Tag: agroforestry

Kevin Wolz – Starting an agroforestry industry in the belly of the beast, the soy and corn monoculture heartland of the US Midwest

19th November 2024 koenvanseijen Ecosystem Services Payments, Farmers First Tech, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

A conversation with Kevin Wolz, CEO of Canopy Farm Management and former founder of the Savanna Institute. Canopy provides tree planting and management services to farmers and landowners in the US Midwest. They establish perennial crops, timber plantings, conservation practices, and integrated agroforestry systems.

We have been talking about agroforestry systems and investing before (see link at the bottom of this page!): trees were the answer to whatever your question was. But how do you start an agroforestry industry right in the middle of the belly of the beast, the American Midwest, where corn and soy are everywhere, leases are 1 to 3 years, and there are no trees as far as the eye can see? And especially here, trees are needed, not as magical carbon sequestration tools but as climate adaptation, against erosion, wind breaks, to protect animals and crops, nutrient leaking into streams, and, of course, to produce a lot of food integrated into the fields. What does it take to build an agroforestry industry here? What about finance, equipment, planting, seedlings, tree nursery, harvesting, markets, and much more?

Felipe Pasini – Walking the land of Amadeco Syntropic Farm with a regenerative farmer

30th July 2024 koenvanseijen Farmers First Tech, Nutrients to Soil, Regenerative Agriculture, Walking the Land with a Regenerative Farmer 0 Comments

What if you could turn a dry, water-scarce plot of land into a thriving ecosystem? In this new episode of Walking the Land with a Regenerative Farmer we follow the journey of Felipe Pasini, as we explore his transformative work on the Amadeco Syntropic farm in Depressa, Salento, Puglia. Felipe reveals how he tackled the challenges of traditional dry stone walls, rocky soil, and limited water supply to create a productive, visually stunning farm organized into innovative elements.

Fernando Russo – From selling Playboy’s to growing coffee, cacao, credit and lots of cows

11th June 2024 koenvanseijen Ecosystem Services Payments, Investor Stories, Regenerative Agriculture, Transition finance 0 Comments

A deep dive conversation with Fernando Russo about the reasons why he is going deep into coffee and cacao without being a coffee drinker and how he turned from being a Playboy’s salesman and a travel entrepreneur to an impact investor in the regenerative agriculture and food. We also talk about fashion and heights, the Amazon, deforestation, reforestation, the role of cattle—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and, of course, the potential and why he is in the water camp, not the carbon camp.

What is driving one of the most active impacts investors in the regenerative space? What Fernando tells fellow impact investors when they ask him about this regen thing?
Getting credit and other finance into the hands of farmers and land stewards who want and can change is way more important. Let’s get to work.

Jonas Steinfeld – The many shades of green of agroforestry systems

24th May 2024 koenvanseijen Ecosystem Services Payments, Landscape Design 2.0, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

A conversation with Jonas Steinfeld, a researcher and consultant based in Brazil specialising in agroforestry systems, about the many different levels of complexity in agroforestry. Does complexity lead to more or less work? Does complexity lead to more or less carbon storage, and why? And are complex agroforestry systems more profitable? The scientific world has been quite clear up until now that adding more complexity to agriculture, especially with perennials like trees, almost always makes massive environmental differences. So what is holding us back? Why aren’t we planting trees everywhere?

Brett Hundley – From Tyson Foods equity analyst to financing millions of trees

13th February 2024 koenvanseijen Farmers First Tech, Landscape Design 2.0, Nutrients to Soil, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

A conversation with Brett Hundley, President of Agroforestry Partners (AP), a fund that invests in agroforestry projects on farmland with the strategy of providing uncorrelated and attractive nature-based investment opportunities for investors.
We talk about moving away from an agricultural system that relies on annuals to a system that relies more on perennial trees. If trees are the answer to whatever the question is, how do we get millions of more trees into the ground?

How do we finance them, and how do we make the key stakeholders, the farmers- that need to give agroforestry operators access to their land for 20 40 or maybe a 100 years- comfortable with these farming systems? How do we get comfortable with writing these checks the other essential stakeholder investors that need to pour hundreds of millions into an industry and a system they are not really used to, with long time horizons (chestnuts, for instance, take 7 to 9 years before they bare fruit but could produce for at least 50 or even hundreds of years)?

Jan-Gisbert Schultze – How a VC investor got bitten by the regeneration bug and went via Joel Salatin, Gabe Brown and Ernst Gotsch deep into syntropic agroforestry

21st November 2023 koenvanseijen Regenerative Agriculture, Transition finance 1 Comment

A conversation with Jan-Gisbert Schultze, a VC investor who turned into a regenerative enthusiast and bought a small olive farm, which he is turning into the first syntropic farm in Salento, in Puglia (Italy), a region battered by monoculture olive trees.

Marta Cortegano – How to start the regenerative revolution from one of the driest places in Europe

2nd May 2023 koenvanseijen Farmers First Tech, Policy and Legislation, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A conversation with Marta Cortegano, cofounder of Terra Sintrópica and one of the leaders of the regenerative agriculture movement in Portugal. Straight from one of the driest and emptiest places in Europe where climate change is hitting hard, we talked about farming in challenging conditions, syntropic agroforestry and more.

Sven Verwiel – How to unlock the potential of syntropic agroforestry in East Africa

17th January 2023 koenvanseijen Farmers First Tech, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A conversation with Sven Verwiel of ForestFoods, a Kenyan based premium produce brand, about the potential of syntropic agroforestry in Kenya, and what we can learn from the over 40 years of experience in Brazil and what is needed to apply it at scale in the local East African context as well as why is the African continent the crucial and most interesting place to apply regenerative practises.

Felipe Pasini – Trees bring water so when in doubt plant more trees and complexify

8th March 2022 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Farmers First Tech, Landscape Design 2.0, Nutrients to Soil, Regenerative Agriculture 4 Comments

Felipe Pasini, the co-founder of Life in Syntropy, joins us to discuss the astounding capabilities of systemic tree planting coupled with many other agroforestry systems and the role of syntropic agroforestry in gaining back the forests we once had.

Clément Chenost – Lessons learned on investing 80M into vertically integrated agroforestry companies in LATAM and Subsaharan Africa

23rd November 2021 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Investor Stories, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

Clément Chenost, the Co-Founder and CEO of Moringa Partnership/ Fund, joins us to discuss the role of de-commoditizing value chains, vertical integration, and consumer behaviour in regeneration. We also discussed consumer demand and commoditisation that leads to premiums of sometimes over 100% and drives the regenerative transition.