Category: Diet Change

Marcelo Salazar and Zé Porto – A forest super shake to preserve and regenerate the Amazon, the world’s largest agroforestry system

14th January 2025 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A conversation with Marcelo Salazar & Zé Porto, co-founders of Mazô Maná, about how we preserve what is left of the Amazon rainforest, regenerate the forest and, most importantly, truly partner with the Indigenous peoples of the forest who have been stewarding this ecosystem for generations. Yes, the Amazon is a vast, managed agroforestry system. Marcelo e Zé, after decades of working with NGOs deep in the Amazon and building careers with corporate tech giants like Google, decided to create a superfood shake made purely from nutrient-dense ingredients—up to 14— directly sourced from the forest, avoiding monoculture. Indigenous peoples partly own the company.

Why did they choose this model, and why are regenerative brands essential for elevating awareness and consciousness around deforestation? A healthy Amazon is crucial not only for the planet but also for local climates, as recent floods in São Paulo demonstrate. So, how can we encourage health-focused consumers in cities like São Paulo and Rio to buy superfoods from their “backyard”, rather than relying on imported products from overseas marketed by fancy foreign brands who are mostly good at marketing?

What we learned in 2024 about ecocide, land access crisis, regenerative education, return of inspiration, chefs, machinery and brands driving change

27th December 2024 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Ecosystem Services Payments, Farmers First Tech, Landscape Design 2.0, Nutrient Dense Food, Nutrients to Soil, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals, Role of corporations, Short Food Webs, Transition finance 0 Comments

As we wrap up 2024, we reflect on a year that brought hope but also served as a wake-up call. With skyrocketing temperatures, droughts, fires, and floods, the challenges have been immense. But we were very lucky that we—both online and offline— had the chance to come together with many of the pioneers and builders in regenerative agriculture and food. At the same time, we were reminded that we, as part of nature, are at war with extractive forces.

Our takeaways on ambitious entrepreneurs, the many elephants in the room, role and legacy of farmers, innovation in water cycle restoration, money money money, building new industries. Many deep dives in soil health, starting with chefs, consumer brands driving change and educating consumers, walking the land with regenerative farmers, legends, role of AI and tools. And, finally, some milestones and highlights.

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.

Philipp Stangl – Why an award winning hybrid blended regen meat company decided to exit before becoming a ‘unicorn’

6th December 2024 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of corporations 0 Comments

A check-in conversation with Philipp Stangl, co-founder of Rebel Meat (now Rebel Kids), a company we featured earlier working on hybrid blended meat. The story isn’t over, but definitely didn’t develop as we discussed more than 3 years ago.

Let’s all talk much more about changed plans and pivots and companies not being overnight unicorn successes. The founders of companies, in general, have to be very optimistic and visionary people. They need to convince people to join their crazy ideas and people to partner with them and invest in their vision. But things don’t always go as planned; actually, usually they don’t go as planned. But we hardly talk about that. We as society mostly cover the beginning of a story where everything still seems possible or the end where exits or big successes happen.

Juliette Simonin – Teaching over 400.000 consumers that a farm isn’t a screw factory while selling them 4,7m boxes of organic and regen fruit and veggies straight from the farm

15th October 2024 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A conversation with Juliette Simonin, co-founder and  COO of CrowdFarming, a company that works with over 320 farmers and sells fruit and veggies boxes directly to 400.000 consumers. In this discussion, we explore how Juliette transitioned from working at a large insurance company to co-founding Europe’s largest direct-to-consumer organic fruit and vegetable platform.

How do they educate these consumers that a farm is not a screw factory, and that every fruit is different? Delivery times depend on harvests and weather. The conversation also touches on how they keep consumers engaged in the process of growing fruits, and how vital it is for farmers to know there is a growing demand for their organic produce as they make changes to their practices.

Finally, we discuss why CrowdFarming is focused on helping farmers transition toward regenerative practices. Spoiler alert: resilience is a key driver. This resilience is also why the company bootstrapped for most of its early years before eventually deciding to take on outside capital.

