Tag: biodiversity

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 AI 4 Soil Health, Beyond Food, Diet Change, Ecosystem Services Payments, Farmers First Tech, Farmers' Philosophy, Investor Stories, Landscape Design 2.0, Landscape Tech, Nutrient Dense Food, Nutrients to Soil, Ownership, Policy and Legislation, Regeneration Newsroom, Regenerative Agriculture, Regenerative Aquaculture, Regenerative Education, Regenerative Mind, Role of Animals, Role of corporations, Short Food Webs, Soil Builders, Transition finance, Walking the Land with a Regenerative Farmer, Water Cycles 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.

Stef van Dongen – Trees don’t send invoices so a Catalan valley is rewiring water, forests and finance

2nd December 2025 koenvanseijen Landscape Design 2.0, Regenerative Agriculture, Water Cycles 0 Comments

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.

Toby Parkes – Mapping the underground fungi world by building a unicorn

18th November 2025 koenvanseijen Farmers First Tech, Landscape Design 2.0, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs, Soil Builders 0 Comments

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.

Stefania Avanzini – Why and how 26 food giants with a turn over of $900 billion are getting serious about regeneration and biodiversity

24th September 2024 koenvanseijen Regenerative Agriculture, Role of corporations 1 Comment

A conversation with Stefania Avanzini, director of One Planet Business for Biodiversity (OP2B), about working hard to create alternative vertically integrated, farmed-owned food companies and transforming the current giants. Because, whether we like it or not, most of the food we buy in supermarkets comes from these companies. These companies are finally feeling the pain from climate weirding in their supply chains. So, what are they doing about it, and why did 26 of them join the coalition of businesses for biodiversity?

How does a coalition with companies with a total turnover of over 900 billion dollars work on changing the food system? These are the whales of the food system, not the small fishes, and with all their issues and challenges, they are fundamental to the future of our food system.

Matthijs Westerwoudt – Paying farmers for cultivating weeds and making biodiversity super tasty by selling drinks and teas made from native plants

27th August 2024 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Farmers First Tech, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture 2 Comments

Matthijs Westerwoudt is the co-founder of Wilder Land, a company transforming native plants, often considered weeds, into highly desirable products. These plants, once dismissed as unwanted, are now being used to create delicious drinks, herbal teas, kombuchas, fermented teas, and even pasta. The company pays farmers more per square meter than they would earn from any other crop. How do they achieve this? First, by ensuring that these products taste as good as, or even better than, those made from monoculture crops. Second, through exceptional branding—highlighting the appeal of “nature-restoring” drinks over the concept of “biodiversity-restoring” beverages. The secret to success lies in continuous testing and refinement. In short, they are making biodiversity not just important, but incredibly tasty.

In the Netherlands, many things are well-organized, but the country also holds the unfortunate title of being a world leader in biodiversity loss. This raises the question: how can farmers be compensated for the extra biodiversity they create or support? While the idea of biodiversity credits might come to mind, these are difficult to measure and not yet fully developed. Wilder Land found a different solution for it.

Willem Ferwerda – Kickstarted the restoration industry with Commonland 11 years ago, now finally big money shows interest, but we need billions 

13th August 2024 koenvanseijen Farmers First Tech, Landscape Design 2.0, Regenerative Agriculture, Transition finance 2 Comments

A conversation with Willem Ferwerda, one of the founders of the regeneration space, which barely existed 11 years ago when he started Commonland. How and why is it so fundamental to take a landscape view and get all the stakeholders to look at a map- yes, a physically printed large map- together? Because chances are they never have done that. The farmers, the real estate developers, the nature conversation professionals, the local politicians spent most of their time in their own silos and if they talk to each other often it isn’t very friendly.

How do you get them to develop a shared vision of what they want their landscape to look like in 20 or 30 years? How do you trigger that kind of inspiration? Nobody likes to live in a dying landscape where biodiversity has left, where people have left or are leaving, schools are closing, and shops as well.

