agriculture – Investing in regenerative agriculture

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

13th March 2026 koenvanseijen 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”.

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

10th February 2026 koenvanseijen 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 koenvanseijen 0 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.

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

20th January 2026 koenvanseijen 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 koenvanseijen 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.

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.

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

4th November 2025 koenvanseijen 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.

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.

Birker, Bösel, Mazzola – The Regenerative Agronomy Gap: who do farmers call?

15th July 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with farmer Benedikt Bösel, farmer and regen agronomist Matteo Mazzola and Philippe Birker, co-founder of Climate Farmers. We need regenerative agronomists. Because let’s face it — most farmers trust their agronomist, and the chances that their agronomist is trained in regen are pretty small. We’re moving from the first group of super ambitious, entrepreneurial, and slightly rebellious farmers who have made the transition, to a larger group who want to transition but can take less risk and will need support. So, who do they call when they want to start their transition? Current agriculture schools for agronomists are still very much focused on extractive, highly input- driven agriculture. Farmers often want a checklist and a protocol to “go regen” — but it might be more about asking uncomfortable questions.
So how do we go about changing that? This is three-part conversation today with Philippe Birker, who is setting up the Regen Agronomist Training in Europe, a 6-months intensive training program designed to equip agronomists with practical and theoretical knowledge in regenerative agriculture, with the first pilot happening this year; Benedikt Bösel, farmer at Gut&Bösel, whose farm will serve as a training farm, while sharing his experience with getting help taking his first steps into regen; and Matteo Mazzola, regenerative farmer at Iside, who also works with many others supporting their transition.

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).

Tag: agriculture