Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast features 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. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
359 Louis De Jaeger - Eat More Trees: a Masterclass with thé storyteller of the Regen Space
A conversation with Louis De Jaeger, international keynote speaker, author, award-winning filmmaker, and landscape designer, about dreams, action, and storytelling—how to reach and touch people. We discuss why storytelling is highly underrated and underfunded, and why he is organizing a festival—not the next Burning Man, but a regeneration festival.
He shares his excitement about small water cycle restoration, the biotic pump, and much more. And in the end, it all boils down to one simple message: Eat More Trees.
During his 5-year sabbatical that turned into a lifelong mission to regenerate landscapes, Louis' revelation came during world travels where he witnessed environmental degradation firsthand—monoculture landscapes so depressing "you want to drive against a tree, but there are no trees." This observation sparked his mission to regenerate 550 million hectares of land globally, potentially cooling our planet by two degrees Celsius.
Beyond the environmental benefits, Louis paints a compelling vision of a regenerative future characterized by abundance rather than sacrifice. "We're going to have an even more luxurious lifestyle, we're going to have better food that tastes fantastic" he assures us. His approach isn't about shaming people into environmentalism but showing how regenerative practices create healthier, more desirable lives.
More about this episode on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/louis-de-jaeger.
==========================
In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show 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. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
==========================
👩🏻💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/
📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE: https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course/
💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORK https://investinginregenag.gumroad.com
- Share it
- Give a 5-star rating
- Buy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture
==========================
🎙 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST AND SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL ON
🎧 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/4b7mzk8c9VNM7HX5P3pM4u
Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!
Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more here
Get your tickets here, regular tickets are sold until Feb 1st
https://2025.ai4soilhealth.eu/
https://foodhub.nl/en/opleidingen/your-path-forward-in-regenerative-food-and-agriculture/
Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:
https://gen-re.land/
Feedback, ideas, suggestions?
- Twitter @KoenvanSeijen
- Get in touch www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com
Join our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P!
Support the show
Thanks for listening and sharing!
We have to sketch a world that is so irresistible, so beautiful that you just have to go into it. Tell our storytelling in a way that is really compelling for other people to follow. We all deserve to eat healthy food. It's not fair that only people with a certain income bracket can go to an organic shop and buy food that hasn't been sprayed with poison. It's not fair. You shouldn't be happy with that. We need a revolution. Eating more trees will save us as a human species. I really mean that. So if I would get a billion euros, I would first invest the first part in it into attracting more money to get 10 billion euros just to raise even more money, and then I would really just go full force, all in to make Europe regeneratively.
Speaker 2:Wow, what did I enjoy? This conversation with Luis, our guest of today. We talked about dreams, about doing, about storytelling and how to reach and touch more people, why storytelling is highly underrated and underfunded and why he's organizing a festival no, not the next Burning man, but a regen festival and why he's so excited about the small water cycle, restoration, the biotic pump and many other things. And most of these can be boiled down to one sentence Eat more trees. This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture Food Podcast, where we learn more on how to put money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems, while making an appropriate and fair return. Welcome Today with our guest. He is on a mission to regenerate 550 million hectares of land in order to cool down the planet with two degrees, save biodiversity and hunger, and create world peace. So just a small side hustle.
Speaker 1:Welcome Luis hey Kun. Very happy to be on your podcast, huge fan of it.
Speaker 2:And I'm really looking forward to this conversation, but I'm going to start with a personal question, as we always do. How did you end up speaking, working in communicating? We're going to talk a lot about communication around regeneration. Where does the 550 million come from? Why not six, why not seven, why not five Like? Why so precise Five, five zero. Anyway, how did you end up spending most of your waking hours thinking, acting around?
Speaker 1:regeneration. Well, it's a long story actually. When I was 18 years old, I really was sick with school, to be honest, and I wanted to be free all my life. I felt that I was like stuck in school. Of course, afterwards I realized that it's a huge privilege to be able to go to have a good education, but I wanted to be free. So, together with my girlfriend now wife we went to do a sabbatical world travel and we saw that all across the world, people were degrading landscapes, mostly via farming. We were traveling through the United States with a 30-year year old motorhome we bought very cheaply and it was so depressing to see all the monoculture, square kilometers of only corn or soy. I often make the joke that it's so depressing. You want to drive against the tree, but there are no trees and try to kill yourself in a cornfield is very difficult.
Speaker 1:I mean slowly goes with the pesticides, but yeah, yeah, we get there then, and we traveled across like half the states of of the us and you were like 18, 19, yeah, after like you were sick of school, meaning high school, not university exactly and and then, yeah, the further south we went, also saw the effects on the mississippi river, the gulf of mexico, or should I say the gulf of america now, and then went further south to Central America or later on to Africa.
Speaker 1:Then we saw that the effects that how we deal with land are not only creating an ugly landscape but we're really creating problems for people living there. I saw people that had to go to bed with growling stomachs, little children who are hungry, and that really dense puts a dent in you when you see this, these horrible images and what we then. I really had an aha moment when I was in mexico. I was staying with a couple who they were currency. They had a currency shop in cancun, in the very fancy tourist place in mexico, and they said screw the financial world, I'm going to live self-sufficient according to the principles of permaculture. And I was like, oh my God, permaculture. All my questions are answered in permaculture. Because as a young, naive guy, I thought, well, you don't need to work if you can grow your own food, because why do you work To buy food? But if you grow your own food, you don't have to work because you already have food. That was a very simplistic thoughts and I just yeah, like, sucked all the information I could out of these wonderful people learning about boca, the one straw revolution, about emilia hazelip, a french woman who did no dig gardening, all the yeah, permaculture pioneers and other pioneers in the field as well. And what was first one-year sabbatical actually turned into a five-year sabbatical. We lived in several places in the south of France. I experimented with permaculture principles and then at the end of our trip, where we took an early retirement without any money but just by being creative.
Speaker 1:The last part of our trip was in morocco. We were hitchhiking through morocco with a backpack and there I saw the desert and it was actually very scary experience. Because I'm a forager, I know how to survive in in the forest of a temperate climate not that I will like it, because I really love good restaurants, but I could survive. But there in the desert you just die because it's just sand. And one of the there's nothing to forage, no, exactly.
Speaker 1:And one of the guides they said well, this used to be one big food forest, this used to be Garden of Eden, also the granary of Europe, but now we degraded it into a desert and for me, that was really the point that I said well, I gathered so much information, did so much of self-study, I could like keep on living like a nomad and just yeah, having retirement. But then I really, yeah, took the decision to just put my entire life about regenerating the planet, because I suppose a lot of people already heard the prediction of the united nations that says in 2050, 90 of our earth will be degraded. That's not so long anymore, that's less than 30 than 25 years now. And so now we're like, okay, I'm just going to go all in, make my entire, my entire life about it. I I don't have any problems with working because I'm already. I already had my retirement. Having a retirement is actually an illusion, because it's actually nice to work and to go for something.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, I just never stopped since and like when you, there are so many things up back there, but when you went to the us, got this camper, did you already have an interest in food and then, indirectly, agriculture. Was it really on that trip that you started seeing landscapes through that lens?
Speaker 1:no, I was already very interested in healthy foods, organic foods, also plant-based food. My wife was eating plant-based, I wasn't, but she inspired me and taught me about the benefits of eating more plant-based and my initial hope was well, in the United States, let's buy organic. Because we saw some nice documentaries about organic farms in America and we thought, oh, it's going to be probably much more accessible than in Europe. But then when we had our first build, when we went to an organic store, we were like, okay, or we're going to eat organic and have like a one-month trip, or we're going to buy cheap food at the superstore and be able to afford a one-year trip.
Speaker 2:And then the whole celery instead of whole foods?
Speaker 1:yeah, you know, that's the joke always yeah, that's a nice one, yeah, but a tragic one. Accessibility is a thing yeah and it's.
Speaker 2:And so when that moment came, when they said, yeah, we're doing permaculture like did you have heard of that term before, or was it just a light bulb?
Speaker 1:no, I've never heard it before and I was like wow, like everything came together. And, of course, as a as an 18 year old, you're still super open and you're also easily convinced to, I would say, join a cult or something like that, not that we did when?
Speaker 2:was it just for reference for people like, not last year, right?
