356 Dimitri Tsitos - Making regenerative intensive tree crops profitable

A deep dive into the world of intensive—or super-intensive—tree crops, particularly olives and almonds with Dimitri Tsitos, co-founder of Agrosystemic, the Regenerative Agroforestry Podcast, the Arbo-Innova project and Mazi Farm. In Portugal, the sector is booming—highly profitable yet highly destructive—due to its high- input, high-output nature, with heavy reliance on fertilizers and chemicals.

This raises the question: can there be another way? That's exactly what Dimitri and his team have been researching over the past few years—on real farms, running large-scale regenerative plots alongside conventional ones. The bad news? It's not easy. It demands a systematic shift in machinery, protocols, and inputs. But the good news is the results are extremely promising: much higher quality olive oil, only a slight drop in production, significantly better price points, lower costs from day one, and biodiversity that bounces back remarkably fast.

It's a booming industry that, like CAFO factory farms for animal protein, is reaching its limits in terms of public acceptance, climate risks, biodiversity loss, quality concerns, and rising input costs. But don't despair—this is a hopeful discussion. There's plenty of low-hanging fruit (pun intended) ready to be rolled out quickly, following an initial phase of research and development.

More about this episode on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/dimitri-tsitos.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

an organic farm. He's got maybe about 200 hectares of olive trees. They weren't conventional cut off and he just went biological straight away, super intensive olives. He is inorganic, so he's not using any chemicals. He's yielding 20% less than conventional and he is producing award-winning olive oil.

Speaker 2: 0:19

And he gets polyphenol levels that are.

Speaker 1: 0:22

Very much high with the same varieties, with the same production system. Olive is one of these trees where the industry is ready to value nutrient density, because it's been structured in this way the more quality, the more polyphenol content, which is nutrient density. The higher it is, the more you can sell your olive oil for.

Speaker 2: 0:41

In terms of the cost side.

Speaker 1: 0:42

His costs of production are much low, much, much low. You don sell your olive oil for, in terms of cost side, his cost of production are much low, much, much low.

Speaker 2: 0:50

Don't need to have studied economics to understand that you want a price premium and you want to half your costs. Friend of the show, dimitri joins us again and this time we take a deep dive into the world of intensive or super intensive tree crops, especially olives and almonds. In portugal the sector is booming, very profitable and very destructive because it's so high input and high output, lots of fertilizer and chemicals, which begs the question are there other ways? Which is exactly what Dimitri and the team have been researching over the last few years on real farms running real size, regen plots versus conventional plots. And the bad news is it isn't easy at all. It requires a systematic shift in machines, protocols, obviously, inputs, etc. But the good news is the results are extremely promising Much higher quality olive oil, for example, and only a slight drop in production and much better prices, lower costs from day one, biodiversity which bounces back very fast. Join us for a conversation about a booming industry which, like any industrial approach CAFO, factory, animal protein farms, for example is reaching its limits in terms of public acceptance, climate risks, biodiversity loss, quality issues, input costs, etc. But fear not, this is a hopeful conversation because there's so much low-hanging fruit pun intended which can be rolled out very quickly after initial phase of research and development.

Speaker 2: 2:07

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.

Speaker 2: 2:58

Find out more on gumroadcom slash investing in RegenAg that is, gumroadcom slash investing in RegeneAgg or find the link below Welcome to another episode Today with the co-founder of Mazi Farm in Greece, the co-founder of the Regenerative Agroforestry podcast, co-founder of AgroSystemic and, of course, the Arbo Innova project. And welcome back on the show, dimitri.

Speaker 1: 3:32

Thanks Kun. Thank you so much for inviting me here. Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 3:38

We had you on, together with Matteo Mazzola, recorded on farm on May 3rd in 2021. That's when it went live, probably a week before or something. We recorded. I still remember probably we took a picture as well, sitting at the table on Easy to Farm recording an episode or a chat, basically. Probably.

Speaker 2: 3:58

Massi set us up and said we need to do something. We need to do something and we did, but this is the first proper one, let's say say we do. In a long time. We've seen each other many times different conferences, events in different places but we've never had the time to sit down and have a tea in your case and in my case, a glass of water and and see where we get to in terms of regenerative agroforestry. But to start with a personal question we always like to kick it off with. We covered it a bit in that one, but that was four years ago now. Wow, of course, almost four. What led you to focus on regen agroforestry? Why do you spend most of your waking hours in this space? And this can be a long answer. We'll probably unpack the journey a bit. What was your journey like to where you are now focusing on high intensive crops, in intensive tree crops in portugal and in spain yeah, actually, you've, you've, you've been, uh, you've accompanied um since 2021.

Speaker 1: 4:56

You've accompanied that journey, uh, for a part of that journey, uh, at least half of that journey, I, I would say, since I met you, which was in 2021, I think in Issy de Farm, if I remember well.

Speaker 1: 5:09

But, yeah, basically, I started more interested in the agroforestry side of things, entering the agricultural space, thinking, understanding and being aware and sensitive to the ecological issues going on in the planet and the role that agriculture had to play in it, both negative and positive. So I was initially very inspired by agroforestry because I saw it as a very interesting way to regenerate landscapes, basically whilst bringing in elements of productivity. Regenerate landscapes, basically whilst bringing in elements of productivity um, that lasted a few years. We I studied with people like erin scotch and mark shepherd, and then I started a farm with my family, which is mazi farm, um, which was, uh, in greece uh, it still is in greece and uh, yeah, that was a crazy adventure my first, let's say, experience um leading a, a farm project, and you know, as you can imagine, it was was really super easy yeah ah, very easy, yeah, too easy.

Speaker 2: 6:18

And then I thought, you know, I need to do it again and again and again, let's find yeah exactly where's the challenge um on like a hilltop with a lot of wind and almost no soil, and try to plant. Oh, it's crazy exactly so.

Speaker 1: 6:32

It was really. It was mad, but it was incredible. I learned so much about the challenges of farming and the challenges of of ecosystems and uh and all of that stuff. You know, we were setting everything up ourselves, planted all ourselves, put the irrigation system in ourselves. Yeah, it was really cool, and it was also really nice to do this with the family. Now it's my dad that's managing this. And after that, though, I kind of felt like I needed to learn some more and I needed to just see more, and I needed to kind of get out of the farm and just go work with other people and keep learning, basically Because I was in a mission from the start, trying to understand how are we going to make RegenAg work, especially economically?

Speaker 1: 7:13

I'd studied economics at university. I had a very strong focus on the economics, and so I still had a lot of questions unanswered. I was like, okay, this is great, we've really regenerated the soil and it's still in process, and we had incredible results in terms of reducing erosion very fast and transforming the quality of the soil, especially on our tree lines. We concentrated a lot of organic matter. We did a lot of different practices. It was organic as well. We went quite far in the whole regenerative organic logic, but we were struggling to make it work economically and we were struggling to get the results that we were wanting, and so I was needing to get out and expand and explore more, and so that's what I did. I went working around. That's where we met. I worked in Switzerland on an intensive apple farm. That was my first encounter with intensive apples or intensive tree crops, and that's where I was like oh, but there's something going on here with these intensive systems when you say intensive, just for us to like, bring us there.

Speaker 2: 8:17

This is a, an audio podcast. I mean, we're filming it as well, but we're definitely not in an intensive tree crop farm. When you you say intensive, what do you mean?

Speaker 1: 8:46

Yeah, intensive, for me it means high input, high output. So when I'm talking about it, usually it also means high density. They usually go together, but not necessarily, so I'm going to separate a lot of people that maybe know about tree crops. You talk about intensive almonds or super intensive olives to refer to the density of the planting. When I say intensive here and we'll talk about super intensive later and we'll be talking about, we'll refer to, you know, the density of planting, but now intensive I mean just high input, high intensity, you know, yeah, and high output systems. And there you know, and what I saw there was that they're pretty interesting economically.

Speaker 1: 9:20

And then I started to pull some threads together. I spent some time as well at Mateo Mazzola's at his seed farm. That's where we met. Afterwards I went back to Greece to help out my dad and then I ended up in Portugal, and in Portugal it happens to be where there's a huge. One of the biggest booms in tree crops in the world is happening here, Huge growth of intensive almonds and super intensive olives, and so I ended up kind of at the right place at the right time and then we started focusing on the super intensive, uh, on super intensive problem because I say problem because um challenge yeah challenge yeah, well, because it's.

Speaker 2: 9:55

It's the input side that is the issue, because you say high input, high output, high output is great from an economic perspective. Per hectare, per square meter, per acre, whatever you want to calculate, that's what you're looking for in terms of economic driver um, the amount of apples per hectare, the amount of trees as well, which maybe is in the density side of things, but also the what, what are the costs associated with it, what are the costs economically and, of course, environmentally to keep these trees in the production speed and the production quantity that you need to make the economics work? And is that where the problem lies?

Speaker 1: 10:37

I mean, you're spot on and this is classic, right? These intensive systems, regardless of the type of crop that you're producing, they yield a lot. We've been focusing a lot on these systems, let's say, in the past 30, 40 years in agricultural development especially with technology and arable as well and animal production as well.

Speaker 1: 11:03

And what I saw and I'm going to speak specifically about the context that I know, which is the tree crops, and you know it's I'm going to give you an example. I'm working with a farmer at the moment and he planted super intensive. He's a small, relatively small. He's a family farmer in in Portugal and he's a regenerative farmer. His soup, he's got 40 hectares of super intensive in about a 200, 250 hectare farm in Montado. He's got animals grazing and his super intensive system has enabled him to fund his whole regenerative journey and is allowing him to be able to take risks on the rest of his farm to manage his Montado properly.

