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
386 Lauren Tucker - Inner regen work, gut molds, almonds groves in the Central Valley and taste buds
This is a check-in conversation with Lauren Tucker, co-founder of Kiss the Ground and Renourish Studios. We talk about wrapping up the cohort at Renourish Studio, where they’ve worked for three years with a diverse group of entrepreneurs and investors across the US food and agriculture system.
How do you bring the fact that we are part of a living system into your work in commercial organisations? Lauren shares lessons learned, and what they’re doing moving forward. How much of this work is inner work—how we see the world, what we think is possible and not—vs. outer work like planting cover crops, digging swales, showing the financials and nutrient density of almonds, and demonstrating how regenerative farming systems are more alive by measuring biodiversity? How do we open up to opportunities like small water cycle restoration, instead of only thinking about cover crops on our farm?
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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 Lauren Tucker, co-founder of Kiss the Ground and Renourish Studios, where we discuss the wrapping up of the cohort of their studio, where they've worked for three years with a diverse group of entrepreneurs and investors across the food and ag system in the US. How do you bring the fact that we are all part of a living system into your work, into commercial organizations that have, as we know, different KPIs? Lauren shares lessons learned and what they are doing moving forward. We talk about why pre-competitive collaboration works really well. We talk about breadfruit and how important operating loans are and what the role of banks could be. We take a deep dive into the element industry in the Central Valley of California. We talk about the water cycle in the Central Valley and how to potentially restore it. We talk about flavor, getting people back in touch with their taste buds. And the molds living in your gut. Don't get scared, we can hack them. Or they might have already hacked us. Do you also feel like you're bitten and controlled by the soil bug? Enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Lauren. 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 Lauren back on the show. It's been the third time on the podcast we talked quite a while ago, two and a half years, which could be very long and a lifetime or very short, depending on what kind of cycles you are in. And we're gonna discuss re-nourished studios. So I'm very happy to have you back, and of course, looking forward to discuss a lot of things, including Elments, which is always interesting. Welcome back, Lauren. Thank you. Great to be here. And to start with the with a question for people that didn't listen to the previous two, which of course I was I will link below. But re-nourish, what what was it? Because you wrapped up a few months ago a big piece of work or a big, I don't know, project if it's the right word, but a cohort of amazing entrepreneurs and people working in the food space. And then we're gonna talk what re-nourish is now. But what have you wrapped up, let's say, in spring northern hemisphere, so May June of this year, 2025?
SPEAKER_01:Sure. So Renourish Studio started as a grand experiment. And over three years ago, as all good things do. So a little over three years ago, we started a cohort of food business leaders, investors, nonprofits in the food space who were really inspired to go beyond regenerative sourcing to look at regenerative thinking and to look at the paradigm in which we see the world. And so we spent three years together. We had 33 people join us for the entire journey, and then a few people flowed in and out because we had some people join in the second year, and a few people changed positions. So I think there are 47 total that flowed in and out of the space. And we met regularly.
SPEAKER_00:That's a lot, actually. That's a lot of people, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:A lot of humans.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because that's how I think you were talking about like 23, 23 people of the first cohort. So it's almost double with people floating in and out and joining the second year. Wow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. It was just such an incredible gift to be able to hold that container and work with so many different people. And we were every couple weeks on Zoom and we changed it up over the years. I think we started with every other week, two-hour Zooms, and on off weeks doing meetings, more individual meetings with folks. And we ended up, I think, once a month on Zoom towards the end, but individual resourcing twice a month with each different business or nonprofit that was in the cohort. And then three events a year. So we went to many different places all over the US and Mexico. Really, it was a grand experiment because we stepped into the unknown together and we were very clear that was the intention. We said, look, we're here to work on paradigm, we're here to see what it means to apply living systems thinking to ourselves, to our business strategy, and to the way our business can evolve a system, and what could be the result of that. And we were really committed to integration, but we kept it very open. And so we had very open-ended results. So we had several people who started new offerings. We had people who ended up evolving company strategy. We have one client that we're still working with that has a 50-person team and they're going into an entire deep dive on company culture and engaging their entire company in this work. We had people feel like they got more aligned and quit their day jobs, and we had folks start consulting. So it was really all over the map as far as the what people did with it. But I think what it really energized in me is that the way we see the world makes a huge difference, and that is one place where we can really evolve systems.