We are at the beginning of what was barely a space 11 years ago, of course holistic landscape management existed in indigenous circles and ecology silos, but barely outside of that. And now we see the financial space starting to dip its toe into this and we will need them, as we talk billions of real green infrastructures, not hard infrastructure made of concrete, but soft, healthy spongy soils, thriving ecosystems, beneficial keystone species including people coming back to the countryside and managing landscapes holistically.

Kat Bruce – Going from putting insects in a food processor to raising $27M in 10 years and building the biggest eDNA biodiversity monitoring company

14th June 2024 koenvanseijen Ecosystem Services Payments, Farmers First Tech, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

A conversation with Kat Bruce, founder of Nature Metrics , going from scooping insects with a small net and putting them in a food processor, to analysing the goo with an eDNA machine, to working with lots of large food corporations on measuring their biodiversity, food footprint, and impact.

How do you look back at raising 27 million dollars and spending 10 years building the biggest biodiversity measurement company using eDNA in a time where very few people care at all about biodiversity, let alone invest in measuring it. How do we analyse water at a catchment area to see what lives in that area? How about soil measurements for DNA at scale, and what about air sniffing and analysing? And why are the corporations only coming in in the last few years? Where are people moving, and what is still missing?

Henry Dimbleby – From designing the National Food Strategy for England to starting a £50M fund focussed on food transition

28th May 2024 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Regenerative Agriculture, Transition finance 0 Comments

A wide range conversation of almost two hours with Henry Dimbleby, founder of Bramble Partners, a venture capital firm, that invests in businesses seeking to improve food security. Before Bramble Partners, Henry co-founded Leon Restaurants and the Sustainable Restaurant Association and also served deep in the heart of the UK government as he was appointed lead non-executive board member of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

In this exchange we discuss everything from Donella Meadows in complex systems to what that means for all of us trying to influence these systems and policies and how you actually change policy. How it was to manage the COVID crisis from within the UK government, keeping food on the shelves of the supermarkets and local shops, and trying to drastically improve school meals and their accessibility for children living in poverty in the UK. Plus, a deep dive into the junk food cycle, the differences between ultra-processed food and junk food, and the crazy ultra-processed food addiction we all, or mostly, have fallen victim to. And finally, how eating lentils can change everything.

Cameron Frayling – Forget biodiversity credits (for now). Regen ag farm land funds and regulation are driving the biodiversity sector

7th May 2024 koenvanseijen Ecosystem Services Payments, Regenerative Agriculture, Transition finance 0 Comments

A check in conversation with Cameron Frayling, CEO of Pivotal Earth, about biodiversity, one of the most important sets of things we should track and measure, and yet it is super difficult and mostly hasn’t been done until now at scale at all. The data is simply not there, so what do we do? With Cameron we check in with one of the leading companies trying to bring technology to this space and make biodiversity measured at scale and cost-effective.

We learn a lot about the current tracking devices and new hardware Cameron would love to see developed, how little most biodiversity experts actually know and not many are able to identify the right insects, etc. What data to trust and how to build trustworthy data, plus the most active customer of the company, not biodiversity credit developers, but regen farm land forestry developers that want to report to their investors about biodiversity gains because the investors are asking for it or regulation is forcing them.

Chris Henggeler – Standing on the shoulders of giants (Savory, Ingham, Provenza) and managing over 77000 hectares in remote Australia

26th April 2024 koenvanseijen Farmers First Tech, Landscape Design 2.0, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals 0 Comments

A conversation with Chris Henggeler, a second-generation high-density, low-duration herder using herds for land management. From one of the most remote places in Australia, we explore big myths like many animals damage the land, to a huge question: can we actually put the new megafauna to work? Farms need to get smaller, and ranches need to get bigger. If you want to retire in security, you have a vested interest in healthy landscapes.

How do we invest as if our grandchildren mattered? How do we ground investing in ecology, and what human activity is restraining nature from building wealth? This and much more in the conversation with Chris.