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
384 Thomas Kliemt - A farming incubator with a 75% success rate (that nobody knows about) lands in Germany
A check-in conversation with Thomas Kliemt, formerly part of Kulturland, which has been growing and they are suddenly, after 10 years in the making, an overnight success. In the first 6 months of 2025, they accelerated their fundraising by 100%, raising the same €2.5m they raised in all of 2024.
Once you enable access to land, transition it into the commons as an anti-speculation measure, and remove the huge debt burden new farmers face, who is actually going to farm this land? That’s what Thomas’ next venture is working to solve, inspired by a highly successful French model which has trained hundreds of farmers in running their businesses through incubator farms: new farmers work their own land for 3 years, run their enterprises, and receive a salary. Afterward, they are ready to take over a farm elsewhere and, remarkably, over 75% of them do. Many of the rest join other farms as employees. This is an incredibly high success rate for any incubator, and the model has already scaled to Belgium, Spain, and Finland. Now Thomas is bringing it to Germany.
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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.
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A check-in conversation with a friend of the show. This is his fourth appearance. Always busy with the big topics in agriculture and not afraid to take them on headfirst. A serial entrepreneur in region farming. We check what Thomas has been busy with Access to land in Germany and how Kulturland, the organization he has been working with for the last eight years, has been growing and why they are sort of suddenly ten years in the making. An overnight success. They accelerated their fundraising by 100% in the first six months of 2025, raising already the same amount 2.5 million euros that they raised in all over 2024.
Speaker 1:Then we shift to the next piece of the puzzle. If you have enabled access to land, transition the land into the commons as an anti-speculation and taking away the huge debt burden new farmers face, who is going to farm this land? That's what the next venture of Thomas is trying to fix, based on a very successful French approach which, over the last 20 years, has trained hundreds of farmers on running their own farming businesses Incubator farms, where new farmers farm their own land for three years and run their farming enterprises while getting a salary. Then they are ready to take over a farm somewhere else and, surprisingly, over over 75% of them do and many of the others join other farms as farm employees. This is a crazy high success rate for any incubator and it has successfully scaled to Belgium, spain and Finland. That's why Thomas is bringing it to Germany now and the timing seems right. He already raised a few million in government funding and different regions are fighting to get these incubator farms established in their regions, which, of course, could be an ideal launchpad for a stronger region farming movement. We talk about the huge impact successful region farms have on their region. We talk about community and why it is so personal for Thomas, a true serial entrepreneur in region farming systems. Enjoy.
Speaker 1:This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and 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 to another episode. Today we have Thomas back on the show. We had him in 2018 and 2019 at the end, before all kinds of pandemic stuff changed the world and then it didn't. We talked about many things at the time pension for city folks and farmers. We talked about stable coins. We talked about land access and ownership and tenure, which are big themes in thomas's life, and now you are shifting, not shifting, you're migrating, transitioning to training future farmers, which is another big missing piece, which actually we've talked about a few times lately on the podcast. So welcome back, thomas, I'm looking forward to checking in cool and thank you for having me again.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to be back.
Speaker 1:It's been, as you say, more than five years, and oh, if you say it like that, it's even worse yeah a lot has happened in the last five years, so I'm excited to talk to you about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I checked. It was like episode 69 was the last one. It feels much closer, but then again we've done so many episodes in the meantime and actually we did one with Benedict where Benedict was the co-host. Actually, this is the fourth episode, even with you on the show. But just to describe, of course, I will link the previous episodes in the show notes if you haven't listened to them, because I do understand, if you don't scroll back that long, if you're relatively new to the podcast, you're not going to scroll all the way down, even though some people do that. But what brought you here?
Speaker 2:Now we're going to talk about the training of farmers, but just briefly, let's say, what have you been working on until this new chapter? Well, let me start with uh, where my journey into farming started. Now, almost 15 years ago, I was just taking a time off and I just needed a different perspective on life, so to say, and I did a three-month internship on a farm. And yeah, that was after reading Michael Pollan's book, I think, omnivore's Dilemma, and we might what an impactful one, eh Sorry.
Speaker 1:What an impactful book. What an impactful book for so many people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just gonna say that another book from Michael Pollan also changed my life how to Change your Mind. I read that, I think, in 2018. And now this year I had a very intense experience based on that book and so I could get into that maybe later, but yeah, after reading that book, I think maybe 2009,. Then in 2010, I did a three month internship on a farm and then transitioned to work in the area of farming, got involved in an EU project that was looking at composting on farms, and then, in 2012, I think, I actually decided to become a farmer.
