Transition finance – Investing in regenerative agriculture

Tania Rodriguez Riestra – Systems change investing done right

3rd March 2026 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

The food, agriculture and planetary systems, for that matter, are all in serious need of change. No news there.
But how? Individual investments and grants, however large, will never be big enough to move these systems. What we need is a serious, deep analysis of the food and agriculture space within a certain context: hundreds of hours of interviews with many stakeholders to map the players, the positive and negative feedback loops, and the intervention points with huge leverage (or not), trying to make sense of the messiness of a system. No, a map is never the territory, but it’s better than no map.

Then what? How do we go from mapping to action? It is key to build dedicated funding vehicles for-profit, low-return, no-return, philanthropy, the whole capital spectrum concentrated on the highest leverage points in a system. And then, and only then, we might have a chance to move something.

CO_ is one of the most interesting regen investment vehicles we have come across, combining deep systems research with long-term, on-the-ground work, weaving until you have a common vision, and then deploying serious capital to make it work.

This is a long conversation where we walk and talk, with some dogs and helicopter noise and butterflies too. We talk water, landscape-scale regeneration, investing in the Global North and South, investor mindsets, relationship to wealth, what is enough, inequality, biodiversity hotspot research and funding, equity vs. debt, and why whales will be on investment committees soon.

Neal Collins – Agrihoods for free-range kids: A Trojan horse for regenerative agriculture

24th February 2026 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

Think about where and how you live. Close your eyes and picture your ideal neighbourhood. We bet it looks something like this: a walkable neighbourhood designed around a fully functional farm, with different types of houses built from healthy, non-toxic, natural materials, multifamily, aging-proof, small but not too small, with plenty of privacy, and affordable. The neighbourhood is designed for meeting your neighbours, hence the word neighbourhood. Cars are confined to a designated area, and most importantly, there are lots of free-ranging kids and chickens.

But wait, isn’t this an agriculture and food podcast? Why are we talking about real estate? Because so much agricultural land is being swallowed up by “development”. Cities are expanding, often building super ugly, incredibly toxic suburban homes on that land with big gates and big cars parked in driveways or garages, and kids who never go outside.

At the same time, real estate is very good at raising money and investing it, often without taking negative externalities into account. So, what can we learn, and how can we use the highly developed real estate capital markets to build agrihoods and thriving regenerative farms, enabled by well-planned, healthy neighbourhoods? And yes, we can achieve market-rate returns.

Happy to welcome on the podcast Neal Collins, founder of Hamlet Capital on a mission is to create more agrihood and conservation communities, serving a largely untapped yet growing demand for these unique living environments

Martin Reiter – Building a $100B home for regenerative brands

27th January 2026 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

We need to build a 100b conglomerate of regenerative brands, good for you and good for the planet.
What is needed to truly move the needle on health? Create more research, more trials on nutrient density, more advocacy? Or, as Martin Reiter, founder of RARE argues, create the next regen Nestlé or Unilever: a 100 billion (yes, that’s a B) regenerative consumer goods conglomerate, with only better-for-you and better-for-the-planet brands. The demand is there; the current incumbents are unable to innovate in regen, as they are built on chemical ingredients.

The story usually goes like this: a group of people sets up a food (or cosmetics) brand that is better for you and better for the planet. Much better ingredients, honest sourcing, actually healthy, not UPF, etc. Then they need some money and raise funds, keep building, scaling, and at some point, 10–15 years down the road, the founders get tired and want to take some money off the table. and their existing investors need to get out and return money to their LPs.

Currently, their only option is to sell to an incumbent, which then unfortunately usually screws it up. They start tweaking the ingredients, squeezing farmer margins, etc. The original founders leave after a few frustrating years.
Is there a better way? A permanent home for regen, good-for-you, good-for-the-planet brands? A regen Nestlé or Unilever, if you will?

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

6th January 2026 koenvanseijen 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 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.

Justin Bruch – Organic out-earn conventional, how do we transition more farms and farmers?

21st October 2025 koenvanseijen 1 Comment

A conversation with Justin Bruch, Cofounder-President & CEO of Clear Frontier, born and raised 5th generation Iowa farmer. He has actively farmed on 4 continents and has spent his entire career working in agriculture across North America (USA/Canada), South America, Europe, and Africa.

Organic makes more money. This is a financial decision first. This doesn’t mean the whole world should go organic tomorrow. It’s refreshing, right, to hear somebody say that out loud. Of course, it’s context-specific: we’re talking about the Midwest in the US, corn, soy, and specialty crops. But a fund that has been operating for the last six years clearly shows it makes more financial sense to farm organically. Not saying it’s easy, you have a lot of things to manage: crop rotation, pest management, weed pressure, manure, and all of that. But it does make more money.