Speaker 1: 11:40

Just for he's super intensive olives I mentioned olives, yeah, and montado is a is a great, like a silver pastoral grazing system mostly on the iberian peninsula, and very traditional system, a very ecologically sound system with very old imagine very old 200 yearold oak trees dotted around the landscape in a savannah-type setup. Beautiful system ecologically but not very economically viable.

Speaker 2: 12:07

And then you have these 40 hectares of super intensive rows that basically fund the rest but also ecologically damage the rest to a certain extent, and so that's where the tension comes in.

Speaker 1: 12:18

And that's exactly so. You see the positive side, even for family farmers. You don't need to have a lot of land planted to be able to kind of reap the economic benefits of these systems. They've got low cost of production per unit of output. They're very mechanized. Intensity of fertilizer use, intensity of chemical use for insecticides, fungicides all of this Intensity also of tractor passes. You need to treat a lot. You're entering the land many times in a very concentrated area. It's very thin rows. This is obviously leading to many issues around lower biodiversity erosion.

Speaker 1: 13:06

These systems have resource use as well as different types of pollutions that you see coming out of these systems. And yeah, that's, let's say, the negative side of these systems. And that's the next step of the story. These systems manage in a conventional way. So we came in and with the whole thing was okay. So we came in this.

Speaker 1: 13:24

The first time I saw these systems was about, let's say, four years ago, uh, and then this super intensive specifically started working on them two or three years ago, and then we saw them and we're like wait, this is great, we can mechanize it in an incredible way, but can we reduce all the negative externalities, as we call them, or the negative ecological impacts? Why, and and whilst maintaining the, the profit and all the economic benefits to the farm and to the community, in, in through regenerative agriculture? Obviously, I mean this is otherwise we probably wouldn't be here talking together, but that was the whole idea was like wait, can we do something about this? And that's what we've been working on for the past three years and that's why we created AgroSystemic. Our objective here is how can we develop and scale regenerative agriculture in the intensive tree crop space? And I mean, through the journey, we've uncovered some pretty incredible opportunities and yeah, so that's.

Speaker 2: 14:17

We'll get to that, but just as a bit of background to emphasize why the super intense or the intensive space has come about, and the mechanization and I think many people have this idyllic, let's say, olive image as well I mean in all of the region now, where there are relatively large trees, relatively spaced, picked by hand mostly, and that works to a certain extent, apart from the fact that not so many hands left. It's horrible work to do, it's very intense, it's pretty much slave labor, unless you pay a good price for your olive oil or any other crop in this case. And so there there is. This has been this push versus mechanization, very logically because there are just very few hands that want to do this kind of work in that kind of system. So, but then you need the, the machines, of course. I, I know a few people in the audience are going to write angry emails um, please do, um, but still, like here as well.

Speaker 1: 15:12

I'd love to. I'd love to hear that just just the.

Speaker 2: 15:15

The logic here is mechanization, as in many places, um, and that needs a different kind of design of the orchard and different kind of growths, a different kind of management. And, as we often do, is we just approach it as a factory and just think, if we push it all the way down in terms of fertilizer, in terms of inputs, et cetera, that can go forever, and of course that's not the case forever, and of course that's not the case like it starts. If such a hurt in certain places we've seen that in andalusia, in spain, in the olive space specifically um, like the high olive prices we have now is because of some, uh, significant reduced harvests in places that have been pushed far. But there are billions of dollars on, there are years on the line there. Like, the people have made massive investments in portugal, it's increasing significantly, I think in italy as well, in other places. So mechanization is a thing, if you like it or not. Like there's not a, there's no question there. And super intensive or intensive is a thing as well.

Speaker 2: 16:06

And then the question becomes we've had conversation on that okay, how do you do it in the most regenerative way? Like, what's the? Is it even possible? It's a question one and we're going to unpack that. Question two is what it is, of course, but how far can you push from a region perspective without sacrificing the profitability that we need on the land? Like, we cannot play around and say, oh it's amazing, amazing, amazing.

Speaker 2: 16:27

We do all the swales and all the planting, but at the end we're not making any profit, which means the farm will fail and in this case, a family farm of 200 plus hectares will have to do something else or find some other income because it just doesn't work. This is a way out. It will happen more, but the question is how we do it and how we. The need for olive oil is increasing. The need for tree crops is increasing. We all should move more and eat more trees. We just had an episode about it with Louise, and the question is how, yeah, how do you plant? How do you get more roots in the ground? How do you approach it? Roots in the ground, how do you um, how do you approach it? So you've been looking at this. Sorry for the long rant. Anything you want to add to that?

Speaker 1: 17:04

or like yeah, I, I think I I do want to add something to that quickly before we go to the next uh, next point. Um, it's, it's important to note that, um, these traditional systems are extremely important, right, and um, their their value in terms of uh, of of their contribution to biodiversity, their contribution to olive oil quality, is incredible. As you said, unfortunately, there are people that are farmers that are farming these traditional systems are suffering quite a lot due to climate change, and that's why we've lost a significant harvest recently in Spain, which has driven the price of olive oil up, and that's also why there's been a shift towards super intensive systems. Even family farmers are shifting towards super intensive irrigated systems.

Speaker 2: 17:48

Because it's more controllable. It's the pattern we're seeing.

Speaker 1: 17:52

Well, you see, you can control through irrigation, for example. That's an important one. Okay, heat, you cannot control through these systems, but definitely can control irrigation. And then you're also in terms of land, you're also getting much higher production per hectare. So in the context of expensive land, which is the case in Europe, you're getting a lot more out of the land that you're farming, that you're buying, that you're renting. So there's quite a lot going on there.

Speaker 1: 18:19

But I think that it's, um, it's, it's, it's important to note that the industry is shifting toward in this direction and it's and there it's a big force. There's a lot of farmers that are adopting these systems. I can't remember the statistics in portugal, but I think now uh, I can't remember it exactly it'll be interesting to to put it in in, um, in in the show notes later on, but um, there. But it's difficult to fight this back and I know that there's a lot of people.

Speaker 1: 18:44

This is quite politically intense at the moment in Portugal, the view of the super intensive systems and I totally respect that and understand where people are coming from. Our position on that front is much more about okay, this is happening and it's creating quite a lot of ecological damage. How can we reduce that damage? Okay, and then how can we also empower the farmers that want to adopt these systems, but that want to do it in a much more ecological way, and so, anyways, I just wanted to be respectful of that dynamic there and of that political context here in in portugal, because I think that's important do you see any sort of to introduce any potential on on mechanization of the more traditional systems?

Speaker 2: 19:24

Are there ways to, especially the ones that still are productive and just can't find the hands or can't find? There are many groves actually that are not being harvested in many places simply for personnel or for staff. Do you see any ways of revitalizing or or still using the more traditional, older groves in different tree crops as well, where abandonment is an issue, compared to ripping them out and and replanting them with fully mechanized or almost fully mechanized systems?

Speaker 1: 19:54

and the problem with these large trees, um, these old trees and we were, we were, we were experiencing and working in these, in these systems in in greece, um is that the trunk is so large you can't put a shake around it and shake it, um, and so the larger the tree um, and you know, the more you're gonna, it suffers also from the shaking um, and the the less you can shake it, and so that's why you have to come in with there are ways to mechanize it. Of course, there's different, you different handheld harvesters that are electric or engine-powered.

Speaker 1: 20:25

But they kind of whack.

Speaker 2: 20:28

Tingle the trees Exactly.

Speaker 1: 20:29

It still takes quite a lot of time and the key opportunity with these systems is more about how to get a value add because of the quality of the olive oil, which is much, much higher, and that's something we really don't likely answer on yeah, let's double-click on that because otherwise I'm gonna get email.

Speaker 2: 20:42

so, simply put, like highly mechanized versus traditional, when well done both of them, of course, let's not um, there's is there or there is a quality difference there is, of course, and it's linked to a variety, but it's a lot linked to uh input, uh quantity of input.

Speaker 1: 20:58

There's studies on this, um and the on this. The more you irrigate and the more you fertilize, the lower polyphenols you see in the olive oil. And so these high intensive or high inputs, or high fertilization systems and high irrigation systems, they have a lower olive oil quality and it's quite known that, for example, right now, one of the main varieties that's produced is Abiquina in these super intensive systems and the quality of the olive oil is much lower.

Speaker 2: 21:29

What do you use at home?

Speaker 1: 21:29

Galega, for example, which is at home. I use Galega olive oil.

Speaker 2: 21:34

Handpicked, of course, yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:35

I use olive oil from traditional systems because it depends. We have different olive oils and, of course and that's the other thing we need to understand Like, not everybody's using olive oil to put on their bread or to put on, you see, I mean there's different qualities of olive oil in a house. In a household, we have the olive oil for, very like for the salad and for the bread and the high quality, but we also use the olive oil for cooking and we use the olive oil for other uses and then we use a more, a simpler olive oil. So there is room for the super intensive system. But what is interesting is that and this is what we're working on at the moment, and this links a bit to the arduinova project that we we're going to talk about- because I'm guessing where you're going with that.

Speaker 2: 22:10

Yeah, of course we this is.

