Category: Role of Animals

Marco Carbonara – Using 10 species of animals to profitably regenerate 100 hectares of forgotten Italian land between Rome and Florence

26th November 2024 koenvanseijen Nutrients to Soil, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A conversation with Marco Carbonara, cofounder, owner and farmer at Pulicaro Farm, in Lazio, Italy. A special early morning walk through permanent pasture surrounded by multispecies graziers, donkeys, cows, sheep, goats, chickens and, of course, some guard dogs, which means a lot of pleasant and present background sounds. We are in the hills between Rome and Florence and have the great pleasure to visit the farm of Marco and Chiara. Marco takes us on the morning walk to feel, smell, and see regeneration of permanent pastures in a Mediterranean landscape. Definitely not easy, but definitely possible, and yes, also profitable.

How did Marco, who had no farming experience 20 years ago, approach regeneration back then, and how does he approach it now? When they take on new lands, what are the first steps, and how much has he learned over the last 20 years? What is the role of animals in regenerating the Mediterranean landscape, and how does he handle the challenging balance between running a company, needing to break even, and wanting to regenerate as quickly as possible?

We also discuss the challenge of feed: is it okay to bring feed for the non-ruminants in your rotation from outside the farm when your soils can’t yet sustain needy plants like wheat, barley, etc.? And if it is, how do you deal with the challenge of potentially competing for human food? We only scratched the surface because it’s impossible to capture 20years of deep regeneration in just one hour, but we tried and we hope you enjoyed listening to it as much as we did recording it.

Frederik Lean Hansen – Small individual farms are probably not the future of farming in Europe

17th September 2024 koenvanseijen Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals, Transition finance 0 Comments

A wide-ranging conversation with Frederik Lean Hansen, a regenerative farm business consultant who spent a year traveling and working on 12 farms alongside regenerative farmers across Europe. He is currently active as a Farm Finance genitor and is now starting his own silvopastured poultry enterprise on his parents’ farm in Denmark. We discuss topics such as finance, CapEx, OpEx, income statements, and cash flow, as well as the myth of small-scale farming and whether economies of scale truly matter. Fred shares insights on how farmers can organize together to access better markets, run more financially successful businesses, and improve their quality of life. We also delve into the importance of inner work, which is often neglected in our sector—or any sector, for that matter.

Clare Hill and Annie Rayner – The counter-narrative to industrialised chicken: what does it mean to produce deeply regenerative chicken and eggs?

20th August 2024 koenvanseijen Nutrients to Soil, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A conversation with Annie Rayner and Clare Hill, founders of Planton Farm, Roots to Regeneration and Impeckable Poultry, experts in poultry welfare and regenerative agriculture transition pioneers in the UK. We discuss where to start when you want to integrate livestock as a farmer. Many would say poultry, but there are a lot of issues, from lockdowns because of bird flu to feeding because these aren’t ruminants, so they can’t just graze, while another big one is genetics. We have bred birds to be either egg or meat birds, and that is incredibly inefficient and horrible for animal welfare. Annie and Clare are on a mission to answer the question: What does it mean to produce deeply regenerative chicken and eggs?

Chris Henggeler – Standing on the shoulders of giants (Savory, Ingham, Provenza) and managing over 77000 hectares in remote Australia

26th April 2024 koenvanseijen Farmers First Tech, Landscape Design 2.0, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals 0 Comments

A conversation with Chris Henggeler, a second-generation high-density, low-duration herder using herds for land management. From one of the most remote places in Australia, we explore big myths like many animals damage the land, to a huge question: can we actually put the new megafauna to work? Farms need to get smaller, and ranches need to get bigger. If you want to retire in security, you have a vested interest in healthy landscapes.

How do we invest as if our grandchildren mattered? How do we ground investing in ecology, and what human activity is restraining nature from building wealth? This and much more in the conversation with Chris.

Chris Bloomfield and Daniel Reisman – We need animals outside to feed the planet sustainably

22nd March 2024 koenvanseijen Farmers First Tech, Nutrient Dense Food, Nutrients to Soil, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals 0 Comments

A conversation with Chris Bloomfield and Daniel Reisman, co-founders of Collie, a provider of virtual cow guidance system for managing production in grazing, about enabling regenerative dairy, how virtually fencing and cow guidance drastically reduce labour and boost production. To feed ourselves and the planet sustainably, we need to include animals as part of agriculture. We dive deep into going from vegan to grazing, animal welfare, and the state of our planet. How do we enable more farmers to hold complexity on their farms? How do we use technology to enable complexity instead of using technology to make everything mono, as we have done in the last 50 years?

Paul McMahon – With over $500M invested, there is a regenerative edge of about 1-3%

27th February 2024 koenvanseijen Investor Stories, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals, Transition finance 0 Comments

A conversation with Paul McMahon, co-founder of SLM, about why it makes so much sense to put money to work in real regenerative agriculture, yields, and more importantly, profits and the regenerative edge, and more.

Few papers in regenerative agriculture have been shared more than the Investment Case for Ecological Agriculture written by Paul McMahon. We have shared it countless times, learned a whole lot from the simple investment terms describing why it makes so much sense to put money to work in real regeneration. Now it has been updated, even better, it has been completely rewritten and with a lot more science and a lot more experience from the field.

In the conversation with one of the most experienced regenerative farmland investors, we explore the modules of our recent video course on why we need to change agriculture and food systems urgently, and why now is the time to do it.

What we learned in 2023 about cooling the planet, food as medicine, regenerative renaissance, indigenous knowledge and decommodification

27th December 2023 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Ecosystem Services Payments, Farmers First Tech, Farmers' Philosophy, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals, Role of corporations, Short Food Webs, Transition finance 0 Comments

As we are wrapping up 2023 we look back at a year which feels even crazier than 2022. Another war has started and we have been flooded literally with extreme weather events. Every month seems to have been the warmest, driest, wettest etc. in history! Let’s look at what we covered and learned in the podcast!

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin – Why chickens are the perfect entry point to decolonize our food system

22nd December 2023 koenvanseijen Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals 2 Comments

A conversation with Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, CEO of Tree Range Farms, farmers and producers which a focus on establishing or maintaining a “jungle like” habitat that honours the true natural environment of chickens. When they do this, they not only create a better habitat for the chickens, they create a better world. We talk about using indigenous knowledge to transform the food system, how chickens could and should be raised with a focus on soil health and how to structure business with an indigenous mindset.

Rodger Savory – Restore the water cycles and reverse desertification in California, regenerating 150.000 acres with 600.000 cows

17th November 2023 koenvanseijen Nutrients to Soil, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals, Water Cycles 0 Comments

A conversation with Rodger Savory, ecologist, land manager, and ranch owner, about scale and cows, how to kickstart regeneration in desert situations, changing local weather patterns, abundance, soil bacteria, conventional agriculture, WW2 and much more.

Paul Greive – How the biggest exit in regeneration led to millions of more chickens on pasture

18th August 2023 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Nutrient Density in Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals, Short Food Webs 4 Comments

A conversation with Paul Greive, founder of Pasture Bird, about rising millions of birds on pasture per year, selling to one of the largest chicken producers in the world, the positive impact of chickens, and much more.