SPEAKER_00:And the way we see the world shifts when you spend this kind of quality time with others that are starting to shift their worldview as well, or their glasses, or how like what's the filter they put on? That's pro did most of the people have that kind of shift? And did also some people not have it at all, or did they drop out? What were the ones that didn't I'm not saying click but didn't connect to that or didn't step into that as fully as some of the ones you just mentioned?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think I started to realize why communities of practice are so important because we all fall out, right? Just because I've been engaging in learning what a regenerative paradigm means and engaging and integrating it into my life doesn't mean I'm gonna operate from that perspective all the time. It's not like an on-off switch, right? And so I think that's where we discovered that community is really important. And so people would have aha moments and then go back to work and struggle to integrate. Or we'd come back together, and whoever was asleep hopefully was being woken up by someone else. And that was one of the reasons I really loved working on a team in this project as well, is because it allowed us to do that as people who were leading the space, bringing ideas and frameworks and being the ones on the path with everyone else. It allowed us to be that for each other as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, which is so needed. I remember from last conversations, of course, being in the space for so long as you have been, and being one of the people that not started the fire, but definitely made the fire a lot bigger with Kiss the Ground, and really when nobody or very few people, let's say in the food space, we're talking about soil, and then seeing it blossoming, and then also I remember from the I think one of the earlier decks of Renurished, like if we only focus on soil health, that's what we're gonna get. Healthy soil, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's so much bigger than that, or it's so much deeper, and it's so much this is systems change. And so, do you consider it a success? We talked about it last time as well, but like what what because of course you didn't define it to begin with, because this was an open project, an open process, seeing would even people show up, would they stay around, would they stick around, would it linger after one year, and maybe the third meeting you do in person and nobody showed up anymore, and that was it? And or the zoom become became an empty Zoom room, or would hundreds flock to it, or like what do you can now looking back at this cohort, what do you consider it a success, if that's even a fair question to ask in in these kind of processes?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think it was a success in that people were able to integrate new ways of seeing and thinking into their businesses. I think because we gathered such a broad group of people that it wasn't so satisfying in that we could see the impact on a singular system. And so that's a lot of where we're thinking about going now and starting to work is how we can work on specific cropping systems? So, can we work with the dairy industry and bring stakeholders together all in dairy? Can we we have a potential client who's really interested in us helping to bring breadfruit to market and looking at how you would grow an export market for breadfruit in a non-extractive way? Can we build in regenerative thinking to something that might become a commodity in the future? But can we do that differently from the beginning? And that's really exciting to do.
SPEAKER_00:What is what is breadfruit? What is breadfruit and bread that grows Hawaii native? Yeah. Yeah. Like, how can you not know that? But for people that don't, people in the back of the room, they're like now taking their phone and Googling or ChatGPT or Claude, what is breadfruit and why is it so interesting?
SPEAKER_01:Breadfruit's amazing. It's a complex carbohydrate that grows on trees. I believe it's native to Polynesia, and now it grows in many tropical places all over the world. And the folks that we've been collaborating with are in Costa Rica, and yeah, there's this interest to grow a global export market because people in the country aren't really seeing it as a staple crop.
SPEAKER_00:It's considered poor man's food, which is so like many very healthy and very interesting growing food, like beans in many places, like money legumes. I think there's a central, there's a theme there of poor man's food that should be much more well known locally and in general because it just makes so much sense from environmental health and socially. But yeah, okay, so it's but that's difficult to change, probably in Costa Rica on the ground. That needs a significant media campaign to figure it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And so often people think, oh, let's go to the export market because that's gonna be where we can find the money, the economy, the potential purchasers, right? And I'm so curious about how we could build an export market in a way that could reinvest in the local. And what would that look like? And seeing how other commodity crops have gone, could we learn some lessons and do it differently? And so, yeah, I'm getting really energized about utilizing the skills that I've been practicing both with White Buffalo in convening crop-specific projects in a region, which their region is really focused on California, and the skills that we've developed in helping people work on paradigm and seeing things from regeneration as a process and business strategy and leadership and company culture from regeneration as a process. So we're looking at combining those two skill sets and saying, okay, can we start to work on focused systems and convene around them?
SPEAKER_00:And is it a coincidence that two of those are tree-based crops?
SPEAKER_01:No, I'm really interested in working in dairy systems. I'm really curious about corn and soy and if we have a role to play in corn and soy. That would be the greatest joy in the Americas because, especially in North America, it's probably our biggest crop. And really, if you look at it, it's not about corn and soy, it's about how do we feed animals because that's where most of those acres are being dedicated. Carbs, right?
SPEAKER_00:Ethanol is quite a significant piece as well. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It is, yes. And so it's really a question. This is where I get so jazzed about thinking about whole systems, but not thinking about whole systems from a mechanical point of view, from a living point of view, is really everything's connected. And so we can't work on the Midwest and the health of the Midwest in the United States without thinking about ethanol and animal feed and all the global forces that are affecting those markets.
SPEAKER_00:And do you see maybe it's wishful thinking, or like what would an ideal client or partner look like? What kind of questions would you like somebody to ask in the animal feed side or in the soy and corn one to maybe they're already asking it? Do you see some of those signs? Because objectively, it's probably the biggest landmass we can influence is that kind of system. Very monoculture, very extractive, but also a lot of potential. And have you gotten those questions already? Or if not, what kind of questions would you like to receive from that system or those systems in the Midwest?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so the Midwest, I don't know enough about to even commit to working there yet. And I'm super curious. I think one thing I'm really excited about that I've been tracking in the Midwest is more rise of perennial agriculture. So more folks diversifying, growing acres, looking at agroforestry, looking at animals integrating with trees. And so I'm really curious about that. Kernza has grown quite a bit. I was just at a trade show and seeing all the products that are being made from it and all the partnerships to get Kernza out in the marketplace. And so there's incredible innovative work being done. And I'm just so curious if we were to gather more stakeholders in that system that don't normally talk, aren't normally at the table together. And could we create a pre-competitive atmosphere where we could really work on the whole of it? One of the things I've been tracking is that I'm seeing a lot of folks who have been in the regen ag movement for many years are tired. The a lot of folks have been pushing the boulder up the hill. And I had a friend a couple months say to a couple months ago say to me, Yeah, and now the boulder's flattening us like a pancake as it rolls back down. And so I think we're at that moment in time where we need a lot of diverse stakeholders to come to the table because the innovative folks can't keep pushing by themselves.