Speaker 1: 22:12

This is classic, but it's interesting to see that I've got examples. I'm going to give you an example now of an organic farmer that I know, I've been talking to quite a lot recently and spending a bit of time on his farm, and he's got maybe about 200 hectares of olive trees. They weren't conventional. He cut off and he just went biological straight away Superintensive olives, ahabikina, koroneiki and Ahabusana, which are the key varieties that you see in superintensive systems. But he's got quite a lot of Ahabikina. He is inorganic, so he's not using any chemicals. He's yielding 20% less than conventional and potentially he's going to get to 10% less. Maybe some years he's going to match, but let's assume 20% less, which is aligned with the studies approximately. You know, organic and tree crops. It's about 10 to 20% less. And he is producing award-winning olive oil. He is going to Switzerland and to different countries with his olive oil and he's winning awards and he's blending them together.

Speaker 2: 23:13

So he's blending Abusana, koroneik and Abikina to make his blends and he gets polyphenol levels that are very interesting, much higher. Which means he gets the sweet spot.

Speaker 1: 23:21

With the same production system, which means the same super intensive is more than, which means it's the management. Well exactly, super intensive is like more than, let's say. I don't know what the official statistic is, but it's around 2,000, let's say more than 1,800, 1,600 plants per hectare and get a goosebumps.

Speaker 1: 23:46

Yeah, this is the sweet spot, exactly, and so you know, olive is one of these trees where the industry is ready to value nutrient density because it's been it's. It's structured in this way you, the more quality, the more polyphenol content, which is nutrient density. Okay, one of the things that defines nutrient density. Let's say, the higher it is, the more you can pay, the more you can sell your olive oil for, and so there's a direct, there can be a direct correlation. Or let's say that we can use nutrient density and regenerative practices that lead to nutrient density, because this farmer is organic but he's applying a variety of regenerative practices yeah, let's, let's talk about what he's doing, because he he's definitely not just doing the normal organic swapping, your standard chemical playbook no he's doing things well.

Speaker 1: 24:25

He's actually one of the consultants that works with him, is one of our key consultants in our Habu Innova project. I'll explain a bit more about it, but we've got a consortium of different experts farmers, universities. It's quite a big project, uncovering how, or let's say, proving and also demonstrating and providing data about regenerative agriculture in intensive tree crops, and this is one of our consultants there and he is consulting him as well. And so I know this consultant is very regenerative, organic, let's say. That's his standard, that's how he works.

Speaker 1: 25:03

And the farmer there, of course, the farm manager, is extremely aware of soil health and is super focused on this. He's seeing these results going on and he's just, he's amazing, and both of them together they're doing an incredible work. And it involves, you know, fertilizing with manures, it involves taking away herbicides, so the soil is extremely alive under the tree berm, which is usually sprayed with glyphosate three or four times a year. In super intensive olives, when they're older, only once because of the shade. But anyways, he's applying a variety of these techniques and, obviously, managing his interlineline. He's also mulching his interline onto the tree row. All of these things are, you know, ticking a lot of the regenerative practices, box uh, in tree crops that we have, and uh, yeah, so the results are there, and uh, it's very interesting.

Speaker 2: 25:54

So and price wise. Like he's winning prices, but in terms of price, what he can sell for like. Just to give us an understanding, we've had a deep dive into the coffee space with Fernando Russo and was saying the same thing. In a sense, there is an established market for quality in coffee because if you're able to grade it and if you're able to select, you can enter the specialty side, you can enter the subspecialty side and the commodity, of course. But if you're able to do that, people pay for quality and flavor, which means in most cases connected to nutrient density, like in olive oil. Like how does that work? And from what you know, not this specific case, but how much like? How much more successful is he, even though they're doing 20% less in terms of yield? Like, is the 20% an issue or is it? The price is double and so it really doesn't matter?

Speaker 1: 26:46

There's a lot to unpack there and I'll start off by saying that I'm not an expert in the olive market and we're learning about it at the moment, understanding the nuances, but at the moment we're very focused more on the operational side. That being said, I know that through the quality of his oil he doesn't have a small amount of land. He's farming 200, 250, I think it's 240 hectares of olives. So he's got quite a significant volume and he's able to sell it at currently prices are very high. So compared to current prices, he's selling it at 30% more compared to current prices. But for these systems and it's important to understand this these systems are high output but they're also quite high input, so they can have quite super intensive olive groves, can have quite high cost of production relative to a traditional system, but because they have such high output they're actually quite price sensitive. But because they have such high outputs they're actually quite price sensitive. So a small change in price leads to quite significant changes in profitability.

Speaker 2: 27:47

So the last few years have been good in Portugal.

Speaker 1: 27:49

Yeah, last few years. But that's abnormal.

Speaker 2: 27:51

It's not necessarily good for the producers.

Speaker 1: 27:55

Exactly. But even it creates a lot of fluctuation in the markets and it's not ideal. But the normal price recently, a few years ago, was at 3, 4 euros per liter. Now it's at 8. So it's doubled. This is not going to maintain there, but he's already at 30% more than the 8.

Speaker 2: 28:15

So anyways, I don't know about the dynamic of how this whole operation works, definitely financially and in terms of the cost side.

Speaker 1: 28:22

Sorry, Exactly, that was the next step and that's really interesting when you compare his cost to the conventional other clients or the partners.

Speaker 2: 28:31

Dimitri is laughing already. People that are not seeing it you can see. I can see him laugh already, which means it's a good thing.

Speaker 1: 28:38

Oh, it's great. His cost of production are much lower, much, much lower. I don't have a number to give you.

Speaker 2: 28:44

But just it doesn't matter, but just that's something we've heard from grazing as well, and that's, of course, from I mean, you studied economics and run companies. That that's the thing you want to want to hear. You want to hear a higher premium or ideally, same price or more, but let's say, in this case more and significantly lower costs and let's say, in the range, similar yields. In this case it's a bit lower, but it might climb. Or but at least it's not half or 10% or whatever. No, it's 20% under, so 80% left. That makes a lot of economic sense.

Speaker 1: 29:15

No, it makes sense, and you don't need to have studied economics to understand that you want a price premium and you want to have your costs.

Speaker 2: 29:19

I didn't finish my university study, but I do understand this one. I can make this press sheet. Nice Okay.

Speaker 1: 29:26

But yeah. So I don't know exactly how much it reduces costs, but I just know the amount of times he's spraying. He's spraying a third of the amount of times that the others are spraying and in terms of fertilizer use, will probably be approximately the same. Because manure is quite expensive, you still have to spread it. But just in spraying, taking away five, six sprays off of your cost at the end of the year, taking away herbicides as well, it's quite significant. But the key factor here is the price. Premium is the quality. That's the golden. Exactly that's what we need to strive for and that's the potential promise in olives.

Speaker 2: 30:04

It cannot be a shit here, Like that's the worst thing when you go to some I'm not saying all, but some organic shops or some, and if it just doesn't look good and doesn't taste good and doesn't like deliver on quality. Yeah, we're going to have a very limited market. Let's say it's not going to be easy and thus premiums are tricky, et cetera, et cetera. So he's already delivering on that, which is fascinating the market for premium olive oil.

Speaker 1: 30:31

Let's say it's not small, but it's a certain size. If everybody's doing super intensive and in these let's say, lower quality, lower grade olive oils, they're still considered extra virgin Okay, so they're still meeting a minimum of quality. They're still. It's still, let's say, good olive oil. It's just not great olive oil and if you talk to some people that you know work in the great olive oil space, they'll probably say it's shit olive oil. I won't take any position here.

Speaker 2: 30:56

All I'm saying is it's lower quality.

Speaker 1: 30:59

And there's other benefits of this. One of the other benefits is, for example, the shelf life of the olive oil is much better. So there's various benefits with having a higher quality olive oil. It's not just about, let's say, having a higher market. Of course, this is potentially a communication tool for the food industry. Say, we've got a higher quality of oil, this is better for your health. There's more polyphenols, more antioxidants. That can be a selling point and something that they can leverage. But there's also the shelf life.

Speaker 1: 31:32

But, most importantly, the RegenAg, and this is with our experience working in the super intensive systems, the RegenAg ag can and this is not always the case, okay, and this is very context specific but in this instance we can see that in many, in many cases we are reducing the cost of production and that's going a bit. Going back to the example of our, of our organic farmer, he's a bit on a different ball game because he's also organic. Okay, but even in a conventional space, if we compare a conventional producer using traditional, conventional techniques and then a conventional producer doing regenerative, he's likely he's going to tap into other markets, but especially he's probably going to drop his cost of production and that's a win Drop his cost of production, increase his resilience as well. So at the moment, let's say, two weeks ago it rained 120 millimeters in a few days, for in clay soils it was a mess.

Speaker 1: 32:25

People aren't managing to get into their orchards. When they do get in, they're creating huge holes with the tractor tiles and the tram lines and it's creating more water that accumulates. And guess what? The olive tree is extremely sensitive to excessive soil moisture and the water is not able to infiltrate and to go into the lower layers, which have the capacity to infiltrate water, which are porous. It stays there and it just means that the tree lines are just full of much higher water content, which makes the tree suffer, which increases the risk of diseases and stress of the tree, which means you need to use more input to manage them, which means you need to go in more often with the tractor, which means you would worsen your tramline situation. So it's that cycle of like having to. You know what I mean. And so with regenerative agriculture, we're seeing that-.

Speaker 2: 33:13

Did you see another like, other effect of like the rain on the you you work with and in the um in the project? Did the rain have a different effect on on those lines or is that too early?