So now the question becomes: how do we get more farms and farmers to transition? What are the financial models? What are the investment models to unlock this transition at scale? Not too fast—organic scale obviously, but still at scale.
That’s what we discuss today with one of the leaders in the space.

Cindie Christiansen – Top 50 Farmers update and the simple tweak to raise millions for regeneration

19th August 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A check in conversation with Cindie Christiansen, founder of Foodprint Nordic and Top 50 Farmers (no, it’s not a ranking, so nobody “won”). We spoke just six months ago, but this time we met in person to talk about the progress of turning farmers into the next superheroes of climate, water, health, and more.

We unpack her vision for systems change in food and agriculture. Directly from one of the world’s leading culinary scenes, Copenhagen, we ask: why hasn’t a strong farm-to-table, local cuisine movement led to real change in the agrifood system yet? And more importantly, what can we do about it?

We dive into her work with Foodprint Nordic and how they’re about to expand it to the rest of Europe. Very simply, but of course, it’s not that simple, the idea is to access a whole new pool of money not yet active in this space: the money of us eaters, and funnel it as quickly and with as few strings attached as possible to farmers ready to expand regenerative practices, planting trees, buying compost equipment, and more.

And even more importantly, how this approach could serve as a blueprint for real regional, and potentially national, action, helping shape government policy that truly supports regenerative farmers on the ground.

Thomas Hogenhaven – The €22M regen fund that said no to €7M

17th June 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

After three years, Thomas Hogenhaven, founder of Planetary Impact Ventures, is back on the podcast. Thomas and his team just turned down a $7 million investment in their fund. That’s right—said no to $7 million. And this wasn’t some shady source of capital either. This was a serious, institutional investor, fully compliant with KYC requirements. So… why walk away?

It comes down to values and incentives. When you’re building one of the most radical investment funds in the regenerative space, with an evergreen structure and no carry, you can’t afford to compromise. If you let investors in who start nudging you toward their own impact goals- let’s say, a focus on water savings- you risk skewing your entire investment strategy. Drip irrigation might look great on a report measuring millions of liters saved, but that’s not the point here.

Instead the super brave thing to do is say no to these kind of impact measures and trust that the structure and the alligned incentives will automatically make sure you only invest in the most radical founders. This radical approach has ripple effects. Like you might refuse to invest in a company, for example a drone platform, which could be used to spray compost tea. This radical fund will force the company to sign as part of the investment terms to never use the drone spraying platform for the agro chemical industry, but only for agroecological purposes.

Do you see how a new investment paradigm starts to take shape?

Laimonas Noreika – From FinTech to Farms: bridging the €60B loan gap for Europe’s small farms

25th March 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Laimonas Noreika, founder of HeavyFinance, about providing loans to farmers, bringing innovation to the traditionally stagnant agri-loan sector. Regen ag is more profitable—Laimonas has the data to prove it and is putting serious money to work to scale regen across Eastern Europe.

Some numbers: over €70M loaned to farmers and over 13,000 individual investors have invested through them. But the gap is much bigger—over €60B a year—which means we need institutional investors. Some, like the European Investment Fund, have invested through Heavy Finance. And why aren’t banks stepping in? Because small farmers don’t fit their criteria well. So, we need new fintech solutions and scale. This could be quite a standard fintech play in agriculture if it weren’t for a super clear focus on regenerative practices. Why? Because it’s more profitable and thus makes farmers better lenders.

And yes, we’re also talking about carbon credits—Laimonas is placing big bets in that space, and we explore why and how.

Matt Schmitt – How to make regenerative food and agriculture bankable

11th February 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Matt Schmitt, founder of Structure Climate, about how to get institutional investors invest in the regenerative food and agriculture transitions. These are big terms we use regularly, but what do they actually mean and, more importantly, how do we get there? How do we get novel climate technologies- like biochar machinery, chestnut agroforestry systems, biofertilizer plants, or weeding robots- bankable? Novel technologies often start as luxury goods with a clear customer demand, even if they don’t yet have many existing transactions, just very clear customer interest.
How do we make these technologies investable, or at least recognisable, by major financial institutions (like the big, “boring” banks, insurance companies, and pension funds). We need billions and trillions to flow to the soil. So, how do we get these asset managers over time to start financing this seriously, in the same way they do solar projects or sustainable real estate?

How does a capital stack for a novel technology look like, and how do we financially engineer it with creativity—the good kind, not the kind that caused financial crises in the past decades? To roll these technologies out across farms and landscapes, we need scalable solutions. While commodification in food and agriculture has a bad reputation, turning enabling technologies into bankable commodities can be a good thing. It helps farmers adopt systems that hold more complexity and resilience on their land.

Category: Transition finance