João Valente, owner of Monte Silveira, took over his family farm in central-eastern Portugal that was running on tobacco, broccoli, and melons with sixty-five people employed year-round, the rotation designed entirely around subsidies. When the tobacco subsidy disappeared at the end of the 1990s, he found himself with a question: what does this land actually want to be? That question led him to organic agriculture conferences in Portugal, to a magazine showing no-till, to a German seed company that flew him to New Zealand and Australia to see holistic planned grazing in action, and eventually to the first Climate Farmers Congress in a castle in Germany, back in 2021, where he helped write the manifesto, brought ham, wine, and olive oil, and met much of the regenerative agriculture network he’s been working with ever since. Today, Monte Silveira manages around 700 hectares of Montado and irrigated annual crops, runs five species of animals, carries sixteen active research projects, has three full-time scientists on staff, and has been no-till since the year 2000.
One plus one, in companion cropping, is not two. It might be three, four, or five: two or three species in the same field, each supporting the others, the vetch fixing nitrogen for the wheat, the wheat stem holding up the climbing vetch, and if one fails the other covers it. João has been doing this long enough now that the yield comparisons with neighbouring monoculture fields aren’t theoretical. And after decades of absorbing the risk alone, he’s at a point where he can start handing the knowledge on, to neighbouring farmers who are curious but can’t afford to fail, to the Portuguese government, which recently invited Monte Silveira to one of only three private companies at the table for the country’s seven-year environmental strategy document, and to consumers through brands, built on cereals and legumes priced to compete with conventional supermarket products, not just to sell to those who can already afford the premium.
In this episode, recorded under the shade of an old farm building during a May heat wave in the Portugal, too hot by then to keep walking the Montado, we get into how a tobacco subsidy became the turning point of a farming life, why João thinks the two groups most drawn to regenerative research are newly graduated scientists and recently retired professors (and almost nobody in between), what it takes to bring the most important conventional almond consultant in Portugal from sceptic to practitioner in under a year, why he would mandate no-till for all dry-land cereal producers in Portugal if he had the legislative pen, what he’d do with a billion euros, and why, given a magic wand, he’d change human ego before he’d change a single farming practice.
FROM TOBACCO AND BROCCOLI TO NO-TILL: WHY A LOST SUBSIDY CHANGED EVERYTHING
The farm João inherited was a model of conventional efficiency: a three-crop rotation of tobacco, melon, and broccoli engineered to keep sixty-five people employed twelve months of the year, with each harvest timing designed to hand off to the next. What it wasn’t designed to do was work with the land. When the tobacco subsidy ended at the end of the 1990s, the rotation collapsed and João began attending organic agriculture events, picking up a magazine on no-till almost by accident at a conventional farming conference, and slowly rebuilding the farm around observation. He doesn’t like labels, but the shift was fundamental: from imposing what he wanted on the land to pausing, watching the plants and insects and soil, and asking what the ecosystem could actually carry. The no-till started in 2000. Twenty-six years later, the results are clear.
“We were a purely conventional farm until ‘98, ‘99. We changed that time because there was a disconnection from the subsidies of the tobacco crop. The big click is creating a gap: if you have the power to pause time and observe and understand that it is not correct, that the ecosystem where you are working is not accepting it correctly, you are really facing it.” — João Valente
REGEN WORKS
Monte Silveira has been no-till since 2000, has been integrating companion cropping (two, three, sometimes four species in the same field) for years, and runs five species of animals across 700 hectares of Montado and irrigated annual crop pivots. The results are no longer a hypothesis. Companion cropping fields are outperforming neighbouring monoculture plots on proportional yield. Chickpeas grown here are visibly smaller than conventionally grown ones, but consumers report eating less and feeling more satisfied. Animal integration has restored grass in degraded Montado from ankle height to waist height. Species not seen in the region for 150 years have reappeared. João is careful not to overclaim, he prefers to let the data speak, but after a quarter century, the direction of travel is settled.
“We do no-till since the year 2000. And it works, with clear evidence. We are doing no longer monocrop. We do double crop, triple cropping, sometimes we are trying quarter cropping. So then it’s not one plus one equals two, it’s one plus one equals five or six.” — João Valente
A LOT OF R&D NOW READY TO TEACH OTHERS
The transition from proving it to teaching it is the conversation the farm is now in. João is careful about who he teaches: farmers living on the edge of bankruptcy, with land already mortgaged, are not the right first cohort, if a recommended practice fails, the consequences fall on someone who had no margin to absorb them. The right candidates are those with enough financial cushion to take two or three years of risk, ideally supported by a structured programme with a financial pillow: money paid regardless of outcome, in exchange for showing up to training and reporting honestly on what happens. The GroundWork project, already running with twenty neighbouring farmers, is designed to be the proof of concept that a government can pick up and scale. Monte Silveira was recently one of only three private organisations invited to advise the Portuguese government on its seven-year national environmental strategy.