Speaker 1: 33:24

it's a bit early we're definitely seeing we're not seeing as much of the of the tram lines, uh, of the of the, let's say, water ponding on the tram lines, okay, on the interlines where we drive with the tractors, um, and we're definitely seeing that visually, um, and that's already a big win. Now, that's not necessarily by doing crazy techniques, that's literally just by making sure that we are properly leveling the soil and not entering at soon after treatment and reducing the amount of treatments we're doing. So that's something else that we're doing at the moment, instead of just coming in and just treating because you have to treat, because that's what everybody's doing and because you want to be safe, what you're doing instead in a regenerative transition, in tree crops, in most crops, but you're monitoring, you're measuring, so you're coming in when there's a real need to do so.

Speaker 1: 34:22

And that's also one of the keys exactly, and that's the keys of reduce your input use, which then has effects on your soil, your interline and your logistics, but also an effect on, you know, your agro ecosystem and the insects, because you're treating less so they can develop more, and so you're starting to activate the spiral of, you know, improvement. I mean, the people that are listening to the podcast know very well of all these concepts. What's interesting here is that we can, we're seeing it in practice and we're seeing quite big opportunities in this specific, in this specific industry because of the intensity of the input use. You see what I mean. We're not in traditional systems where they're putting one spray a year, maybe a bit of copper, and they're putting, you know, maybe 50 units of nitrogen and that's it. The rest is a lot of tillage, though okay. So that's something, that's something to work on.

Speaker 1: 35:04

In the traditional systems, especially in spain, they've got a lot of. They've got major tillage issues and desertification issues in these contexts. Here it's a bit different. It's high intent, high input, intense, and so we're trying to phase out the inputs and we're trying to replace synthetic inputs with biological inputs, because there's a lot of biological tools that are good enough, depending on the year and the let's say yeah depending on the gravity of um of the infection, uh whether it's fungal, insecticide, etc and in terms of cost of these that's, a biological input site versus the chemical one are they equal, are they cheaper, are they more expensive?

Speaker 1: 35:39

depends, of course, but like on the depends the problem with them is not necessarily that they are much more expensive. They are a bit more expensive, or some of them are the same price or a bit cheaper but it's that they're less effective in years with high disease pressure, and so you have to use them more, and so suddenly you have to go again.

Speaker 1: 35:58

You know, and sometimes again, because you haven't able to properly control. Um, so I mean, the conventional farmers have the tools, uh, the chemical tools, the synthetic tools, which are fantastic tools to solve problems. Okay, um, it's just that they need to be used more attentively and, um, and, yeah, they're, they're in this context. Here in portugal, we're seeing quite a lot of just spraying because To be, safe.

Speaker 1: 36:22

Yeah, to be safe and that's fair enough. I mean, I always sympathize with the farmers. There's so much risk. There's so much risk in this industry. Trying to be safe and play it safe because you can is a completely okay approach. It's just that we are now coming to farmers and telling them great, we're playing it safe, but we're also having other. There's other implications to what we're doing here in terms of resilience, as we said okay. In terms of cost of production, in terms of the health of your trees. Your trees will become dependent on these things. Your agroecosystem becomes dependent on the insecticide because if you're using puritoids constantly, you're affecting the native or the predator or the beneficial insects in the orchard that have an extremely important role in controlling various, various pests.

Speaker 1: 37:04

It's this is a significant contribution to eating that larva and the eggs and the things of different, you know different pests that we see in the olive groves, and so they're there and you're using peritroes repetitively. You're going to need to continue using them. It builds a dependence.

Speaker 2: 37:18

So we're trying to tell them these things and, little by little, things move and and you're saying specifically in this high input and does high cost systems, um, any changes in that make immediate economic sense, like because there's so much money going in and there's quite thin margins of course, depending on the on the markets, depending on the years, etc.

Speaker 2: 37:39

But you might find a more willing ear, let's say, of the farmer saying we can significantly reduce your not your risk and increase your risk, but significantly reduce your costs and swapping out of a lot of things and changing a lot of things. Not go cold turkey you might, if you have the budget to do that. But there are a lot of things that can be stripped out and immediately end up being more money in your pocket. Every other pass you don't have to do is X thousand per hectare and every other pass is X, and every other diesel you don't have to pay and every other spray you don't have to do and every other operator you don't have to pay for, that is just straight into your pocket. If you can maintain roughly the yield and, of course, increase quality is and markets is. The um is the golden point there. But um, even if you don't reduce costs and not increase risk, is is a golden combination I've, I know a farmer who is managing um.

Speaker 1: 38:36

So this is a large, a large farm, managing you know a couple of thousand hectares, and they're planting cover crops on all of their acreage. They're in, they're in almonds, because the key benefit that they're that they're doing it for, the key reason they're doing it for, is to be able to go in sooner with the tractors. So it's they want the cover crop to be evaporate, evaporating as much as possible during the winter, where we have very high rainfall in the mediterranean, especially in portugal during the winter. They want that creates excessive soil humidity, which means that you can't get in tractors getting stuck.

Speaker 2: 39:12

So they're putting in cover crops to manage water in the soil, not purely, but the main reason.

Speaker 1: 39:17

Yeah, and then the other benefits, of course, of improved water infiltration. Well, that's linked to both these things.

Speaker 2: 39:24

It's evaporation and water infiltration.

Speaker 1: 39:26

But there's also, of course, improving beneficial insect populations. All of these things great, but the key benefit that they're noticing in the short term is ability to come in sooner, to be able to treat at the right time. Tree crop's extremely sensitive. Almonds are even more sensitive. They're extremely annoying crop. On that front, you need to come in at the right time to spray. You know in between two rains and you've got to do it on a large scale. You know a better, a harder and more, let's say a more. A soil that can hold you up better is a significant benefit. So you have to see, like the farmers, there's short-term, medium-term and long-term benefits of applying regenerative agriculture for the farmers and often it's a bit far for them to, let's say, not to grasp. They grasp it very well, but it's a bit too vague that it's the long-term benefits. You see what I mean.

Speaker 1: 40:18

Yeah, so you have to be looking at the short-term benefits, because that's the low-lying fruit. You know that you need to pick first.

Speaker 2: 40:23

And was that the reason to start Arbo Innova? Like, what was the? Apart from us chatting about farmers that are hitting that golden spot of higher profitability, better markets and applying as many region practices as possible, what was the? The reasoning behind arbor nova? And, of course, let's let's unpack a bit where you're at now um, yeah, so, um, we, we.

Speaker 1: 40:51

when we first came here uh, a while back, and we already had this idea beforehand but I understood the value of having demonstration sites and demonstration farms. I also understood the value of data, of showing to farmers this is what's happening or these are the results we're getting. Farmers, they like to see things, but they also like data. All farmers I haven't seen one farmer that when you get a graph out, they look away Hasn't happened to me yet. And so they like data. We need to demonstrate things in practice, show things to farmers.

Speaker 1: 41:31

And we were in an industry. So the tree crop industry is intensive. Tree crop industry has very few examples of regenerative agriculture. So when we came in, we're like we're not seeing it and anybody's showing it. We're not seeing much happening, we're not seeing a lot of experience, we're not seeing a lot of knowledge on the subject and we're not seeing a lot of data on the subject. So we're like, okay, so in that case we're going to do it. We're going to create a project that basically ticks all these boxes and that works towards these three objectives. And so that's when we created a consortium.

Speaker 1: 42:02

We went together and found three farmers that were already engaged in regenerative agriculture or were very interested in regenerative agriculture. We went to the universities and told them okay, we want to do this project. We need to have some robust data. We'd like to have some studies produced on this. We'd like to be able to share some robust data, some quality data on the subject, and we went to see a lot of different agronomists and agronomic institutions saying that we want this to be the best project out there. We really wanted to be our best project out there in terms of intensive tree crops. We weren't seeing enough and so we wanted to push much further than what was currently happening. A few things happening there, here and there.

Speaker 2: 42:38

Yeah, because what gave you hope that it was possible even it could also be an assumption after saying nobody's doing this, hence it's not possible, and you said no, no, nobody's doing it, so we're going to do it Maybe it's me being a bit stubborn.

Speaker 1: 42:55

Just a bit, just a bit, yeah, but also when there's a problem, I kind of had this thing of like okay, we need to tackle this problem. The problem is what we started talking about at the beginning. There's more and more super intensive groves and intensive tree crops being planted. The agricultural system. What I'm seeing in Portugal is that agriculture is intensifying on many different crop types. So we're like okay, we need to take on the intensification issue. So there was only it was kind of clear that we needed to do it and also, you know, we started this If it wasn't going to work out. It wasn't going to work out, at least we would have tried.

Speaker 1: 43:25

You know we would have found out. We would have found out that it's not possible. But obviously that's not kind of the attitude that we had at the beginning. I was convinced that we could do a lot of work. At the beginning, three years ago, I was asking people like do you think we can do this? You know, and that was the kind of questions I was asking.

Speaker 1: 43:43

Now I'm not asking these questions anymore. I'm not asking do you think we can do this. I'm asking how can we improve this? Or how can we work on that specific issue? How can we reduce even further our chemical use? How can we plant a cover crop in? But anyway, so we put together this consortium, went to see the farmers, went to see the experts, brought together about 10 different experts working on tree crops in Europe, some in Portugal, some on the European level. We're working with people like Soul Capital Farming. We're working with people like David Dahl, who's considered the almond doctor in the space, and there's a variety of other incredible um agronomists that are that are contributing to the project. And we also went to see a foundation and so we went to get this project funded and it's a shout out to avina that's funding the project um and um that you put us in contact with, actually.