Speaker 1:no, no, it was quite a time ago.
Speaker 2:But yes, so Look how he avoids the question people.
Speaker 2:No, I don't have problems saying I'm 31 years old, so it's about 13 years ago and that cult piece definitely is part of some of the permaculture circles, not everywhere. You mentioned specifically being naive. In that sense, how is your thinking and doing evolved since then? I mean the naive part of if I just grow food, I don't need celery, so I don't need to work, I work on growing food. I mean that that's true to a certain extent, but of course you went into a different, like gear selection, I think, after that, but like other things on permaculture, how do you still use it? How has that evolved? Your thinking around? What you saw there as an 18 year old thinking like this is the holy grail. Why is not everybody thinking like this and doing like this?
Speaker 1:yeah, fair question. Well, when we decided, well, let's move back to belgium, my home country, my actual dream was to become a farmer. I was still young and naive then and I went and talked to a lot of farmers, to a lot of professors, and they all say, louis, sorry to burst your bubble, but permaculture is total bs. You're never, you'll never be able to feed the world. I was like, no, I love permaculture.
Speaker 1:They like a very I've done my design course I haven't done it at the time yet, I didn't have the budget at the time, but I read all the books and so I I quickly then learned about the bigger brother of permaculture, agroecology, and, and that really made a lot of sense and I soon realized in belgium the prices per hectare of land are about 100 000 euros. I realized, well, I wouldn't. I would like to have like 10 hectares, so I need a million euros. But no bank is gonna lend me a million euros because I've been I'll never be able to pay like 20, yeah, a million euros in 20 years selling grains, for example. So it's a utopia to start a farm when you're young in belgium. If you don't have money or if you don't have parents or family who owns the land, it's very difficult. So that's that made me ask the question yeah, well, but what's the future of farming? So I was really voracious in into looking for answers, and I that that's also when I decided, well, I'm gonna write a book about it, I'm just gonna interview yeah, in total I interviewed a little less than 100 people to really get an answer to the question, because I was really frustrated as a young guy like I wanted to become a farmer because I was just not able to do it.
Speaker 1:I heard this economic reality university professors that teach farmers and prepare the next generation to form farming in entire Europe and they were teaching them. Well, there is, we don't want nature in farming. If you have nature in farming, it's bad. So so they're teaching definitely via one kind of paradigm. And, yeah, I was shocked because they say, well, with permaculture you're never going to be able to feed the world. These are the kpis. But then I also showed them the kpis of, like, biodiversity, climate resilience and stuff like that and I said, yeah, well, but is that in your kpis? Well, no, not really. So that really drove me to, yeah, find answers.
Speaker 2:And then so, let's say, the dream of starting a farm didn't happen because, simply, of course, and not having that kind of money, nor a family with land, then what was the next step? Or you, because you decided in, like you were in southern france, you decided to go back to belgium, go all in regeneration. Then the first step doesn't work. What's the next move? Or what's the next like? Okay, I'm going to show you that permaculture can feed the world on a very small scale, or like, or something else like. What was the next, the next move after dreams being crushed a bit by agriculture?
Speaker 1:professors? Yeah, well, I. So I started studying again. I did a bachelor's in agro and biotechnology and I also did an internship at a farm. So I really got to got to also know how it is to be a farmer. Because I thought, well, if I talk about farming, I really need to know how it is to be a farmer, otherwise I would feel like a hypocrite, and so I felt it.
Speaker 1:I talked with a lot of farmers and I saw that there are a lot of farmers really doing fantastic jobs.
Speaker 1:And I also came to the realization that I'm somebody who wants to prove stuff, and one of the biggest reasons I actually wanted to start a farm was to prove to the world that it is possible. And then I realized, well, why should I like start the 237,000 and fifth farm to prove it to the world if there are already so much farms showing it and proving it to the world? So I like shifted my focus on like doing all the work again for a farm to like looking well. If there are already so much farms, how can we gather all this information and spread it to the world? And more, think of how can we like market the hell out of all these beautiful farms that are already existing. So so that was actually a pretty easy shift, because I realized the true reason why I wanted to start a farm and so becoming a not a media personality, but definitely an outspoken, trying to market or to share the storytelling piece here.
Speaker 2:Where do you start or how did you is it the media type film, photography, writing? What was your approach when you said, actually, these farms exist in many different shapes and forms and contexts, etc. Most people don't know that you can, including ag professors, that you can easily feed the world with agroecology methods. There's a strong narrative there, a strong myth, let's say, to dispel. How do you go about it? Because I think many people listening are trying to do in their circles the same and would like some insights and some info.
Speaker 1:Well, I actually started out as an activist, really just wanting to change stuff, and I wasn't methodologically at all about it. I have a pretty artistic brain, so I'm not the most structured person in the world, but I actually did kind of biomimicry. If you look at nature, you have pioneer plants and you have climax plants. First the pioneers are like the birches that grow on the roofs of abandoned buildings and then you have climax plants coming in and I really see myself as like this pioneer tree that tries to grow on a piece of land that's like not very fertile and literally just spread as many seeds as possible.
Speaker 1:The message for me was clear after I wrote my first book and found like the most important answers I was looking for, and then I was like, well, I'm just going to spread any seed I can. So I started to make documentaries, write books, give keynotes, do social work via social media also go and also like, prove it in the real world. So I didn't start a farm myself, but I started a company that that designs farms. So I actually have a lot of farms right now and yeah, and just by by spreading the seeds, you a lot of people and say, wow, you have so many seeds that germinated and became this beautiful project. But for every one seed that germinated, like thousands of other seeds, have died and nobody ever noticed.
Speaker 2:But still cost and it's fine. That's fine. That's. It's not a, I mean, as long as you have enough seeds that do germinate and you can keep food on the table, it's. That concept is very interesting from, of course, agroforestry and subtropic agroforestry. Like, everything has a role in there, and it's fine if the seed doesn't germinate or if the pioneering plant does its role, functions and creates the space for the next group of the next consortium to come in. And so now, when we're talking beginning of 2025, what are the different seeds that are sprouting or that are growing? Like, if you had to give an overview of what you're busy with, which are many things if you follow you on LinkedIn, you can see that it's almost a portfolio of different projects. What are a few of the ones you would love to share here, apart from, of course, the best tagline ever eat more trees. But, like another book, I think, is coming this company, of course, that you just mentioned there's a festival in the makes. What are some of the projects that we should absolutely discuss here?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the project that still gives me the most energy are like my biggest baby still is, and remains, Comensalis, the company where we design places all across the world, and it's just so nice to like start new projects, really be in this pioneering phase, take 500 hectare and say, well, let's regenerate the hell out of it. So that still gives me, yeah, so much energy every time we we can start something new. Besides that, we've been traveling around the world for the last year and a half two years to film eat more trees, a documentary where we show that farmers are actually the solution to most problems in the world. You already know that and the listeners are probably also already a bit convinced about it?
Speaker 2:What is the question? The answer is always plant more trees.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, but not just trees, food trees, I don't know, sorry, product Whatever the question was there are very few things wrong with food trees. So the documentary that's going to come out this year normally gives me super much energy always tricky with the documentary. Yeah, I know because then sometimes there's like a very interesting scene that we still need to film, and then and where does it go like, is it gonna like?
Speaker 2:what is the plan there?
Speaker 1:well, the goal, the goal, yeah cinema but, yeah, definitely trying to have as many screenings as possible. But we're very much inspired by kiss the ground and and their new film as well common ground about what they realized and it's also our goal to get it on netflix but you know the story of how that happened.
Speaker 2:right, like in covid, they got their, their full launch basically cancelled because it was I think it was going, it was premiering i'm'm going to say February or March 2020. And then they didn't have anything because everything closed, all cinemas closed, and then they negotiated or had to fight for Netflix, I think until September, when I think Woody Harrelson, their narrator, had to I think this is what I heard had to threaten to sneeze in the face of the Netflix people if it didn't go on Netflix. So so it wasn't a smooth it wasn't.
