Diogo Pinho started his scientific career in the first DNA sequencing lab in Portugal, then did a hands-on PhD on the soil microbiome of cork and holm oak, studying why the trees get sick, before spending two years with Biome Makers, a soil microbiome analysis company, running labs and translating bacterial and fungal profiles into colour-coded, farmer-readable reports for growers around the world. Three years ago, a chance conversation at a farm visit twenty minutes from where he was living led him to Monte Silveira, a 700-hectare farm in the Alentejo, where farmer Joao Valente had been testing regenerative practices for years. Diogo came on board as head of research, hired two more scientists, and is now coordinating fifteen different research consortia — universities, policy makers, and environmental associations — all running in parallel on one working farm.

Portugal produces 70% of the world’s cork. And every year, the Montado, the vast savanna-like silvopasture system of cork and holm oaks that makes that possible, and that once covered much of the Mediterranean, is losing between 4,000 and 5,000 hectares. Not to disease, exactly: the disease is just the final hit on a tree already too weak to resist. The underlying cause, Diogo says, is simpler and more fixable than most people realise. The Montado is a system built by human management, and the one thing it was always managed with — grazing animals cycling nutrients back into the soil — has quietly been removed. Bring the animals back, do it well, and the trees can recover.

In this episode — recorded walking the Monte Silveira land on a mild May morning, with horses and sheep audible throughout — we get into how Diogo went from genome sequencing to working on a regenerative farm, why he sees the Montado’s decline as a chronic disease rather than a single crisis, how soil organic matter went from 1% to 3% in seven years without importing fertility, what a clover carpet growing underneath intensive almond trees is doing to herbicide use and nitrogen budgets (and why the 8,000-hectare conventional industry next door is already paying attention), and how a transition finance programme for twenty neighbouring livestock farmers is quietly building a model that could scale well beyond one farm.

FROM GENOME SEQUENCING TO A FARM IN THE ALENTEJO

Diogo always wanted research that worked in real conditions, not on a university test plot. His PhD on the soil microbiome of cork oak gave him a concrete early result: he could identify bacterial and fungal bio-indicators in the soil that predicted, before symptoms showed, whether a given tree was about to start declining. After that, years of running labs for Bio Mamakers took him around the world, analysing microbial profiles from farms on every continent and packaging the results into colour-coded reports farmers could actually read, not a spreadsheet of species names, but a functional picture of what the soil biology was doing. What made him come back to Portugal, and eventually to Monte Silveira, was the gap between collecting that data and doing something useful with it at scale.

“The stars align again and he invited me because Joao is very curious and he is always testing different stuff, but one big thing that was missing was getting all this data. My main task was to organise all these partnerships and data and start building something that also had a purpose.” — Diogo Pinho

RESEARCH ON A LARGE WORKING FARM

Monte Silveira is not a research station. It’s a 700-hectare working farm — 500 hectares of Montado, 200 of irrigated annual crop pivots — running goats, pigs, cattle, sheep, cereals, and legumes, and generating the kind of messy, unpredictable real-world data that university plots rarely produce. Diogo now coordinates fifteen research consortia on that one farm, with full-time scientists on staff and a constant stream of visiting researchers, agronomists, and universities. The farm’s role as a “living lab” has shifted what funders expect: Horizon Europe now requires researchers to put farmers at the centre, which means universities need farms like this as much as farms like this need universities. At the time Diogo arrived, regenerative agriculture was still, as he puts it, mostly a romantic story. The goal now is to put serious numbers behind it.

“We need to somehow professionalise this kind of data — to show investors and investment groups that it is possible to be ecologically balanced and also economically balanced.” — Diogo Pinho

THE MONTADO NEEDS ANIMALS

The Montado is a man-made system. Cork and holm oaks, grazing animals, and grassland evolved together over centuries of active management. When economic pressure pushed livestock out of the silvopasture and into industrial sheds, that management stopped. The separation of forestry and livestock — logical from a short-term accounting perspective — broke the nutrient cycle the whole system depended on. At Monte Silveira, rotational grazing has been rebuilding it: more animals grazing correctly means more grassland biomass the following year, which means the system can carry more animals the year after. Soil organic matter across the farm’s annual crop pivots went from 1% to 3% between 2019 and 2026, without importing significant fertility from outside. On one stretch of degraded Montado, a bale-grazing intervention — high density of cattle, bales of forage brought in as a kickstart, followed by a year and a half of rest — brought grass from ankle height to waist height.