Speaker 1: 44:40

So shout out to you as well you were at the start of this project. We had a very strategic role to play and altogether we started working on it and we started the grind, and it's been two years now that we're working on this.

Speaker 2: 44:55

And so what's the project? Two years in, we're now recording this beginning of 2025. I mean beginning. We're already a month plus in um, but um, of course, depending when you listen to this, just to give a bit of context what, what are you currently working on? What is the phase in in the project? What are you yeah, what are you building?

Speaker 1: 45:16

so, more specifically, um we are at the moment we are implementing. So the first year of the project, it was a year of diagnostic understanding what's going on in the project or what's going on on the farms, what are the problems? Really going deep into what are the issues, what do we need to tackle in priority? In priority, you know, um what do we have available, what can the farmers do, what tools they have? So we started to really get into much deeper, into the, into the context. And then the second year, we started and we, of course, we implemented our first practices, um light though we didn't go very hard, but we were implementing our first, trying a few things out, starting to reduce input use where we saw it was very clear that we could.

Speaker 2: 46:00

Um planting cover crops three different farms.

Speaker 1: 46:03

Right, that's three different farms. Yeah, we've got one farm that's with olives, two farms that's with almonds, and between the two almonds we've got one organic where we're testing regen organic, and one which is conventional, and we're testing, obviously, regen conventional, okay. And for each farm we've got a control plot and our trial area where we're comparing between the two and we're measuring parameters on plants, soil, biodiversity, with our university partners and we've got three different universities on board and so we're measuring different performance, different indicators, to understand what's going on. So we started with our first practice in the first year and then planted different cover crop mixes to try and understand what cover crop mix adapted to which context. We started planting clovers on the tree lines to see if we could substitute glyphosate to get rid of weeds, a variety of things. And then the second year, based on these initial tests, based on this diagnostic, now we're going all out and we are really applying many different practices.

Speaker 1: 47:01

So we're looking at alternative forms of fertilization. We're bringing in organic types of fertilization. We are looking at alternative integrated pest management, integrated disease management. So looking at different alternative forms of managing pests based on monitoring, based on biological alternatives. We're looking at, obviously, soil management. Um, so, obviously, when we've got a very it's, it's a bit counterintuitive, but when you've got a very compacted soil, you need to till to create the top soil that is able to host a cover crop that is able to stabilize the soil. You see what I mean. So we needed, did a bit of soil work, planted cover crops, let them, looked at amendments as well um planting or or applying either some mineral, uh or um organic amendments and compost.

Speaker 1: 47:50

We planted on all farms clovers on the tree line, did some trials, are doing some, running different trials there to see if we can get rid of herbicide and see what is the competition effect on the trees.

Speaker 1: 48:00

To what extent does it reduce yield. So we're measuring yield parameters and tree canopy development parameters, such as based on these alternative forms of managing weeds. And, yeah, and we're managing also what we call best practices. Many of the farms require an approach to best practice approach or better practices, and that is what's important. There is to make sure that we are as efficient as we can. You know, if we're putting out some chemicals and insecticides, for example, or fungicides, is the pH of the water right? This enables you to reduce quite a lot the use and increase the quantity of chemical that you use and increase the efficiency or the efficacy of this chemical. Making sure the sprayers are calibrated well and are atomizing and spreading uh liquids well. There's all these different, better practices which are important to, which are part of the regenerative transition, amongst other things and so going all in like what?

Speaker 2: 48:55

of course it's too early for results, but what? What has surprised you the most of of, let's say, the second year or the second? Of course the first one you do some very light touches because you're not saying super comfortable with it, but of course, getting to know different farms, different contexts, etc. Second year, as you said, all in, what has been the biggest surprise?

Speaker 1: 49:53

I mean, it's been surprises along the way and it's been a big process. But I think one of the things that for me, has been the most striking and evident is the way in which the system to apply to really be able to go regenerative and fully regenerative. Here we're not talking just about planting cover crops, which is already incredible and it's the most fully regenerative. Here we're not talking just about planting cover crops, which is already incredible, and it's the most like, let's say, multifunctional technique you can have in an orchard. It's incredible, but it's quite easy to plant cover crop in an orchard. But here we're talking about, you know, like up to 10 different practices implemented at the same time, and actually there's quite a lot of people that are planting cover crops, but you can't consider that regenerative. You're not pushing, let's say, pushing the understanding or the limits of what regenerative is. So when you're looking at 10 different practices, it requires quite a fundamental change in the system. It's not just oh, I'm going to do this and do that. No, you're going to have to change a lot of different factors. You're going to have to potentially change the way you harvest. You're going to have to. It requires you're going to have to change the way you prune, that all of these things allow you to be able to come in and to apply a lot of different regenerative practices.

Speaker 1: 51:04

I'll give you an example. We've been struggling to implement a regenerative, a cover crop inside our super intensive olive, because the olives were pruned, were very large and very high, and so we're needing to take them down to. They were, let's say, two meters 80, three meters 20, and we have to take them down to two meters 20, two meters 40. We have to nearly knock off a meter, but if you do that, you're going to lose all your production. So you can't just come in and say, okay, I'm just gonna fucking you know just prune it down like this, so you have to be.

Speaker 1: 51:34

So it's a two to three year transition to get the orchards, to get the trees that are extremely wide and high to smaller and thinner without compromising yield. We know that because we're working with different experts in in the specialized just to get more light down so you can grow.

Speaker 1: 51:47

To get some more light down so we can have a better cover crop, so that we can then really kick start that, that get the living roots in the soil, which is one of the foundations of having a healthy soil, instead of just having the olive tree roots, which is good, but it's not enough to maintain a healthy soil, you need herbaceous tree roots. So that's one thing you know. And then what's that? Also incredible.

Speaker 1: 52:05

The second kind of key realization not realization, but like what we've seen happening in the field, kind of proven, this proving theory is the interactions between these different practices. And so here, for example, if we continue with this example, we've taken down, we've, we've, we've shortened our tree rows, we've made them thinner, we now have a lot more air coming into our orchard, which reduces our disease, uh, our the presence of fungal diseases, okay, which then allows us to be spraying less and to be spraying with organic products if we want to, because we've got less pressure, which is then allowing, putting you know, less pressure on the soil microbiology, because we're using less fungicides that are also going onto the soil and that are also affecting the soil microbiology and the development of mycorrhizae, etc. So it's all kind of connected and you can't, you've got to find, you got to start at these. Let's say, you got to start at the low-hanging fruit and you start digging and that allows you to uncover new opportunities. That you keep digging and every time you're putting on a string that's getting thicker.

Speaker 2: 53:04

You know, in a way, and for the farmer side of things, because, when you said it, it needs like an almost complete systems change, of course, from an operating perspective, but this goes quite deep on how they've been doing things, depending on how, how long, they've been doing super intensive, of course. What have you seen on the farmer side of things with these three farmers and also their operators in terms of um? Of course they signed up for this. It's not that they you forced them to do it, but in terms of changes with within them and with them, in terms of approaching um agriculture, in terms of approaching tree crops, have you seen shifts on on the personal level and the inside level?

Speaker 1: 53:42

let's say, yeah, definitely, um, and I think that it's. It's a process. Some, with some people it goes faster, with some people it goes slower, but, um, definitely there's, you see, an increasing interest. Uh, you know there's people are trusting us more as well, trusting the project, the consortium, us as a company. We're the ones that are, let's say, overseeing and have the most frequent interaction with the farmers. I'm there very often, visiting them, talking with them, etc. And it was great because recently I had a visit with one of our farmers and he was like let's do this on a large scale. Now I'm going to plant a new orchard and let's go to the next scale and some of the techniques that we're developing into the regenerative orchard that I'm suggesting in the regenerative orchard. Now he's doing it in the whole orchard and the problem is that I've got a control plot next to the regenerative and I'm trying to get the control plot to stay conventional. So I'm trying to tell him don't try not to do that in the control plot.

Speaker 1: 54:36

Okay, you know like because otherwise you're messing with our data yeah, otherwise you're messing with our data, but it's a good problem the control has to look bad.

Speaker 2: 54:43

Let's be very clear here.

Speaker 1: 54:45

Yeah let's keep going with the control plot.

Speaker 2: 54:46

Don't optimize too much over there, please are you compositing for the potential loss that the control plot is like suffering, because anyway, it's an amazing problem to have, which means like farmers saying, look, I like what what's happening here on my x percentage and I want to do it on the rest, or at least in the new ones. And how can we roll this out in year two? But of course, from the data perspective it's interesting.

Speaker 1: 55:08

Yeah but and this links up to kind of the next step of the project and we started these first years we didn't do a lot of outreach um, and in general, you know we didn't talk too much about regen ag in the space. You know we've got our clients, we've got our projects, um. But now things are starting to pick up a bit as the project has more things to show, as we're gonna, we're gonna start to have our first data in. We're gonna start more and more to expand and to not take. Well, one is expand. We want to do more trials, we want to go further.

Speaker 1: 55:36

There's a lot more things to uncover, to generate, let's say, the additional experience, to especially uncover specific practices and the effect of specific practices on the system. I would like to do individual trials where we're just looking at organic fertilization alternatives, for example, and understand what's the effect of this on the system in a separate trial. Alternatives, for example, and understand what's the effect of this on the system in a separate trial, let's say a simpler trial, and look at the effect on nutrient density as well. So there's a whole nutrient density parameter that's being analyzed in collaboration with RIA, which is the Regenerative Healthcare Association. I advise you to check it out. It's very interesting.