SPEAKER_00:And do you see that happening in Almonds? Is that a place or in the system where you are interacting with White Buffalo? Is that nothing further along, but at least those questions are on the table? Or people are at the table, let's say.
SPEAKER_01:Almonds has been a really incredible learning journey. Again, the Almond Project is a project of White Buffalo, and I've been working on that in collaboration with White Buffalo for a little over four years at this point. And we started with a scientific study on 160 acres looking at conventional almond orchards plus soil health practices and organic orchards plus soil health practices. And what we didn't realize at the time was when you get a small group of stakeholders together to fund science takes forever, which is a huge blessing. And so then we have relationship development that happens over time. So it's a five-year scientific study. And what's happened is there's been so much more interest in our work, and we've added all of these streams of work and collaborations. And now we have much larger companies joining us. We have a large company that joined us that is a silent partner, and we have tiny companies in the fold and medium-size. And so working with all these purchasers of almonds and then a few different farms and a processor, yeah, we're seeing that pre-competitive collaboration is really working. And so we're working on things such as nutrient density testing, in addition to the soil health research. We're working on understanding the landscape of certifications. Right now we're scoping a project and looking at all of the different platforms that can measure insetting and carbon sequestration and understanding if they're even ready for some sort of claim that a company can make and comparing our data to those platforms. And we've really been looking at economics, almonds as a as an economy are bizarre. And when you have a commodity crop that goes well, because it goes up and down with market whims, essentially, and it's not based on the true cost of growing almonds. So some years the market's great and farmers make a ton, and other years the cost of production is higher than the price that almonds are being sold at.
SPEAKER_00:And it sounds like a normal commodity market, right? That's uh the thing. And but it's of course any perennial is tricky because it's not you can plant a lot more when you know the market. Like it's not a you have no flexibility in that sense. Either you harvest or you don't, or yeah, you put into work that year, but yeah, the tree is there and will die if you don't fertilize and irrigate, probably.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and we've seen some really large actors in the almond industry go bankrupt in the last couple years because of that volatile market. And then California is facing so many issues around climate, really, and the impacts of monoculture. People talk about water a lot. I think water is very complex, but essentially we're not farming with the ecology. We're farming with a man-made canal system. And I think that is the root of our issue, not necessarily which crop is using quote unquote too much water, but how far are we from what the landscape wants to do? And so there's, yeah, there's, I'm starting to hear interests from almond growers who want to diversify. And that is really exciting to me. And then it brings up another question: who is gonna help the market do that? And can we have farmers creating plans for meeting all these market demands in the way they want to? Right? The market saying we want carbon sequestration, we want water use efficiency, we want fair labor, we want nutrient density, we want all these things. Oh, but we've designed a system that's for scale and food safety, and none of these. And so, yeah, is the market gonna come in and help us source agave from the same land that's growing almonds and source olives from the same growing land, and who's gonna eat all the sheep that we're integrating into the orchards? And so I think that there's a lot that is needed right now in the regenerative ag movement around collaboration and really large-scale collaboration to look at these whole systems.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, almost like how do you buy again a full rotation? Of course, isn't it a rotation, but how do you buy from a landscape not just one commodity crop, but what a landscape can and wants to grow? Yeah, the sheep needs a need a place, the almonds, the olives, and everything else that you can do. And of course, there might be different buyers because they are super specialized in shipping olive, ship shipping almonds all over the world, but that won't sustain a system, a living system. That's just not gonna work.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I'm just so so curious how do we evolve past commodity markets and what is it gonna take? And can we do product development not from what we think a customer might buy based on consumer research, but could we do product development based on what the land can provide and what is healthiest for the land to provide? That would be monumental if we could switch that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think we still need to check in with them, but the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has done a lot of work around product redevelopment based on what landscapes can actually grow, instead of oh, we do this one single cash crop and we make it as sustainable or regen as possible, but then all the other things that the farmer also needs to grow that will be dumped somewhere else, or who knows if they even find a buyer. And what would that look like? What are even the questions to ask in a landscape that is so industrialized as the Central Valley in California? Like, how would how would you even how do you listen to land that has been paved over, let's say, or desertified so much to see what a landscape wants to grow or could grow in these kinds of circumstances with the climate weirding that you're seeing as well, with all the fights on water and the fires, etc. Like, what would a process like that look like?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, I think it's really important to look at the long arc of history and to be able to see new potential from that lens and then to go back to the practicalities of what are people facing and what are people invested in today. So it's a bit of a both and. So can we remember our history and understand what this landscape used to be or really still is, but we've just changed it in all these strange human ways? So snowpack melting down from the Sierras, creating seasonal wetlands, we know that's what the ecosystem wants to do. And so can we remember that history and acknowledge the native peoples who are still here who are holding some of that knowledge of being in relationship with place and knowing how to cultivate that relationship? And can we acknowledge that people are multimillion dollars, maybe even billion dollars, invested in systems that are in the Central Valley, and so we're not gonna wipe those away or disregard them. And so it's a both a bit of a both and it's like how can we evolve from here, but also understand our context? Our context isn't starting from today where everything's monocultured and we have canal systems, and this is how we access water, right?