“The main advantage of having animals in the Montado is to foster the nutrient cycling. If you have better soils, fertilised soils, you have more nutrients that then can be assimilated by the trees.” — Diogo Pinho

CORK OAK TREES DIE (SLOWLY) WITHOUT PROPER GRAZING

Portugal produces around 70% of the world’s cork. The industry exists because of the Montado, and the Montado is losing between 4,000 and 5,000 hectares every year. The focus in the industry has long been on the fungal and bacterial pathogens that visibly kill trees — but Diogo’s research suggests that framing misses the point: these pathogens mostly attack trees that are already severely weakened. Two or three consecutive drought years push a cork oak into fragility; from that point, almost anything will finish it off. The underlying weakness, though, is usually rooted in soil. Poor nutrient cycling, absent grazing, compacted or depleted ground — these are the chronic conditions that make the tree vulnerable in the first place. Diogo notes the system is protected, meaning degraded Montado cannot simply be replaced with more profitable crops. That makes the question of reversibility urgent.

“As we are talking about the chronic disease — like in humans with diabetes — there is not a single factor that kills the tree. It is an accumulation of external factors: climate change, pests, and stuff like that. What is happening in the Montado is that there is a lot of focus on the fungal and bacterial diseases, but these diseases normally just happen because the tree is already so weakened.” — Diogo Pinho

INTENSIVE ALMONDS CAN BE RUN (ALMOST) REGENERATIVELY — AND BE MORE PROFITABLE

Monte Silveira is surrounded by 8,000 hectares of intensive almond orchards — fully irrigated, fertilised, mechanised, planted at high density. Rather than dismiss that reality, one of the farm’s fifteen research projects is working inside it: a five-hectare real-life field experiment, part of the Arbo Innova project, running at the same tree density as conventional neighbours but managing weeds, water, and soil cover completely differently. The key intervention is a living mulch — a carpet of clovers growing directly in the tree lines. Early results: weed pressure has dropped sharply, almond leaves show higher nitrogen content than in conventionally managed plots, and the clover carpet is attracting pollinators and auxiliary insects that help control pests. Most strikingly, herbicide applications have already been cut in half — from four applications per year to two, in a single season. The reason the conventional neighbours are interested is not primarily ecological. It’s that halving herbicide runs reduces operating costs, and the fertiliser bill is also moving in the right direction.

“We can decrease the nitrogen fertiliser. Actually, we are putting more nitrogen, but through a biological process — nitrogen fixation that the clovers provide. We were already able to only apply herbicide twice a year. So we are already talking about a 50% decrease in a year, which is good for nature and good for the pocket.” — Diogo Pinho

THE INDUSTRY IS WATCHING

The Arbo Innoova almond project is still processing its first full data set, but the neighbouring operators — mostly backed by financial investors, running thousands of hectares on tight input budgets — are already paying attention. The conversation has started, Diogo says, not because they’ve been won over philosophically, but because the numbers make sense: less herbicide, less synthetic nitrogen, lower cost base. The same logic applies to the transition finance programme for livestock farmers, which is built on the same premise: you don’t ask someone running a fragile operation to take a risk. You de-risk the transition for them, walk alongside them, and let the results do the persuading. Twenty farmers from the local area are now enrolled, receiving a financial pillow — paid regardless of outcomes, but requiring attendance at training sessions — and will be supported through co-creation workshops starting in June and July.

“They already know the project. They are very interested to come — actually also because of this question of reducing the nitrogen they put in. There is an interest.” — Diogo Pinho

OTHER POINTS DISCUSSED:

Koen and Diogo also talked about

• Intercropping for yield resilience — growing wheat and vetch together on the same pivot: the vetch fixes nitrogen for the wheat, the wheat stem supports the climbing vetch, and if one fails the other covers the loss. Combined output easily beats either monoculture alone
• Soil organic matter tripled in seven years — from 1% to 3% between 2019 and 2026, using precision compost placement guided by soil mapping (red/yellow/green priority areas) combined with no-till and rotational grazing
• What Diogo would do with €1 billion — Three priorities: research into regenerative practices, ecological training across the whole supply chain (including consultants and agronomists, not just farmers), and funding the actual farm transition; his magic wand answer: make all soils healthy overnight, then use the billion to keep them that way.

LINKS:

• Monte Silveira
• Ground Work
• Projects in which Monte Silveira is involved

LINKED INTERVIEWS:

• Raiza Rezende – Soil health and human health: why the science is still years behind the hype
• John Gilliland — Why a top UK regen farmer hasn’t sold a single carbon credit yet

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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.