Speaker 1: 56:34

Association uh. I advise you to check it out. It's very interesting. Um. They're one of our partners in um in uh in the project and they're developing a protocol to be able to analyze nutrient density and we're starting to have more and more projects and evaluate nutrient density in these projects and to start to understand what is needed as well, like because all of you are very clear like quality, let's say, the market is is, um, like rewarding you if you hit certain things, if, etc.

Speaker 2: 56:59

Etc. In almonds, how, how is the element like how the other tree crops, sorry in terms of nutrient density and quality and flavor, in terms of accessing those markets which hopefully are those parameters are moved because of the practices you're implementing.

Speaker 1: 57:17

With what I said at the beginning is that olives have a. There's a clear connection to market value, but with almonds there's obviously a lot of different parameters that we can measure in all in all food crops there are Now. Will it? Will it express itself the same way as an olive oil which is pressed?

Speaker 1: 57:35

and I'm not sure and and this is something that we um, something that, um, we're going to find out little by little, um, but definitely, um, I mean, I'm an advocate of you know all we should all be, you should measure, we should be measuring nutrient density for all crops and we're in that process right now for the specific crops, but it's a large process and, for example and this is conversations that I have often with Haiza, who's working on the project, who's also my partner, my wife, and before we understand, one of the first steps of understanding nutrient density is defining nutrient density. And defining nutrient density is done by having thousands of samples to be able to say, okay, this is the maximum, this is the average, this is the minimum. And understanding where you know, testing almonds from different systems in different locations, and then you start to define the nutrient density of almonds and then, when you have a regenerative project, you can place it within that.

Speaker 2: 58:31

You know where you're going.

Speaker 1: 58:32

Exactly so. It's a process project. You can place it within that. You know, are we doing, are we going? Exactly so it's a process. Uh, it requires lots of trials and lots of analysis and lots of and money and very simply because it's very early, we're a few examples.

Speaker 2: 58:42

I mean we've run about 20 plus probably more, but let's say in two series 20 episodes on nutrient density and and like a lot of the science partly is there but it's still disconnected in a way. Like I don't think we can say what a good element would look like. What is a top tier element? Um, and sorry, and what does it need to be a top tier element? Or, and many crops, yeah, they're. That sort of spectrum isn't there yet. Like the map isn't there.

Speaker 2: 59:10

Um, we might have some things we see now a bit in beef, there's some on dairy. Um, there, there is some of that research. But it's really fun like foundational research. That needs to be done because otherwise we cannot say this tomato, we can say a bit about flavor and a few other things, but we don't know in that context this type of tomato should do that or could do that, imagine, or actually you don't expect, shouldn't expect too much from it because it's it's the wrong type of soil for that tomato. So this is actually a really good value. Like we don't have that. Even if you have a spectrometer, if you can measure something, it doesn't tell you anything because there's no context.

Speaker 1: 59:43

Yeah, exactly, yeah, there's a. This is a big adventure that, uh, that we're about. But we we really, the more I go I progress in in this whole. How do we convince people to do regenerative ag? I see that nutrient density can potentially be one of the key levers that then the food industry can leverage for, you know, as they bring this to the consumers, as they bring this to the intermediaries. So this is what we need to be thinking at the, you know, at the industry level, and connecting the different players within the industry, aligning the different players within the industry, the different players within the industry, aligning the different players within the industry, and seeing how can we start to bring value to a regenerative practice, to a regenerative agriculture approach. So that's part of what we're also looking to do here in Abu Innova, and it seems to be.

Speaker 2: 1:00:30

When it's in a a crop where it's already semi divine, like in in olive oil, for instance, or in coffee, it seems easier. Or in a cash crop where that is already done, like pepper. I think we we discuss it um often with with take line highs of grounded, like there are really good quality, like you get paid for quality pepper. Of course, if everybody changes tomorrow that that's not the case. But there is a market. If you grade it, you can sell, if you manage to sell it into the market. It's never easy, logistics are a mess, um, but there is. There's a quality gradients and it's just interesting in certain of these crops, peppers, the same um you, you can sell into those markets.

Speaker 2: 1:01:07

So maybe in some crops that's not the case, which might not be the easiest, but that might be crops where the costs are so incredibly high or the intensity of the cost and the margins are low, where the cost savings are a big driver for farmers to transition With. Then, of course, a lot of research into. Okay, if you can make these changes, your elements will be different and you can enter other markets or there are offtakers that are interested in this and this and you don't have to enter the commodity market necessarily, but it sort of seems to dance like which crops are the first, what's the low-hanging fruit to transition Millions of acres, because that's the kind of scale we need, and which are the crops that are just not ready for that yet, because maybe we don't know the practices, maybe we don't have the demonstration farms, or maybe the market around it in terms of input-output is just not ready yet to transition as soon as possible.

Speaker 1: 1:01:56

And that's the importance of these types of projects. You know, at the beginning we could have thought, oh, this is way too ambitious, this is crazy. But it's this type of project that's helping to answer these questions, little by little, and that's why we want to expand on these activities, because there are a lot more questions to answer Nutrient density in almonds, for example, as we said, even in olives, understanding what are the practices that are directly linked to changes in nutrition, in nutrient density. That would be an incredible one to work out, but it's going to take years to do that, three, four, maybe five years to work that out.

Speaker 1: 1:02:29

But if we don't start now, you know we're not going to get anywhere. And so we're kind of like, you know, little by little, grinding and just chipping further into this kind of mind and just like trying to go further and further, further and get this whole thing to grow. And um, and yeah, also a lot of outreach. That's necessary at the moment when we're obviously creating these demonstration sites and now we're about to go into a phase where we can show things to people and we can start to host a lot more educational events and people, yeah, exactly and that's and the community likes, likes this a lot.

Speaker 1: 1:03:01

I mean, I've participated to many, we've already started talking in a few um and the people rock up. You know, the industry comes and the big and all the key main, uh, allman players, they they come and they go to these technical days where they listen to innovation in the field. Uh, and that's what it is. You know, it's a new innovation, new technology and um, and it's not necessarily very easy to do, it's quite technical.

Speaker 2: 1:03:22

So yeah, but it's not training. When, when 20, 30, 40, 15, whatever the the intensive elements took off in certain regions, it wasn't easy as well. It was a massive shift from how we used to do things, or whoever we is, and so many of them have probably remembered that or have heard stories at least from from that transition, which arguably is a bigger transition than this that's a very good point.

Speaker 1: 1:03:47

Yeah, the whole new technology thing when irrigation came in and they had to, like, put in irrigation systems, when I fully agree, when they and they're still tech they're still in like here. It happened 15 years ago, it started 10 years. It started to boom, um, these intensive crops here. They're still learning how to optimize these systems. You see what I mean. There's still, there's a very strong learning curve happening. Um, especially now that there's a lot more pressure from, you know, governments and from, uh, the supply chain in terms of, you know, meeting sustainability targets. People are trying to suddenly, as I said, not just spray because they need to spray, but try to be optimized, you know, and try to spray less, and there's certifications that they need to meet and that limits the chemicals that they can use and it's a variety of things like this. So it's kind of there's change happening in the agricultural space, regardless of regenerative agriculture and agriculture. We're trying to just get regenerative agriculture to tag on to that change as well and to be like hey, this is also very interesting.

Speaker 2: 1:04:38

And shifting gears a bit to the investor side or the financial world. Let's say, we do this in a theater in Lisbon and we have an audience full of investors managing their own money, managing other people's money, of course, doing also philanthropy, so might be able to support R&D or research and development projects like this. What would be your main? Of course, we have a nice dinner, we might do a field trip before, but people forget as well, and I would like to. I always like to ask the question what would be your main message? What's the main seed you want to plant? If people only remember one thing from an evening like that, what would it be?

Speaker 1: 1:05:24

Yeah, I think that one of the things I've been thinking a lot about recently and I've just been having quite a big conversation about it with one of our consultants on the project and one of the people we work with it's the importance of us creating a consortium, creating a voice that comes from many different people. So we've already created a consortium of, let's say, we're about 20 different entities companies or independent agronomists or farmers, but we're about 20. We need to grow that to 30, 40, 50, grow our consortium, do more trials on more farms so that then we can and not just trials get more farmers in. At the moment we're doing on trials, but soon we're going to shift away from the trials and we're going to be, as I said earlier on, one of the farmers already looking to do this at scale. So the farmer is becoming a partner and then we'll become a trainer and then we'll be talking to other farmers about the work that's been done. And then suddenly the snowball gets bigger and it starts to roll and we're starting to have a stronger voice.

Speaker 1: 1:06:14

And this stronger voice is necessary because there's something happening as well. There's quite a lot of greenwashing going on around regenerative agriculture and we're needing to define kind of clearly what regenerative agriculture is, and it needs to come from a consortium of people that are working on it on the field and it can't just be one company. If it was just our company, for example, saying this, what's the value it, for example, saying this, what's the value it's a huge conflict of interest there, because I'm trying to sell RegenAg and then we're telling RegenAg is the best, like okay, it's not as valuable as 30.

Speaker 1: 1:06:41

Or a food company, exactly 30 or 40 people that are coming together. This is what we believe RegenAg is, and this in these specific crops. It's also very context specific. This is how it should be done, and then from there, we start to have quite a big. It starts to really get political. It's a movement, it starts to be people that talk about it and then it starts to grow and then we start to create associations from it, etc.

