Category: Short Food Webs

Olusola Sowemimo – How a Nigerian lawyer built a profitable organic farm with standards, data and community

13th March 2026 koenvanseijen African Regenerative Frontrunners, Diet Change, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A mother’s passing set off a mission: rebuild trust in food by rebuilding the way it’s grown. We sit down with Olusola Sowemimo, a lawyer-turned-farmer and founder of Ope Farms in Nigeria, to unpack how grief became a blueprint for organic, traceable, and profitable agriculture. Her catalyst was a cancer conference in California where survivors only ate what they could trace—an idea that reshaped how she thinks about soil, inputs, and integrity. Back home, the early days were rough: antibiotic-laced manure wiped out hundreds of tomato plants, a strong tobacco extract burned cucumbers, and buyers were nowhere in sight. What changed? Relentless record keeping, strict organic standards, and smart design—corner plots with buffer zones, on-farm worker housing, and a refusal to cut down trees.

Olusola details how rabbits and carefully managed poultry helped her close nutrient loops, why fruit trees are the most underrated cash-flow asset for new organic farms, and how processing gluts into shelf-stable products saved revenue. She shares the playbook for market fit—from salad staples to premium greens like kale—and the power of traceability in winning home deliveries, retail partners, and even international lab validations for turmeric and ginger. We also explore the human side: training that prevents avoidable mistakes, social media that tells an honest story, and the mindset shift needed to move beyond “organic is impossible”.

Sylvia Banda – How she trained 60,000 farmers and transformed Zambia’s food system

17th February 2026 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Farmers First Tech, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A conversation with Sylvia Banda, Zambian business woman, restaurateur and social entrepreneur about her journey started when when she was 12. She opened her first food company, and she hasn’t stopped since. She now runs a multi-million-dollar business with over 15 restaurants in Lusaka, Zambia, a food- processing company selling traditional Zambian food worldwide, and has trained over 60,000 smallholder farmers to produce higher-quality products and process them to receive better prices.

We talk about why researchers should take a back seat and let farmers and entrepreneurs lead now; why the hand tools many farmers still use belong in a museum and why mechanisation is key, but with care; why processing and preserving are essential to ending hunger; and about nutrition, traditional food versus imported food, and how she taught urban people to re-appreciate what is often considered “food for the poor” that is traditional, nutrient-dense, and tasty food. To supply all of this, she set up two factories and trained over 60,000 smallholder farmers, changing many lives.

Enjoy the story and the knowledge of a true Zambian and Southern African powerhouse.

Thekla Teunis and Gijs Boers – Regenerative practices deliver higher quality and higher prices in year one

6th January 2026 koenvanseijen Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs, Transition finance 0 Comments

Regenerative practices lead to higher quality and much higher prices in year one and, over time, to lower costs, which makes the regenerative business case in certain cash crops that are exported (spices, tea, coffee, etc.) so strong that it almost spreads on its own. Nothing is easy, but this is really hopeful. In this conversation with Thekla Teunis and Gijs Boers, founders of Grounded, Grounded Ingredients and Grounded Investment Company, we discuss why quality is intimately linked to regenerative practices.

We talk about why we don’t need transition finance in many cases, but we do need philanthropic capital to figure out what regenerative looks like in specific circumstances. When that research and development (in other sectors we would call that R&D ) is done, it can be rolled out profitably and relatively easily with more commercially focused, return- driven capital.

We talk about why it’s easier to act regeneratively in many places in the Global South (easier, not easy). And we talk about the why of super hands-on investing. Knock knock- there are regenerative barbarians at the gate. What if we do private equity right and use it as a tool for good?

No, don’t worry, this is not a hallelujah story about how capitalism is going to save us all, but we are talking to two very, very experienced entrepreneurs and company builders, now turned super hands-on investors in East and South-Central Africa. In their context (you see, it’s always context-specific), super hands-on investor involvement makes sense. They invest in processing companies that buy and process spices like coffee, tea (you know, all those things that make your kitchen and cooking more interesting and your mornings bearable).

This is Thekla and Gijs third time on the show, and we talked about all the lessons they’ve learned building companies across the African continent over the last 12 years, and why, despite all the scars and R&D paid for, they are super optimistic.
We discuss how they designed their investment fund from the ground up instead of top down, and how their story is landing with sceptical investors. Really, no need for regenerative certification and transition finance? Again, in this context, regeneration makes sense from day one, and now it’s time to scale and replicate it.

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 AI 4 Soil Health, Beyond Food, Diet Change, Ecosystem Services Payments, Farmers First Tech, Farmers' Philosophy, Investor Stories, Landscape Design 2.0, Landscape Tech, Nutrient Dense Food, Nutrients to Soil, Ownership, Policy and Legislation, Regeneration Newsroom, Regenerative Agriculture, Regenerative Aquaculture, Regenerative Education, Regenerative Mind, Role of Animals, Role of corporations, Short Food Webs, Soil Builders, Transition finance, Walking the Land with a Regenerative Farmer, Water Cycles 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.

Andres Jara – How a chef-butcher-farmer turned legumes into a scalable, clean-label food that rewards farmers

23rd December 2025 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

How do you make legumes great again? Don’t worry, this is not a political episode. It’s about something far more urgent: giving legumes the role they truly deserve in our food system. Together with Andres Jara, co-founder of Favamole, we explore what it really takes to build a regenerative food brand in the middle of today’s industrial food landscape.