Speaker 2:I did a vocational training for five years and I had the vision to actually take over my own farm. And when I finished that education I had to realize that's almost impossible because it's so expensive to buy land, it's so capital intensive to buy a tractor and just to get started with farming. And that's when I started to work for the Couture Land Cooperative. That's where I worked for the Kulturland Kooperative. That's where I worked for the past seven, eight years, eight years, and helped build that organization where, yeah, we enabled community capital to be pooled and to buy land for farms, for organic farms, for young people who want to become farmers and don't have the capital to buy land, and that project has flourished in the last eight years yeah and now I decided to leave that and start something new and just some numbers.
Speaker 1:Like you raised significant money already in 2018 or 2019 last time we talked, and so just for people, because I think it inspired. It was inspired definitely by a French initiative, terrier, and then it also inspired others, like an Olentelant, which both of us are an advisor to in the Netherlands is largely inspired by the work you've done and the work you the larger you as a team Just to what is the latest numbers on contour in terms of hectares and how many farms have you helped to secure long-term tenure? Because, just to repeat for the 10 000 time, access to land is one thing. 10 year long-term tenure for many people and many farms is a huge issue everywhere. Like it's not really, it's a universal fear for successful region farmers to be kicked off their land because something changed in the ownership and they don't have the money to buy ridiculous speculated prices. I will get off my pedestal now, but just in, what have you managed to achieve in such a short moment in time as well?
Speaker 2:Yes, the organization now is 11 years young and I still think of it as in the early stages of the growing phase because it's a generational project, and so far we've raised a little bit over 20 million euros.
Speaker 2:The past four to five years have been pretty constant and I would say that's a big success because the interest rates have risen a lot, which made investment in the organization, financially speaking, a lot less attractive. When you can get like 5% interest somewhere else and then you give money to the Kultura organization with 0% interest, then that's a bigger challenge than five years ago when you had no interest on your bank account also, and so we managed to maintain slight growth even every year. So we raised something like two to two and a half million every year, but this year has already raised to somewhere July're, july 28 2025 and organization has already raised two and a half million and is on track to raise five million this year with something like 600 new members this year, so in total it's close to 3 000 members and 50 farms that the organization has bought land for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so so it's really.
Speaker 1:Why suddenly that switch shift, like if you have an idea, like we invested a long time ago four or five years, I remember but not necessarily for the interest rate, just to park money in a way and enable that to do something very useful. But what has shifted? If you have any clue, like the last six months compared to two, three years before where, let's say, global conditions were similar except for the financial market.
Speaker 2:I think it's that the organization has become such a trusted institution that more and more farms just want to buy land with us, farms that could potentially do it on their own without our help, where they have an enormous community. Just to give you one example, this farm Nossal Farm, from where we are it's three families running the farm, three young families in their early 30s. Just a wonderful community doing community, supported agriculture, producing food for something like 300 families, and they have managed to raise money in their community to buy land on their own in the past. But now they came to us and they were like well, you're such a wonderful organization, we would like to do this together with you, and maybe we can be even more successful to do it with you together.
Speaker 2:And then just within, like without even us doing anything, they brought 200 people who put in 600,000, 650,000 euros, so we had, we didn't have to do anything.
Speaker 2:They just brought the money and we just had the infrastructure, yeah we organized the legal framework and the buying of the land and so on. Yeah, in a way, cooperative has become this trusted institutions, where you know that the land that is being bought by the cooperative is going to be kept as a commons for generations to come, and that's why these farms and people around these farms are interested in working with Cotuland more, I think.
Speaker 1:And last time we talked about and we're going to get to the training of future farmers, we talked about pensions as well.
Speaker 1:You mentioned an example which I've repeated 600,000 times probably, about farmers like the early organic pioneers that are now at a retirement age and that land could probably support more families, maybe three, like in this case, or four or five, but because of the very high land prices they can't, because it pushes you into a certain farming system and you enabled somehow for this retiring organic farmer high land prices.
Speaker 1:They can't because it pushes you into a certain farming system and you're enabled or somehow to for this retiring organic farmer to take a very good pension, a very comfortable pension until they are no longer around. But also that was a much lower price than the land itself, which I think was valued at two and a half million, and in total you organized a pension of 650 000, something like that for buying a piece of land, a nice house and a nice pension, a nice retirement for, which made it suddenly this land accessible, of course, in the commons forever for way more people. Has this pension work? Has that increased as well over the last years? Because that sounded at the time and we're talking six years ago, again as a pilot or as something that that incidentally happened, but of course, with the current age of most farmers, including organic farmers, this is a thing yeah, that became a big pillar of the organization.
Speaker 2:So it's not so many cases. I would say it's one to two of these farms where a retiring farmer who doesn't have a succession but has a lot of land and wants to hand that over to the next generation comes to the Kulturland Cooperative and says look, please take care of this farm, please find the next generation of farmers, and all I want is a decent amount of money to live my retirement, and the land is worth more than that and it's such an interesting concept.
