Role of Animals – Investing in regenerative agriculture

Pablo Francisco Borrelli — Grazing carbon credits: the Trojan horse transforming Argentine grasslands

21st April 2026 julia 0 Comments

Argentina has just issued its first grazing-based carbon credits and the story behind them is forty years in the making. Pablo Francisco Borrelli, co-founder of Ruuts, has spent the last decade building the infrastructure to get farmers in Patagonia and beyond paid for what their land is actually doing: sequestering carbon, retaining water, and growing more grass than anyone thought possible.

The carbon credit is not the point. It is the door. Once a farmer steps through it and experiences what holistic management does for their land and their bottom line, the market can disappear and they won’t go back. This is a grounded account of what it takes to turn forty years of agronomic pioneering into a verified, sellable outcome and why the hardest part was never the science.

Joe Tomandl – CAFOs have caught up, can regenerative dairy still win?

10th February 2026 antonellatotaro 0 Comments

We are at an interesting moment in the dairy sector. For years, smaller farmers with around 200 cows, who were also great graziers, could undercut the costs of large concentrated dairy operations, keeping costs low, taking healthy margins in good years, and surviving the bad ones.

But something has changed: CAFO dairies have grown bigger and bigger (10,000 cows is now normal, and 100,000 is no longer an exception) and their economies of scale mean they are undercutting the grazers. Of course, this leads to massive manure lagoons, animal welfare disasters, and all kinds of other externalities, but nobody is paying for that yet. Not to mention that you can only push biology so far before it literally breaks.

So what’s next for regenerative grazing? Joe Tomandl, 4th generation dairy farmer, founder and director of the Dairy Grazing Alliance, argues instead for focusing on the transition of mid-size farms with 300– 700 cows that have surrounding land which could be grazed but currently isn’t. You need grazing experience and a long-term offtake agreement, but it can be done.

And what about nutrient density and quality? What’s good enough in terms of grass-fed, 50% on grass or 70%? We talk decentralised processing, consumers who are waking up to where their food comes from, and the huge fragility and risks of a super-centralised, heavily indebted system. Enjoy this deep dive into dairy, regenerative, grazing-based dairy in the US!

What we learned in 2025 about making regen bankable, animals, water, chefs, scale, Al in ag, agroforestry, education, food as medicine, ROl, storytelling

26th December 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

If 2025 had a soundtrack, it would be the sound of stress: stress in the system, stress in humans, stress in animals and in all other non human beings.

And then the cycle of Heat. Drought. Fire. Flood. Over and over again.
And yet, between the headlines, something else seems happening. We spent the year in conversation—with farmers walking their fields, scientists questioning old assumptions, investors rethinking risk, and builders experimenting in the real world. Online and offline, we found ourselves in rooms where regeneration wasn’t an abstract ideal, but really happening.

As 2025 comes to a close, it’s hard not to feel cautiously optimistic. The signals are there. Regeneration works and the direction is becoming clearer.

Alfonso Chico de Guzmán – The ag-tech that brings cows back

9th December 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

Straight from La Junquera farm, in Murcia, Spain, a Walking the Land episode with Alfonso Chico de Guzmán, a regenerative livestock farmer. This is a story about the reintroduction of animals as a tool, with all the animal welfare worked out, on a farm that has been transitioning to perennials, transitioning away from annual crops, and seems to have found the puzzle pieces to actually make it thrive. And now the question is: how to get more cows? How to get sturdier cows? How to get stronger cows that can survive outside and thrive outside? And that is surprisingly difficult. Getting cows from too far away almost guarantees that they won’t adapt quickly and won’t thrive.

And yes, there’s work to do. Are the numbers large enough to see the impact on the land? Not yet. Can we see that the land is not suffering with the animals on top? Absolutely. What is the maximum carrying capacity? Nobody knows. They’re grazing in a landscape where cows have disappeared or they’re inside in factory farms and where sheep are disappearing. How are you going to manage these landscapes at scale? How are you going to support against fires and really impact the landscape?

Beyond cows, this is a blueprint for dryland regeneration. Ponds slow stormwater, aromatics stabilize slopes, and planned grasslands increase infiltration and biodiversity. We talk nutrient density, flavor, and how management changes meat quality; we talk permits, grazing rights, and the talent it takes to ride 70 kilometers in two days. Most of all, Alfonso make the case for patient capital and watershed thinking: if funding timelines matched ecological timelines, more farms could switch from extractive annuals to living systems that pay their way.

Jonathan Lundgren – You need more cows, not fewer, to save the planet

28th October 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A new conversation with Jonathan Lundgren, one of the world’s most interesting and most cited scientists when it comes to regenerative agriculture. For the last four years, Jonathan and his team have been in full swing with their 1000 Farms Initiative, where they document research and follow regenerative farms, actually closer to 1600 farms now.
An episode where we talk about data, data, and more data. We unpack a four-year effort that spans commodities, ecoregions, and management styles, revealing how regeneration scales in the real world. The results are striking: equal or better yields, stronger profits, higher biodiversity, improved water infiltration, and a path to substantial soil carbon storage, all without needing more land.

But it isn’t just about that. It’s about farmers’ health and happiness. It’s about pushing our imagination of what farmland could look like. It’s about the outliers in these studies that show us what is possible: more people on the land, more farmers connected to every acre being managed. It’s about producing food for your family and community. It’s about revitalizing rural communities and bringing back the life that has been sucked out of there. Enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Jonanhan (though, as always, it feels too short!).

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.

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.

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.

Walking the land with Benedikt Boesel – Fully integrating 300 cows into a 1000-hectare arable very sandy farm

24th June 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

It just doesn’t happen very often we record in a field surrounded by cows just after a cow gave birth to a calf. There is not more fitting place to explore the super complex role of animals in the food and agriculture space than walking the land- and standing amongst the cows- with Benedikt Boesel, founder and farmer at Gut&Bösel, in Alt Madlitz, in Germany.
Very few topics will divide people in and outside the food space quicker than cows. So we are walking that fine line literally surrounded by three hundred cows who are an integral part of the fertilisation of Benedikt’s 1000-hectare arable farm with very sandy soils. We discuss everything from how much joy animals bring to a farm and how complex it is to treat them well and how they are a direct mirror of your actions. We talk as well about the moment in which the cows are taken out of the system, and how Benedikt does that (we are sorry if the first part of the episodes shocks you, but this is also part of the food and agriculture sector to face and consider. Even if you don’t consume animal protein, your fields are going to be fertilised by either fossil fuel fertiliser or animal manure).

Ichsani Wheeler – We need more large animals in our landscapes

10th June 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

Ichsani Wheeler, co-founder of OpenGeoHub and Envirometrix, challenges dominant assumptions in land use and agricultural design, making the case for more large animals in our landscapes—not fewer. She explains why understanding the maximum ecological carrying capacity of agro-ecological systems is essential for restoring function, productivity, and resilience in both natural and farmed environments. Wheeler advocates for granular, place-based research to better inform ecological planning, arguing that broad generalizations fall short when it comes to the complex realities of nutrient cycling and biomass distribution. Megafauna plays a critical role in ecosystems as mobile nutrient cyclers, their absence leads often to stagnation and imbalance.

Category: Role of Animals