Antonella – Page 2 – Investing in regenerative agriculture

Maria Jensen – Giving cows a voice through epigenetics while improving animal welfare and profitability

30th September 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Maria Jensen, co-founder of Antler Bio, helping dairy farmers identify and address factors limiting their herd’s full potential. What if cows could speak? Especially dairy cows. They would probably share not only the horrors of the dairy industry, but also stories of many dairy farmers who truly try their best to care for their animals and yet still fail. Their cows are neither healthy nor happy, their bank accounts look worse every year, and their mental health and marriages are shaky. Intensive dairy, unless you are massive, is a very difficult industry.

Yes, all dairy cows (and cows in general) should be, depending on the context, almost permanently outside. And yes, calves should stay with their mothers as long as possible if we are even going to start talking about regenerative dairy. But for many dairy farmers, this is still a distant pipe dream. We need to meet them where they are. If we don’t give them concrete tools now, they will never change and instead go out of business. And no, dairy won’t disappear any time soon. The market will just be absorbed by even bigger dairy cow factories, where cows never see grass or sunlight.

So how do we change this gridlock? By taking technology from the racehorse industry to let cows and herds speak: to share what’s missing, what could be improved. And, surprise, there is plenty of low-hanging fruit in improving dairy cows’ lives practically overnight from better minerals to more water points, and of course the holy grail: super-diverse pasture management.

This leads to healthier cows, fewer vet costs, and more milk. Importantly, it also points toward potentially healthier milk, and thus healthier people. It’s still too early to connect this directly to nutrient density and quality, but that’s the direction we’re headed.

We also touch upon much more: the risks of raising money from the wrong parties for such a disruptive technology, the fact that while animals and farmers win, input companies and pharmaceutical companies will likely lose. Suddenly it becomes clear which interventions work and which don’t.
And what about raising finance as a female founder? Surprise surprise—it’s not easy. Male investors, especially, waste a lot of your time.

Get ready for a conversation about disruptive tech, dairy farming margins, raising capital, and horse racing.

Thomas Kliemt – A farming incubator with a 75% success rate (that nobody knows about) lands in Germany

23rd September 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A check-in conversation with Thomas Kliemt, a true serial entrepreneur in regenerative farming systems and previously part of Kulturland, always busy with the big topics in agriculture and never afraid to take them on head first. We catch up on what he has been working on: access to land in Germany, how Kulturland- the organization he has been involved with for the last 8 years- has been growing, and why they are suddenly, after 10 years in the making, an overnight success. In the first 6 months of 2025, they accelerated their fundraising by 100%, raising the same €2.5m they raised in all of 2024.

Then we shift to the next piece of the puzzle: once you enable access to land, transition it into the commons as an anti-speculation measure, and remove the huge debt burden new farmers face, who is actually going to farm this land?
That’s what Thomas’ next venture is working to solve, inspired by a highly successful French model. Over the last 20 years, this approach has trained hundreds of farmers in running their businesses through incubator farms: new farmers work their own land for 3 years, run their enterprises, and receive a salary. Afterward, they are ready to take over a farm elsewhere and, remarkably, over 75% of them do. Many of the rest join other farms as employees. This is an incredibly high success rate for any incubator, and the model has already scaled to Belgium, Spain, and Finland. Now Thomas is bringing it to Germany, and the timing seems perfect.

He has already raised several million in government funding, with different regions competing to host these incubator farms. This could become the launchpad for a much stronger regenerative farming movement. We talk about the huge impact successful regenerative farms can have on their regions, the importance of community, and why this mission is so deeply personal for Thomas.

Rasmus Nørgaard – From bricks to soil: rethinking real estate from the ground up

16th September 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

We all have a roof over our heads and a bed to sleep in if we’re lucky. And if we’re unlucky- which most of us with homes actually are- we spend a significant portion of our monthly budget on housing. This is only increasing: the size of houses, the cost of rents, and mortgages, especially in highly sought-after cities. As a result, many people are left with less budget for high-quality regenerative food. This situation isn’t sustainable, economically or socially, especially given that the building sector is incredibly wasteful and consumes vast amounts of fossil fuels.

Straight from Copenhagen, a conversation with Rasmus Nørgaard, co-founder of Urban Partners, Home.Earth and Nordhus , with over two decades of experience in real estate, pushing the boundaries of sustainability within conventional systems. With Rasmus we dive deep into the world of real estate. Not “real assets” (although buildings are assets), but the actual built environment: homes, concrete, steel, and hopefully a lot more wood in the future. The built environment is one of the three major sectors that needs a complete systems change, alongside with agrifood and energy.