Speaker 1:I keep repeating that to everyone as a story that people are willing to not get the best price that they could get. Of course, a certain amount of people, certain group, I'm not saying, but there are many out there that if they get a comfortable retirement, they're not, they don't need whatever speculating developer would pay for it if that land continues to be developed regeneratively and continues to be managed in a way that they have worked for the last 40 years probably a day in, day out and all night, probably as well.
Speaker 2:So there is that that land prices is a flexible thing depending on the circumstances yeah, I forget how unusual this is, but I have to go back in my mind because I I came from, I would say, classical neoliberal economic mindset a long time ago.
Speaker 1:Which this is impossible. This concept doesn't exist. Why would you?
Speaker 2:If you wrote this down as a concept to start an organization, people would be like ridiculous, like why would anyone give away millions in the end? But yeah, and it's just that the connection that farmers have to the land, it's, I would say, almost spiritual.
Speaker 1:No, not almost it is, it is I'm glad you say that, because. We're going to edit out the almost here.
Speaker 2:I shift around in how I describe the work that I do, Depending on the context. I say that with the work that I'm doing, it is my effort to enable society's spiritual connection to the soil You're in the right place, don't worry.
Speaker 2:Depending on the context that I'm in, that might sound a little bit strange, but for me, in the end, it's about that. This connection with the soil is so deep and this is an activity that we have been doing at least for generations, and we're in the process of completely losing that and what we're losing as a society. I think that it's really painful. It feels really painful to me personally, but I think for society as a whole, we're losing something that we don't even know what that's going to be like when we have farms that are only run by autonomous machines and these which we talked about last time actually, yeah, the human beings who have this spiritual connection to the soil and and are willing to take care of the plants and the animals in a way that is holistic.
Speaker 2:I think these people I just really admire them, these farmers, and I really hope that we can manage to enable them to continue their work. And yeah, I think a farmer that is willing to give his farm for much below market value, he knows that or she knows that if the farm is sold at market value, the person or the organization, the farming corporation that is buying that land, they're not going to continue that farming anymore that they were doing. They're going to do large scale farming that is mostly machine based. And I talk about farming organisms like a farm. If you think about it as a closed nutrient loop organism, then it is its own kind of being, so to say. And then if the land is just sold to a larger farming institution, then this organism gets dissolved and it dies. And for the farmer who has been devoting his entire life to his farm, and maybe for many generations, that thought is just too painful.
Speaker 1:And then You're giving them a way out. Yeah, you're giving them an exit strategy into steward ownership, into a dignified exit strategy that they can feel good about, without saying you have to donate it completely. There is money there. There are needs, there are retirement needs that have to be met or should be met.
Speaker 1:If there are needs maybe sometimes they're not, but giving people that option, actually two or three times a year or whatever, people do that and they shouldn't according to economic law, but they are which makes economic law, makes us question that and enables more people on the land, more hands on the land, more hearts on the land, more eyes on the land. Because you take away that huge burden of massive interest rates, you have to probably pay, even if you could borrow two and a half million or something like that. So it's which gets us to the people side of things and increasing the amount. I'm not saying you took care of the land piece, but that's being taken care of with all the growth that is needed, with all the intensity there, and of course, it needs to be scaled and replicated in all kinds of different forms and shapes. But you walked against this other huge elephant in the room like who's actually going to do the farming, then yeah, that was a big challenge when we had these retiring farmers giving us the land even much below market price.
Speaker 2:And the Kulturan Cooperative now has this farm and okay, so we're going to make sure that the next generation is going to take it over. And then we found out well, that's actually really much more difficult than we thought because we had just a whole bunch of cases of farms that should offer the basis for an existence a farm that is working, that actually has a good customer base, that are paying a reasonable price and the farm can actually generate a living for a family. And still we had such a challenge to find people who are willing to take over a farm that is 50 hectares, 60 hectares or 100 hectares. The people who are new entrants into farming, who didn't grow up on a farm and they might do a farming education. Their heart and soul is burning for this, they really want to do that. But the challenge to then take over a farm that's 100 hectares is just overwhelming. And even if they think they can do it and we had a few cases where young families they came to this farm and they were so excited if they think they can do it and we had a few cases where young families they came to this farm and they were so excited they really wanted to do it. And then they just realized even if the land is given to them very cheap, then still it's so capital intensive just to buy a big tractor and to build the stables or whatever, and they were overwhelmed by it. And so we had a whole bunch of cases where we were not able to ensure a farm succession, and that was very disheartening to me.
Speaker 2:And then once again, I looked to France. As you mentioned, the Culture and Cooperative is a replication from a French model, terre de Lien, and also in France they started this organization called Reneta, which enables farm succession for new entrants into farming. So people who didn't grow up on a farm and have done a farming education, they come to one of these farms that we call them incubator farms, one of these farms that we call them incubator farms. So yeah, where these people they come and they can stay on a farm for three years and they get a certain amount of land and infrastructure and so on, and they get mentoring and coaching and they learn how to become independent farmers. And I really thought that that's a really wonderful project and I looked into it and it's become a big success in France. So right now they have 80 of these incubator farms.