Speaker 1: 1:07:04

Anyways, there's a lot of things that can be done and it's not my expertise either, so I'm super open to ideas as to how to get these things to grow. But what I do understand is that we need to create, we need to leverage what we've done at the moment to get things, to keep things rolling, keep things growing and onboard new farmers, new partners. There's a lot of other also supporting, let's say, supporting projects that need to happen. We're limited in the tools that we can use in regenerative agriculture. We need to be setting up, for example, companies that are able to rent or operators that are able to offer services that specialize in regenerative tools. So we're talking about, you know, no-till seeders. We're talking about, for example, mowers that can mulch. At the same time, there's a lot of things that need to happen to activate and facilitate this transition.

Speaker 2: 1:07:53

In this context, On the machinery side, on the tool side, on the machinery side.

Speaker 1: 1:07:57

Also on the educational side, getting agronomists trained in these things, so that they have experience with this, so that they can then be. This is what it requires.

Speaker 2: 1:08:06

Building a movement, yeah, Exactly.

Speaker 1: 1:08:08

It requires a whole set of different competencies, companies, services to be developed to be able to support a large farmer or many small farmers to get involved with regenerative agriculture. It requires communication about it, marketing, all these things.

Speaker 2: 1:08:26

So if we would flip the question and put you in the investor seat and we always like to ask what if you had a billion euros to put to work? Could be partly, lobbying partly, but could be long-term, could be short-term, whatever you want. Of course, we're not asking or giving investment advice and looking for exact amounts, but I am looking for what would you focus on, what would be the nodal points in the big buckets of this investment fund if you had a billion euros to put to work?

Speaker 1: 1:08:53

Yeah, it's a difficult question because I think it's a question that requires a lot of perspective, but I have this tendency of thinking let's focus on a crop, let's focus on an industry, and that's kind of what we're doing, of course, and it's coming from. We're doing it because we believe that it's needed to kind of unblock things. So I think that it's linked to what it's needed to kind of unblock things, you know. So, um, I think that it's linked to what I was saying earlier on. I think I would focus on a problem. I would focus on the olive industry, for example you know, intensive olive industry and I would start to build these different things that are needed for this transition to happen.

Speaker 1: 1:09:28

And, um, I'm showing like a vertical sign with my, with my hands because of that, for the people that see, because it's also like a vertical integration, I think, in terms of going from supply chain, so going from people that are using the olive oil commercializing olive oil and putting them in different products, all the way down to the intermediaries that are buying and selling, to the produce, to the, and that are often the people that are also the mills and that are and that are um, um, um, I don't know is the word milling in english, I'm not too sure, but there are um yeah, what's the word for olives?

Speaker 2: 1:10:01

I'm gonna olive meal squeezing. No, it's not squeezing squeezing.

Speaker 1: 1:10:07

I like that though juicing.

Speaker 2: 1:10:08

Juicing the olive, it's not the word.

Speaker 1: 1:10:09

People juicing the olives, it's definitely not the word, but it sounds funny anyway. So, all of all of these players all the way down to the farmer, and then from the farmer, as I said, there's a whole support thing, so that you need to unblock these different levels and connect them together, um, and so I think that if I had a billion euros, I would obviously invest it into the problem that I'm working on, not somebody else's problem, because you know this is where this is where it's happening pressing olive press there we go.

Speaker 1: 1:10:35

This is where, for me, the problem, one of the key problems, that and then I would develop a model in the olive uh and you would pick all the targets, or potentially, I think, because I think there's some interesting opportunities there, develop a model there of how we can create a transition at scale connecting the whole supply chain, and then start to, with that model, we start to apply it to different industries because then we're starting to have learned things and and understood things, created contacts there and created just just grown our ability to.

Speaker 1: 1:11:05

But it's a multi-stakeholder operation. You can't just do it. As you know, I'm very focused on the technician, on the technical side of things. Um, you know, it would be great and I've already worked with people that have worked 10 years, 15 years with in the food industry doing and what's it called Supermarket industry, that have worked in super. So you know, you get these people on board and then you start to say, okay, so now how can we go to the supermarket and how can we start to understand with them how we can get regenerative agriculture on our in the supermarket shelf and get sold regenerative agriculture on our on in the supermarket?

Speaker 2: 1:11:36

um, shelf and get.

Speaker 1: 1:11:36

So that's the kind of and get sold and what are the leverage, what are the like, and each product will have his unique kind of as you said, it's unique kind of sensitive point, but it's unique on its unique opportunity. So then you need to get these kind of people on board and then you start to, you know, start to grow.

Speaker 1: 1:11:50

This is somewhat similar to the work that earthworm is doing, that we're working with as well earthworm foundation, and they're spectacular, they're really getting things done at uh shout out to bastian and the team yeah, exactly, um, and so I mean that's an incredible inspiration for us, um, and I think that they're they're getting it right, because they're really just going, starting right at the top and then just building down to the farmer.

Speaker 2: 1:12:14

You know, starting with uh, there's quite a lot of power concentrated, and then getting regen ag applied on farms and some pressure and and yeah, like it depends where, where you need to start, where you have the leverage point, where you have the potential to to quickly shift, because that's what we needed, what we need without losing the space for transition and the space for r&d, and because, because a lot of these things, nobody knows, nobody knows how to do this at scale in many, many crops. Some crops we do, and let's roll as quickly as possible. Some others we're starting to understand and let's do the same, and some others are still a big mystery on how to do things, and so I'll add something to that.

Speaker 1: 1:12:53

I mean it's important. I think it's important not to think after this conversation that we had, especially after we talked about Ahabu Innova, which is an R&D. It's becoming a living lab, but it's kind of like an R&D hub, you know, a research development hub. But this is not the only way to do a transition and I think that it's, and that's what we're already doing with some clients of ours.

Speaker 1: 1:13:11

It's extremely important to just get started, because the transition is not let's do eight practices from the first year. It's start with one or two practices on a smaller scale, regardless of you know the farm. You're going to start small, you're going to start with a trial. That's how smart farmers do it. You start, you take I'm going to take these 20 hectare block and I'm going to plant cover crop here. If it goes well, I go to a thousand and so that's kind of like this process of little by little act and then bringing in first, first year, two or three practices. Second year, another two or three. What I'm seeing here is that in the tree crops it's reasonable to get to, to activate a transition in three and four to five years. Three is too short. In four to five years. You need to train the teams. You need to get people on board.

Speaker 1: 1:13:56

You need to get people to like it fast, if you like essentially and do you, then the benefits for 20 years, right, but I mean like activating the practices, getting eight to ten practices um implemented that are coherent, that are logical, that are that have economic sense.

Speaker 2: 1:14:13

Four to five years, I would say and do you see a need for finance there? Or I mean if you can rent the machinery, if those things, let's say, are easier, or are the savings if you do it well enough, which is what Soil Capital in some cases and contexts keeps saying like it doesn't necessarily mean we had them on in our Transition Finance for Farmers series, of course with a specific case of Benedict Beuzel and a very specific approach there, but also very much saying look, there's so much wasted in conventional agriculture in general because of playing safe and it's not waste, but it's a lot of money If you start cutting back on that, actually you can fund a lot of things from year one. It doesn't mean you don't have to raise extra capital to go faster, but it's not always needed. What do you see in intensive tree crop space in your context, if you say three, four, five years, like is that actually a big financial risk or is actually could you do it with the same? Or you see options to do it with the same budget?

Speaker 1: 1:15:10

I think that the big investments, on my understanding is, take into account. You're not gonna do a thousand hectares of cover crops from the first year, so there's there's the transition strategy, as we call it. There needs to be properly designed and smart, but, um, the the biggest investment is going to be in in machinery. So potentially, support on a machinery level, although these farms are also used to acquiring machinery. But they may need to sell off some and buy others. If they're going to make an investment in machinery, it needs to make sense to them and that's the thing. They need to believe in it and they need to be supported by their funders. Or, if it's a family farm that owns the farm, they just need to believe it. But in many instances, there's also but then their bank needs to believe it as well.

Speaker 1: 1:15:51

Bank exactly Okay, bank exactly Okay. And if we're talking about a fund and there's more and more funds in intensive tree crops, it's kind of a very common setup Then the fund owners and the people that are managing the fund need to be able to allow the fund managers to do it.

Speaker 2: 1:16:09

They need to believe in it To buy their toys, which is a tricky one.

Speaker 1: 1:16:12

Not just buy the toys but to plant the cover crop, because the cover crop is going to cost you 100 to 120 euros a hectare for the whole thing, for the seed, the planting and everything together. And that done on a thousand hectares, sonny, that's quite a lot of money that's being spent on something. And so I believe for me it's much more about seeing the benefits and seeing that it's important and seeing the data, which links back a bit to the Arboinova thing. But it's more about that than it is about trying to give money to people to do it. Because, as you said, planting a cover crop, you're saying, okay, I'm going to be putting 100 euros a hectare in this, but I'm also going to be saving on other costs, like the cost of, for example, having to clean out all of the drainage from sediment, from erosion, so you have to be able to sow there. So you have to be able to sow. There's the cost but there's the benefit. So when the cost-benefit is well understood, then suddenly cover crops are getting planted at scale, as many people are demonstrating in intensive tree crops, and each practice needs to go through that process.