Speaker 1:This was at least that's what you told me that sneezing part I never heard before just said it, I think pretty much on this podcast anyway, it wasn't an easy journey, let's say.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's still the holy grail and there luckily no other platforms as well, where we can go, but like, of course, there's so many people that saw it on a flight on a yeah like, and it's. Many people want to start farms after that rightfully so.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of people who actually started because of that movie, and that's why I like documentaries so much. I meet people every week who say, well, I changed everything because I saw kiss the ground, biggest little farm, inconvenient truth or any other movie related to that theme, and I'm always like, okay, if that is what makes people change their lives, I'm going to make documentaries.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no fair, that's a huge lever. Yeah so somewhere this year we can enjoy.
Speaker 1:we can organize screenings as well, which would be very cool and like we have a very nice Belgian celebrity who's going to do the Dutch voiceover, a very nice celebrity in Brazil who does a Brazilian voiceover. In Brazil, who does a Brazilian voiceover? That's because we also filmed in the Amazon rainforest. But we're also looking for our Woody Harrelson, preferably a lady. So if yeah, an A-list actress, I have some ideas. Let me do that offline.
Speaker 2:And very interesting. Yeah, because I remember who had it. I think Falkert Engelsmann of Eosta, when he was still at Eosta they did like a soil and they had julia roberts doing the voice of soil.
Speaker 1:You can find it online.
Speaker 2:You can find on youtube I'll put a link in there nice the show notes. So they had, like the voice of oceans, the voice of soil the voice of. Somehow volkert got to julia.
Speaker 1:I don't know how, but like something like that, yeah there's only three people between everybody in the world, right, was it three or seven? I think, you're probably three I don't know.
Speaker 2:We can get to some people. It doesn't mean they answer, nor do it, but we can always ask. We always ask for introductions left and right, or we always ask, let's say, double opt-in. People have to say yes to it, but surprisingly most people to a reasonable ask are pretty pretty, at least in a regeneration space, I've noticed pretty open to help, pretty open to connect, pretty open to connect, pretty open to share, unless you ask crazy things.
Speaker 2:But like there's one afternoon in the studio, it's pretty feasible, it's pretty feasible and so okay, so that's coming, unless there's some amazing scenes that you haven't shot yet that you're gonna shoot.
Speaker 1:Okay, but let's say end of year, yeah, and then, besides that, yeah, besides that, my my first book is being translated will come out in the spring, so it's nice, like I'm dutch speaking, so all my books are in dutch. And then I give a lot of international conferences or keynotes as well, and then everybody's like oh yeah, can I buy your book? I say, but can you read dutch?
Speaker 2:no, so really, how is that a problem still with all this ai, with all this like live translation on, like you can have your little bubble box in your mind? Yeah, no, of course.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's coming, I'm super happy that it's coming out in English, because it's yeah. It's also nice because there are so many stories about pioneering regenerative farmers in it, For example, Ian Tolhurst, one of my favorite farmers. Did you have him on the podcast?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:You definitely need to have him. It's amazing what he's been doing. He's been doing farming without animal manure Just by using wood chips. He grows on his own parts. Also, of course, agroforestry. Eat more trees, but yeah, so it's just again spreading so much seeds. And what was, for me, what I needed as an 18-year-old guy who wanted to stand on the barricades to protest or to demand change? To be honest, at that that time I didn't have had like the good arguments to talk about it, and it's all in that book. So it's like the manual. If you know this, you can like passion, everybody's face that you want figuratively, of course or with.
Speaker 2:If it's a very, if it's a hard copy, you can do. But I think it's very interesting how do we equip more people with the arguments, the talking points, the pieces to have these conversations? Because otherwise you get the same response you got from the ag professor you have a permaculture still to bs and you can never feed the world. And you're like, yeah, but I read the books. I mean, yeah, that's not the answer. But like, how do we have that conversation to? Yeah, to, let's say, have a constructive conversation and show that's not necessarily the case, of course, going back and say biodiversity is not in your metrics, etc. And so what is your vision? Then we go to the other projects as well, because you have a new book.
Speaker 2:I saw some pictures somewhere. You signed a contract or a book publishing deal, whatever that's called. But how is your thinking on storytelling now? Like, what's your? You've spread many seeds. Are you continuing that? Are you doubling down on certain, let's say, species that grow really well in certain contexts? Or are you like, actually, I start a lot of these things and I keep spreading because that's my role?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, definitely I think I'm going to keep spreading. It's just in my nature to spread seeds, but keep spreading. It's just in my nature to spread seeds. But if you just look at the narrative and how people have been responding to storytelling definitely look at the Brexit campaign, for example, or the Trump campaign it's never one with facts, it's never one with science, and that was like the beginning of my spreading the word. I was like, yeah, but these are the facts. It's so simple. If you know this, you can't ignore it. You just have to do it.
Speaker 1:But then I realized that this is not how people work or how they respond, and we have to tell our storytelling in a way that is really compelling for other people to follow. We have to sketch a world that is so irresistible, so beautiful that you just have to go into it, and that's exactly what's possible too. There are so many people who have like the most rich lifestyle you can imagine, just by living a regenerative life, and everybody, yeah, could benefit benefit from that. And often people are afraid and say, oh, we're gonna have to be going back to the cave and like have huge vests on because we can't put the heating on or we can't take hot showers anymore. But the narrative I want to bring is no, we're gonna have an even more luxurious lifestyle. We're going to have better food that tastes fantastic. We're going to be able to do so much more if we go in that direction and that's.
Speaker 2:It's an interesting, it's a fascinating narrative and a very true, I think, realization that with the facts that we've been slamming everyone with and soil, organic matter loss and erosion and et cetera, et and erosion and etc, etc.
Speaker 2:And we have only x amount of harvest left, but we got a good group of people together, but now it's the time to get a much bigger one and we have to paint a much more interesting future, much more desirable future. But I think it's also very scary or very. It doesn't come naturally, I think, with sort of the pioneering species that are currently in the region world, to start to turn around or to turn to left or right and say look what it could be, because it's just not part of our nature. We might need a second wave of let's say we keep in the metaphor pioneering plants, the second one, that that are actually the ones that fully express what is possible. Yeah, do you get a pushback from that, from people like you're, showing a naive image, or like you're like we don't all live on Ibiza, or like go and live in a food forest but the rest of the world is burning, like what's the general reaction? Let's say, pushback is too negative, but general reaction to that?
Speaker 1:well, the general reaction actually is very positive. A lot of people are like, oh my god, like I'm so sick and tired of these doom messages. You're showing messages about what is possible, and it gives me not only hope because, yeah, what are you with hope? It gives active hope and it gives also like handles on how you can do stuff or see stuff in another way, and that that's actually pretty empowering and I think that's our biggest job that we can do.
Speaker 1:People have analysis paralysis. They see so much information, hear so much, they don't know what to do, how to do it, and they go into this paralyzed mode. They become eco-anxious, they have eco-anxiety and it just blocks them, and that's the last thing we need. I'm like burn all your books, go and join a CSA farm or start a food cooperative or do something that's within your talent and budget range that you can do. For example, when I give keynotes, I always let almost always let the audience do this kind of dreaming exercise. This is like what you also like to do with people, kun, and then let them talk let's do it.
Speaker 2:Let's do it, walk us through it, because I think many people listening are in front of groups regularly, or let's say one on many or one-on-one organizations, all right.
Speaker 1:So it's actually so simple that we, yeah, sometimes think it's too simple to do it with people. But if you look at any invention in the world, it all started with a crazy dream. For example, like two simple bike repairmen were like oh, how cool would it be to fly? Of course you're so freaking naive. What the hell are you thinking? But they built an airplane and they flew anyway.
Speaker 1:And the rest is history. Or like some crazy dude thinks, oh, I have a boat, but how cool would it be to like explore the ocean bottom and like have a submersible boat? Oh yeah, the submarine is born. Or like have a staircase that goes up. You just have to stand on the staircase and it goes up automatically. Wow, what a crazy idea.
Speaker 1:But it all, yeah, started with this dream. And so in the exercise I give to people and if somebody is listening to it right now, just go ahead and do it. Just imagine you don't have any barriers, you have unlimited amounts of cash a million or a billion of euros and what would you do with it? And then I let people talk to each other In this reality. We're five years further. What have you done the last five years with this money and this unlimited potential and possibility? And there are so many beautiful ideas that come out of it. And sometimes it happens after a month or a few months I get an email. I say, oh, louis, I had this idea. That's cool.