Speaker 2:Eight zero Eight zero, and it was replicated in Belgium 10 years ago, and now they have 15 incubator farms in Belgium and in Finland and in Spain. They also started with this, and so I, with a few other people, we put together a proposal to do this in Germany also, and so this is what we're just about to start.
Speaker 1:And so people come to that farm on an incubator, stay for a couple of years, earn a monthly stipend as well so they're not living hand to mouth, basically and manage different enterprises or manage the ones they want and basically learn how to financially independent farm and before being thrown into basically, otherwise you'd be straight out of school and maybe some internships left and right, but at internships you never really manage the farm and the financial and the admin and all of that. So this failure rate is just really high of people that, yeah, just can't manage unless you grew up on a farm, which not so many do and then after that they go out in the world and take over farms in in france. Basically that's been the case, right yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 2:thank you for the wonderful summary that that is what it's about. So these people who are usually new entrants to farming and they're not that young, actually, the average age is around close to 40 a lot of them have professional backgrounds. They have maybe successful careers in, in whatever, maybe it or something, and then they decide to that they want to do farming because they just want a different kind of life. And the people who then come to an incubator farm, they already have at least one year of full-time experience working on a farm, so they're not completely new, not completely naive. They know what farming is and on the incubator farm, I love the word naive in this case.
Speaker 2:Well, you have to be very naive to even think that you can make it in farming. But you don't want people who are completely naive, because then the failure rate is going to be too high. So we have these people who just maybe a couple of years ago, decided to leave whatever life they were living city life and join farming, and maybe a lot of those here there's a sieve already in between, a lot of those here there's a sieve already in between and those who have decided after one or two or three years of working in farming that they this is really something for them. They can then join this incubator farm and they get land, they get, they get the machines and they get mentoring and then it's okay, off you go.
Speaker 1:now you produce your own but they get their own plot of land like x hectares is theirs for two, three years to really go through a few cycles, wow, yeah, and and then they have the market.
Speaker 2:They produce also themselves. And what's very interesting is that in france this is considered a kind of a period where people start their own business and in this period they get unemployment money. So as a kind of basic income, they get something like 1000 euros per month for three years. So that's the kind of a little bit of a financial basis for them to live off, because it's really tough if you don't have any, if you don't have a big chunk of money in your bank account, and then you're just starting from scratch with farming. So then you get a thousand euros a month to cover your basic, very basic living costs, and then everything beyond that you have to work for it.
Speaker 2:And then you get coaching and mentoring and they have worked out this very intricate system where they established a cooperative, a nationwide cooperative, and you, as an independent working farmer, you are officially employed for that cooperative.
Speaker 2:So you have all of that, all of the benefits of an employment status, but at the same time the money that you get paid as a salary is what you earn from your farming. So that gets the cooperative gets the earnings, and then pays it out as a salary, and maybe in the US that wouldn't mean so much in terms of social benefits and so on, but in France it makes a big difference in terms of your security if you're employed, and so they put together this system where you're independent and at the same time you're employed and you can have the status of selling produce organically from the get-go and you don't have usually you need a conversion period wow yeah, and access to the machinery and to the people, and you have colleagues or co-conspirators and you're not out there alone somewhere super remote where you just took over a 70 hectare farm yeah, and with your family, and you have no idea, basically no idea where to start.
Speaker 1:You have a lot of ideas, but also 10 000 things to do. It's a very different on-ramp, let's say yeah, that's a good word and on-ramp.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna write that down. I don't know if it translates well into german my german is not bad, but they're, they're, exit.
Speaker 1:Like there's a lot of highway metaphors.
Speaker 2:I don't know why there are a lot of these I really like it because you need to get to that speed in a way to get into that rhythm of it and it's just yeah, but you need a bit of space.
Speaker 1:You need a bit of space like on a highway. How annoying is it if your on-ramp is too short, like you're going to be squeezed into traffic or you At the end of the on-ramp you're going to be waiting for space to get in. It's very uncomfortable. Sorry, I'm just getting out of sharing my traffic stories.
Speaker 2:From that on-ramp when they've reached the speed of the rest of the traffic, then after three years they can go left and go on the main highway. And that's what 75% of the people who start this program in France, 75% of them, end up running their own farming business after three years. And I say farming business because a lot of them have smaller plots of land, maybe one or two hectares, where they're growing vegetables very intensely or they're even growing flowers or something like that I would call that farming. But there's a whole bunch of them. Really. A lot of them take over big farms where you also have animal production or producing grains in a big way and so on.