Franco Fubini – Delivering unmatched flavour to 2000 of the world’s top restaurant and unlocking consumer demand

1st October 2024 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A conversation with Franco Fubini, co-founder of Natoora and author of In Search of the Perfect Peach, about flavour as the key to unlocking consumer demand. We talked about what leads to great flavour, which is of course soil health, but first, we need amazing seeds. How do we make sure farmers get paid accordingly when they grow the most amazing pumpkin or peaches? We tackled creating demand for flavour and lots of it starting with the world’s leading restaurants, and chefs who are relentlessly looking for the best flavours on their plates.

Chris Smaje – High tech manufactured food won’t save us. Spread money, people and energy more thinly instead

27th September 2024 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A conversation with Chris Smaje, farmer and author of Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future, about manufactured food not being the solution to the food, agriculture, and climate crises, despite what George Monbiot portraits in Regenesis. Why don’t we just grow food from thin air and all move to cities and have nature rewild the countryside? If this sounds dystopian to you, this conversation is perfect for you. We unpack the many issues with that worldview and how it most likely creates more problems than it solves. There are huge technical challenges with this kind of manufactured food, like energy costs and health. But this is about much more; this is also about the concentration of people, capital, and power in cities and the rural-urban divide.

Eduard Müller – Regenerative education is the answer, whatever the question was

3rd September 2024 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

A conversation with Eduard Müller, founder of University for International Cooperation (UCI) and leading Costa Rica Regenerativa, about regenerative education: what does it mean, and why is it so powerful to focus on educating people who want to learn more about regeneration? Eduard makes a very strong case against trying to convince the people in power, in industry, in chemical companies, in fertile companies, in large ultra-processed food companies, at the UN, etc. He has tried and failed, and he truly believes in on education and unlearning. That is why he started his own university 15 years ago. He started with online education in 1998, focusing on scaling regeneration in Costa Rica and showing the numbers and data behind it to reach the tipping point.

Eduard and Koen also discuss how the combination of on-the-ground, large-scale regenerative projects with science and data and the global reach of over 4500 alumni can replicate in their context what is being learned in Costa Rica.

Matthijs Westerwoudt – Paying farmers for cultivating weeds and making biodiversity super tasty by selling drinks and teas made from native plants

27th August 2024 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Farmers First Tech, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture 2 Comments

Matthijs Westerwoudt is the co-founder of Wilder Land, a company transforming native plants, often considered weeds, into highly desirable products. These plants, once dismissed as unwanted, are now being used to create delicious drinks, herbal teas, kombuchas, fermented teas, and even pasta. The company pays farmers more per square meter than they would earn from any other crop. How do they achieve this? First, by ensuring that these products taste as good as, or even better than, those made from monoculture crops. Second, through exceptional branding—highlighting the appeal of “nature-restoring” drinks over the concept of “biodiversity-restoring” beverages. The secret to success lies in continuous testing and refinement. In short, they are making biodiversity not just important, but incredibly tasty.

In the Netherlands, many things are well-organized, but the country also holds the unfortunate title of being a world leader in biodiversity loss. This raises the question: how can farmers be compensated for the extra biodiversity they create or support? While the idea of biodiversity credits might come to mind, these are difficult to measure and not yet fully developed. Wilder Land found a different solution for it.

Jay Albany – Despite the graveyard of D2C companies, it can actually work in the world’s most remote city

19th July 2024 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of corporations 0 Comments

A conversation with Jay Albany, CEO of Dirty Clean Food, about what it takes to build a successful direct-to-consumer business- basically buying from regen farmers and delivering to consumer, restaurants, etc.- in the regen space and in the most remote city on the planet. Despite all challenges of B2C, Jay makes a passionate case for the contrary. A deep dive full of golden nuggets of direct-to-consumer companies, what works and what doesn’t, but also a long conversation on the power of transparency within businesses and the most important return of all, inspiration.

What are the lessons learned? Looking at the graveyard of direct-to-consumer companies we have seen, especially in COVID years, raising a lot of money, struggling, or shutting down. Does that mean disrupting the current supermarket oligopolies isn’t worth it?