Page 2 – Investing in regenerative agriculture

Tania Rodriguez Riestra – Systems change investing done right

3rd March 2026 antonellatotaro 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 antonellatotaro 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

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

17th February 2026 antonellatotaro 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.

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!

Million Belay – Why the USAID shutdown was a gift to agroecology in Africa

3rd February 2026 antonellatotaro 6 Comments

The difference between agroecology and regenerative agriculture is the deep social change we need in the food and agriculture system. As Laura Ortiz Montemayor told us once “ecology without social justice is just gardening”. Million Belay, who leads the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, the largest social movement on the African continent, is very clear stop intervening with agriculture on the continent, stop imposing all kinds of rules, practices, seeds, inputs etc, which don’t serve in this context (and we could argue in the context we come from as well, how many European banned pesticides are exported to the continent?)

We talk about the shut down of the USAID which was actually a good shock to the system. And finally donors, which unfortunately dictate quite a bit the direction, are talking and slowly also acting around agroecology. We discuss how through lobbying they managed to get many countries to adopt agroecology policies in the last few years, what Million would do with a billion dollar and what his message for investors is.

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

27th January 2026 antonellatotaro 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?

Bart van der Zande – A venture studio is the solution to all our regenerative challenges

20th January 2026 antonellatotaro 0 Comments

How to get more entrepreneurs building in the regeneration space? If you are a regular listener of this podcast, you have heard us discuss this so many times you probably lost count. No, we are not saying entrepreneurs and companies are the solution to all our problems. But entrepreneurial people who set up companies, but also non-profits and movements— basically people who don’t accept the status quo and get to work to change it—are always the ones who change the world.

So how do we get more of those started in the biggest challenge of all: how to regenerate a severely degraded world? And when people get bitten by the “soil” bug, how do we give them all the support and resources to make sure the chances of them succeeding against most odds are as high as possible? Or, in the words of Bart, how do we create the best enabling conditions for them and others to succeed?

Enter the venture studio. We have had Bart van der Zande, co-founder of the Fresh Ventures Studio, on the show twice before, and it really was time for a check-in. They have run three cohorts now, built 10+ regen-focused companies, and are gearing up for their fourth cohort. We talk about the venture studio and what is holding back the sector: more early-stage funding, but also why it is so difficult to get early-stage funding in. Everyone who has done a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation on starting a fund to focus on “early” stage quickly figures out that small tickets don’t really make a lot of sense. So how does Bart think they can make it work?

We also talk about the best place to look for real regen innovations: on a leading regen farm. But what usually happens? The super-forward regen farmer invents something that works for him or her (e.g. a special bio-tea compost extract sprayer that fits on the existing cover-crop planter, etc.) and then? It stops there. Maybe she or he will make a few for neighbours, and that is pretty much it. How do we commercialize and, more importantly, spread these super context-specific but super relevant innovations? Again, the answer is entrepreneurial people who set up companies around the inventions, where the farmers can choose how involved they want to be.

Omoke Brian – Inside Africa’s regenerative agriculture opportunity

13th January 2026 antonellatotaro 0 Comments

Bill Gates Foundation works in Africa: what goes through your mind when you hear those words? We all probably quickly have our thoughts ready, but hold on a second. Just as we often talk about farmers without asking them, we often talk about the African continent without asking people actually living there. So, we never fully grasp how big, how interesting, how full of potential, and how fundamental it is in a regenerative future.

In this new series on African Regenerative Frontrunners, we try to do that differently. We will be talking to amazing regenerative entrepreneurs on the continent, but we obviously are not the best suited to do that and thus won’t be doing this alone. We are collaborating and co-hosting this series with Omoke Brian, aka The Organic Guy, who has been deep in organic agroecology for the last 10 years, based in Kenya, an entrepreneur himself and a podcast host. We will be co-hosting a number of conversations. We will both interview different guests and build upon each other’s episodes, and we kick it off with a double interview where I join Omoke’s show and he joins ours. Will we get it perfect? No. Will we have a lot of fun doing it? Yes.

Why the continent? Most young people this century will be born there. Most land is farmed by smallholders who barely make ends meet. And it is hit hard- really hard- by climate change while having contributed nearly nothing to it. So, all of us better get to work.

What are the big myths, the big pitfalls, when foreigners- especially investors and entrepreneurs- come to this continent and try to “help the poor farmers”? Yes, we will be talking about Gates, GMOs, decolonisation and all the good stuff, and of course get into what Brian sees as big opportunities and what he would do if he were investing 1B, and of course the magic wand question.

AI in Ag: What’s Possible, What’s Not, What Farmers Need to Know @ Groundswell 2025

9th January 2026 antonellatotaro 0 Comments

AI is transforming agriculture, how can farmers and land managers be sure it works for them? What digital twins, soil health metrics, novel robot sensors and other technologies can do to support profitable farming and enable ecosystem service payments—while also addressing critical questions about data rights, governance, and ownership like: How can farmers and landholders retain control of their own data and capture more of the value AI creates? How can the new tech help farmers to monitor, track and predict soil health and empower them to make on-farm decisions? Through maps and real-world examples, let’s explore limits and opportunities.

This episode was recorded live at Groundswell 2025, in the UK, one of the most important gatherings for regenerative agriculture in the world. During the panel Koen moderated on AI in Ag: What’s Possible,What’s Not, What Farmers Need to Know we dove into into challenges and opportunities with the scientist Ichsani Wheeler, the farmer and investor Maarten van Dam, the journalist Louisa Burwood-Taylor and the fund manager Naeem Lakhani.

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.