and like having the sales first approach, right, it's a bit at least from what I've seen quite contrarian and that you don't need to like that small farms is not really the answer, but it can be done. Or that even you know that regenerative agriculture needs to be open source if we're serious about really making it big at scale. I think if we all sit down, you know, in our office or in our fields or whatever, and we kind of hide away our learnings, I mean we're going to have to relearn it so many times. So if we want to speed up the development, development, I think we just need to be much more open, and preferably open source, in in our documentation and and what we're doing and and to the to the extent that we're comfortable with it sharing even our you know financial numbers, right, I know that you uh have, did you realize? Uh, did you release a podcast just the other day with you sharing?

Speaker 1: 1:21:13

the yes with martin.

Speaker 2: 1:21:15

On martin van dam of schevinghove I'm yet to listen to it, but I think it's.

Speaker 1: 1:21:20

I mean, it's a breath of fresh air honestly in. Okay, what does it take to like these specific cases super specific? And then what does it take to transition? What are the numbers? Per hectare, let's go.

Speaker 2: 1:21:33

Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, and again, like you mentioned, you're probably not going to be able to translate it. You know, I mean definitely not going to be able to translate it one-to-one, but the fact that somebody does.

Speaker 1: 1:21:44

It means, hopefully, that somebody says, okay, in Denmark, we're going to do this. Means, hopefully, that somebody says, okay, in denmark, we're going to do this, okay, we're getting this context, or in northern ireland, or in germany and in southern italy, okay. What does it actually? What does it mean? Let's talk about numbers more. I think it's very basic and flat and doesn't talk about quality of life etc. But it enables it because if you have the overhead and if you can do other things, you have the time to to sit down and look at your balance sheet and and know and your income statement and know you're going, you're going well, you're not running out, running out of cash in in two months.

Speaker 2: 1:22:14

Um, I think we'll all be better off and, and especially region farmers, deserve that I think so too, and the openness, and I would say actually a huge uh thanks to you for bringing that forward. And and even I think you did, uh, you did a podcast at some point about, uh, an actual investment into a startup, where you just went through the the numbers, right, I think many people have uh sort of a less transparent or a lack of understanding. How does it actually work, like uh, how do you get a loan into a startup, right? Like, what are the terms you can get?

Speaker 1: 1:22:52

And I think there was one case there was Climate Farms, I think with Philippe and Ivo Again again Philippe.

Speaker 2: 1:22:55

Yeah, you know, I know All over the place.

Speaker 1: 1:22:57

It was an exception. It's an exception because, interestingly, I agree to have them on, of course. Interesting story, fascinating people. No-transcript, because otherwise we keep talking like, oh yeah, you've got a low interest loan. Okay, what does it mean? And is that a normal case? No, it's an exception, so don't count on it as like, let's put it in perspective, because otherwise it sounds like everybody can get that and it's just not true. But it's good to get the details because you can actually use it as an example. It sets a precedent like look, they got that, why don't I get xyz and things like that? So, um yeah, thank you for listening yeah, of course.

Speaker 2: 1:23:41

Yeah, and thank you for, you know, contributing to such a large extent to to this ecosystem. I think some people probably underestimate how much it means to have a voice that, uh, consistently, you know, just pulls forward in the same direction, if you will, and and yeah, thanks for that thanks, and that's a perfect wrap-up of this conversation.

Speaker 1: 1:24:01

Thank you so much for coming on here share about your journey. There's way more in your your farm log, which I highly recommend going into and see, uh, what you've been up to in the last 12 months and which amazing places you visited. It's a great itinerary for people to visit as well and a great reminder, I think, that you don't have to be a 20-year-old woofer to go around. Many people in their 30s, 40s, 50s and I would say 60s as well, have skills that are super useful, and you'd be surprised how you'd be welcomed on farms and can make yourself useful, not just physically, which is really good for the mornings. I'm taking that away as a lesson here. Physical mornings and, let's say, mental or office afternoons is a very aspiring one, says the one that's recording this in the morning, obviously inside, but with that, thank you so much, fred, and I'm looking forward to checking in on your Silver Pasture poultry project, obviously.

Speaker 2: 1:25:02

My pleasure, thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:25:12

Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. For the show notes and links we discussed in this episode, check out our website investinginregenerativeagriculturecom. Forward slash posts. If you liked this episode, why not share it with a friend or give us a rating on Apple Podcasts? That really helps. Thanks again and see you next time.