Speaker 1:And look, this is a picture of a little food forest I made in the center of the city. I live in a very busy street. I just asked the government official and they were like, yeah, okay, do it. And now it's there. And I was like, oh, my freaking god, just just by dreaming it. And it can be. It's super simple as that. But I also know people who actually got a couple of hectares of land for free just by doing this exercise. And it's simple. It's three steps one, you, two, you put it on paper, and three, you talk to it with other people about it. That's the only three steps Dream it, write it down, talk about it and you immediately see if it gets enough attraction. Yeah, then people are drawn to it. You might need to try a few times.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter but try. And there's that big step from analyzing, looking at things, discussing and then doing. And there are very few people that do, but I think many more people can.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying let's do a scale, let's become the next tech tycoon. But if you a few actors, a few square meters, a few, like the act of doing and the act that you see that you can have a change on a micro scale will probably trigger you to do more and more and, who knows, a few of them will set up fascinating farm transition tools or technology or not, and have just better food.
Speaker 1:Just have a fun time. Even that is also something worthwhile, and they're not stuck at doom scrolling on the toilet on Instagram.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is probably bad. Let's blend the food forest instead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's like a self-reinforcing cycle. You start because you then first start something super small, like remove one tile of concrete and put a plant in it and say, well, it worked, well, I can do a second one, and then I can do a third one and before you know it, you organize a national movement Tegelwippe competition, exactly yeah. And that's happening, so tile removal.
Speaker 2:I don't know what's the English. Anyway, there's a competition in the Netherlands, yeah, of removing as many tiles in the garden. So these concrete tiles that are extremely efficient, extremely ugly and extremely or in front lawns as well a front lawns. It's let's remove them, put something growing living roots in the soil. Come on and there's like a competition now and people. Yeah, it's a thing. And is it going to save the world? Of course not. Is it way better than the alternative?
Speaker 1:yes, so please, yeah, do it well, is it going to save the world? You never know it, you never know you never know it's one of those seeds that could turn into something impact measurements like I'm a lot in the world of impact, entrepreneurship, impact investing and they're always like, yeah, but can you measure impact?
Speaker 2:well, sometimes the most unlikely things become world we struggle with that with the podcast, because we record this, then we reach a nice amount of people. We usually don't hear back of somebody, like getting that email that you just subscribed to somebody, like a month later, look, I did something. We get those messages, we hear that, but but not enough. Of course, it's always nice to hear, because this is quite an anonymous Come on people. Hey, we send it like hello people. And the fact that there are I don't know 3,000 people listening to this is crazy and taking action or doing things or connecting with you or having effects. So, just in general, please send us a message.
Speaker 2:I read all of it. What happened after you listened to it? Did you learn something or not? Did it spark something? Did you connect with somebody? Did you? And we hear that every now and then. But, yeah, how do you put it in an impact report for a funder that helps us fund? Sometimes the podcast is very interestingly what KPI are you going to put on that? Yeah, we got a good review. So we're like that's super tricky but super tricky, but it is probably the biggest impact. Could be one introduction we made last year or something.
Speaker 1:I know somebody who did a university study just about that subject, who's also in the impact world, and she said, well, don't tell anybody, but I'm going to tell it now but I'm not going to tell who told it to me. But she said don't tell it to anybody, but I like research it for, I don't know, one year or something, but you, you can't really measure impact.
Speaker 2:You can measure certain things like carbon sequestration, but there are of course we can put a few things like maybe proxies.
Speaker 1:Okay, this is going in a direction of something Exponential ones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that's the most tricky one. So, okay, sorry, we got an attention on storytelling. Beyond a new book, there's a new book coming as well. I mean, there's a book being translated into english. The new book I'm imagining is going to be released already as well in english. So you're writing now what's the new book about?
Speaker 1:so it's actually about the fact that you don't need to care about climate change. You don't even have to believe in it, you don't need to care about anything. You just have to care about some things that you really love and work on those things you really love. It's a bit poetic sounding now, probably, but if you follow that calling you have whether it's building an airplane that's more sustainable or building something else or doing any kind of hobby or job really well, and if everybody would do it, then most problems in the world would be tackled. So that's like the more spiritual narrative inside the book.
Speaker 1:There's, of course, also a very hard scientific narrative in it as well that really explains the climate problem to people, because we talk a lot about climate change, but most people don't know what actually drives the climate. Most people don't know that the way the earth is tilted creates the seasons, and if it was tilted a little bit more to upwards or downwards, we'd have a total different climate. Most people don't know that if it's going to be drier in Europe, it's going to be wetter in Africa, or reverse, but never at the same time. So we talk about, oh, climate change, but what is climate change? So that's something I'm very passionate about and also to make people realize what a beautiful system we have on this planet, like the Gaia hypothesis, for example, that says that the Earth is one living organism. If you study these climate patterns, all the influences, of course also the biotic pump, and I'm super grateful that you did a series about the water cycle.
Speaker 2:Super grateful for that, really loved it, by the way, thank you, it's probably the one we get the most responses wow, like from people in the space and we push them in a rabbit hole they're still climbing out of, we're still recording around it. We're looking for a bit of funding, but it's difficult kpis to do more and more because I think it's one of the most neglected pieces and the biggest potential, probably together with nutrient density. Like those two, I keep feeling, as there is so much there and so little work being done. Besides the fact there are amazing pioneers like anastasia, antonio nobra and many others are, of course, me on, the late me and me but yeah it, he died on my birthday.
Speaker 1:I wanted to interview him for a documentary and then I saw that he died on my birthday. I was so sad. I'm so sorry. I was really sad that day.
Speaker 2:It's a year plus ago, but there's been work around, like it seems to be in Spain. Yeah, yeah, the Iberian Peninsula.
Speaker 1:It's, the legacy is being brought to a whole new level. Yeah, we have this big statement. What's?
Speaker 2:up group with, like all these crazy water people.
Speaker 1:Hello exactly yeah, and it's, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's very inspiring to to so there seems to be momentum there, but it's still anyway. Sorry, the biotic pump and thing most people have no idea. When I talk water cycle like I need better narratives there, better storytelling, because I say water cycles and I seen it, even with people deep in the regeneration space they look okay, yeah, water is important. I said no, but it's.
Speaker 2:Then this is what they were like oh, bring back the rain, right yeah, thank you like, but it's something that's so far away from what we could even imagine or dream about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and probably that's why it's hitting a nerve and difficult to raise some funding to do more episodes yeah, exactly, and so that's for me super important, and not only in like the landscape landscapes we're designing, but also in the book about the cooling potential of vegetation. It's just so, it's just crazy that we're not doing more about it, like like calculations show that if you double the amazon rainforests about 550 million hectares you cool the planet down with two degrees Celsius.
Speaker 2:And it's Now I know where the 550 million is from, and it's not even.
Speaker 1:Of course it depends where you put the forest and there are a lot of variables. But to just put it a very simple message just double the Amazon rainforest and you cool down the planet with two degrees Celsius. It's just amazing.
Speaker 2:And not even because the carbon is stored in the tree.
Speaker 1:You don't even look at the carbon. No, it's because of the cooling potential of trees and vegetation.
Speaker 2:It's not about carbon, which helps, but it's not about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just the tree. It sweats and if you sweat like a human being, if you're sweating, then you need actually heat to transform the water that's on your body, to transform it to vapor, and that's actually heat that you take from the atmosphere close to your hands and put it high into the atmosphere where it's done release. So it's literally like a heat pump going from the tree up high in the sky and it's so.
Speaker 2:Let's repeat that point again let's please repeat that point again so so it's not just that the area around the tree that gets cooler, it's actually our full system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you have the tree. The tree actually has this little mouth in his leaves, called stomata, and he used the mouth to breathe and that's actually the way that it pumps.
Speaker 2:My daughter would say no, that's not true. Trees don't have mouths. How do they eat? But yeah, that's a difficult thing to come to explain. Okay, mice, how do they eat?
