Gut & Bösel in Alt Madlitz, Brandenburg is one of the largest regenerative farms in Europe — 3,000 hectares of arable land and forestry on some of the sandiest, driest soils in Germany. For years, farmer Benedikt Bösel and his team have been experimenting with agroforestry, holistic grazing, and composting at scale, with no blueprint and no neighbours to learn from. That experimentation costs money, takes time, and generates knowledge that other farmers benefit from for free.

So they set up a foundation next to the farm to do the research properly — 10,000 soil samples, four university partners, climate sensors across 300 hectares, and a carbon credit programme that is already generating revenue. Max Küsters, managing director at Gut & Bösel, talks with Koen about how regenerative farms can start turning their hard-won data and ecosystem restoration work into actual income streams — through carbon markets, biodiversity credits, and eventually the insurance industry, which is slowly waking up to the fact that healthy soil is cheaper than flood damage.

[We interviewed Benedikt Bösel several times in the last years, the English version of his book Food & Farm Revolution will be out in summer 2026]

This podcast is part of the AI 4 Soil Health project which aims to help farmers and policy makers by providing new tools powered by AI to monitor and predict soil health across Europe. For more information visit ai4soilhealth.eu.

WHY PIONEERING FARMS END UP DOING RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT AND WHO SHOULD REALLY BE PAYING FOR IT

There are no blueprints for what Gut & Bösel is doing. When Benedict Bösel started integrating agroforestry, composting, and livestock on 1,000 hectares of organic arable land in Brandenburg around 2016–2018, he was largely improvising in a landscape where nobody else was trying anything close. That experimentation is valuable, but it costs time and money that a farm on thin margins shouldn’t have to absorb alone.

The foundation, established in 2020, was the structural answer: a separate entity that could attract research funding, partner with universities, run rigorous data collection, and share findings publicly without pulling the commercial farm off course every time a researcher showed up with a question.

“The kind of farming that we were starting — planting agroforestry systems, really starting off the composting part, no tillage, bringing in the animals it was pretty clear that it will be very, very tough to do that commercially sound. And it was very clear that we needed to look at the effects of all these measurements.” — Max Küsters

WHY COMPLEXITY ON REAL FARMS BREAKS SCIENTIFIC METHODS

There is a fundamental mismatch between what a working regenerative farm looks like and what a scientist can actually study. Universities need clean variables. Gut & Bösel runs a compost with around 25 ingredients. When they go to their research partners and ask what’s happening, the response is often: “Can you use three?”

“When we are speaking about compost, they say: ‘Just use three ingredients, please — that’s what we can manage to really observe.’ And then we say: ‘We use at least 25.’ ‘So why would I use three?’ ‘Because with 25 we cannot do anything.’ And I totally understand that. But the problem is the diversity — that’s where the magic happens. That’s where things actually work.” — Max Küsters

This isn’t an abstract problem. It shapes what science can say about the transition, and by extension what claims can be made to investors, carbon credit buyers, and policymakers. The DaVaSus project is partly a response to this: five ecological focus areas (soil, water, biodiversity, microclimate, and animal welfare) being monitored simultaneously, across 300 hectares, with the explicit goal of connecting on-the-ground ecological data to the farm’s financial picture.

CARBON CREDITS: WORTH THE TROUBLE, BUT ONLY BARELY AND ONLY WITH THE RIGHT PARTNER

Gut & Bösel has been running a CO2 certificate programme for two years, operating under the Verra standard. The arrangement: the commercial partner funds 80% of the measurement and administrative costs, Gut & Bösel covers 20% and runs the whole programme operationally. In return the partner receives the certificates.

Is it worth all the trouble?

“It’s worth all the trouble, but that just holds true for the partner that we have. So we have a partner who’s really taking our side and says: ‘I will invest in the measurements that you are doing outside.’ He’s basically covering 80% of the costs.” — Max Küsters

WATER CYCLES, FLOODS, AND THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY’S SLOW AWAKENING

When Germany floods, the public conversation goes immediately to dams and levees. Max challenges this, he thinks the insurance industry is the most likely vector for change, not because insurers are enlightened, but because the economics are becoming impossible to ignore.

“I think the premiums or the prices that they would need to pay a farmer to just manage their land in a different way are currently still quite low compared to what’s at stake.” — Max Küsters

He references a BCG report estimating the cost of transitioning farmland to regenerative practices — a few hundred euros per hectare. Against the cost of insuring flooded cities and data centres, that number starts to look like peanuts. But insurers haven’t arrived at the farm gates yet. Max has spoken to some at forums, but the connection between landscape management and claims hasn’t fully landed in their scenario planning.

“I think it starts with insurances. They know that times are getting rough. So they’re looking at: what can we actually do?” — Max Küsters

KOEN AND MAX ALSO TALKED ABOUT:

• Max’s path from energy consultancy to Gut & Bösel via the Camino de Santiago
• EU subsidies, bureaucracy, and why regenerative transition still needs a push
• Who owns the data: foundation research vs. carbon credit partner
• The monitoring infrastructure: climate stations, insect counters, cameras, microphones
• Why agroforestry at scale requires years of small iterations first
• Where Max is contrarian inside the regen bubble
• Why animal welfare is his magic-wand answer

LINKS TO RESOURCES:

• Deloitte: Closing the gap – An analysis of the costs and incentives for regenerative agriculture in Europe
• Boston Consulting Group – Accelerating the Transition to RegenerativeAgriculture
• DaVaSus Experimental Fields: Data and value-based decision-making for a sustainable land use
• Finck Foundation
• Gut & Bösel Farm
• Book Food & Farm Revolution by Benedikt Bosel (English version out in summer 2026)

LINKED INTERVIEWS

• Benedikt Bösel, updates from the 3000h German farm in transition
• Introducing Transition Finance with Benedikt and Koen
• Walking the land with Benedikt Boesel – Fully integrating 300 cows into a 1000-hectare arable very sandy farm
• Sallie Calhoun, do and don’ts from the most experienced regen ag investor

MORE INTERVIEWS IN THE AI 4 SOIL HEALTH SERIES:

• Alfred Grand – Why an Austrian farmer and researcher trained by earthworms is very excited about AI
• Mateusz Ciasnocha and Maria Virginia Solis Wahnish – From EU Soil Mission to Pope Francis, how to change local and state agriculture and food policies
• Bridget Emmett – Moving over carbon soil compaction is the real issue in agriculture
• Jason Hayward-Jones – Corporates paying for low carbon grains and why virtual twins are key in gaming and Scottish whiskey
• Paul Clarke – Smart Machines, AI and Modeling: engineering our way out
• Tom Hengl – We should reward the stewards of the land like we celebrate Olympic champions
• Anastasia Volkova – Building the world’s largest MRV provider
  

MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Max Küsters is the managing director at Gut & Bösel, a 3,000-hectare farm in Brandenburg, Germany — around 1,000 hectares of arable and 2,000 of forestry — that is one of Europe’s most closely watched regenerative agriculture operations. He leads the farm’s research and development work through the associated foundation – Finck Stiftung, including the DaVaSus project (a multi-university data and decision-tool initiative funded by the EU and the German government), as well as the farm’s CO2 certificate programme and its broader ecosystem services strategy.

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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

This work has received funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant numbers 10053484, 1005216, 1006329].

This work has received funding from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).

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