Tag: fund

Cindie Christiansen – Top 50 Farmers update and the simple tweak to raise millions for regeneration

19th August 2025 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Farmers First Tech, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Transition finance 0 Comments

A check in conversation with Cindie Christiansen, founder of Foodprint Nordic and Top 50 Farmers (no, it’s not a ranking, so nobody “won”). We spoke just six months ago, but this time we met in person to talk about the progress of turning farmers into the next superheroes of climate, water, health, and more.

We unpack her vision for systems change in food and agriculture. Directly from one of the world’s leading culinary scenes, Copenhagen, we ask: why hasn’t a strong farm-to-table, local cuisine movement led to real change in the agrifood system yet? And more importantly, what can we do about it?

We dive into her work with Foodprint Nordic and how they’re about to expand it to the rest of Europe. Very simply, but of course, it’s not that simple, the idea is to access a whole new pool of money not yet active in this space: the money of us eaters, and funnel it as quickly and with as few strings attached as possible to farmers ready to expand regenerative practices, planting trees, buying compost equipment, and more.

And even more importantly, how this approach could serve as a blueprint for real regional, and potentially national, action, helping shape government policy that truly supports regenerative farmers on the ground.

Mark Lewis – After putting half of their $50M fund to work in regen, what has one of the leading VCs in the world learned?

23rd August 2024 koenvanseijen Regenerative Agriculture, Transition finance 2 Comments

A check-in interview with Mark Lewis, managing partner at Trailhead Capital, about the inevitability of the “regenerative revolution” and the potential for significant financial and non-financial returns in this space. What does putting almost half of your $50 million VC fund to work in businesses active in the regen space in North America, taught Mark about the space and what has changed since 2021, and what big opportunities haven’t we collectively invested in? What is missing and what is needed? And we discuss why Mark is no longer hunting for unicorns but is still very positive about the potential for financial returns in the regenerative food and agriculture space.

Maarten van Dam – How to fund the transition of the first pioneers in regenerative agriculture

16th July 2024 koenvanseijen Regenerative Agriculture, Transition finance 0 Comments

A conversation with Maarten van Dam, founder of Schevichoven Regenerative farm, about numbers when transitioning from conventional to regenerative agriculture and keeping records on inputs, prices, and machinery. Maarten is changing that and keeping a lot of records of their pioneering farm transitioning from a mono dairy farm to a diverse agroforestry system.

Remember the Dutch farming protests? What do we miss when we talk about the transition of conventional? We miss numbers numbers numbers. Many of the pioneers- rightfully so- didn’t keep good records, on inputs, prices, machinery and, of course, hours. Nobody tracks hours in agriculture. What does it cost per hectare, and what off-take do you need? With a minimum of 50K euro per hectare in the Netherlands, you can transition in about 7 years to a diverse perennial agroforestry system, only counting wholesale prices, counting all your hours, and paying a fair wage. Of course, at Schevichoven they are only in year 4, so all of that has to be proven. But what does it mean for the rest of the 50.000 farmers in the Netherlands? What are the types of regen systems they can apply? We need about 150 billion to transition them. It sounds like a lot, but is doable.

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

10th February 2023 koenvanseijen Farmers First Tech, Investor Stories, Regenerative Agriculture, Transition finance 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.

Rose Marcario – From growing Patagonia to $1b in sales to making early stage regen tech investments

27th September 2022 koenvanseijen Beyond Food, Farmers First Tech, Investor Stories, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of corporations 1 Comment

A conversation with Rose Marcario, former president and CEO of Patagonia and current founding partner of ReGen Ventures, about moving from an organic food company to joining an early-stage VC fund focused on regenerative technologies.

Bert Glover on investing over $600M into regenerative farms in the US and Australia and selling soil carbon credits to Microsoft

12th July 2022 koenvanseijen Ecosystem Services Payments, Investor Stories, Regenerative Agriculture, Transition finance 0 Comments

Bert Glover of Impact Ag Partners, comes back on the podcast for a discussion about soil carbon credits, operating his fund in Australia and North America, as well as the importance of biodiversity and more.

Jasper Bertels on how to regenerate and calculate the returns in a landscape of 1M ha

1st June 2021 koenvanseijen Ecosystem Services Payments, Landscape Design 2.0, Landscape Tech, Regenerative Agriculture 7 Comments

A dive into a model which shed some light on the potential returns of landscape scale regeneration with Jasper Bertels of Commonland.

Gina Pattisson on how to raise more than half a million euros during a pandemic

5th January 2021 koenvanseijen Ecosystem Services Payments, Farmers First Tech, Investor Stories, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture 1 Comment

How can one raise capital during a global pandemic? What can we learn from a very experienced non-profit fundraiser who has joined a regenerative agriculture tech startup two years ago? These are the questions that we will be zoning with our special guest Gina Pattisson, founding team member of Soil Heroes.

Richard Focken on how German pension funds are investing significantly in sustainable agroforestry

28th July 2020 koenvanseijen Ecosystem Services Payments, Investor Stories, Regenerative Agriculture, Transition finance 2 Comments

In this interview with Richard Focken, CEO of 12Tree, we explore the 4 year due diligence which lead to a German pension fund investing 200m into agroforestry.

John Kempf, what would he do with a 1 billion dollar investment fund?

14th July 2020 koenvanseijen Farmers First Tech, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 5 Comments

John Kempf, founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA) and host of Regenerative Agriculture Podcast, is back on the podcast to discuss his book on Regenerative Agriculture, developing AI agronomists, and influencing farmers to ask better questions.