So, what can we in the regenerative agriculture and food sector learn from one of the pioneers of sustainable real estate? Rasmus is building a much more holistic (dare we say Horizon 3?) for-profit company that is reinventing real estate from the ground up. And he’s convinced: long-term real estate companies like this will prove more profitable, even financially, than those driven by short-term thinking. Yes, we talk a lot about buildings and homes, but there are so many overlaps with agriculture and food. Let’s face it: soil is a real asset in investment terms.
We ought to learn from the best in real estate to bring more aligned capital into the ground fast.
In the end, it’s all about aligning incentives and creating the right structures to build things that last.

Dianne, Ian and Matthew Haggerty – Food, not commodities: how regenerative agriculture works at scale on 63,000 acres

9th September 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

Legend alarm on the podcast! We are happy to welcome the Haggerty’s family, Ian and Dianne, together with their son Matthew, on the podcast sharing their 30+ year journey- from being considered the hippie weirdos to leading a movement in Western Australia- showing that you can absolutely farm regeneratively at scale, in this case over 60,000 acres, with deep regeneration.

They regularly take on new land, but only if they feel the land wants and needs them to manage it. In other words, they don’t go looking for land, the land finds them. Often this land is extremely degraded, and they bring it back to life with the help of sheep, whose gut microbiome kickstarts regeneration, followed by well-integrated annuals.

We talk about how fundamental it is to allow anything that wants to grow to grow in a brittle environment. They don’t have the luxury of discussing the concept of weeds: anything that can stay green and alive, with living roots in the soil pumping out exudates during the brutal hot summer months, is welcome.

We also dive into the different water cycles they are influencing and how these have even affected local rainfall. Of course, we unpack the massive mindset shift that is fundamental in the regenerative transition, vibrations, quantum agriculture, and rebuilding local supply webs. We cover it all.

Sarah Hellebek – Training Denmark’s next farmers with practitioners, not professors

2nd September 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A walking the land episode with Sarah Hellebek, deputy head at Krogerup Højskole, who spent years at the heart of Denmark’s climate activist movement. By most measures, she was successful, climate made it onto the political agenda, though never strongly enough. But the fight came with a cost: it also made her pretty depressed, she was in our own words mostly shouting in front of the Parliament.

Until a tour visiting progressive Danish farmers exposed her to the world of regeneration and she dove right into it. After spending a lot of time on different farms she noticed the need to train the next generation, as the current ag school system in Denmark (and everywhere else for that matter) doesn’t prepare you to run farms and embrace complexity. So she started her own school, outside the free super subsidied Danish school system and it took off.

We talk about why the next generation of farmers has to be trained by practitioners not teachers and why your holistic context is so important and pretty scary to dive into that in week 1 of your education; and why the students need to work full time on regenerative farms throughout the country and bring that knowledge back into the lessons classroom (which of course is on a farm). Like this, the teaching is done with real case studies of the top regenerative farms through out Denmark. Bye bye outdated text books. This is cutting edge.

She felt she had to get some dirt under her nails and set up a market garden which hosts a lot of activities. We end with some very concrete calls to action and, of course, a mini deep dive into our role as positive key stone species.

Frederik Lean Hansen – Double-purpose chickens and the regen dating agency matching landowners with land seekers

26th August 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A barefoot conversation across his Danish farmland with Frederik Lean Hansen, advisor on regenerative farm finance, revealing the efficiency of his pasture-raised chicken operation and Abunda, the revolutionary business he’s building to connect land holders with entrepreneurial farmers.

How many times have you visited a farm or heard a story from a farmer or landowner who wished for more people on the farm? Someone to start a market garden, run a chicken operation, or build an advanced biofertiliser brewery? More stacked enterprises, more diversity, and more hands and eyes on the land- of course, only if it makes financial sense. But let’s assume that’s the case. Where do you find these entrepreneurial people who fit your context, your farm, country, culture, and personality? And once you find them, how do you structure the financial and legal side to create a partnership that lasts?
We probably all agree that we need more well-paid people on the land—so how do we make that happen?

This episode is a conversation where we walk the land (just a few hectares) and check in on the latest developments: pasture-based chickens on Fred’s farm, the earliest steps into agroforestry and, most importantly, Fred’s new venture focused on land matching. That is connecting landowners with those ready to work the land but lacking access, to facilitate lasting land partnerships.