Speaker 1:but yeah, that's a difficult thing to come to. To explain okay, they're very tiny mouths. You don't see them? Yeah, and that's actually the way they pump up water to amazing heights that scientists are still flabbergasted about. So, so, because they open their mouths, they have billions of mouths. The water gets pulled out of these mouths and the water gets pulled from down in the roots up to the leaves where they have all these mouths, and and then the they sweat and they take up heat around the forest, because when you go from like water that's on your back if you've been on a run and it's like becomes vapor. How does it become vapor? Because it like needs a lot of energy to become vapor and it takes this energy out of the air as heat. So this heat is actually stored in this vapor. And what happens with warm air? Warm air wants to go up. Warmth always goes up. So the warm air goes up high in the atmosphere when it's cooler we all know that and when it's high enough, it condenses again. And what happens?
Speaker 2:the warmth has been transported from the forest high up into the sky magic and that's such yeah, it's such an important one, like why don't we teach that in schools? Yeah, and not taking any way thing away from stop burning fossil fuels.
Speaker 1:No, of course not. We still have to do that.
Speaker 2:The tricky part is that people are like oh yeah, okay, this gives me a license. No, it doesn't give you any license. Let me be very clear here. Stop methane holes and stop burning dinosaur bones and now. But there is a huge cooling potential that Mian and others have shown that is completely ignored in models, completely ignored by us. As a lever, and probably the not the easiest, the most scalable one to like the most hectares we can touch- and actually pretty cheap as well.
Speaker 1:And and that's the entire thing why I'm I literally I'm not afraid to say that eating more trees will save us as a human species. I really mean that. So we've been to the amazon rainforest to film the documentary and talk with indigenous leaders one of the craziest experiences in my life and we talked so with indigenous leaders, but also with with professors such as Carlos Nobre, who won the Nobel prize who won the Nobel prize for writing or co-writing the first IPCC report, and the Amazon rainforest is being cut down.
Speaker 1:We all know that it's been cut down until around 20% almost, and if it reaches 20 to 25% it will become a savannah. Why is that? Because, if I don't know, if I'm repeating stuff that other people have told in a podcast, if so, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:We have even if we're in marketing, we have to repeat things so even if I don't remember. I'm pretty sure we covered something of that, but it doesn't hurt. Probably it's needed to repeat and repeat and repeat.
Speaker 1:Well it's just one of the most important messages in the world. So if you haven't, if you have heard it before, yeah, you'll hear it again. It's just so crazy how the amazon rainforest or a lot of other forests function. So you have this 8 000 kilometers from the andes to the, to the atlantic ocean, where you have like a lot of water going to the sea. And how does it go the other direction? Because, yeah, we all know that clouds form from the sea, of the evaporation of the water, but the clouds have a hard time to crossing 8000 kilometers all the way to the Andes. So, yeah, what happens? You actually need to help to pump it to there.
Speaker 1:And what do they realize is that, like, one in every two drops of rain that fall down in the rainforest actually were created by trees themselves. So one in every two drops of rain that falls down on the ground was not created by the sea, not created by some mysterious cloud. It was created by the tree itself. So what happens if you cut down the trees? Well, they don't do their sweating anymore, and then it rains less. And when it rains less, trees suffer or die. So the pump slows down even more. And what happens? Now? There is more water coming out of the amazon rainforest than in the opposite direction. Car Carlos Nobre calls it the flying river, and I really love this term because you can visually see it. You see the Amazon with its uncountable number of branches going down to the sea, and in the opposite direction you see this beautiful flying river, the atmospheric river. You can't see it with your bare eyes, of course, but you can imagine it, you can study it and see it.
Speaker 1:And when they did the isotope analysis, they could see that one in two drops was actually the flying river was being fed by the forest itself. Yeah, so you can that way. You can see it just if you look in the sky.
Speaker 2:You, yeah but recently or relatively, which is there are some fascinating youtube videos on this where he walks you through the flying river concepts and, with some think, radar satellites, like looking at the different seasons and float, floating things, and so you're bringing, but all of this is not super complex but still not easy to understand. Like how do you bring this to a book that is people are going to use to figuratively smash other people's head with this info?
Speaker 1:like, how do you make this understandable and grab and I'm not saying boring, but like still like something you want to read yeah, well, there was a famous belgian television maker that that told me louis, I'm going to tell you one secret, remember it for the rest of your lives, life. And. And he said well, every time you try to explain something, explain it to your 95 year old, explain it to your 95-year-old grandmother or to your 5-year-old child. If both of them can understand it, then you did a good job. So that's my goal.
Speaker 2:So you're going to do a cartoon?
Speaker 1:Could be yeah and that's maybe a next step. It would be nice to have a cartoon about that, to even make it more visual. I'm also writing on a child's book about the soil life, actually with illustrations. That's another project. But even just if you write it down in words, everybody can imagine a flying river going in the opposite direction. Everybody can see two drops of rain and see, well, one is created by a tree and one is created by just the normal water cycle we all learn in schools.
Speaker 1:So to come back to why we need to eat more trees, is that they calculated.
Speaker 1:That's yeah, if you plant normal forests back, that would of course, be a fantastic solution. But you cannot plant trees on places that are agricultural lands and that's like this huge polarity you see all across the world, especially also in europe, where there's like even the fight between trees and farmers. It's crazy to see that, to say, well, if you plant trees that provide food and income, you have the same effect on the water cycle as if you would plant normal trees, non-productive trees, and then that's like the holy grail, because you unfix the water cycle, you cool down the climate and you provide an income for the farmer and also you make the landscape more prettier. I personally find you can discuss about that, but that's really the golden nuggets. And so the only way we're going to be able to save the Amazon rainforest and also save the rest because if the Amazon falls, we all fall. It's like this little card house, but to do that we simply have to plant more trees, we have to eat more trees, and it's as simple as that.
Speaker 2:And so are there any, of course, conditions like how do you plant in a way, productive trees, edible trees, let's say, in a way that triggers the most rain or helps the most with that, because massive, let's say, agroforestry projects with the desert underneath, monoculture like barely survive. I'm thinking almond trees in California and actually quite a few ultra high intensive ones or intensive ones in Spain and Portugal, are trees technically or bushes but not. I don't think they're sweating a lot Like. There must be some conditions there.
Speaker 1:No, you're totally right. Well, and that's exactly the same point, as it's not a cow, it's the how it's like, it's not a tree, but it's the how you can have. You can plant trees that will ruin the world, ruin the planet, like, like we all know about, palm oil plantations that are super destructive. So you really have to mimic the natural forest and find this healthy balance.
Speaker 1:I really really loved the project of Hidrodinis Fazenda da Toca another guy I have on a podcast that their team experimented with, first planting a lot of varieties together to see, well, biodiversity was great, everything was great, but to harvest it it's impossible for farmers. So then they said, okay, let's try it with only a few plants, and they really experimented a lot to came, or to come, to a situation where they just have the right numbers of plants to make harvest super easy, and right now they have more biodiversity than in nearby natural forests, they have more carbon sequestration and they more trees per hectare also, and they, which is interesting- yeah, that's like crazy one yeah but yeah, but it's true, I, I first I thought that that's bollocks, but then I I walked in the amazon rainforest together with an indigenous leader, barefoot really cool experience, by the way.
Speaker 2:And now you have to get to that crazy experience you mentioned, but you didn't talk about let's, we'll get there and then. And then you see you saw more trees. Yeah, then you see that in the amazon rainforest it's not like super dense in all places.
Speaker 1:And then you see that you sow more trees, yeah. Then you see that in the Amazon rainforest it's not like super dense in all places. So then you can realize it is true. And the farmer is also making more money than their neighbors. And you just have so much nice examples of this really thin line between not too much diversity but enough diversity to have all these benefits for climate, biodiversity, but also for your wallet, of course, because we still need to make money.
Speaker 2:And so do you bring that kind of thinking and practice and theory as well to projects? Because it feels like Brazil is miles ahead in a lot of these ways. They have 40 years of agroforestry experience. I mean the Amazon is a managed agroforestry experience. I mean the Amazon is a managed agroforestry project 12,000 years old.
Speaker 2:They have a very long history, long lineage in agroforestry systems and managing forests and eating them and so and then. But it feels very far from the average Belgian, northern France or even European farm. Let's say, where you do a lot of your work, like how do you bring that here, adapted to the context, and even if it's technically possible, make people believe that it's possible in their context, because that's maybe when you get hired for farm, a garden, a large plot of land is like how do you sell this to an owner that thinks this is too crazy, that's, it could never work here, of course, yeah, of course that's the reaction you always get Wow, it's in Brazil, we are here in Belgium, or we're in Argentina.
