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This is a check in interview with Ethan Soloviev, the Chief Innovation Officer of HowGood, an independent research company with the world’s largest database on product sustainability. Ethan is a good friend of the podcast and one of the leaders in the regenerative food and agriculture space, where we talk about the regen hype. We ask today, where are we now and how far we’ve come?

Regenerative Business

Regeneration is moving very quickly. In the last few months, a few large corporations pledged their support towards regenerative practices. Moreover, just recently, Walmart announced that they will become a regenerative company as well. 

“That was surprising, shocking, even hard to believe, especially I think, because they were not following the trend that had been happening. So, there’s this linear thing and you will see it later this year, when we update our regenerative agriculture industry map.” – Ethan Soloviev

Growing Interest To Regen Agriculture

There has been a significant increase to the listenership of the podcast and it might have been due to the growing interest of people to regen ag. This has impacted the regenerative agriculture space as he found investors for most of the companies who were in the podcast. 

“That’s why we do it, to make money flow to the people that are building things to regenerate soil at scale and ocean, so let’s not forget. I feel that the wave is catching up. We’re on the surfboard and you feel that you’re going up, although you cannot see it because everything else is going up as well.” – Koen van Seijen

Call For More Entrepreneurs and Farmers

There’s the need for more entrepreneurs, farmers, and professionals to run the companies for the investment funds, as money is pooling in quickly. Ethan also shares the concept of regenerative economy collaborative.

“It is a community of practice that is writing on the concept of a regenerative economy from a regenerative paradigm. So not just taking an older perspective of finance and saying, ‘well, let’s look at regeneration and write about it’, but actually a group of people, for 40 years thinking and working in a regenerative way, and saying, ‘Okay, what if we apply this way of thinking to the economy.’” – Ethan Soloviev

Regenerative Approaches

Ethan suggested to use the term regenerative approaches instead of regenerative processes, since processes are a set of activities that might get a different result, depending on several factors. For example, farming process for a certain area may have different results from another area. 

“Regenerative approaches can actually be the mind and the principles and the decision methodology and all of that. Then they may also do some practices. When we say we’re doing practices, it makes everybody think there’s a checklist of regenerate practices. I just got to do them and then I’m done, which is like the antithesis.” – Ethan Soloviev

Other Points Discussed

Koen and Ethan discussed communities of practice or communities of integrity of people who are working together over time. They also touched on the topic of the lack of ingredients grown with regenerative approaches and lastly, what large and small food companies are doing about that.

“You have to work in a regenerative way, with your company with the procurement team, with the R&D team, with the marketing team, and then actually develop your supply system to match your companies and match your products to get them out in the market.” – Ethan Soloviev

To know more Ethan Soloviev thoughts on the enormous lack of regenerative ingredients for food companies and what to do about it, download and listen to this episode. 

Main links:

• Latis by HowGood – Latis brings comprehensive impact insights into the product R&D process through instant data analysis for over 30,000 ingredients, chemicals and materials.

• Food System Investing in a Regenerative Economy article on Medium
• Regenerative Agriculture Industry Map
• Toniic Tracer
• Walmart Regeneration plan
• Regenerative Economy Collaborative
• Interview with Chris Newman on indigenous regeneration
• Interview with Bastien Sachet of Earthworm Foundation working with the largest food brands in the world
• Cargill’s regen ag pledge, 10m acres
• How Good innovation series
• Ethan’s article on the agriculture continuum
• True Price store
• German discount supermarket Penny showing True Prices

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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

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