Category: Ownership

Ian McSweeney and Kristina Villa – You can’t address food security, soil carbon sequestration or climate change without first tackling the crisis of land access

3rd December 2024 koenvanseijen Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

Why land tenure and security are key to the future of food. We’ve touched on the massive issues of land tenure, access, and security on the podcast before, but never enough. In many regions, land prices have been rising steadily for the past 50–100 years, becoming entirely disconnected from the land’s productive value—especially for those wanting to farm using regenerative agroecology. This has made land increasingly inaccessible for the next generation of farmers.

Exacerbating the problem is the aging farmer population. In the U.S., the average age of farmers is 62, which means most are nearing retirement. What happens next?

With Ian McSweeney and Kristina Villa, co-founders of The Farmers Land Trust , we focus on first-generation pioneering organic and biodynamic farmers who plan to retire soon. Many have spent their lives building successful small businesses, running community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs, hosting events, providing education, and feeding countless people. Then there’s the next generation—capable farmers who’ve trained extensively, spent years working on others’ farms, and now dream of having their own land. Yet, they can’t afford the inflated market prices.

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.

Nettie Wiebe – We have become monocultural in our fields and minds

6th September 2024 koenvanseijen Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture 2 Comments

A conversation with Nettie Wiebe, organic farmer and long-time small farm activist in Canada and globally, one of the founders of La Via Campesina, part of the IPES food panel, and coauthor of the recent Land Squeeze report. We talk about land purchases and prices. In many places, over 70% of the farmland is controlled by 1% of the farms. This is just one of the many challenges the latest Land Squeeze report of the IPES food panel addresses. We talk about the results of the report and what to do about it, how go get speculative money out of farming and why green grabbing needs to stop.

Land squeeze: one of the biggest issues in regenerative farming is access to land. Why is that? Farmers in the global industrialised north are ageing, and many of them don’t have a next generation taking over the farm; many other people would love to farm and are, in many cases, able, but can never finance the land purchase because land prices and value are completely disconnected. They face competition from ever larger industrial extractive, well financed farms.

Joachim Ewechu and Hannes Van den Eeckhout – Why Uganda is the best place for a locally owned regenerative agriculture revolution

6th February 2024 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

A conversation with Joachim Ewechu and Hannes Van den Eeckhout, co-founders of Rootical, a start-up studio that enables purpose-driven entrepreneurs in Uganda to build and own their regenerative agri-food companies. We talk about why Uganda is the place to launch and build agroecology, regenerative agriculture, and food companies, why Uganda enjoys political support for agroecology, the importance of different steward-type ownership models, the importance of different investment models, and more.

REGENERATIVE MIND – Emma Chow and Jessica Hutchings – Connecting soil with the stars

19th January 2024 koenvanseijen Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture, Regenerative Mind, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A conversation with Jessica Hutchings, a Maori researcher and apothecary, about indigenous knowledge, letting go of old mindsets, our relationship with nature and the deities of our landscapes. A deep dive in the New Zealand food system, indigenous ways to connect with soil and the food web, sound of plants, vibration of nature and much more.

Emma Fuller – Making soulless capital who doesn’t care about regenerative agriculture invest in it

3rd November 2023 koenvanseijen Landscape Design 2.0, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture, Transition finance 0 Comments

A conversation with Emma Fuller, co-founder of Fractal, about the transition to regenerative practices or outcomes of the millions of acres of broad-acre row cropping, corn, soy, and wheat in the US, Brazil, Argentina. Fractal provides farmers with equity financing by investing alongside them in their farmland to fund their growth.

Ivo Degn and Philippe Birker – Does a low interest, 3,5% on $2,5 million loan, really qualify as a regenerative investment?

27th October 2023 koenvanseijen Ecosystem Services Payments, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture, Transition finance 1 Comment

A conversation with Ivo Degn and Philippe Birker, founders of Climate Farmers, about the reason why they picked carbon credits as the first business to focus on, how they recently raised $2,5 million in a very unusual way, at least for a startup, what they consider a regenerative investment and much more.

Yanniek Schoonhoven – Training the next generation of farmers with an academy and regenerative farm of 1100HA

7th February 2023 koenvanseijen Farmers First Tech, Investor Stories, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

A conversation with Yanniek Schoonhoven, co-founder of the Regeneration Academy, a physical learning hub and model farm in the South of Spain, about building a space and community to become practitioners, entrepreneurs, innovators and leaders in the field of regenerative agriculture and eco-system restoration, specialized in semi-arid areas.

Stijn Markusse – Raising €4M in 72 hours to scale boring distribution and storytelling

31st January 2023 koenvanseijen Nutrient Dense Food, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A conversation with Stijn Markusse, founder of Boerschappen together with his partner Stéphanie Vellekoop, about distribution, packing boxes, telling amazing stories, paying the farmers’ invoices on time, and making sure you also do that in 2-, 5- or 10-years’ time so that the farmer can invest in long term regenerative practices.

Jeremy Leggett – Learning from a solar energy pioneer on making nature recovery bankable

20th January 2023 koenvanseijen Ecosystem Services Payments, Investor Stories, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

A conversation with solar energy pioneer Jeremy Leggett about the nature recovery industry, the things we can learn from the solar industry, fossil fuel companies and much more. After Solarcentury, Jeremy is now working on Highlands Rewilding.