Tag: soil health

Raiza Rezende – Soil health and human health: why the science is still years behind the hype

23rd June 2026 antonellatotaro Diet Change, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 3 Comments

Brazilian-trained chemical engineer, Raiza Rezende left a career path lined up by petroleum, gas, and pharmaceutical companies to study syntropic agriculture with Ernst Götsch, then WWOOFed her way across Spain, Portugal, and Greece before co-founding two organisations working from opposite ends of the same problem: Agrosystemic, which helps large farms in Portugal and Brazil transition toward regenerative practices, and RHEA, the Regenerative Healthcare European Association, which is trying to prove — with hard data — that healthy soil produces healthier people.

Pull one carrot out of the ground and test it, and the number on the lab report tells you almost nothing. Is its vitamin A content high or low? Compared to what? That’s the problem sitting underneath the entire “nutrient density” conversation, and it’s the one Raiza keeps running into: without thousands of samples across farms, regions, and varieties, a single result is just a number with nowhere to stand.

In this conversation recorded in a Lisbon park, with the podcast’s producer Antonella Totaro taking over hosting duties for the first time, we get into Raiza’s path from an oil-and-gas-sponsored engineering campus in Rio to the most desertified farmland in Portugal, why Agrosystemic refuses to tell conventional farmers they’re doing it “wrong”, what four real farms and 40-plus measured parameters are starting to reveal about nutrient density, why €700 billion a year in EU disease treatment costs hasn’t yet connected soil research to health research, and why, with a magic wand or a billion euros, she’d skip the technology and put the money straight into farmers.

Sherry Hess – Hijacked Flavour: reclaiming taste from the food industry

14th April 2026 antonellatotaro Diet Change, Nutrient Dense Food, Nutrient Density in Food, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

Your tongue might be the most underused tool we have for understanding food quality — and for moving consumer buying power toward regenerative farming. Sherry Hess, culinary professional, nutritionist, and founder of Legendary Spice, makes the case that taste is not a nice-to-have. It is a powerful biological signal, and the food processing industry has understood this far longer than we have.
We go deep on the five tastes — salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami — and on why ultra-processed food has been so effective at training us toward intense sweetness while stripping out complexity. Sherry argues that bitterness isn’t a flaw to engineer out; it’s the missing piece tied to polyphenols, antioxidants, detoxification, glucose metabolism, and satiety. The good news: chefs already know how to balance bitter with umami, fat, protein, and spice. We don’t all need to go to culinary school — we just need to borrow a few of their moves.
We also take apart the “chocolate steak syndrome”: the fitness industry has built an entire pipeline of protein products with steak-level nutrition engineered to taste like chocolate and in doing so, trained a generation to completely ignore what flavour is actually telling them. For investors and brand builders, Sherry has a practical provocation: if a product claiming to be regenerative needs five or six flavourings on the label, it’s almost certainly masking the low quality of what’s underneath

AI in Ag: What’s Possible, What’s Not, What Farmers Need to Know @ Groundswell 2025

9th January 2026 antonellatotaro AI 4 Soil Health, Regenerative Agriculture 1 Comment

AI is transforming agriculture, how can farmers and land managers be sure it works for them? What digital twins, soil health metrics, novel robot sensors and other technologies can do to support profitable farming and enable ecosystem service payments—while also addressing critical questions about data rights, governance, and ownership like: How can farmers and landholders retain control of their own data and capture more of the value AI creates? How can the new tech help farmers to monitor, track and predict soil health and empower them to make on-farm decisions? Through maps and real-world examples, let’s explore limits and opportunities.

This episode was recorded live at Groundswell 2025, in the UK, one of the most important gatherings for regenerative agriculture in the world. During the panel Koen moderated on AI in Ag: What’s Possible,What’s Not, What Farmers Need to Know  we dove into into challenges and opportunities with the scientist Ichsani Wheeler, the farmer and investor Maarten van Dam, the journalist Louisa Burwood-Taylor and the fund manager Naeem Lakhani.

Nicola Giuggioli – Building a regenerative brand: from soil health to living wages

4th November 2025 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Farmers First Tech, Nutrient Dense Food, Nutrients to Soil, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 2 Comments

Can you pay a decent year-round salary to farm workers, enough to go to a bank, get a mortgage, and still not charge prices that make your produce accessible only to the happy few? What do vibrations, pest management, nutrient density, and processing have to do with it?

With Nicola Giuggioli we walk the Quintosapore land, on a hilly but stunning landscape in the green heart of Italy, Umbria, where GPS auto-steer tractors don’t exist because simply keeping the tractor in a straight line without slipping down the hill is already an achievement. Quinto Sapore is new farm, only 5 years old and 2.5 years into serious business, but it is making huge steps.

They are building a brand, paying attention to revenue and costs, measuring nutrient density, and paying living year-round wages. Is it easy? Of course not. But for the past few years, they’ve been going deep, very deep,  into the next frontier of agriculture: vibrations, frequencies, and more. In this episode we cover it all: seeds, living wages, trying to intervene as little as possible, quantum agriculture and transformation, and processing. Of course, not ultra-processed, but actually old school and high tech at the same time.

Maria Jensen – Giving cows a voice through epigenetics while improving animal welfare and profitability

30th September 2025 koenvanseijen Farmers First Tech, Regenerative Agriculture, Role of Animals 1 Comment

A conversation with Maria Jensen, co-founder of Antler Bio, helping dairy farmers identify and address factors limiting their herd’s full potential. What if cows could speak? Especially dairy cows. They would probably share not only the horrors of the dairy industry, but also stories of many dairy farmers who truly try their best to care for their animals and yet still fail. Their cows are neither healthy nor happy, their bank accounts look worse every year, and their mental health and marriages are shaky. Intensive dairy, unless you are massive, is a very difficult industry.