Cindie Christiansen – Top 50 Farmers update and the simple tweak to raise millions for regeneration

19th August 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A check in conversation with Cindie Christiansen, founder of Foodprint Nordic and Top 50 Farmers (no, it’s not a ranking, so nobody “won”). We spoke just six months ago, but this time we met in person to talk about the progress of turning farmers into the next superheroes of climate, water, health, and more.

We unpack her vision for systems change in food and agriculture. Directly from one of the world’s leading culinary scenes, Copenhagen, we ask: why hasn’t a strong farm-to-table, local cuisine movement led to real change in the agrifood system yet? And more importantly, what can we do about it?

We dive into her work with Foodprint Nordic and how they’re about to expand it to the rest of Europe. Very simply, but of course, it’s not that simple, the idea is to access a whole new pool of money not yet active in this space: the money of us eaters, and funnel it as quickly and with as few strings attached as possible to farmers ready to expand regenerative practices, planting trees, buying compost equipment, and more.

And even more importantly, how this approach could serve as a blueprint for real regional, and potentially national, action, helping shape government policy that truly supports regenerative farmers on the ground.

Darren Doherty – 35 years in regeneration training farmers and the role of tech and AI

12th August 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Darren J Doherty, co-founder of Regrarians, in the space of regeneration and regenerating for over 35 years, about the role of technology, AI, and large language models in training farmers and agronomists. We touch on how expensive and too-short workshops are hurting everyone, and why a hybrid model, grounded on the land and in person, combined with much longer online engagement, might be one way to move forward.

We also explore what it means to reinvent yourself after spending years deeply immersed in a project, only to resurface and realise the regenerative world has shifted. Suddenly, you need to work harder to get attention, to find work, and to fill your courses. And yet, there’s so much value in being able to draw on decades of experience and the thousands upon thousands of farmers and land stewards you’ve worked with through times of transition.

We ask why larger corporations haven’t reached out to tap into this expertise: why aren’t they calling about training their farmers or agronomists? It seems we may be exiting the phase of dogmatic pioneers, the era when it had to be permaculture, or holistic management, or keyline design, and entering something more pragmatic. A moment where the focus is shifting toward whatever actually works: on your land, in your human context, and within your market.

Rob de Laet – Water is key to cool the planet within 20 years

5th August 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Rob de Laet, project lead of Cooling the Climate and co-author of the book Cooling the Climate: How to Revive the Biosphere and Cool the Earth Within 20 Years. The science is pretty clear and getting clearer by the day: water cools the planet. The more living, healthy vegetation we have on this planet, predominately perennials and thus trees, agroforestry systems and healthy forests, the cooler the climate is and the less extreme weather events occur. Living plants literally make the Earth sweat and remove heat from the biosphere.

Humans have systematically devegetated the planet as Judith D. Schwartz likes to say, and the ongoing climate weirding suggests we may have gone too far. Now we’re seeing real calculations: how many square kilometres do we need to regenerate to lower the global temperature by just one degree?
If this is all becoming increasingly evident, why isn’t it common knowledge yet, especially in the headquarters of banks, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, and governments?
This is the story of a successful entrepreneur getting drawn into water cycle restoration, planetary cooling and all the good stuff that comes with it. We share notes on why this movement, maybe the defining story of our time, hasn’t broken through yet and what we can do about it.

Sheila Darmos – Why Greece is leading the regenerative agriculture movement and what the world can learn

29th July 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Sheila Darmos, co-founder of the Southern Lights, based in the southern Peloponnese, Greece with the mission is to spread knowledge, techniques, and the mindset for regenerative practices across all domains of human activity. Sheila is also a co-founding farmer of the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture (EARA) and serves as an EU Soil Mission Ambassador.

A question we get very often is: which place or country is leading the regenerative movement? It’s obviously a very complex question to answer, but after talking to Sheila, our answer might be Greece. Having battled numerous economic and non- economic crises, it seems that those who have stayed don’t have much to lose. There is a strong back-to-the-land movement, well-organized local organizations helping farmers and land stewards’ transition, and people who want to return to the land more easily.

Perhaps the fact that 10% of the workforce is still active in agriculture helps, along with Greece’s long history of farming without fully going down the super-mechanized, industrial, extractive path. The rural-urban divide is very real and it’s not easy at all, but maybe farming and food are the way to break down those barriers.