Tag: land

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

6th September 2024 koenvanseijen Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture 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.

Sonja Stuchtey – Have billions flow into regeneration by having accountants agreeing that it is an investment, not a cost

9th April 2024 koenvanseijen Regenerative Agriculture, Transition finance 0 Comments

A conversation with Sonja Stuchtey, co-founder of The Landbanking Group, about innovative financial strategies, accountancy standards and rules, reliable sourcing, better quality and lower prices, investing in the value chain and more.

Let’s say you are an orange juice or chocolate bar producer: your margins are under pressure because the costs of buying raw ingredients have exploded the last few years. What do you do? In any other business you would likely invest in your supply to secure reliable sourcing, better quality and potentially lower prices. Why haven’t we done that in regen (with some exceptions of fully vertically integrated brands)? Now it seems possible for companies to invest in their value chain so to allow orange farmers to make regen changes in the practises to future proof them. 

How? Crucially it comes back to treat it as a long term investment and not as a short term cost which will hurt you margins and, thus, annoy your shareholders. Treating investments (which btw we need billions) in regen as an investment and not a cost sounds so trivial and simple, but it takes a whole lot of technology to measure, report and a lot of talks with the big four accountancy firms to get this done.

Zach Ben – Breaking down centuries of oppression through indigenous baby food

31st October 2023 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Nutrient Dense Food, Nutrient Density in Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 2 Comments

A conversation with Zach Ben, cofounder, along with his wife Mary, of Bidii Baby Foods, an indigenous baby food line created by farmers and new parents to increase access to traditional foods in early childhood. We talk about the role of farming and stewarding the land in Navajo Nation and the role of nutrition and health with newborns.

Mark Drewell and Marcus Link – The iPhone moment of regenerative agriculture through a journey of the soul and spreadsheet

4th September 2023 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 0 Comments

A check-in interview with Marcus Link and Mark Drewell, founders of New Foundation Farms (NFF), about how they went from trying to raise £20M to buying 1000 acres in the UK, building their stacked enterprise on leased land and ending up going almost full circle back to the beginning.

Alpha Lo – What if water is more important than carbon

21st July 2023 koenvanseijen Landscape Design 2.0, Regenerative Agriculture, Water Cycles 7 Comments

A conversation with Alpha Lo, physicist and writer of the Climate Water Project, about the importance of slowing water down, the connection between drought, fire, and floods, and the massive role water plays in heating and cooling our planet.

Neal Spackman – Why it is so difficult to get truly regenerative water and ecosystem restoration projects funded

30th June 2023 koenvanseijen Regenerative Agriculture, Water Cycles 0 Comments

A check-in interview with Neal Spackman, founder & CEO of Regenerative Resources Co, on why it has proven to be quite difficult to get his RSA Regenerative Seawater Agriculture project funded. We also talk about mangrove restoration projects, why investors are not jumping on top of it, what he has learned over the last 6 months of brutal painful pitching and hearing no, and more.

Wouter Veer – Trying to fix private land ownership, the root cause of all our issues

13th December 2022 koenvanseijen Investor Stories, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs, Transition finance 1 Comment

A conversation with Wouter Veer, entrepreneur, impact investor, founder of Lenteland, about inequality, impact investing, land ownership, unsustainability, Charles Eisenstein, and starting and funding a venture and a movement in the Netherlands.

Josh Heyneke – Small scale farmers going potentially bankrupt with regen duck eggs and fertiliser

1st November 2022 koenvanseijen Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals 1 Comment

A conversation with Josh Heyneke, founder of Parc Carreg together with Abigail, about buying 10 acres in Wales to farm, Back to the land movement, duck eggs, feed prices, black soldier flies, vermicompost, and the difficulties in the space.

Johannes Scheibe on using carbon credits to transition from understocked and overgrazed to zero input grazing

6th September 2022 koenvanseijen Ecosystem Services Payments, Farmers First Tech, Nutrients to Soil, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals, Transition finance 1 Comment

A conversation with Johannes Scheibe, founder of Ruumi, a satellite grazing app, about financing land regeneration and how Ruumi works with farmers and companies to create the conditions for a better future.

Soil Regeneration: The Four Keys to Restoring Healthy Soil

26th October 2021 antonellatotaro Diet Change, Ecosystem Services Payments, Farmers First Tech, Nutrient Dense Food, Nutrients to Soil, Ownership, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs, Transition finance 2 Comments

Guaranteeing access to sufficient nutrients to the entire global population, which is set to reach 10 billion by 2050, will force a radical rethinking of the current agri-food system. The industrial, linear model of farming has created diversity-free systems that require enormous quantities of pesticides and chemical fertilisers to keep yields high. Cropping and farming practices, with their intensive use of inputs, have led to the exhaustion and erosion of soil and natural systems. The long-term health and resilience of our ecosystem are in danger. However, this trend can and must be reversed.