Speaker 2:Start with a B.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just show them examples of projects that worked. I think every country I've been to and I've been traveling a lot the last couple of years I've seen examples of projects that are really beautiful. For example, we were regenerating an entire island in Argentina at the moment. That was totally degraded and there we, of course, showed to the client theory about it, showed projects on pictures, but then we also went to the nearest food forest or agroforestry systems there are and then just saw that well, look, this is working.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, very important, for example, very large scale projects we do we never plant everything at once, For example, the island project we're like super careful and we're like, okay, we're first going to take 2000 square meters and do a lot of test plantings, see what will work, what will not work. And then, for example, we I just come back from Argentina and we saw that like a lot of plants work. So we were super happy. But now we said, Okay, now we're going to create a bigger test zone of like one of, I think, 10 hectares, another 15 hectares I don't know the exact number, but something in that yeah, around that size and then, after examining that, then we're're gonna go even further and then like, little by little, organically, we build up the system, but never like just go in there and do it all at once, something I would really advise against also because they're not really examples in many places that you can point at saying, okay, what does a consortium of plants look like in these kind of systems?
Speaker 2:because most places are so degraded that it's not that you have a neighbor that you can put like that has done this R&D, it's basically R&D. You need a couple of years, a couple of seasons, to understand what grows there and what can you get reliably your hands on in terms of seeds, in terms of nursery, in terms of stock, and then you can start and I've seen some examples of people going oh yes, we're going to do regen whatever fruit and plant a lot of hectares, and most of it didn't make it because that fruit is not necessarily and it's just such a capital.
Speaker 1:One note to add there are so many people living on their island, figuratively then, who are doing crazy stuff, but just nobody knows about it, and that's sometimes, yeah, by accident or by chance that you get to know. These people are like, oh my god, if nobody would have thought about it, I would never have known that. There are no websites, no facebook or instagram pages about it.
Speaker 2:So there is more out there that we know, okay, don't underestimate how much research is already being done and not shared, which comes back to the storytelling piece as well. Yeah, so that means doing some proper field work and talking to a lot of people in that context just to see, okay, who has figured out pieces of this puzzle already and can save us an immense amount of time and failures because, yeah, this and this doesn't work here, or this and this does work and very interesting and involved them too involved them too, because they're probably the crazy ones.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pay them to carry out some of the work, or to or for consulting like and so of the projects you're doing and actually let's get to.
Speaker 2:Let's get down the list further. I see the not the ad, but like you're looking for a place to organize a festival, but this year, what's up with that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it was very nice. I've spent two weeks with a wonderful woman from Belgium in Jordan, actually at Jeff Lawton's place, the Greening the Deserts. We had a good click and one year later she said, ah, louis, let's go to a good restaurant. The chef is the person who convinced Beyonce to become a vegan. I was like, oh crazy, the private become a vegan. I was like, oh crazy, the private chef of beyonce or the former private chef, and it was fantastic food. We're talking about dreams, doing the dream exercise. And she said, oh, yeah, I have this crazy dream, but probably it's yeah, it's too much, it will never be done. And I said, yeah, but go ahead, tell your dream, okay, okay. So she started to tell her dream and I was like, oh my god. She said, well, like burning man, this fantastic festival where a lot of people come together, get stoned and do crazy stuff, make art. I want to do the same, but without the stoned part, necessarily.
Speaker 2:I want like without the burning, without the burning.
Speaker 1:I want to regenerate the version of it. And I was like on the spot. I was like this is too cool, we're gonna do it. She said yeah, but are you sure, isn't it like? And then I was like, no, we have to do it, it's like too crazy.
Speaker 2:So you know the story about change there's always like one crazy person dancing and it's when the second crazy person joins, that it becomes the more important one, because that sort of legitimatized that. And then everybody joins. There's that video which, yeah, we're not gonna google which shows how change happens. Like you need to first, obviously, and then you definitely need the second one to join, because otherwise it just stays a one man or woman show.
Speaker 1:Okay and most of the time I'm like the first crazy person, so, but this time I was the second one. I was super happy to just like say, well, this is a fantastic vision, let's go for it. And so now we worked out like it's super attractive. We talked to a lot of people. Everybody wants to help and work. We found a really nice core team now that has experience organizing large-scale festivals, and we created this concept where people are going to come for five days to a place. In the first focus on europe, on mediterranean parts, desertified places, gather together 5,000 people five days during daylight. They will do things to regenerate the land that don't require a lot of knowledge. Everybody can do it. Also don't require too much physical capacities, and in the evening they'll be able to have a regular festival experience. So it's like you beat so many flies with the same stone, or I don't know exactly how the expression goes.
Speaker 2:I heard somebody say yesterday when we recorded with ethan solivier. He said feed two birds with the same seed, which I think is more regenerative than hitting birds. We need them anyway.
Speaker 1:Anyway, yeah, yeah um and and it yeah, it brings so much things together. It's like the eco anxiety thing gets tackled because a lot of people don't know how they can be part of the change. But you go to this festival, have this amazing transformative experience of helping something. And every time the festival leaves, we don't leave like tons of rubbish what they do right now, but we leave regeneration. For example, let's say Valencia with the very severe floodings they had. If we'd have like a festival there, we'd create soil structures, check dams, for example, that will hold on water and we'll make sure that next time there is a flash flood, it will be less severe. And our goal is not to create a festival but to create a franchise of festivals, to also have it steward owned and to, yeah, make sure that it spreads like a wildfire.
Speaker 1:And a lot of people also want something more out of festivals. Um, they're like well, I'm not going to festivals anymore to just spend three days like just drinking and watching uh shows it's. Sometimes festivals are super passive. I personally don't like festivals that way because I'm a workaholic and I need to do something. But that kind of festival I would love it because at the end of the day, oh my god, look at all the things we did. We're also going to organize some games, like some olympic regeneration games, for example, where they can compete into like doing the most on, in a very nice manner, of course, and at the end of the's, like, okay, now we deserved our beer and listened to some great music. And it's crazy how many positive reactions we already got out of it from people who want to volunteer. Of course, we're going to need a lot of funding as well, but there are already people who showed their interest in it and, yeah, this just gives me so much energy because it's.
Speaker 1:When can we expect the first one? What's the goal? So we're gonna do pilots this summer already of 25, and the first edition we're gonna do it in the fall of the fall or spring of 2026, so it's not so far ahead no, it's, and I mean festivals require a lot of work, but can also be organized relatively quickly yeah so there is a yeah, if you have the right crew experience crew, the right people, the right crew experience crew, the right people, the right place, yeah, and the right audience, which you have, then, yeah, these things can come together pretty quickly.
Speaker 2:Not to take away any of the hard work that is needed, yeah, but yeah, it's not a an engineering project that will take 10 years of designing it is and remains crazy, of course, but we have a very nice founding team of very complimentary people.
Speaker 1:I'm super, super happy with that. We already have experience with organizing festivals. Of course, yeah, we want to do everything as regeneratively as possible. So, the transport to the festivals we don't want people flying in from the other side of the world or like, at least minimize that, and I want to try to check every box, of course, also not trying to beat ourselves up about being too perfect, but, yeah, we just want to show what's possible. And at the beginning of our conversation we're talking about, yeah, storytelling. How do you tell nice stories? Well, for me, that's such a beautiful story party, your way to regeneration. It's like, yeah, can it get better?
Speaker 2:yeah, and it touches upon the storytelling gap. You wrote on linkedin actually recently like the people with destructive agendas have just way more money to fund their storytelling. Yeah, then we have. Or the people with constructive. How do we tackle that? By telling better stories, by raise a bit of money. Like what's your answer to, or, let's say, your portfolio of answers to, the storytelling gap?
Speaker 1:yes, well, that's for me one of my biggest pet peeves the storytelling gap. Because, like you said, people with destructive agendas. They just have so much money that's generated out of their destructive businesses and they invest that in amplifying the voices. They want to get amplified.
