Category: Farmers First Tech

Chris Bloomfield and Daniel Reisman – We need animals outside to feed the planet sustainably

A conversation with Chris Bloomfield and Daniel Reisman, co-founders of Collie, a provider of virtual cow guidance system for managing production in grazing, about enabling regenerative dairy, how virtually fencing and cow guidance drastically reduce labour and boost production. To feed ourselves and the planet sustainably, we need to include animals as part of agriculture. We dive deep into going from vegan to grazing, animal welfare, and the state of our planet. How do we enable more farmers to hold complexity on their farms? How do we use technology to enable complexity instead of using technology to make everything mono, as we have done in the last 50 years?

Clint Brauer – After an investment of Chipotle, ready to scale his robots to weed hundreds of thousands of acres

A check-in interview with Clint Brauer, founder and CEO of Greenfield, company powering chemical-free agriculture with advanced AI-powered robots, about his dream to get chemicals and expensive machinery out of broad acre, row crop farming (AKA soy corn farming which currently occupies millions of acres around the world, especially in large industrialised agriculture countries), the ending of the era of the chemicals, and much more.

After interviewing Clint in September 2020, we check in on what has changed; farmers and many others in the space see that the era of chemicals is ending. It might not look like that yet, but we have already won: chemical-free, broad-acre farming is totally possible; now it is about execution. What else has changed? Is Clint still interested in integrating animals, and why has Chipotle invested in the company?

Alfred Grand – Why an Austrian farmer and researcher trained by earthworms is very excited about AI

A conversation with Alfred Grand, farmer at Grand Farm, an organic farm with a high proportion of research, about vermicompost and seed inoculation, but also what policymakers should know about farming. Plus, the role of technology in the regenerative transition. And why he is so excited about AI and robotics.
Dive deep in the story of a bike mechanic turned farmer and researcher, who has been trained by millions earthworms!

Sebastiaan Huisman – Farmers die slowly

A conversation with Sebastiaan Huisman, large-scale organic farmer and advisor, about consulting on many large farm transitions, including the British royal family and working with Wildfarmed. Why is he so optimistic about biodynamic, holistic, and regenerative farming, and why does it all start with children?

Picking apples on an biodynamic farm at age 12 led to setting up one of the largest biodynamic farms in Europe, almost 2000 hectares in Poland, on very very poor soil, Sebastian had an incredible journey from that Dutch farm to the creation of one of Europe’s largest biodynamic farms. As he shares his story, we’ll uncover the transformative impact of regenerative agriculture, not just on the soil but also on the very heart of the community.

Abby Rose – On raising non-extractive funding and the power of AI to help farmers with observation

A conversation with Abby Rose, co-founder of Vidacycle and Farmerama, about the role and potential of AI in observation, alternative investment, the power of transparency, why regenerative viticulture is so interesting, and more.

Why did someone who didn’t really need the money and had serious and reasonable questions about the tendency of startups, both in and outside the regenerative space, to keep raising money, ended up raising funding? Not in a traditional, potentially extractive way, but a revenue share, and service fee, and a cap.

Brett Hundley – From Tyson Foods equity analyst to financing millions of trees

A conversation with Brett Hundley, President of Agroforestry Partners (AP), a fund that invests in agroforestry projects on farmland with the strategy of providing uncorrelated and attractive nature-based investment opportunities for investors.
We talk about moving away from an agricultural system that relies on annuals to a system that relies more on perennial trees. If trees are the answer to whatever the question is, how do we get millions of more trees into the ground?

How do we finance them, and how do we make the key stakeholders, the farmers- that need to give agroforestry operators access to their land for 20 40 or maybe a 100 years- comfortable with these farming systems? How do we get comfortable with writing these checks the other essential stakeholder investors that need to pour hundreds of millions into an industry and a system they are not really used to, with long time horizons (chestnuts, for instance, take 7 to 9 years before they bare fruit but could produce for at least 50 or even hundreds of years)?

Keith Agoada, the regenerative landscape orchestrator

A conversation with Keith Agoada, CEO and co-founder of Producers Trust, a global network of farmers, farmer groups, and producer groups, about indoor greenhouse growing, aggregation, sorting, quality control, packaging, processing, and more.

REGENERATIVE MIND – Emma Chow and Calla Rose Ostrander – In our healing is our evolution as a society

Emma Chow and Calla Rose Ostrander explore the regenerative mindset and the importance of integrating human behaviours into natural cycles, recognising abundance and the physical capacity for healing, burnout, the perception of time scarcity, prioritising regenerative activities, and much more.

REGENERATIVE MIND – Emma Chow, Thomas Legrand and Luis Camargo – Shifting the narrative to capture food’s positive potential

A conversation with Luis Camargo and Thomas Legrand about the regenerative mindset in food systems, transforming the inner capacities for sustainability and regeneration, personal growth through reconnection with nature, food systems and narratives, and much more.

What we learned in 2023 about cooling the planet, food as medicine, regenerative renaissance, indigenous knowledge and decommodification

As we are wrapping up 2023 we look back at a year which feels even crazier than 2022. Another war has started and we have been flooded literally with extreme weather events. Every month seems to have been the warmest, driest, wettest etc. in history! Let’s look at what we covered and learned in the podcast!