Speaker 1: 1:17:06

We need to be able to demonstrate that, taking away herbicides and potentially using 5% yield in the short term. If we're planting because we're planting a clover on the berm, they need to be able to see that there's a benefit to that, because then suddenly we're not applying herbicides, which are a massive chelator to micronutrients and affect plant uptake of nutrients and affect microbiological development, which is the immune system of the plant, et cetera, et cetera. So you need to be able to show this. In theory, we know, but we need to now show. Believe in this. I'm going to invest 50 euros per hectare, or 60 euros per hectare planting this, this, this bloody clover on this line. That's annoying and that it doesn't look clean like it did before. You know what I mean like that. So you need to.

Speaker 1: 1:17:45

There's a lot of resistance to that and that I think it's much more psychological, um, and also not just psychological, like saying I don't want to invest in anything stupid, it's's smart. It's not like a psychological problem, it's smart.

Speaker 2: 1:17:57

Kept you in business until now.

Speaker 1: 1:17:59

Exactly. It's like well, you know, is this a smart investment or not? Do I put my money on this? So you know, you need to show them. Well, yeah, I think you should for these reasons, and come and see where I've done it. And then they come and be like okay, we managed to do it. We've got the machine to do it. Now we're going to invest in the machine to do it. We're going to buy us an intercept mower. Now we're going to do it on 100 hectares and, if it works there, we're doing it on a whole fund investment.

Speaker 2: 1:18:26

We're going to do it on 3 000 hectares and that's impact yeah and then that's impact so I see, I see it more there from my perspective.

Speaker 2: 1:18:36

Yeah, the data piece and then the psychology piece, that it's okay to have your fields not perfectly, um, clean which is always an interesting one in agriculture um, and trying to be respectful of your time as well, we could talk for another two hours and we'll do that another time, but just to go versus, to wrap up, and I love to ask this question inspired by Jon Kemp what do you believe to be true about regenerative agriculture that others don't believe to be true, like, where are you contrarian, let's say and others, I mean here within the regen ag space when do you get pushback? Where are you contrarian, let's say, within our bubble?

Speaker 1: 1:19:23

I think it's. I thought about this question before because I knew you were going to ask it, so I didn't want to end up not having anything to say. So I was thinking about it and it's linked to what I was saying. Now, around the trials, I've heard quite a lot of people say anything to say. So I was thinking about it and it's linked to what I was saying. Now.

Speaker 1: 1:19:38

Um, around the the trials, I've heard quite a lot of people say, um, we've gone past the trial phase, or we've gone past the what's the other word that's used a lot um, the pilot phase? Um, I think that may be valid for certain industries and for certain contexts, certain regions, but I think that any farmer that I know that's even trying a new fertilizer or even wants to use a new fertilizer, they will trial something. First, the company will come, will set up a trial for them, they'll try it out and then they're going to scale it throughout the farm. Now some farmers are going to come in and be like, because it's not too risky, they'll be like I'll do it on the whole thing, straight up, no problem. But I think it's important that we need to understand that trying things out is the way to reduce the risk of the transition, and we're always talking about this is a very classic term we use inside agrosystemic it's the transition risk. Our objective is to reduce the transition risk as much as possible for all of our clients and for and for our, the people working on our projects. And that requires to go slowly. And going slowly means trying things out, because not just trialing the technique, it's trialing the, the, the skills. Well, not the skills, but trialing the people.

Speaker 1: 1:20:50

If you have a farm, you have farm workers okay, and these farm workers, and you have farm managersaling the people. If you have a farm, you have farm workers Okay, and these farm workers, and you have farm managers and, depending on the size, you have a whole set of people working there, and these people need to be able. It's not just about will cover crops work, for example. We know that they work, it's been proven enough. You know. We don't need to question do cover crops work? Everybody should be planting cover crops, you know, or or at least managing well their interlines and not spraying herbicides everywhere.

Speaker 2: 1:21:16

And in general in arable as well.

Speaker 1: 1:21:17

Yeah on arable. I don't know the context so well, but I know that it's a foundational technique, but in tree crops they're essential. And so the question here is it's not about trialing that, it's not about understanding if it works. It's about testing the team there to say, okay, they're going to try it out on a small scale. They're all going to be skeptical looking at it being like, and then they're going to see that something happens. They're going to see, oh, we have better water infiltration here, we have less erosion. Ah, this looks nice, it looks neat. I like to see the flowers and everything. It looks cool. And then they start to feel it. And then they're bought into the technique.

Speaker 1: 1:21:52

And then the second year is going to be easier.

Speaker 2: 1:22:03

It's emotional trial basically, yeah, yeah, I guess I guess, yeah, we can call it that, I like that term. Actually, nature already noticed it works, but like we still have to like see it for a season and see a few, um, heavy downpours, uh, infiltrate quicker and and not take all the soil away, and then like, oh yeah, maybe, maybe this is a thing.

Speaker 1: 1:22:11

Yeah, I mean it goes down to this thing, like I think for me and I don't know if that's contrarian or no, I don't think it is contrarian. I think many people that work in region I know this but this is a very human experience, like it's a very human. It's a human transition. You know, it's much more than it is a technical one. In many instances not always sometimes it is a technical one, but and the mechanical one and this, but many times it's human and so it requires. We were just talking about this last month with colleagues from Earthworm. We were talking about how much psychology was involved. You know I made a lot of psychological mistakes at the start. I still am, but it's like you know, did the wrong thing or presented things the wrong way, or, you know, I tried to put too much pressure on this or didn't focus enough on that or whatever. So it's very psychological.

Speaker 2: 1:22:58

And as a final one, which usually leads to other questions. So let's see if you had a magic wand that you could change one thing overnight, what would that be? Sorry, in the food and egg space or in general, we've heard many different answers on the spectrum. Let's say but what if you had that magic power but change only one thing overnight? What would that be?

Speaker 1: 1:23:22

The one thing, and I would like to know how many out of your hundreds of interviews people have answered this one, because it's probably good you have so much volume now that you can start to pull statistics.

Speaker 2: 1:23:33

I know, I know, I think we can get the scientists to study these things.

Speaker 1: 1:23:40

Okay, if you're in a phd or whoever wants to do that, we need to transcribe all of it well, first of all, yeah, yeah probably feed it to a large language model and then maybe ai can help us soon to transcribe all this stuff, but anyways, there's, there's a huge amount of data there, but I think the thing that I would say is that and that would change everything is is for for for the consumer to have more sensitivity around um, ecology and um and uh and human health, and, of course, that not everybody has the capacity to a financial capacity to buy different food, um, and that is obviously needs to be respected and that's a fault of our current system, financial system, etc. It's not their fault at all.

Speaker 1: 1:24:26

But if people, if a much bigger chunk of the population can afford to would be spending, would be more attentive as to where they're putting their money for their food, considering quality, which is a very personal, direct thing. Food is medicine, which is an incredible concept and a very real concept, from that all the way to okay, I understand that where I put my money has an impact on insects, on fish, on dolphins, on whales, on all these things that people care about. Then it would be much easier for the whole system going back to our chain, to our vertical chain, you know, to the whole food chain. It would be much easier for pressure and for basically the things to come back and for the farmer to be like okay, I can afford to invest in a cover crop, because there's requirements that are telling me plant a freaking cover crop. You know, don't spray herbicide on the edges of your fields all the time, because that's actually a biodiversity area and that potentially, that's moving. You know governments are putting in europe, putting more and more pressure and etc.

Speaker 2: 1:25:27

But I'm just saying I think that would be nice to have a point, yeah, instead of a push around it yeah, yeah, exactly, but I'm sure you've heard that many times.

Speaker 1: 1:25:35

I could have thought about something more creative. I I can ask the large language model.

Speaker 2: 1:25:39

I can ask chad, no, we need. We need one that only feeds on these transcripts. So if anybody wants to do this, uh, get in touch. We've we've been playing with the idea, but simply, uh, haven't had the time, but it's. Yeah, we're now 350 something episodes, in which means I've asked this question. Probably 300 of those, because I don't know when that question entered the, the, let's enter the chat room, let's say, or maybe 330 of those. We've probably asked a good chunk of these questions. I don't always get to the john camp one, because sometimes people are so contrary in any way. That is like we already covered that but most of the other ones we've done, so there must be some very interesting.

Speaker 2: 1:26:16

This is a body of research almost, where a lot of deep practitioners in the space that know their stuff in their context very, very well have answered like a very specific set of questions, and so, yeah, I'll be curious, we're going to figure this out. We haven't done yet, but we'll figure this out at some point so we can see how how unique your answer was or how how not unique it was. I think it was. It was pretty unique. I mean, we've had very, very different answers to to this question, so it would be fun to see a a bit of a word cloud or graph or something.

Speaker 2: 1:26:44

Yeah, exactly some graphs nice but with that I want to thank you so much for your time, for the work you do, obviously in the space for pushing the intensive tree crop space way further than it was a few years ago, and of course we're coming on here to share about it.

Speaker 1: 1:27:01

Yeah, and I think, final words as well, a bit of advertising for our project. If there's, you know, if anybody's interested in coming and getting in touch with us to fund and to support the Ahabu Innova project, to be a part of the Ahabu Innova project, to become, you know, as we're starting to expand the consortium here, if anybody's interested in getting in touch with us. We are currently looking for new farmers, we're looking for new funding, so please get in touch with me and it would be great to exchange. But, koen, thank you so much for inviting me here. I really really appreciate it. Second time I had forgotten about the first but, uh, very happy that we were able to stick into this, not always, but in this case I remember, yeah, it took me by surprise and I was like what I've been here before?

Speaker 1: 1:27:46

how I don't remember this.

Speaker 2: 1:27:48

Yeah, it was a special episode on the farm like very casual, but it was. We did release something, thank you so much. Thanks. 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.