Speaker 1:If you want healthy soils, for example, and you achieve healthy soils, you don't have a lot you can sell to people with healthy soils. It's the same with human health. If you're a healthy person, balanced, you're pretty happy, you're not anxious, there is not super much you can sell to those persons. They don't need to go on revenge shopping, they don't need to have expensive treatments or buy expensive medication. They're balanced, so they don't really need anything. And that's the problem. If, yeah, if we'd had more money to amplify good stories or find ways to put the good stories, the regenerative stories, more into the ether, then that's the only way to get forward, and for that we all need creativity or we need money, and probably both of them, because I don't know if you've heard about Merchants of Doubt the book or the film, but there they.
Speaker 2:Heard about it, didn't read it nor watched it.
Speaker 1:Well, if you watch the movie, it's only one hour and a half or one hour and 20 minutes and you basically see the gist. They literally have playbooks. They used for the tobacco industry, for the asbestos industry, for the pesticide industry. They use exactly the same tactics or the climate stuff as well, to debunk. Fossil fuel, fossil fuel, yeah, or the climate stuff as well, to debunk fossil fuel. The exact same playbook they use to stay longer in business, and it's literally like spreading doubt, and they invest money in spreading doubt.
Speaker 2:We, of course, also know the example of British petrol, bpe, that's actually coined the term CO2 footprint and try to make you and me feel guilty about our CO2 footprint and the same we're doing in diets and like it's an industry to keep you addicted to ultra processed food and making it personal, because why are you not resisting this and you can't? Because there's an army of 3000 people figuring out to make you eat more Pringles, like, of course you cannot resist.
Speaker 2:Like come on, but it makes it very like. It's the same mechanism. It makes it very personal, like and personal carbon footprint and it's there, but it comes straight out of the playbook of that. Actually, they're the same companies that work for the tobacco industry and the fossil fuel industry and the big pharma and big food and ag. Same scientists they hire to testify about how good or bad something is. And so you say a combination of creativity and funding, because without funding creativity is not. I mean, things go viral anyway, but it's very difficult without some funding. At least you don't need the same budgets, but we have better stories, that's for sure. But yeah, unless we have some funding, we don't reach masses.
Speaker 1:in that sense, yeah, and also reach the politicians, because, for example, if you go to washington dc or to brussels, they have like gazillions of people just living there, working there, being on a telephone, having dinner with politicians and just push their agendas. They are professional storytellers. They're just telling the stories that they're paid to tell. Yeah, imagine if we'd have the same amount of people telling other stories to these politicians.
Speaker 2:or try to find a way to find a counterbalance to that, because I also know some lobbyists myself that work for the car industry, for example, and they sometimes literally just send the text and these politicians just take that test text and put it into what becomes a law or an agreement or something because sometimes politicians are also just lazy and they just want to copy something or that people work with them and for them, like, if you have to like this the input we've talked about it a long time ago with Hervé Dupuy, I think, on how do we give, let's say, the larger, more successful agroecology farms in Europe he was specifically talking about France a voice in Paris and in Brussels, like making sure, and they need to be paid because they cannot spend days away from the farm lobbying. But we need that voice because otherwise the only voice you're going to hear in the future food debate is the agrochemical industry. Yeah, and because they have the lobbyists, they can pay for it. So this is an like somebody needs to fund this and to make sure we have professional lobbyists in brussels, in washington, to actually have a counter story and some aata is doing some of that work. Yeah, wonderful, in brussels actually yesterday big conference or a big like to show real farmers that are doing things differently, they exist, and to and they're now bringing that to a host of cities in europe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for the next cup, just to show there's work created. Even if you don't care about climate and soil, there's work created locally, which pretty much is on the agenda of anyone, everyone better paid, more health and like those agenda points are just never shared by or not shared, but just never really land on most politicians' angle. So I'm guessing that might be an answer to, or at least part of the billion euro question. But if you had a billion euros to put to work, how would you do that? Without giving investment advice, of course, without some of it going lobby? Like what would you do that without giving investment advice, of course, without some of it going lobby? Like what would you do if you had one with nine zeros? Well, I'm launching this Louis coin.
Speaker 1:I'm joking Go, let's pump and dump it. So if I would get a billion euros, I would first invest the first part in it into attracting more money to get 10 billion euros.
Speaker 2:So steal the coin.
Speaker 1:No, just to raise even more money, and then I would really just go full force, all in to make europe regeneratively. If you look at the playbooks of the brexit campaign, for example, or other campaigns that changed narratives so fast just by pressing the right buttons if we do it in an ethical way, of course it is with way less money, probably that they didn't spend a billion and it this like this is, yeah, interesting um, and to really just spread this message in all different layers, from the working class to the politicians to and everything in between, to just inform people about the dangers of not going into regenerative, organic farming and mostly, of course, the positive parts and say well, we all deserve to eat healthy food.
Speaker 1:It's not fair that only people with a certain income bracket can go to an organic shop and buy food that hasn't been sprayed with poison. It's not fair. You shouldn't be happy with that. We need a revolution stuff like that. So so that that would be definitely the way to go forward for me with this amount of money. And to give you a very nice example, there is a guy, one of my personal heroes. His name is Gunther Wallnofer, from Malles, a village in Italy where they speak German. I've met him.
Speaker 2:Ah, I'm jealous. He kicked out the non-organic apple growers in the survey. I'll let you tell the story. Yeahic, apple growers in in that story. But I will let you tell the story yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm jealous that you met him. I talked with him over the phone to interview him for my book and he basically went together with the pharmacist of the town and they just very simply organized some evenings where they just talked about the dangers of pesticides to the, to the citizens of the town. Why? Because he's an organic apple grower and there were pesticide residues on his organic apples. So he had two choices or lose his organic license and of course no organic grower wants this or to leave his hometown, which he of course also doesn't want. So he said there must be a third choice and the third choice is well, let's make sure there are no other users of pesticides that can drift to my apples. And that's exactly what he did.
Speaker 1:So, together with the pharmacist, they organized some evenings, told about the dangers of pesticides, about the benefits of organic food or regenerative organic food, and he said well, that was actually the easiest part. Everybody that understood the story about the dangers of pesticides. They're like of course we're not gonna do it, of course we're not gonna make our children grow up in a place like this. You'd have to be, yeah, just ignorant or don't know it to do this.
Speaker 2:It was good that he had a pharmacist.
Speaker 1:That helps yeah, exactly, and then they organized this kind of referendum and they voted a real referendum. Yeah, and voted and they won and they just said, okay, now on this valley is organic voila.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they gave them the they gave, I think the non-organic apple, because apple is a, is a poisonous plant and from his region down, let's say all the way to verona, etc. Is heavily apple and wine. Both of them are not the nicest crops when sprayed and they gave them a yeah they gave them an ultimatum like I don't know, you can leave and go somewhere else.
Speaker 2:I think for sure there was some compensation left to write or you can change. And the nice thing was they had an alternative. They had gunter that like it was absolutely possible to grow organic apples and you were absolutely able to make a living if you didn't lose your organic license, obviously because of traces were found and so it's, but it's. I haven't seen like on regional level many of those of other stories like that. I mean some in india, there's some other places. Of course there are massive movements yeah and.
Speaker 2:But with all these dangers of pesticides and herbicides and fungicides and all the other sides, you would expect more of that. I think we're starting to see them more, but this is a story that's yeah, I think I met him 10 years ago, like it's not super recent, unfortunately yeah or fortunately for the valley, but like we, like how and it's absolutely possible.
Speaker 1:There's no, of course it's a small valley in the italian alps, like this, is not a massive growing region, but still there were people that had to change things because of people voted I know, and for me that's like the most powerful message you can share about that is just, he shows that it is possible that as a simple human being, you can change something, and if you can do it on a large, on a small scale, you can do it on a large scale as well.
Speaker 1:And of course, we have this typical syndrome that as long as you can lie down on your sofa with a bottle of Coke and Netflix in front of you, you don't really need to take action. Most people take action when it touches somebody close to them, but a lot of people have somebody close to them who has any sort of disease that could be linked with one of the pollutants maybe pesticides, maybe deodorants with parabens or something else. Yeah, we don't know. We just use so many poisonous stuff that we don't know which one is causing which. But I think the point is we need to get rid of it anyway. And but if it gets close to you, for example, yesterday I heard of a somebody super close to me who had glyphosate poisoning not by sprays or by drifting of it, but just by eating it, but just by eating the residue out of it, and I was yeah, I'm working about around this already for more than a decade now. But now, if it happens, close you don't like?