SPEAKER_00:So it's uh it feels like a both and do you see that specific system willing to step into that kind of thinking, like being part of a living system and not a mechanized or mechanical mindset? Do you see because that's like the way we started, like how do you see the world is one of the biggest shifts you can make? Do you see enough people in like up and down, let's say the value chain, also in terms of size, because you need a bit of body to to do things, to have a bit of size to start making these kind of changes or to even start asking those questions. Do you feel Central Valley is becoming ready for or is ready for those kind of of deep transformations?
SPEAKER_01:I think it's a bit on the spectrum. I think there are some folks who are already innovating and we need to uplift them and bring them support so that they're not going at it alone. I think that there's also some pretty basic, almost human decency that we need to start with. We have so many purchasers of almonds, and this is probably true of any commodity system, but we have so many purchasers of almonds who make all the pricing decisions, write all the contracts, negotiate on the pennies who have never even visited a farm, don't even know what an almond tree looks like, right? And so we need to first do some basic human connection and start with respect. Sometimes it feels too basic, but I actually think that the system really needs that. And we've seen it over and over again in the work we've been doing in almonds, that this is really powerful to have a purchaser get to know a grower, get to know our processor, and be able to sit in the same room and realize that we're all human, we all have families, we all want to care for our community, we all basically care. And can we start there instead of coming to the table with these are the metrics I need you to meet? And I sat in my skyscraper and decided what are the reports you need to fill out because I'm afraid that you're doing something bad. And then how's the farmer gonna feel? Right? And where are we starting those discussions from? And so I think we need a bit of both. There's innovators who are already working on really pushing the boundaries of what this system can become in the future, and we need to uplift them and come around them. And we also need some really basic connections, care, breaking down barriers.
SPEAKER_00:And do you see is it different like the four years you're in that system like four years ago? Of course, are there already some results from the study that this whole thing started with, even though it's a five-year study and we're four years in? Are is there a different wind you feel, or a different energy compared to four years ago, or not? Is it are the people more people showing up, different people showing up, stepping into okay, something is off and we need to like this cannot continue like this. Like the sense of urgency has it been changing in the value, and of course, are there some results from the study?
SPEAKER_01:Certainly. Yeah, on the soil health results, the mid-year sample or the mid-study sampling that we did last fall, so that's three years into a five-year, it showed us honestly exactly what we were hoping to see in all the short-term metrics of carbon and biology. They were all trending in a positive direction. Water infiltration, we're seeing more infiltration in field. And it's funny to me that we had to do the project in this way. This science has already been done. But the point of this project was to do the science with certain stakeholders. It was to do the science with certain stakeholders at the table who had a stake in the science, right? So that it wasn't hidden on a university shelf and so that it could be integrated and will-building. And so, not surprised, really glad that the results are trending in the direction we thought they might.
SPEAKER_00:Compared to the other studies already done in the space, so there's no, but it's an excuse to get people at the table. Interesting, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. Yeah, and then we see more companies that are willing to pay some sort of benefit or premium of the added cost because all of these soil health practices in almonds specifically cost more. Cover crops, compost, application, animal integration, they're all added costs. There's no cost savings. It's not the same story as some other systems. And so we're seeing a lot of actors coming in to pay for the actual farm cost. But on a system level, it's such a tiny amount of acreage. And so we're really asking questions about, again, looking at the whole of the system, looking at the whole of the economics and wondering what else, where is the money in the system stuck? And where else could we fund this? And one idea we had, and if a bank is listening to this and wants to call me, please do. One idea we had was can we find a bank that's willing to give a slightly lower interest rate on operating capital and tie it to soil health outcomes? That honestly would make the biggest difference and allow us to transform so many acres. More so than a previous. Huge cost. I think loans are around nine, nine and a half percent right now, just in general. And if you look At servicing debt for land, servicing debt for machinery, servicing debt for even just operating capital before you and the gap between when you actually have to spend the money and when you get paid. That's a huge cost. And so we're just starting to ask all these questions altogether. Can we zoom out and really see the complexity of how the system is currently working and find some more points where we can evolve?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I remember there was a project which I don't think it went anywhere, but with Replant Capital and I don't remember which bank, Danone for sure, was involved for their almond-based milk replacement, so not a non-dairy milk. And they were banking at the same bank as so Danone was banking at the same bank as one of the larger almond growers. So Replant put a project together, it didn't go, and I don't remember the drama or the story behind it, which we might need to cover sometimes on the podcast. But they were made an interesting connection where the same banker basically or the same bank could be servicing, and of course, Danone could be an off-taker and a certain guarantee if certain things were in place with the almond grower and the bank could be, let's say, a bit more favorable when those things happened, but that didn't go anywhere. But it's of course a yeah, a very obvious thought, especially with bankruptcies going around, especially with like the risk of this industry suffering from another downturn or whatever happens to commodity prices that nobody controls, or some people are, but not us at least. Do you see that financial sector in that sense starting to show up as well? And say we start to see the risk, let's say, and we would like to sit at this table as well in this study just because of resilience of our farmers.
SPEAKER_01:I've had some early interesting conversations with folks in the financial sector, and no one's at the table yet, but that doesn't mean that they're not willing to be, or that we haven't met the right people. And yeah, I'm really excited to have those conversations and have them show up. And this is again why I'm so energized to work with people on their thinking and paradigm looking at one whole system, because I think that's going to be part of it too, right? We only see what we see because those are the glasses we're wearing or it's the water we're swimming in, right? And sometimes we need a disruption in order to see new potential. And I think that there's a lot of potential for us to evolve food systems and do it pretty rapidly if we can collaborate more and if we can start to really see all the forces at play in each of these systems.