“I’m sorry if I’m not being humble, but I always try to be. We are in perfect conditions to teach others and to explain why things happen. A lot of barriers have been crushed here. They feel confident. We are offering them money to fail and giving them guidance.” — João Valente
WHY RESEARCH IS MOVING (THE YOUNG AND THE RETIRED, NOT THE MIDDLE)
Sixteen research projects are running simultaneously on the farm, with three full-time scientists and a constant stream of visiting researchers. What João has noticed is who wants to be there: not mid-career academics constrained by university structures and funding requirements, but the two groups with the most freedom. Newly graduated researchers want direct contact with working systems and retired professors, people who have spent careers publishing in universities and have now reached the point where they can choose, are choosing the farm. At least two have moved to Monte Silveira to continue their research. Just like Jonathan Lundgren in the US, researchers are leaving institutional science to base themselves on farms because that is where the interesting questions are being answered.
“We have two different generations that want to be on the farm: new researchers, and researchers of sixty, sixty-five, sixty-seven years old who are quitting their jobs because they’ve achieved their point in age where they are retired and they want to continue, but they want to continue in a different approach. They say: this is the right approach to be on the farms. Not in the lab.” — João Valente
FROM “PUNK GUYS SPREADING MILK ON THE SOIL” TO DRINKING THE KOOL-AID IN UNDER A YEAR
The most tangible evidence that conventional agriculture is starting to notice isn’t the government invitation or the research papers. It’s what happened with one of the most important almond consultancy firms in Portugal. When the consultant first visited Monte Silveira, his reaction was somewhere between bewilderment and dismissal: these were punk guys spreading milk on the soil and doing compost extracts. Within a year, he was implementing the same practices on his own almond operation. João is deliberate about this strategy: rather than staying outside the conventional system and critiquing it, he pulls its most credible practitioners inside the research projects, gives them something small and low-risk to try, and lets the results do the rest. When that consultant starts talking to his network of conventional olive and almond growers, he carries a credibility that Monte Silveira could never have on its own.
“I remember the first days he came to our farm — he said, these guys are doing like punk stuff. And now he’s doing the same practices in his own almond operation. We gathered him immediately because the results were so easy to see. If this kind of consultant talks to the consultant of olives, this is going to get traction.” — João Valente
THEY WENT ORGANIC IN THE 2000S
The farm’s shift away from conventional production wasn’t a single decision, it was a sequence of experiments, each one adding a layer. No-till started in 2000; João ordered one of the first no-till seeders sold in Portugal, and the brand’s representative drove out to the farm wondering who this person was. Holistic planned grazing came later, after the trip to New Zealand and Australia. Companion cropping came after that. The newly launched brands, regenerative cereals and legumes sold at conventional supermarket prices, positioned not as a niche product for people who can afford a premium but as food for anyone, is the latest layer, built on the conviction that if regenerative food is only accessible to people who already eat well, it will never change the system.
“We want to compete with the conventionals. These foods should be available to everyone. If you are a normal mechanical guy or the CEO of the richest company, both of those two people should be able to go to the supermarket and get this product. We want to change the food system and we need to be different, but at the same time accessible to everyone.” — João Valente
OTHER POINTS DISCUSSED
Koen and João also talked about:
- What João would do with €1 billion — scale up exactly what Monte Silveira is already doing: more R&D, bigger farming operations, faster product transformation, and more social impact through the incubation programme that offers land, knowledge, and housing to people who share the farm’s values but don’t yet have the resources; his magic wand answer: change human ego, not a single farming practice, but the thing underneath all of them
- Complex multi-species operations as resilience: five animal species, annual and permanent crops, Montado, and irrigated pivots all integrated on one farm; the rotation designed not just for yield but to keep a skilled permanent team employed year-round, which João sees as one of the hardest and most underrated management challenges in regenerative agriculture
- Proof of concept de-risks transition. His message to investors: it is possible to be profitable and ecologically balanced on the same balance sheet, the transition costs money and time but it is not a gamble in the dark anymore, and creating resilience in the ecological operation also creates resilience in the financial one
- Landscape-scale government influence needed. João’s proposal to the Secretary of State: mandate no-till for all dry-land cereal producers in Portugal within two years; it’s a simple, monitorable, relatively low-disruption starting point, and Monte Silveira can prove it works; his broader argument is that the government’s job is to extract the best from the people managing the land, because they are the ones providing a better quality of life for everyone else
LINKS:
MORE INTERVIEWS IN THIS SERIES:
- Diogo Pinho – Europe’s biggest silvopasture system is dying and grazing can fix it
- Lara Espirito Santo – Fixing food waste through extreme regenerative sourcing
- Raiza Rezende – Soil health and human health: why the science is still years behind the hype
- Jonathan Lundgren on why all agriculture scientists should become farmers first
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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.