Speaker 2:But they're very explicit about saying it's not the goal to get that percentage up more and more 75% now we want it up to 80%. It's totally fine that somebody says along the way that it's not for them, it's totally open. And then from that 25% of people who don't end up running their own farming business, even half of those, end up being employed in farming, right? So we basically only lose something like 10% of the people along the way who completely leave farming after that, and to me that sounds fairy tales. In Germany I know from the biodynamic education the people who finish that really intense program of education of three years only 15% end up running their own farms.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. That's the reverse of this, basically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because in Germany it's just so difficult to take over a farm. The land is much more expensive. That's one big point. In Germany, land is about five times the price compared to France.
Speaker 1:And it's not five times as productive. I think we can, it's not five times as productive?
Speaker 2:for sure not. So. The average hectare in Germany costs 40,000 euros, in France it's 8,000 euros. So it's different worlds, right? So in France at least you don't have that financial barrier so much, and even though the land is so cheap, you still have this Théodilien organization that helps you. But then there's so many other institutional mechanisms that help people to enter farming so that in France every second farm that is passed on to the next generation so 50% are handed over to new entrants into farming. People who didn't grow up on a farm right being handed over outside of the family, and in Germany that number is below 2%, so it basically doesn't exist. When I talk to people here about this concept that farms could be handed over outside of the family, people are stumped, like they don't even know what to do with this information.
Speaker 1:It's crazy, but it's interesting. How, then the framing of, sometimes of the family? People are stumped like they don't even know what to do with this information. It's crazy, but it's interesting. How then the framing of, sometimes of the french agriculture? What we see we mean largely we outside is that the protesting, the pesticide law that just passed, as we're recording this too, but there's this massive under undercurrent movement of very strong agroecological farms, very, actually very successful financially, paying living wages, relatively big sizes, getting access to markets, etc.
Speaker 1:But it always stays in France, just like the earlier, and then it finally got translated into other places and got implemented, and also this far that there is a farming school incubator that exists for 20 years with a 75% success rate, and even I would argue that the last 10% might still stay in food and agriculture but start doing other things like running organizations like Kultuurland. You would be a quote unquote failure for the education you did because you didn't end up running a farm, but of course, you're enabling much more than that, so there might be even a few in there that end up doing setting up food brands or whatever, or new supermarkets or all of those things that we desperately need, and so you're bringing this to Germany. Very exciting period. What are you most looking forward to in this, in this new venture?
Speaker 2:well, I I look forward to working with these really excited and, I would say, still somewhat naive new entrants to farming who are just so wide-eyed like I was when I started 15 years ago and then taking them like by their hand in a way.
Speaker 1:I wish I would have been taken by somebody and try to you might have been running a farm now if that would have existed.
Speaker 2:For sure, I have no doubt about it. I would have been a farmer and I live a wonderful life, no worries, that's totally fine. But I think it's, in a way, it's also a shame, and I wish that maybe still one day when I retire and I'm going to run a small farm. But it just wasn't possible. Really, it's just so impossible if you didn't inherit millions, and then it's okay. Well, how am I going to take over a farm? Well, it's just not going to happen, because the land price is so high that if you want to take a bank loan, you're never going to be able to repay it, and so I'm just really excited to make that possible for a new generation.
Speaker 1:And so what's the plan? How many people Like where? Do you start One incubator farm first, or a number because you want different, maybe climates and geographies? What's the Because? The idea sounds amazing, but then what does it practically mean? Let's say, when this gets started.
Speaker 2:It's starting off pretty big. It's very interesting how several governmental departments got interested in this kind of in parallel. But first we were able to secure funding from the research ministry and then, out of nowhere, the agricultural ministry also said they are interested in this and so they set up a. Yeah, they said they want to also enable incubator farms and they made some money available for that. And these are two separate projects in two different departments, so it's a bit of a challenge to bring that together.
Speaker 2:And then, at the same time, the Lower Saxony Agricultural Ministry, with whom I'm more deeply connected because I live in Lower Saxony they also said they want to enable something like this, and the city of Hamburg, which surprisingly has 500 farms within their city parameter, also said they want to participate in this. So the city of Hamburg took a lot of money or made a lot of money available to make this happen. So we're basically starting off with starting two incubator farms with the money from the research ministry, and in Hamburg we're starting two incubator farms with the money from the city of Hamburg and with the money from the agriculture ministry. We're going to be starting something like four, maybe up to six, incubator farms that hasn't been decided yet and the types of incubator farms that are being started are very different. So we have one farm that is 1800 hectares, an organic farm that is very diverse with with cows so you're buying these farms, like with the projects you're like what's?
Speaker 1:what does incubator farm mean?