SPEAKER_00:And when you look at that specific one of the Central Valley, we spent quite a bit of time with the podcast talking about water cycles and what what does regeneration at scale look like in one watershed, and how does it influence rain patterns and snow patterns and all of those things? But you need enough scale to start influencing that. You need enough literally life on the land, otherwise you you just don't have the influence, let's say, on the atmosphere around. Are water cycles and regeneration at scale at all part of the conversation?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, we're talking about them quite a bit, and we did a farmer innovation, I guess we could call it working group. We brought farmers from California, from Spain, Portugal together this spring for a series of Zoom calls. And the question was very open-ended. It was how do we evolve almond growing for what the market's actually now demanding around carbon and nutrient density and care for ecosystems and what we all want, care for community and place and sustainability of the industry, or at least looking at resilience. And one of the ideas was so obvious. And I just wish we could align the actors to do this. It was, well, we know it would make a huge difference if we could just keep all of the ground covered in California. And if we could do that on a large enough scale, we should be able to see a small water cycle impact to that and actually bring back rain to a region that is suffering from very odd weather patterns and seasons of drought, right? To say the least.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. To say the least. And so again, it's just wild to me how many, how many silos we're all working in.
SPEAKER_00:Well, how did that land? Because I notice often, even when you say something like that, if we have the ground covered at a significant enough scale, we impact rain patterns. That little sentence can really open your eyes and open your mind, of course, but it can also sound like sci-fi, and then people are like, what have you been on to? What have you been smoking? And so, how does something like that land with a group of almond farmers from all over the world?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, this was a pretty probably progressive group, and everyone was excited about it. And then the question was more, okay, who's gonna help coordinate that? And how does that actually happen? Yeah, and we have a lot of questions around government right now in the United States, and I don't even know if I want to go there, but what should be a role of a government is to be able to see a system at that level and help coordinate something like that. But we're yeah, we're not seeing the motivation yet on this specific issue.
SPEAKER_00:But I think it's an interesting question, especially in a system that is so heavily farmed and so much at stake. Like literally tens of billions of dollars are planted there, not gonna go anywhere. It's not you pick up the tree and you go to another valley, and all of the industry, everything, like infrastructure, everything is around. And so it's almost, and just thinking of previous guests like Ali bin from Pakistan, like starting to ask those questions, okay, what would it cost? And how much do you need to plant? And what kind of cover crop, of course, the kind of like how many acres do you need to and where more or less? Do we have the compute power now to to model that and say, okay, it's and is that then doable, or is it just completely sci-fi? Okay, we need to cover 80%. That's not gonna work. But if it's 15, like what's the size of the space we're talking about before when you can actually say there's a good chance you start influencing the small water cycle with this amount, and just to be safe, we need 20. I don't know. Like, what are like can we can we make it more concrete? And then, of course, the question okay, how much does a cover crop cost per hectare or per acre? And can we put a number on it, more or less, just a ballpark, so we have a feeling like are we talking insane money or are we talking moonshot money? Are we talking reasonable insurance money? What's the range? Because I have no clue. But I start to sense that we might be able to at least ask those questions and get a like. I think he did some calculations, Alibin, on Valencia and the big floods that happened there now, I think a year ago. And so, what would have been needed in that ecosystem? What would have been planted upstream, downstream, etc., to minimize some of the damage or to restore the small water cycle there, so not all the build-up rain over and humidity over the summer, the hot summer in the Mediterranean wouldn't have landed there or would have landed differently, let's say. And it wasn't that critical. There's that's not an and of course there are trees, but it's not an out of this world amount of hectares that that we need to influence. And I think we're getting to a side, okay, let's see if we can ask that question, but I don't think we're there yet, let's say, for cover crop in the Central Valley. But we can ask Ali just to see if if that's a fun theoretical question to to ponder or a project to just to say, okay, what's the range? What are we talking about here, more or less?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Now I'm really excited to ask him and ask a lot of people can we actually calculate that?
SPEAKER_00:And it must be a fascinating question for people working working water cycles. Okay, what's okay, Central Valley? These are the parameters, more or less. What are we talking? Like just as a as an exercise.