Speaker 2:okay, now it's enough now we have to do something.
Speaker 1:It's like okay and course, I have tons of respect of farmers using glyphosate. I also teach farmers and organize these trajectories for farmers that take one year to go from conventional to agroecological or to regenerative, organically. So I work very closely together with also conventional farmers. So I know why they use pesticides and I totally respect why they are using it. But that's again the point. We don't have to say, well, it's the farmer's fault. We don't have to say, well, yeah, you have to do something. No, it's we as a society we have to do something, and we need to do it together with farmers.
Speaker 1:Farmers want to change if it's in their best interest, and a lot of farmers I know they don't like spraying pesticides because they get diarrhea every time they sprayed. I know some farmers that became impotent because of it, because of pesticide spraying, and so a lot of farmers they want alternatives. They know they will be rewarded to do it. Right now that's just not always the case. So so, one, have tons of respect of for farmers who are still doing it conventionally, but two, let's, yeah, work together on all different fronts on changing things, and for that, yeah, we need better storytelling and we need just the goods. The good storytelling is already there, it just needs more funding. And the question, of course, is the billion dollar question who's going to pay that funding? It's not going to come from a business that's going to make a lot of money out of regenerative agriculture, I fear, because, like I said, a healthy soil doesn't need a lot of money.
Speaker 2:It's like pretty. And so then your first answer, your first part of the answer, was I'll take that one and turn it into 10, without going into crypto. Speculation when would you go, like, how would you do that? Because it's interesting for our thinking. I love the answer speculation where would you go, like how would you do that? Because it's interesting for our thinking. I love the answer. Yeah, that probably it's easier to go from one to ten than from zero to one billion, because there are whole different mechanisms that come to play in the, let's say, the grand space or the philanthropy or even the investment world, like it's somehow seems easier the more zeros there are. How would you, in a hypothetical approach, that like, why is your answer? I will take one and turn it into 10, because that's what we need.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think with one billion you could already do a lot. But if you see how much money there is in destructive industries then we need really to have a big counterweight. Turn one into 10,. Well, how would I do it? I don't have super much experience with fundraising A little bit. For example, documentary more trees were making. Once we had a big investor on board.
Speaker 2:It was easier to get other investors because they say, oh, you already raised, in this case, one billion from xyz.
Speaker 1:Yes, you already raised one billion dollar. Let's say, can you also give me like 10 million or 100 million? Maybe we already have one billion, so, like adding 100 million, it's not so much for certain people or organizations. And also, yeah, with this money you can also craft materials and craft the nice stories that you then need to tell the bigger funders out there to then invest in you or to, yeah, it also can gain access to yeah, people with a lot of money. Money gets access to more money. It's as simple as that.
Speaker 2:I love the notion because I think it's the first time anybody has answered to that. Okay, I will take the one and turn it into 10. Okay, and going to a question we love to ask as well what would be your main message to the financial world? Let's say you listen to the podcast. We like to ask it in, like. Let's say we're in a theater in brussels or paris or wherever we would like to london maybe and the room is full of financial types. Quote, unquote. What would you like the main message?
Speaker 2:I mean, it's gonna probably gonna be eat more trees I'm gonna ask it anyway what would be your main message if we message the seed you would like to plant?
Speaker 1:that they remember. Yeah, of course, eat more trees, definitely. But I would say, loosen your tie. I see that it's a very rigid world and I know, because I know people in that space, that there's actually a crazy person behind these uptight ties. There is some craziness inside of them. Some people more, some people less, talk to that crazy person a little bit more, because there is so much money power in it. I mean, there's so much power in it.
Speaker 1:And don't be afraid to sometimes do crazy investments. Hey, I know it's hard working in the financial industry. You need to attain numbers and everything needs to be so tight and so strict. But create a fund or something that is less strict and invest in some crazy ideas. And you really need to invest in some crazy ideas because, like, sometimes the only companies or things they invest in are already so tight and are already so how would I say, well behaved and already fits into the current paradigm. But we're never going to be able to change the world or to get into the new paradigm by investing in the old paradigm.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, then you have a fund that say, oh, wow, this, I'm going to invest in this regenerative machine or I'm going to invest in this regenerative machine, or I'm gonna invest in in a plant-based alternative, but that's again, super rigid.
Speaker 1:If we're gonna really make a difference, you need to think out of the box and invest in in more crazy, innovative ideas that are totally, yeah, loose from our current paradigm and with the current paradigm I mean the paradigm in which we just tackle the symptoms. We need to go to the paradigm where we tackle the source of the problems, and for that you need to think out of the box, you need to be crazy. So set up a crazy fund, even if it's only one percent, or even one zero point, one percent of the money you're managing. Have a crazy fund and do impact investing. Do philanthropy, do some crazy stuff, because I know some people who also invest in philanthropy that because of this investment in philanthropy, they widened their network so big that they actually help them and to generate more money with their other investment things they're doing. So, again, you never know, yeah, which direction the wind will blow from.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, set up a crazy fund and spread some seeds that you have no clue if it's gonna it's gonna germinate or not, which brings us nice back to almost the beginning. I want to ask a final question. Be conscious of your time as well. It's getting dark outside. Yeah, we had the sun shining through at some point as well. If you had a magic wand and you could change one thing overnight, what would that be?
Speaker 1:to plant a seed in everybody that they can and are allowed to follow their calling, to follow their passion, to follow what they really love in life, to have this notion inside of them. Because I'm 100% convinced that if everybody would quit doing what they don't really like doing and a lot of people are doing it because parents told them to do so, they're pushed in something or they're in this golden cage or gazillions of reasons to do it but if they would really just find their. I call it's called ikigai in japanese. I really love the term ikigai where, like, everything comes together.
Speaker 2:What's good, the three circles, right, yeah, what's good for the planet? What's good?
Speaker 1:for your financial status, what's good for what you really love doing and what your biggest passion and talents are. The circle in the middle where everything comes together. That's your ikigai. If everybody would find this ikigai, then we are there. I'm going to focus on planting trees, somebody else is going to focus on making aviation regenerative. Somebody else is going to build the nuclear reactor without waste and that cannot explode. Somebody else is going to work on social social inclusion. Somebody else is going to help old grandpas and grandmothers cross the street, somebody else is gonna clean up the beaches. And if everybody would just find this ikigai and this passion, everybody would be happy as well.
Speaker 1:Imagine a world where everybody is happy. I just read the numbers today. But one in every four people is having a severe psychological problem in Belgium and it's even worse in Sweden and in other countries. In the UK it's even worse. That's a huge pandemic people that are unhappy. If you are happy, that's the first step towards regeneration. So how do you become happy? Yeah, eating healthy foods because of the gut-soil connection. A lot of depressions, they stem from bad gut health and bad gut health. They exist because you eat bad food. So if you start to eat regenerative food, you already become more healthy. But then, of course, yeah, doing the things you love and surround yourself by people that are going into the same direction as you want, because you become a sum of all the people you're closest with, and then, yeah, if everybody, everybody's happy, then we're there, right? Isn't that the goal of life to be happy?
Speaker 2:it's such a perfect way to wrap up, I want to thank you so much, louis, for what you do, for your enthusiasm for jumping all in instead of continue to nomad around the world, which for sure would have made you happy as well still doing it, but just in a more luxurious way slightly different and a small correction. The voice of nature was actually Julia Roberts was doing the voice of nature and Edward Norton was doing the voice of the soil.
Speaker 1:And I will put the links below.
Speaker 2:You can, yes they're very nice conservation. I think conservation international did the documentaries love Julia we're gonna figure out this voice. That's a goal after this podcast. Anyway, thank you so much for coming here.
Speaker 1:Thank you for spreading the message, kun. You're one of the guys doing it, so kudos to you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening all the way to the end. For show notes and links discussed, check out our website investinginregenerativeagriculturecom slash posts. If you liked this episode, why not share it with a friend and get in touch with us on social media, our website or via the Spotify app, and tell us what you liked most and give us a rating on Apple podcast or Spotify or your podcast player. That really, really helps us. Thanks again and see you next time.