Yes, all dairy cows (and cows in general) should be, depending on the context, almost permanently outside. And yes, calves should stay with their mothers as long as possible if we are even going to start talking about regenerative dairy. But for many dairy farmers, this is still a distant pipe dream. We need to meet them where they are. If we don’t give them concrete tools now, they will never change and instead go out of business. And no, dairy won’t disappear any time soon. The market will just be absorbed by even bigger dairy cow factories, where cows never see grass or sunlight.

So how do we change this gridlock? By taking technology from the racehorse industry to let cows and herds speak: to share what’s missing, what could be improved. And, surprise, there is plenty of low-hanging fruit in improving dairy cows’ lives practically overnight from better minerals to more water points, and of course the holy grail: super-diverse pasture management.

This leads to healthier cows, fewer vet costs, and more milk. Importantly, it also points toward potentially healthier milk, and thus healthier people. It’s still too early to connect this directly to nutrient density and quality, but that’s the direction we’re headed.

We also touch upon much more: the risks of raising money from the wrong parties for such a disruptive technology, the fact that while animals and farmers win, input companies and pharmaceutical companies will likely lose. Suddenly it becomes clear which interventions work and which don’t.
And what about raising finance as a female founder? Surprise surprise—it’s not easy. Male investors, especially, waste a lot of your time.

Get ready for a conversation about disruptive tech, dairy farming margins, raising capital, and horse racing.

Jacob Parnell – Move over chemicals, biological inputs work and we can provide farmers with accurate advice

20th December 2024 koenvanseijen Farmers First Tech, Regenerative Agriculture 0 Comments

A deep dive with Jacob Parnell, director of Agronomy at Biome Makers, into the evolving world of soil biology and biological inputs. Soil biology is the answer—no matter the question. While this may sound black-and-white, it is safe to say that soil biology holds the potential to resolve many global issues. So, where do we currently stand with soil biology research, and, more importantly, what does it mean practically for farmers? Many farmers are eager to transition away from heavy chemical inputs to biological alternatives. But, how do you know which ones work in your context?

Jacob discusses how the “black box” of biological inputs has disappeared in recent years. We now have enough trails and data to say to a farmer after done a soil biology test, this range of biological inputs will likely—up to 80% of the time—work well in your soils, providing specific, beneficial effects. This shift is revolutionary not only for farmers but also for the manufacturers of these products, who have historically marketed their products to work everywhere ( which obviously disappointed many farmers when they tried and product X didn’t perform). Now, companies can say “please don’t buy this product which likely won’t work in your context; try this one instead”.

Andres Jara – Walking the land of market garden De Stadsgroenteboer with a regenerative farmer

5th November 2024 koenvanseijen Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs, Walking the Land with a Regenerative Farmer 1 Comment

A new episode of the Walking the Land with a Regenerative Farmer to explore the journey of Andres Jara, a regenerative farmer who has turned a mere 0.4-hectare plot outside Amsterdam into a vibrant market garden De Stadsgroenteboer. Andres shares his innovative farming practices that support an 650 people weekly and how the farm not only thrives on biodiversity, but also champions a unique trust-based market stand model, overcoming challenges like sourcing organic materials from abroad. De Stadsgroenteboer market garden is really pushing the boundaries of what success means financially, quality of life, quality of products, and of course the health of the soil.

Franco Fubini – Delivering unmatched flavour to 2000 of the world’s top restaurant and unlocking consumer demand

1st October 2024 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture, Short Food Webs 3 Comments

A conversation with Franco Fubini, co-founder of Natoora and author of In Search of the Perfect Peach, about flavour as the key to unlocking consumer demand. We talked about what leads to great flavour, which is of course soil health, but first, we need amazing seeds. How do we make sure farmers get paid accordingly when they grow the most amazing pumpkin or peaches? We tackled creating demand for flavour and lots of it starting with the world’s leading restaurants, and chefs who are relentlessly looking for the best flavours on their plates.

Bridget Emmett – Moving over carbon soil compaction is the real issue in agriculture

21st June 2024 koenvanseijen AI 4 Soil Health, Farmers First Tech, Landscape Design 2.0, Regenerative Agriculture 3 Comments

A conversation with Bridget Emmett, British ecologist, Professor and Science Area Head for the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, about the EU Mission Soil, what is the role of technology, remote sensing, digital twins, etc, and what role should and could policy play.

Dan Kittredge – Local, regenerative and organic have no connection to nutrient density, soil health does

30th April 2024 koenvanseijen Diet Change, Nutrient Dense Food, Regenerative Agriculture 2 Comments

A long-overdue check-in interview with Dan Kittredge, founder of the Bionutrient Food Association. We discuss their involvement in the revolutionary beef study, all the research they have been doing and where they have been showing absolutely no connection between the labels, local, organic, regenerative, farmer’s market, etc., and nutrient density.

What has been shown is a correlation between soil health and nutrient density. All the claims about regenerative agriculture that leads to more nutrient-dense food, they are only true if it leads to healthier soil, and in some or many cases, it actually doesn’t. It all starts with the soil. Plus, very interestingly, the potential of nutrient density: most of the crops they researched scored very very poor compared to what they could have scored. The pessimist would say: look at the empty crops we are eating depleted of nutrients, the realist would say look at the amazing potential. Crops could be (on certain aspects) 10x or 20x more nutrient dense. Let’s get to work!