Tag: bread

Edd Lees – After 23 years in finance, a new career full of life, soil, bread and a famous DJ

22nd October 2024 koenvanseijen Regenerative Agriculture, Role of corporations, Short Food Webs, Transition finance 0 Comments

What happens when a seasoned finance professional trades his suit for soil? In a conversation with Edd Lees, co-founder of WildFarmed, we explore what it’s like to help create one of the most renowned brands in regenerative agriculture. Inspired by his friend Andy Cato, Edd, the financial mind behind WildFarmed, embarked on a mission to revolutionize food systems, beginning with a bakery in southern France. Today, they work with over 100 farmers across 10,000 hectares in the UK, supplying regenerative flour to some of London’s best bakeries.

We explore Edd’s transition from 23 years in finance, his pragmatic approach to changing the food system (avoiding dogmatism), and his strategies for scaling the business. This includes expanding beyond their core market of artisanal bakers and finding ways to introduce their products to supermarkets. For WildFarmed, it’s all about scaling up, impacting as many hectares as possible- ultimately at a landscape level- while guiding farms on their regenerative journey, one step at a time, all while maintaining financial sustainability.

Adrien Pelletier – Why all farmers or most farmers need to become seed breeders again

26th March 2024 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

A conversation with Adrien Pelletier, farmer, breeder, and baker, about wheat, seeds, no till organic farming, why all farmers or most farmers need to become seed breeders again, and why it is really difficult to bake sourdough with traditional organic wheat seeds that are not breed for high productive farms.

Why Adrien want to start changing the world in the most difficult place, at home, which is a large industrial, mostly extractive, commodity wheat-growing region in France? Picture a sea of wheat, large relatively flat fields and no trees. He argues we are in the prehistoric area of organic farming, and there is so much to discover, especially around population wheats. We also learn about no till organic farming is the way to go (and super difficult).