Category: Beyond Food

Louis De Jaeger – Eat More Trees: a Masterclass with thé storyteller of the Regen Space

1st April 2025 koenvanseijen Beyond Food, Farmers First Tech, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A conversation with Louis De Jaeger, international keynote speaker, author, award-winning filmmaker, and landscape designer, about dreams, action, and storytelling—how to reach and touch people. We discuss why storytelling is highly underrated and underfunded, and why he is organizing a festival—not the next Burning Man, but a regeneration festival.
He shares his excitement about small water cycle restoration, the biotic pump, and much more. And in the end, it all boils down to one simple message: Eat More Trees.

During his 5-year sabbatical that turned into a lifelong mission to regenerate landscapes, Louis’ revelation came during world travels where he witnessed environmental degradation firsthand—monoculture landscapes so depressing “you want to drive against a tree, but there are no trees.” This observation sparked his mission to regenerate 550 million hectares of land globally, potentially cooling our planet by two degrees Celsius.

Beyond the environmental benefits, Louis paints a compelling vision of a regenerative future characterized by abundance rather than sacrifice. “We’re going to have an even more luxurious lifestyle, we’re going to have better food that tastes fantastic” he assures us. His approach isn’t about shaming people into environmentalism but showing how regenerative practices create healthier, more desirable lives.

Alice Henry – Finally real money for cover crops with sustainable aviation fuel

31st January 2025 koenvanseijen Beyond Food, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

Crops and sustainable aviation fuel—probably not something you think about every day. Alice Henry, co-founder of Regenrate took a deep dive into why cover crops, which provide amazing benefits to farmers and farmland, are not more widely used. No big surprise—it’s about the money. Planting cover crops costs money, and the business model of carbon credits isn’t enough to nudge farmers.

Enter the Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) market, where there is both money and massive demand due to changing European and global regulations. That means working with big oil majors and helping fossil fuel giants decarbonize. But aviation, in particular, needs to decarbonize quickly. We’re not flying any less—probably more—and electric aircraft are coming, but not fast enough and in too limited a capacity.

Enter non-food and non-feed competing cover crops, grown on land that would otherwise be bare, keeping more living roots in the ground for much more of the year. Regenrate aims to turning cover cropping from a cost into a revenue-generating practice.

Kadir van Lohuizen – Walking the museum full of Food for Thought

24th December 2024 koenvanseijen Beyond Food, Diet Change, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A conversation with Kadir van Lohuizen, Dutch multimedia photojournalist, filmmaker, and a co-founder of NOOR, while walking his exhibition Food for Thought at Het Scheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam. We talk about the power of photos and videos, how disconnected we are from nature and how our current food system works. We talk while walking though photos of large dairy facilities in Mongolia, farms in Saudi Arabia, beef operations in the US and onions farms of the Netherlands and vegetables and fruits plantations in Kenya, with produce cut in pieces and packaged ready to fly overnight to Amsterdam, London, etc.

A deep dive and a reality check of the current food and agriculture system and the power of visual storytelling.

Josh and Rebecca Tickell – If you like sick people and climate chaos keep investing in chemical agriculture

28th November 2023 koenvanseijen Beyond Food, Diet Change, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture 1 Comment

A conversation with Josh Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell, producers, directors, and writers of the movie Common Ground and previously Kiss the Ground. We talk about their two movies, food choices and their impact on the environment and health, the chemical agriculture model going bankrupt and much more.

Cate Havstad-Casad – Why are we okay in wearing fossil fuel, oil-based clothes on our bodies?

30th May 2023 koenvanseijen Beyond Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals 0 Comments

A conversation with Cate Havstad-Casad, farmer rancher on a regenerative farm in central Oregon, designer and food system activist, about how the fibres of the clothes we wear every day are made of petroleum or are coated in plastics and other petroleum chemicals.

Claire Crunk – Why the regenerative revolution starts with a hemp based tampon

23rd May 2023 koenvanseijen Beyond Food, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

A conversation with Claire Crunk, health nurse practitioner, founder, and CEO of Trace. As a pioneer 5years in the US hemp fiber agricultural movement, she joins together exciting new practices in healing the earth through hemp and regenerative farming techniques with her knowledge of menstrual healthcare. We talk about fossil fuel-based products, natural fibres, cotton, hemp and maybe the biggest overlooked industry in regeneration: tampons!

200th EPISODE Emma Chow in conversation with Koen van Seijen – Regenerating ourselves before working on regenerative agriculture and food

3rd January 2023 koenvanseijen Beyond Food, Investor Stories, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

The 200th of this podcast sees Koen van Seijen in conversation with Emma Chow, former head of food at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

Emma Chow, former head of food at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, she’s back on the podcast to talk about her journey, her burnout, coming back from the Amazon to London and re-engaging with the food space. In a second part of the interview, though, Emma and Koen switch mics with Emma becoming the host and asking Koen about his lessons learned over the past 200 episodes.

Toby Kiers, the Jane Goodall of fungi and mycorrhizal networks on being an underground astronaut

6th December 2022 koenvanseijen Beyond Food, Ecosystem Services Payments, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

Toby Kiers, Executive Director & Chief Scientist at SPUN (Society for the Protection of Underground Networks) shares about their research into the mycorrhiza network, mapping biodiversity, DNA sequences of mycorrhizal fungi and a lot more about the wonderful world under our feet. She is the Jane Goodall of fungi (according to the words of previous guest Rose Marcario, former CEO of Patagonia).

NEW Farmers’ Philosophy series! Koen van Seijen in conversation with Jeroen Klompe, pioneer of regenerative agriculture

5th December 2022 koenvanseijen Beyond Food, Diet Change, Ecosystem Services Payments, Farmers First Tech, Nutrient Dense Food, Nutrient Density in Food, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 2 Comments

We can learn so much more from farmers than how to restore soil. Regeneration goes much further and deeper. The first episode of the Farmers’ Philosophy series is a conversation between Koen van Seijen, host of the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast, and Jeroen Klompe, farmer and owner of Klompe Landbouw.

Hervé Dupied – Want to change the €387 billion EU CAP? Invest in the regen farmers who against all odds are successful

22nd November 2022 koenvanseijen Beyond Food, Investor Stories, Ownership, Policy and Legislation, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 1 Comment

A conversation with Hervé Dupied Bokx, who currently works on a farm in France and at a university for farmers and, most importantly, on changing the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). We talk about policies, the CAP, which spends most of the European budget on a not very regenerative way of farming, and more.