Speaker 2:they are becoming partner farms and on the farm we, we then the farmer who is there, he or she actually most of the farms it's women who collaborate with us, who are our sparing partners for this project. They are becoming the mentees for the incubates who go there and they own the land or they lease land. They have a farming operation going and when incubates come they will get some land on that existing farm and then they can also use the infrastructure that is already on the farm and we enable them to get some mentoring and coaching to marketing and how to establish your own business and so on. And how to establish your own business and so on. But there's also a different kind of incubator farm in the sense that it's a farm that doesn't exist anymore, actually A farm that has stopped operations maybe a few years ago, and then an incubator goes there and they restart the operations. They start a new venture on an old farm that has existed and we give them all the mentoring and coaching and show them the way to make that happen.
Speaker 1:And so how do you compensate the owners of? Coming back to the land ownership discussion, how does it work with the incubator farms? Of course, differently, it depends. And how are they run longer term in terms of how to make sure that this is around 20 years from now, so we can look back at 40 years of the French and 20 years of the Germans and what are the ownership incentives or ownership structures underneath this?
Speaker 2:Or the firm that I just mentioned, where an old firm that stopped its operations is restarted. It's in cooperation with the Kulturland Cooperative, so that what a surprise.
Speaker 1:I was throwing the ball up. I was like, okay, it would be weird, but just asking.
Speaker 2:So of course it makes sense. Then it's community ownership, right, because of course the young entrants are not going to be able to buy it. So get the community engaged and people put in money Some people put in 500 euros, some people put in 100,000. And then with that money together the land can be bought and made available for those young farmers. And in some well I would say in most cases no land has to be bought right away because the farm is an ongoing operation and the incubates that join that farm they just get some land for a certain period of time and they pay a lease for that. So in france they pay a monthly lease of 500 euros for the land, and it might be different on different farms, but the ones that I visited was around 500 euros for the plot of land and the tractors and so on and what might even happen, but it's just dreaming now.
Speaker 1:Like you take over a non-active farm anymore in an area, kickstart an incubator farm, hoping or assuming that some of the 75 or 50 if you reach the 50 success rate, let's say, people staying farming are going to buy things nearby or at least going to expand, and you get this oil spill, which of course not, let's say, olive oil spill the right kind of oil effect in a region which, of course, is fascinating from many different perspectives, from schooling, to food, to climate, to biodiversity, like you want them also, and they might be able to still share some of the machinery and processing and all of those things that, yeah, cost a lot of money and make sense to to share, plus sales, to to sales infrastructure and making sure this food finds its way to a table and a plate somewhere yeah, I've seen a lot of these examples in the past eight years at couture land where, even though there's all these challenges, managed to start a farm and do, let's say, a community, supported agriculture and then a lot of people ended up moving to that area because it was such an attractive proposition to have this wonderful food and also a community there.
Speaker 2:The people who do this kind of farming, they're usually just very nice people and a lot of the time they will then also start their own kind of school, maybe Waldorf School or whatever, and then you have all of these different components and then people end up when they have children, usually they think about reorienting their life, maybe going away from the city, and a whole bunch of these communities plopped up around these farms, and that, for me, is a big part of my motivation to reinvigorate rural life in a positive way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it starts with a farm, but not only. I mean, we talked about it before, but it forces you I think regenerative farming forces you to ask a lot of other questions as well around education, around health, around real estate, around living, around community living and all of that. And it's not a surprise, of course, at all when people start looking around and they see a community with interesting people maybe weird but interesting people, really good food, maybe a schooling, something that's one plus one is three very quickly and we've seen it in many places we visited. You've seen it as well it's a very attractive proposition, especially now with remote working being much more common, high-speed internet, either satellite or in many places it's coming or it's there. Like you, you are able to do much more than you were 10 years ago or five years ago when we talked last time, and so I can see you need still the real estate, you need houses for people, you need there's any farm I visited. Housing is always an issue, or almost always an issue, but also a fixable issue, because when this is out, we also released a real estate episode. There are ways to figure out that piece as well if we can figure out the farming, but it enables so much more.
Speaker 1:Once our farm becomes part of the commons and managed very differently, which is much more life on it, literally in the soil, above the soil, around the soil, it attracts people and I think we're going to see a lot more of that, and we underestimate that. Is it something that these government institutions find interesting and appealing as well? Is that something that pulls them in, or is it very okay, boxy, okay? We think about successful farms and that's why we're moving into this, that's why we're backing this.
Speaker 2:I think the Lower Saxony Agriculture Ministry really gets it Like they really understand what's going on, and I was even in France with the Agricultural Minister for a delegation or with a delegation to visit these farms and that is a big part of their interest in this for the national ministries, I think. I think we still have to. I don't. I don't know how much they understand about it. To be honest with you, for some reason they they hopped on this train in a way because they saw there's some momentum in this, but when I talk to them I think they don't fully understand the potential of it yet as well.