How do you play the game while sharing shelf space with giant food companies, big retail, massive processors, and catering empires? And more importantly: how do you scale fast, influence as many hectares as possible, and not lose your regenerative soul along the way? We dive into regenerative business models, flavour as a lever for change, regenerative finance, scale, money, and impact, all while walking on the stunning, sunny, and very cold fields of Jeroen and Mellany Klompe.

Simon Kraemer – The €120k study showing regenerative agriculture can feed the world

25th November 2025 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Nutrient Dense Food, Nutrients to Soil, Policy and Legislation, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

How do we feed the world? It’s all nice and cute this regenerative agriculture and food stuff, but how do we actually feed the world? By 2050, we’ll need to produce double the amount of food. This is a question you, like me, get a lot, we bet, from banks, pension funds, large institutional players, investors in general, entrepreneurs, and eco-modernists.

Our go-to answer was always: go to the most pioneering farmers and see what they can produce. But the counterargument was always: “Show me the research!”. Now we have the research.

In this Walking the Land episode, recorded straight from one of the most advanced farms in Europe, we talk to Simon, Kraemer, executive director of the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture (EARA) and the lead author of a revolutionary study where they looked at 78 of the most pioneering farms in Europe and compared them to their conventional neighbours. They analyse everything from fertiliser use, finances, and pesticides to the holiest of grails: photosynthesis. And guess what? Regenerative outperformed conventional in almost everything. Similar or higher yields, more than 75% reduction in NPKs, significantly reduced chemical use and, best of all, over the seven years they compared them, the regenerative farms kept getting better and better. Imagine what that looks like after 15 years! And imagine applying all that knowledge to new farms or new fields. There’s an S-curve and exponential growth in regeneration when you look at photosynthesis on regenerative fields.

So how did this study land in the agri-food world in Europe? What about the large food companies, and policymakers in Brussels who decide about the biggest pot of agricultural subsidies in the world: the €400 billion CAP, renewed every five years?

Toby Parkes – Mapping the underground fungi world by building a unicorn

18th November 2025 koenvanseijen Farmers First Tech, Landscape Design 2.0, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs, Soil Builders 0 Comments

In order to save and more importantly restore biodiversity we don’t need biodiversity or carbon credits; we need biologists to find super profitable business models within the magical deeply complex world of nature. It’s the case of Toby Parkes, founder and CEO of Rhizocore, with whom go deep into the third, mostly ignored, and much more complex kingdom: fungi.

Nicola Giuggioli – Building a regenerative brand: from soil health to living wages

4th November 2025 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Farmers First Tech, Nutrient Dense Food, Nutrients to Soil, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

Can you pay a decent year-round salary to farm workers, enough to go to a bank, get a mortgage, and still not charge prices that make your produce accessible only to the happy few? What do vibrations, pest management, nutrient density, and processing have to do with it?

With Nicola Giuggioli we walk the Quintosapore land, on a hilly but stunning landscape in the green heart of Italy, Umbria, where GPS auto-steer tractors don’t exist because simply keeping the tractor in a straight line without slipping down the hill is already an achievement. Quinto Sapore is new farm, only 5 years old and 2.5 years into serious business, but it is making huge steps.

They are building a brand, paying attention to revenue and costs, measuring nutrient density, and paying living year-round wages. Is it easy? Of course not. But for the past few years, they’ve been going deep, very deep,  into the next frontier of agriculture: vibrations, frequencies, and more. In this episode we cover it all: seeds, living wages, trying to intervene as little as possible, quantum agriculture and transformation, and processing. Of course, not ultra-processed, but actually old school and high tech at the same time.

Lauren Tucker – Inner regen work, gut molds, almonds groves in the Central Valley and taste buds

7th October 2025 koenvanseijen Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

This is a check-in conversation with Lauren Tucker, co-founder of Kiss the Ground and Renourish Studios. We talk about wrapping up the cohort at Renourish Studio, where they’ve worked for three years with a diverse group of entrepreneurs and investors across the US food and agriculture system.

How do you bring the fact that we are part of a living system into your work in commercial organisations? Lauren shares lessons learned, and what they’re doing moving forward. How much of this work is inner work—how we see the world, what we think is possible and not—vs. outer work like planting cover crops, digging swales, showing the financials and nutrient density of almonds, and demonstrating how regenerative farming systems are more alive by measuring biodiversity? How do we open up to opportunities like small water cycle restoration, instead of only thinking about cover crops on our farm?

Herb Young – After 36 years at Bayer, growing regen citrus with 8x the nutrients

15th April 2025 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A conversation with Herb Young, farmer who, after 36 years in the chemical industry working for Bayer, retired and bought a small farm in Georgia—where things quickly got out of hand. While researching organic premiums, Herb came across regenerative agriculture—and fell deep, very deep, down the rabbit hole. For over a year, he read everything, listened to everything, and then planted his first trees.

A few years later, Herb is now one of the leading regenerative citrus growers in the country, conducting cutting-edge research while selling his first harvest directly to consumers in over 36 states. And the most surprising part? His citrus is, on average, eight times more nutrient- dense than conventionally grown oranges. That means you’d have to eat eight regular oranges to match the nutrients of just one of his. Suddenly, the idea of food as medicine becomes very affordable. And, of course, his citrus is incredibly tasty.

We also discuss his history in the agrochemical industry, what his former colleagues think of his new “hobby” and what excites him most about the upcoming second season.