SPEAKER_01:Totally. And it's not just cover crops, because if you look at California's geography, you know, what's above a valley, but mountains, right? And hillsides. And if you look at those hillsides, even taking a scan of Google Earth, that most of them are bare. And not knowing a ton of ton about this. I'm not a scientist, I'm not an ecologist, but just being around, I'm pretty sure we're supposed to have trees on the tops of hillsides and mountains, and that's a really important aspect of the water cycle, too. And I think what I'm seeing happening, there's so many cover crop efforts. Almost every major food company is funding some version of cover crops in California. We see multiple nonprofits working on this. We see government efforts, but they're so sporadic and uncoordinated. And so I'm so curious, can we start to work a little more together? And I see a lot of, oh, well, this is our project, and this is how it's slightly different from everyone else's, right? We all want to differentiate ourselves and almost take our slightly different version of an idea. And that's wonderful. It's wonderful that humans innovate in that way, and it's part of our genius, is that we can all riff off each other and bring out our own version. But sometimes I think it's messing us up. And I'm just so curious: can there be more coordination and excitement in this direction? And I think some of that is we all have to see the direction and get excited about it together. And then we can all bring our creativity to it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because there is a coordination role there. Like it's amazing to do cover crops and amazing to do hillside restoration, etc. But my hunch is that in a system, there are places to there are certain places where it's more important to start. Not that others are not important, but it's there's an order of things. If you do the modeling, okay, this hillside is fundamental because the winds always pass in this way, and this is a certain height and a certain, and this hillside is maybe less, it's number three on the list that we're gonna do. And we have limited resources, so let's coordinate, and probably the same is with cover crops, and the same is with in the system, like where are the nodal points, and this, of course, systems thinking comes into that. And my bet probably is that that a lot of these coordination efforts are gonna get around water and water cycles because it's such a universal, it doesn't matter if you even if you have the biggest farm, like it really matters what happens around you, upstream, downstream, all the way down to the sea and all the way up to the hills and the mountains. And there's no way that your farm is gonna be in itself an ecosystem unless you're living maybe in Australia. But some most other places you need your neighbors' neighbors, and you need all the way. And water seems to be that binding more than soil carbon and more than maybe even nutrient density, seems to be that binding piece. Okay, we are and I've seen that happening in valleys, specifically the Muga Valley in Spain, when Steph puts the big map on the table, like of the whole valley, all the way down to the sea, and you see everybody leaning in and you see the different typical. Of course, we should get a 3D one so you can actually see the the different places, and if you can get the clouds coming in, like then you can understand the full system and not just uh this patch of forestry and this patch of this and this patch of intensive apple orchards. And so I I wouldn't be surprised if we have a conversation in a couple of years that that this the water peace and not just our irrigation and all of course needs to be more efficient and all of that, but actually rain. Let's talk about rain, rain patterns. Let's see, let's see if that we can get people excited about rain patterns and our influence, even though it sounds like sci-fi. Totally.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, now you're motivating me to start Googling and see who already has made that map for the Central Valley. And yeah, I'm just always left asking these questions. Why are people working in such silos, right? Why are the folks who made that map already not talking to the large-scale growers? And are they scared of them? Do they think they don't care? And why isn't that information?
SPEAKER_00:They will care about rain, I think. That's a it's a safe bet to make that everybody cares about rain. Too much, too little, it's there's just nobody that doesn't care in growing. Yeah. Very interesting. And nutrient density, just to bring up another, you mentioned it a few times. How has the interest, maybe also the research now already, is there some like in almonds and tree crops, uh not crops specifically? Uh what have you seen? What have you learned? What's the latest on the the other, let's say, buzzword next to water cycles, which it probably is a bit of a bigger buzzword at the moment, nutrient density or quality, flavor. Sure.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so what we're doing around nutrient density is we took some samples last year, sent them to a lab at UC Davis, and that was meant to be our baseline to see if there was a difference between conventional plus soil health practices, organic plus soil health practices. And so we'll know again in two years when we do another sampling if there's some sort of difference. We already started to see a slight statistically significant difference of more antioxidants in both of the plots with soil health practices. But there's a lot of caveat to that. Number one, it was a small sample size, and so we really can't make claims at all. So I probably shouldn't even share publicly. That's what we saw. And there's all these complexities around different growing practices and different macro and micronutrients that I really don't understand. Some have more fats, some have more sugars, some have more proteins. And yeah, so there's a lot of that. And it's not so cut and dry, like the systems that's more biodiverse with better soil equals better food. I don't actually think that's quite the story. And I think that's I hold a belief that more complexity and biodiversity is more resilience and more health. And so I think that over time maybe we'll see that in the science. But it's a big open question. And I'm just now starting to be in touch with folks who are doing similar studies and learn from what they're learning. But yeah, some of the results are all over the map. And so I don't I think that there's an excitement in the industry to learn, but it seems in many ways like a very new frontier, we could call it.
SPEAKER_00:Because in nut crops, has like quality or like antioxidants, etc., has that never been a question or never been a topic?
SPEAKER_01:I think it's been a topic, but I think what's new is now people are really comparing it to different growing styles. And there's way more research between conventional and organic. And so that research is out there, but now layering and regenerative practices is the big question that I'm seeing. And yeah, I think it's also a question of what we're looking for. I think that there's a lot of trends in the marketplace right now, especially in packaged food, for things to be, say, protein rich. Like I was just at a trade show and saw protein-rich ice cream, right? And so maybe it's more natural for an almond to have less protein, but people are looking for more protein. And so then, yeah, how are we matching what is the healthiest for the growing system and the nutrient density that's the most natural with all these market trends? And I think that's gonna get really confusing as well.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely, yeah. What we're it's the current fad with a D versus the actual what a landscape can grow and wants to grow and what a tree in its optimum health would do might not be the same thing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And I just always wonder why we need so much science. It's like it feels better to walk into an intact ecosystem, or it feels better to walk into a forest that has is teeming with life versus a bunch of trees with a few animals in between. And can we start to use some of our human senses in all of this? I have a colleague and friend who has been working on flavor and the way we taste as the lost human sense and looking at flavor as the best way for us to really understand nutrition instead of a dietary plan or a glucose monitor or all the things that we put in place for trying to decide how to eat healthy. And really, our bodies tell us at the end of the day, but then have our bodies been hacked by, I don't know, bacteria, fungi, molds, processed foods, what we've been used to, our cultures, right? And so, how do we learn to trust our senses again? Is another question.
