finance – Investing in regenerative agriculture

Frederik Lean Hansen – Small individual farms are probably not the future of farming in Europe

17th September 2024 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A wide-ranging conversation with Frederik Lean Hansen, a regenerative farm business consultant who spent a year traveling and working on 12 farms alongside regenerative farmers across Europe. He is currently active as a Farm Finance genitor and is now starting his own silvopastured poultry enterprise on his parents’ farm in Denmark. We discuss topics such as finance, CapEx, OpEx, income statements, and cash flow, as well as the myth of small-scale farming and whether economies of scale truly matter. Fred shares insights on how farmers can organize together to access better markets, run more financially successful businesses, and improve their quality of life. We also delve into the importance of inner work, which is often neglected in our sector—or any sector, for that matter.

Nettie Wiebe – We have become monocultural in our fields and minds

6th September 2024 koenvanseijen 2 Comments

A conversation with Nettie Wiebe, organic farmer and long-time small farm activist in Canada and globally, one of the founders of La Via Campesina, part of the IPES food panel, and coauthor of the recent Land Squeeze report. We talk about land purchases and prices. In many places, over 70% of the farmland is controlled by 1% of the farms. This is just one of the many challenges the latest Land Squeeze report of the IPES food panel addresses. We talk about the results of the report and what to do about it, how go get speculative money out of farming and why green grabbing needs to stop.

Land squeeze: one of the biggest issues in regenerative farming is access to land. Why is that? Farmers in the global industrialised north are ageing, and many of them don’t have a next generation taking over the farm; many other people would love to farm and are, in many cases, able, but can never finance the land purchase because land prices and value are completely disconnected. They face competition from ever larger industrial extractive, well financed farms.

Martin Reiter – Why regen hasn’t produced Steve Jobs yet and how to build a modern Nestlé

23rd January 2024 koenvanseijen 2 Comments

A conversation with Martin Reiter, former senior manager at Airbnb and Wayfair, and prior to this at McKinsey and Groupon, about what excites him about regeneration, where are the Steve Jobs and Elon Musk of regenerative agriculture going to build companies, and how can we help more talent flow into the space?

Growing Regenerative Opportunities – Koen van Seijen interviewed by John Kempf

29th September 2023 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A very special episode: Koen van Seijen, author and host of the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast, interviewed by John Kempf, the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA) and a top expert in biological and regenerative farming.

Bart van der Zande – Thanks to the learning of the 1st, the world 1st regenerative venture studio gets ready for the 2nd cohort

21st February 2023 koenvanseijen 1 Comment

A check-in interview with Bart van der Zande of Fresh Ventures Studio, a venture studio specifically focussed on building regenerative businesses, about how the first program went, the companies they are building, and what they are doing differently with the upcoming cohort.

Brandon Welch and Phil Taylor – Updates with Mad Capital on how to enable billions to flow to regen organic farmers

10th February 2023 koenvanseijen 2 Comments

A check-in conversation with Brandon Welch and Phil Taylor, founders of Mad Capital and Mad Agriculture, to talk about Perennial Fund 1 and 2, the lessons learned and building the vehicles to finance transition and funnel billions into the space.

What we learned in 2022 about nutrient density in food, farmers’ philosophy, enabling technologies and satellites and redesigning products

27th December 2022 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

Wow! What a year it has been. Just when you thought things couldn’t get any crazier we find ourselves in a war in Europe, crazy energy and food prices and extreme high inflation rates in general.

In an ideal world farms applying regenerative practises are more resilient, but as we saw with the story of Josh Heyneke, founder of Parc Carreg, farms can get into trouble very quickly when input prices spike (in this case organic grain from Ukraine to feed the ducks). It seems like Josh and his partner Abigail will make it through the winter and are building hard on their more resilient future, which will include climate neutral eggs!

With this post we wrap up the year and we look forward to regenerating more soils and many more hectares in 2023 and beyond!

Tag: finance