Speaker 1:That's I'm not judging, but it's interesting because I'm still waiting for regions and lower saxon sounds like one where, like investing and it's relatively small amounts into, like farming, got a word infrastructure, but like all the social fabric that is needed to create successful countryside, it's got to be around farming and to enable that with the right schools, schooling for farmers, land access, machinery share, like all of those enabling things which on a, let's say, a regional budget is, you're not even going to see it, but come here because here you have an on-ramp that actually, if you want to, just to have more people in the countryside, more votes, more people to keep the school open, the supermarket and all of those. But I still seen very little that this is used like regeneration of regions as a sort of strategic one to, okay, we need more people. How are we going to pull them here? Especially families. Everybody wants families, obviously, and but it sounds like one, like some people start recognizing that this is a very potentially effective way of, yeah, having more life on the land.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting, interesting so what's what's scary you the most? Are you looking forward to the bright eyes? But what's what's the scary part?
Speaker 2:well, I am a little bit unsure whether for the first two incubator farms well, we're starting off with four, but in Hamburg I'm not worried at all that we're going to find people. That's so easy because it's so easy to market your produce at a good price and so on. So that's going to be totally fine. But the two other incubator farms are in the most remote region and in the economically most left-behind region in Germany. So to get people and also the right-wing, radical, right-wing party is getting 40 plus percent in those regions- Four zero people, four zero.
Speaker 2:So these are the kinds of regions where, of course, we would really want to reinvigorate.
Speaker 1:I was going to say this is a political move as well that we're often talking about. If you want to change the countryside, voting bring more people, especially different people.
Speaker 2:But it's always. The most difficult is to get the first people to come, and I wonder. I feel very positive about it because the farms are just such wonderful places with wonderful people, but then, once you step outside of the farm, I'm not so sure.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I think there's a way of connecting and like reaching over the fence, I don't know. I think we can be surprised, even though there's a lot of skepticism on regeneration in general and organic and we have so many stories on. But it also shifts If you have a successful example and if let's say you're not too weird, instead of dancing naked around a fire every day, like that. There are limits. Let's say what a local population can handle, and rightfully so, because they have been left behind and they have been ignored excuse my french screw it so many times. I don't know.
Speaker 1:There is also I'm very curious, let's say in a couple of years like how many people reach out? Like we've many examples of biodynamic farms that for the first x decades were laughed about and now people are transitioning around them because and not because the voting necessarily has changed, but because something has changed in terms of they're seen as a viable institution, like Coutureland is now Like you need a certain time there and, yeah, you need the dinners, but I think that's all. Everywhere. The challenge is to connect for new people into the countryside with the people that are left behind, which are not so many and mostly relatively monoculture, like culturally wise because everybody else left, and that's not to blame them, but it's yeah, that's the reality and that's not easy to connect with, but the best way to do that is probably food.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're tackling the big challenges right. We didn't want to make it easy for ourselves in a way, but I am very hopeful that with these wonderful farms we will be successful. And the next four to six farms that incubator farms will start on have not been decided yet. So I'm very curious how we will decide on that. And one big challenge that I'm a little bit worried about but I think we will decide on that and one big challenge that I'm a little bit worried about, but I think we will find a solution is that we were not able to put into the funding proposals that the incubates need 1000 euros a month just as a basic income. Like we could not get government money for that, so I need to find that money privately, but I think I'm very hopeful that I will. I'm going to find some nonprofits that see that this is a real challenge to the whole project and that they will step in.
Speaker 1:And so how many? Let's say we're talking a year from now. What is, I want to ask? What does success look like? What would make you happy, like how many people are on the farm? What are some rough ballparks you're thinking about in terms of? And also, that leads to a question how much money just for anybody listening? How much money do you have to find for supporting these farmers?
Speaker 2:for the entire project where over the next three years we will be starting eight to ten incubator, we are getting a total of close to between two and a half and three million euros, which is a good sum of money, and we imagine that per incubator farm we will have one to three incubates. And then you can do the math. If, let's say, two incubates perform on average, then we have 20 incubates. That would cost something like 250,000 euros per year, but we won't establish all of the farms right in the beginning.
Speaker 1:No, no, it's a rolling budget. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, so I for the first yeah, that's feasible. For me, success would mean that three of the incubator farms have incubates already who move there and at the end of the three years, success for me would mean three years. Is the funding period from the government right? So at the end of those three years I will have to have founded a nationwide institution and local institutions that are part of this nationwide network and funding that enables the continuation after the three-year initial funding period.
Speaker 1:And as an almost serial farm entrepreneur entrepreneurs that has different meanings in different contexts has the most positive sense of somebody creating things from scratch or from what triggers you here, like why, after you could have stayed at Coutureland, it seems like you're in a in a sort of liftoff phase there this year, and yet you start from scratch, let's say, on another venture.