SPEAKER_00:I was on my way to starting to think about wrapping up this conversation, but I feel a rabbit hole opening up very quickly here.
SPEAKER_01:We just opened a rabbit hole, yes.
SPEAKER_00:We definitely opened one on flavor. And how tell me more. What's the have we been hacked? Can we untrain our tongue or train our tongue again in terms of because we have a massive sensor in our nose, our tongue, and everything around your mouth when you eat? And we've been bombarded with very well-engineered foods that made sure you don't stop eating that ice cream, that chip, or whatever, like their whole departments, only thinking about the crackiness of your Pringle chip. And not to pick on Pringles necessarily, but like how what do you see in flavor? What do you not see? Sorry, what do you taste in flavor?
SPEAKER_01:What do I think about it?
SPEAKER_00:And tell me more about his friend.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so she was part of the cohort, and her work is called The Flavor Remedy, and I'm really excited about the narrative that she's helping to bring. And yeah, so she was really into getting people back in touch with her taste buds and looking at the correlation between what we taste as really tasty and nutrient density and regenerative agriculture and all those links. But I've had my own personal journey around this in the past year with mold toxicity and detoxing from it. We had black mold in a home and moved, but mold stays in your body at a certain level, and you can't detox it unless you're really doing it intentionally with foods and herbs and sweating, really pulling binders, pulling it out of your body. And throughout that process, I realized how much of my cravings were not coming from my mind. Or they were coming from my mind, but they were actually coming from these organisms in my gut, right? And so having this whole personal journey with my relationship to health and beings that were living in my stomach that were not me, but actually affect your hormones, affect your thoughts, affect you the clarity of your thinking. It's wild. And I think that a lot of us have candidas and molds and funguses that are brewing in our microbiome. And this isn't my area of expertise. There's a lot of folks who are focusing on this and just having a personal journey with it. I realized, wow, how are we going to learn to literally trust our guts again if they've been hacked both by modern food and are being hijacked by entities that are not necessarily our beings? And so I think it's a whole wild journey. And yeah, leads me back to some of the work that we're going to continue to do and renourish, which is working with folks on leadership development, not just working on our mindset, but working on our holistic selves, right? In order to work on our mindset, I really believe we need to work on our nervous systems and work-life balance and our health. And I think that, you know, what Renee Descartes and all of the scientists 400 or so years ago did to us when they separated mind from body and said that we could study things in parts. Yeah, we've been living that out for many centuries and it's really not working. And so a lot of this time period, I believe, is about reintegration and reintegration with ourselves as part of ecosystems. Like my health, I now believe is inseparable from the health of the planet. And whoa, what if we acted in that way? That would be wild.
SPEAKER_00:And how do you bring that to the procurement person in the skyscraper that never seen an almond tree? That's I think the like how do we like expose? I don't think it's the right word, but how do you yeah, how how do you even reach that? Reach a person like that without scaring and this is all we're gonna dance around a fire together and sing kumbaya. Like how do we which I think is the because if they haven't never seen an almond tree, let alone smelled ground cover or really walk bare feet like on in an orchard that is full of life versus an ulch orchard that isn't, how are you ever gonna taste the difference if you don't know like how you like what kind of molds they have living in their guts? That's the cravings and thus the thoughts and thus the hormones is probably yeah, you need a proper reset if somebody's already I don't have the answer to that, but I believe in trying. Definitely, and that might it's in makes it so important to gather around a proper table, an in-person one, and have food, and be in an ecosystem that's alive, and be exposed to those things, and yeah, hopefully have just enough time to have some small some small gut resets to before you go back to the skyscraper.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I've really come to believe that we are not motivated by information. Uh sometimes maybe, but not necessarily motivated. Exactly. We're not necessarily motivated by information or fear. I don't think fear is very helpful, but I do think that we're most motivated by something like curiosity and so, or wonder or joy. And so I'm so curious how we can all, as leaders in the regenerative movement, as folks who work in the food system, how do we create experiences, share experiences with the folks in our networks that we're working with that are curiosity building, that are joyful, right? Hearing a study about how much candida I might may or may not have and how that's affecting my decisions and how I should really cut out coffee and sugar and gluten and go on a detox, that sounds terrible. But sharing a really incredible meal and transformational experience, getting in touch with the living world, with some colleagues, that might be motivational. And then there might be a next step in there. And so just I think both you and I caught the soil bug where we learned about soil and then it went into a whole bug living in us that there's a bug living in our gut that is called the soil.
