Alfonso Chico de Guzmán – The ag-tech that brings cows back
Alfonso Chico de Guzmán – Ag-tech done right, enabling farmers to bring cows back onto thousands of hectares where fencing is impossible
Stef van Dongen – Trees don’t send invoices so a Catalan valley is rewiring water, forests and finance
From the Muga Valley, one of the largest watershed regeneration projects we know, we talk with Stef van Dongen, founder of The Pioneers of Our Time about nature credits, taking into consideration water, carbon biodiversity, regenerative forest management, but most importantly, how to build trust again between communities living in the valley, trust between people living there, but also with local and regional authority.
This is a region which if there isn’t a strong series of interventions over the next years, most likely will be hit by a massive forest fire, which will burn all the way to Basque country. And slowly that sense of urgency is landing. What is needed is a lot of experiments and then a lot of public private partnerships, which is easier said than done, but it seems to be going really fast in this landscape, and we try to find out why.
We talk about why the small water cycle restoration space is still not really landing with people, policy makers, investors, entrepreneurs, and what to do about it.
Sitting at the fireplace we trace how neighbors who barely spoke began phoning across ridgelines, how tourism money are flowing uphill to fund forest work, and how a dense, abandoned woodland started opening into a living mosaic that holds water, softens fire, and invites wildlife back.
We walk through the mechanics of a cost-based climate credit that pays for what a hectare truly needs over 15 years measured across water, carbon, biodiversity, and fire safety. It’s a public–private framework that the regional government helps certify: pilots sold out, and a thousand credits are now in sight as the valley scales from dozens to thousands of hectares, all within a 40,000-hectare fire prevention plan designed to be holistic from day one.
WATERSHED GOVERNANCE AND SCALING UP
The conversation goes deeper into governance and replication. How do you manage a watershed you don’t own? Start with trust, map the layers- forest, water, biodiversity, agriculture, economy- and build a campus where scientists, foresters, and investors can monitor, learn, and iterate. We compare desalination’s billion-euro price tags to the cheaper, cleaner gains from soil sponge restoration. We talk predators and grazers, “green deserts” and beavers, and the hard pivot from carbon-speak to water security, a narrative that resonates across politics because everyone needs a shower, a harvest, and a forest that won’t explode each summer.
The discussion outlines a visionary approach to managing the landscape through a new governance model based on watershed boundaries rather than political ones. This involves creating collaborative systems between public, private, and civil society actors to enable work at the necessary scale for ecological and climate impact.
“We’re working towards a bioregional governance system, so having the watershed as basically a unit of governance which then will be the foundation for society and economy and ecology.” – Stef van Dongen
WATER AS THE KEY TO CLIMATE RESILIENCE
The narrative positions water security as the central, tangible manifestation of the climate crisis in the region, making it a powerful and apolitical focal point for action. Restoring the watershed’s natural water cycles is framed as the core strategy for building resilience against drought, fire, and social instability.
“Water is the manifestation of the climate crisis we have, especially in the Mediterranean. What do you see? Forest fires and floods. Where do functional watersheds come from? Because the sponge where the forest is drying out and turns into fire.” – Stef van Dongen
THE POWER OF COMMUNITY FESTIVALS
The Muga local festival has evolved into a cross-village event, serving as a catalyst for connection and community engagement. It demonstrates how such gatherings rebuild social fabric and empower residents to advocate for their needs.
“Yesterday there was a hunter here, and he said he got a phone call from Tarara, which is two villages upstream from the Muga, and he was really surprised […] They asked specific questions, and he said that this is because of the festival. Because now the festival is growing into a festival of three villages, […] and people start to speak with each other andstart relating to each other.” – Stef van Dongen
BUILDING TRUST IN THE MUGA VALLEY
A foundational element of the work in the valley has been intentionally developing trust and relationships among villagers and between villages, where previously there was little communication or cooperation. This deliberate effort is seen as essential for any long-term, collective action.
“We’ve been investing a lot of time and effort and also resources in building trust and relationships between people and identifying what are really the hopes and the wishes, but also the fears of people.” – Stef van Dongen
OTHER POINTS DISCUSSED
Koen and Stef also talked about:
- Wildlife reintroduction
- Nature credit mechanisms
- Agricultural challenges and tensions
LINKS:
LINKED INTERVIEWS:
- Stef van Dongen – Regenerating a 100.000HA watershed in Spain while preventing the forest from burning and people from burnouts
- Water Cycle series
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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.
Simon Kraemer – The €120k study showing regenerative agriculture can feed the world
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
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.
Julia Kasper – Rewetting peatlands is the biggest climate opportunity to cut CO2
Meet Julia Kasper, cofounder and CEO of Zukunftmoor, a company rewetting drained peatlands and growing sphagnum moss to transform how we think about agriculture. Their powerful approach reduces greenhouse gas emissions and makes climate-friendly farming possible in peatland regions.
Peatlands, peatlands, peatlands: the biggest climate opportunity in agriculture isn’t cover crops or even silvopasture, but rewetting the humble peatlands. They cover only 3% of the global land surface, yet hold immense amounts of CO2. And when they’re drained- as many are- they release it, not just once, but year after year after year. Like a bathtub with the plug out and the shower still on.
These lands, at least in Europe, are often farmed and not very profitable. But before these farmers risk their livelihoods, we need concrete alternatives to transition. That’s what Julia works on: how to grow something that can replace current agricultural methods on peatlands while rewetting them. And it seems they’ve found a big part of the puzzle: rewetting peatlands and growing sphagnum moss. Currently, when you buy a plant in a shop or when plants are grown in greenhouses, the growing medium contains a lot of extracted peat, which comes with huge emissions and will soon be illegal in Europe. Sphagnum moss can replace this 1-to-1.
It’s still early days, but the signs are promising. We talk about how to rewet a peatland, how to seed it (hint: with drones and by hand), how to harvest — and much more. How do you create enough investor interest to actually build a company?
Nicola Giuggioli – Building a regenerative brand: from soil health to living wages
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.
Jonathan Lundgren – You need more cows, not fewer, to save the planet
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!).
Justin Bruch – Organic out-earn conventional, how do we transition more farms and farmers?
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.
Douglas Sheil – Why fixing water fixes carbon
Wow, it seems so simple: healthy forests bring in and trigger their own rain. But, since most rain comes from elsewhere, shouldn’t we be more interested in this “elsewhere”? Why aren’t farmers, investors, entrepreneurs, and policymakers in agriculture, forestry, and land use more engaged with this bigger picture? For example, if China realises that most of its rainfall comes from beyond its Western borders- even as far as Europe. would they get involved in restoring farms and forests all the way to Europe? Big ideas. And you could argue: it doesn’t get much bigger than this.
Yes, we’re talking again about water cycles and this time with Douglas Sheil, Professor of Forest Ecology and Forest Management at Wageningen University, one of the most famous agricultural universities in the world. Why has it been so difficult to get scientific discoveries, like the biotic pump theory in physics, to enter other fields like climate science and forestry? We talk about the huge pushback biotic pump scientists have faced in publishing papers and gaining recognition over the past 20 years.
But we also talk about optimism, why water is a much easier sell than carbon, and how it could spark far more cross-border cooperation. Still, to make it work, we need to think big and get much better at working together, which is no easy feat. It’s a wide-ranging conversation on tropical forests, science, the Sahel, natural regeneration, and politics.
Lauren Tucker – Inner regen work, gut molds, almonds groves in the Central Valley and taste buds
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?