Speaker 2:I think it's just so personal to me that I wasn't able to take over a farm and then I thought that I will be able to do that within Kulturland, that Kulturland can be the institution that enables farm successions. And I had to realize yeah, it was also very painful and, again, it's very personal because my father-in-law I met my wife six years ago not even six years ago, so just after around the time we talked last, I met my wife and I married into a farming family, so to say, because my father-in-law he is a farmer and his farm is very far away and my wife said that she for sure doesn't want to move back there, far away, and my wife said that she for sure doesn't want to move back there. So I tried my very best to enable a farm succession for his farm within Kulturland and we took that farm on. And he's one of those people who said that he's willing to hand over his farm way below market price and he just wants that farm to continue. And we had two families come to that farm who were so excited and then they burnt out. They just had to stop. They just completely lost their mind.
Speaker 2:Because it's just, you know my father in law. He owns the farm and the land, so he doesn't have to pay any rent and he owns the machines and all of it right, and then he can make an okay living from that. But then when you, as a new farmer, you come there and then even though if you pay a very low lease on land, you still have to buy the machines, which is a lot of money and then maybe you want to do something a little bit different on the farm, then you have to invest that money and then, if you take that into consideration, then already you're paying the bank a big chunk of the money that you earn, and then it doesn't add up anymore. And so there was these huge hopes raised from my father-in-law and in these young families, and there was a lot of broken hearts.
Speaker 2:It's very sad. And then I thought, well, there's a piece in the puzzle missing. Twiland is not the solution for this big question and we need to establish an institution. And then I thought, well, there's a piece in the puzzle missing. Coutureland is not the solution for this big question and we need to establish an institution that, together with Coutureland, Coutureland solves the question on the land ownership, but we need to establish an institution that enables farm successions outside of the family for new farm entrants.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it makes absolute sense and thank you so much for doing that. Continuing to search for other pieces of the puzzle are actually finding them and taking on the challenge the fun challenge, interesting challenge and scary challenge of replicating something. Of course, that has been done, but in a very different context. We are two neighboring countries but it can let's say it couldn't be different, but definitely different rules, regulation, institutions and all of that. So I'm looking forward to check in in a bit, maybe not waiting six years as we did now, or five and a half, but see where the training will of next generation of farmers will take you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I very much look forward to telling you about a big success in a couple of years.
Speaker 1:We're aiming for the 75. No, I'm joking, I think any new farmers in the first years because that's also interesting, maybe, like in the France example what did they think when they started? What did they start with? Was it? Did they have made improvements over the years to not that it needs to be more than 75, but 75 is really high, like it's a good chunk of people, at least more than half, which is amazing. Have they did they start out that way or have they improved over time in terms of iterations?
Speaker 2:and things. Do you know? I don't know that. Actually that's part of our project to research, to document how it started with them I don't know so much about the origins of it, to be honest. And then and then to understand how, in Belgium, they replicated it so successfully and what has been happening in Spain and in Finland in the past couple of years, where they also tried to replicate it. Yeah so that's part of our project to learn from that.
Speaker 1:I have to ask actually what's happening now on the farm of your father-in-law? He's still 70 years old and he's still farming. Is one of the goals. You might be finding someone well-trained after a couple of years. That would be an interesting twist.
Speaker 2:I do imagine that in my timeline, in something like three to four years, that we will turn that into an incubator farm and we have so. Because we were not able to find a succession for the farm, coutureland decided that they don't want to buy the land. So right now we decided that my wife will take over the land, just in a legal sense, just to have a succession for feeling responsible for it taking care of it in a way and then we will see what is the best that we can do with it, turning it into an incubator farm or something like that.
Speaker 2:And for now, my father-in-law. He is still the main farmer there and he reduced a lot of his activities. He stopped having animals there and he stopped growing the more complicated crops and, interestingly, he had the best, financially speaking, the best year the last year, as he reduced a lot of the activities that he was doing.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Let's see in a couple of years if we have another twist, another turn in the story there as well.
Speaker 2:There's a little bit of well by the time this is going live. This is already a few months in the past, but just last week we had a very dramatic development because the past half year a young farmer, a 20 year old farmer, has joined my father-in-law as an employee and we had again big hopes that maybe he can take over the farm and last week he had a very serious accident. Oh wow, and now everything. It's unclear how, whether he's going to be able to walk even so.
Speaker 1:Wow, the farming business. It's one of the most dangerous, probably with construction or factories, but it's big machines, a lot of risks, not enough sleep, and it's unfortunate that it's not. Yeah, it happens.
Speaker 2:Big, lethal and very sharp machines that are, yeah, almost too too big to handle, which got us into this mess in many cases yeah, so, yeah, looking forward to tomorrow, I'm going to my father-in-law's farm with my wife and we're talking about the farm succession, so to say, because there's a farm succession going on yeah, good, good luck with that and yeah, thank you for coming on here and share about the next chapters in your journey. Thank you for having me Very excited to keep sharing.
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