SPEAKER_00:100%, like now we named it, and that's just mindfully hacking our brain, and then so we are dedicating the next like whatever part of our career to working on. 100%. I don't know where I caught it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I definitely caught it, and then it turned into a deep dive that that continues to go and go into levels and new aspects of a holistic relationship with the earth that started with soil carbon sequestration. But yeah, I believe that if I can catch that bug, then maybe more people can catch that bug. And it I really think it happens through curiosity, not through statistics and fear and shaming people. Oh, everyone's unhealthy and you should really go on a cleanse. No, that doesn't really work.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I do see more people showing up as well. Like the soil bug is definitely spreading, it's a viral thing. And for different angles of the new bug biodiversity. Yeah, we need some new we need some new bugs on living systems, and also that is seems to be spreading though, and slowly, but I think after it's always this things after you've seen it, not that it's it, but after it's very difficult to unseen or unseeing that you're part of a living system. It's not that you can say, Oh, yeah, now I'm putting my glasses back on and I go back, or my shades, or something. It's very tricky. And after you visited certain places and have shared a meal, which makes, of course, the food part so interesting. Like it's really, and you've organized many of these, like how to get people out of the offices, out of the airco taxis, and into the field and into something, and if they are scared, not barefoot, if they are not scared, barefoot, and having amazing food surrounded by life, it really helps. It's not super scalable, you cannot have 500 people, but it creates meaningful differences and meaningful changes for those groups. So, for anybody who keeps doing that, please do because many people don't have the luxury to be on farms all the time, like we do, and to spend time with amazing farmers that are way out there in terms of thinking and doing that we can never comprehend. Hence, we did a series on farmer philosophy because it gets philosophical very quickly with regenerative pioneers, and so that shouldn't be underestimated how important those farm dinners and are to and you never know what clicks, and it could be the peach they eat, it could be the piece of sheep, it could be whatever the water they drink. Like we don't know what your gut, like we which one of your cravings will trigger the soil buck to to become prominent in your gut system.
SPEAKER_01:Totally. Yeah, and maybe if each of us cooked committed to cooking one person a meal, we'd get it done pretty quickly.
SPEAKER_00:That's a really good one, actually, as well, from scratch or mostly from scratch, and seeing where that goes. And I'm still wondering like, how do we bring more, maybe it's impossible, but more of the like the farm to the office or to the skyscraper? What's what difference does it make if somebody is looking at a procurement even and I don't know, put on the Apple Apple Pro glasses? I don't know if they're still around, but anyway, some of those and be transported virtually to to a field versus another field, and of course, one is full of life and the other one less so while you're tasting. Would you would that trigger some of the flavor coming back to the flavor piece? Or do you need to be there in person and really feel okay, this is a different like how do you train that, or how do you like if the investor doesn't come to the farm, can we bring the farm to the investor? Is still, or to the procurement guy or girl, is still a thought which I don't think anybody has done. If you have done, please reach out. I'm curious about the results, and I'm curious to double-click further on the flavor remedy. And I think it's a good place to wrap up. We were thinking about that 20 minutes ago and we went into the flavor rabbit hole. But I want to thank you so much for coming on here and sharing results, which is not the right answer, but like the journey of the cohort and of course where where that's leading to now.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. It was really great to be here. And yeah, I'm just I'm so energized by how people start to see the whole of systems and see all the complexities that are at work so that we can actually evolve them and stop just focusing on our silos and pushing boulders up hills alone. And so, yeah, if anyone's interested in either our leadership development work and strategy work with clients or to work on a system like dairy or corn or soy, would love to hear.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and we covered molds and small water cycles in the Central Valley, which are not often in the same conversation. So it was a very broad one and very practical. Thank you so much, Lauren.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, always a pleasure. Good to see you.
SPEAKER_00:So what? Why is this conversation important? Apart from the fact that we should talk way more about the inner journey of a lot of the regeneration work we are doing with farmers, it's I think Gabe Brown was the one saying it, or maybe somebody else. The most difficult real estate is in between your ears. Once we see what's possible, when we see the world differently, not saying everything is possible, not just starting to fly or levitate out of nowhere, but a lot more things will be possible. And how do we do that at scale, or how do we help people? Of course, it's amazing when 20 plus people spend three years in different retreats, etc., to really shift their worldview or really shift the glasses they're wearing, etc. But that's not gonna scale. And maybe that's okay. Maybe it doesn't scale like that. It has to go piece by piece, farm visit by farm visit, dinner on the farm, etc. etc. Maybe this is the scaling thought we always have is just not applicable here. But I do wonder, yeah, how do we bring specifically that? Of course, we talk about flavor here in this conversation and your taste bud and the molds living in your gut and all of that. But we also talk about something really big, the water cycle restoration movement that seems to be getting closer to some kind of breakthrough, let's say. But how do we make people across a valley like the Central Valley or any other watershed where you're active? How do we make people see the big picture? Like it's more than your farm, it's more than your neighbor's farm. This is, we need to really start thinking strategically. We discussed it with Douglas, professor in forestry in Wacheningen, which should be out around this as well, so you can listen to that as well. We discuss it at length with different people on like how water cycles are such a binding thing, and yet it's not happening yet, or it doesn't seem to be happening. Of course, we're arguing on irrigation rights and things like that. But we really need to think big, and we're not that good at that in general, and it forces us to cooperate, which is even more difficult. So, what leaves me here, I always love to check in with Lauren. She's been in this space for so long, has seen so much, and that by definition makes it interesting to see what she's working on. And the fact that she picks something like almonds in California is not an easy crop, it's a lot of a lot of money invested, a lot of money on the line, a huge pushback from different actors in terms of change, but also huge need of change. So, very curious to keep checking in with her and what she's doing there, and of course, how do we bring the inner work more into this journey? So I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for listening all the way to the end. And let me know in the comments, get in touch. LinkedIn, website are probably the easiest. They all get to us and we read everything. So thank you for that. And let me know what you think inner work versus outer work, and of course, how do we get all valleys and watersheds together working in the same direction when it comes to regeneration and water cycle restoration? Thank you for listening all the way to the end. For show notes and links discussed, check out our website, investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/slash posts. If you like 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 like most. And give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or your podcast player. That really, really helps us. Thanks again and see you next time.
