trees – Investing in regenerative agriculture

Louis De Jaeger – Eat More Trees: a Masterclass with thé storyteller of the Regen Space

1st April 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Louis De Jaeger, international keynote speaker, author, award-winning filmmaker, and landscape designer, about dreams, action, and storytelling—how to reach and touch people. We discuss why storytelling is highly underrated and underfunded, and why he is organizing a festival—not the next Burning Man, but a regeneration festival.
He shares his excitement about small water cycle restoration, the biotic pump, and much more. And in the end, it all boils down to one simple message: Eat More Trees.

During his 5-year sabbatical that turned into a lifelong mission to regenerate landscapes, Louis’ revelation came during world travels where he witnessed environmental degradation firsthand—monoculture landscapes so depressing “you want to drive against a tree, but there are no trees.” This observation sparked his mission to regenerate 550 million hectares of land globally, potentially cooling our planet by two degrees Celsius.

Beyond the environmental benefits, Louis paints a compelling vision of a regenerative future characterized by abundance rather than sacrifice. “We’re going to have an even more luxurious lifestyle, we’re going to have better food that tastes fantastic” he assures us. His approach isn’t about shaming people into environmentalism but showing how regenerative practices create healthier, more desirable lives.

Antonio Nobre – If nature were a bank it would have been saved already

3rd January 2025 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Antonio Nobre, Brazilian agronomist by training and world’s leading Earth scientist, serving as the scientific director of the Biotic Pump Greening Group. He has dedicated his career to studying the Amazon’s ecological dynamics and its crucial role in climate regulation and is an expert on water cycles, native Indigenous knowledge, and much more.

We talk about how Antonio found his way to the Amazon after being born and raised in São Paulo, how he rebelled against the Green Revolution during his time at agricultural university, and how he discovered the incredible workings of forests—especially rainforests.
We also explore the overview effect—the transformative experience of seeing Earth from space—and how it often turns astronauts into environmental activists.

Jonas Steinfeld – The many shades of green of agroforestry systems

24th May 2024 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Jonas Steinfeld, a researcher and consultant based in Brazil specialising in agroforestry systems, about the many different levels of complexity in agroforestry. Does complexity lead to more or less work? Does complexity lead to more or less carbon storage, and why? And are complex agroforestry systems more profitable? The scientific world has been quite clear up until now that adding more complexity to agriculture, especially with perennials like trees, almost always makes massive environmental differences. So what is holding us back? Why aren’t we planting trees everywhere?

Our Vital Role as Keystone Species in restoring Water Cycles

22nd February 2024 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

The disparity in attention between water vapour, constituting 60–70% of the greenhouse effect, and CO2 at 25%, prompts a crucial question: why is water vapour seldom discussed in climate discourse? Perhaps because addressing its role requires extensive global reforestation and regeneration efforts across the planet.

Do we even have the imagination needed to restore marshes, mangroves, and perennial pastures with trees, and strategically reforest and revitalise ecosystems?

This approach- the intentional large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system to counter climate change, called climate engineering- highlights humanity’s urgent role in environmental conservation and restoration. The call to action is clear.

Brett Hundley – From Tyson Foods equity analyst to financing millions of trees

13th February 2024 koenvanseijen 0 Comments

A conversation with Brett Hundley, President of Agroforestry Partners (AP), a fund that invests in agroforestry projects on farmland with the strategy of providing uncorrelated and attractive nature-based investment opportunities for investors.
We talk about moving away from an agricultural system that relies on annuals to a system that relies more on perennial trees. If trees are the answer to whatever the question is, how do we get millions of more trees into the ground?

How do we finance them, and how do we make the key stakeholders, the farmers- that need to give agroforestry operators access to their land for 20 40 or maybe a 100 years- comfortable with these farming systems? How do we get comfortable with writing these checks the other essential stakeholder investors that need to pour hundreds of millions into an industry and a system they are not really used to, with long time horizons (chestnuts, for instance, take 7 to 9 years before they bare fruit but could produce for at least 50 or even hundreds of years)?

Oliver Hanke invested over 150M in sustainable agroforestry

20th March 2020 koenvanseijen 2 Comments

A deep dive with Oliver Hanke of 12Tree into how they are making agroforestry investable for institutional investors.

Ethan Steinberg and Jeremy Kaufman, ready to invest over 15M into agroforestry systems in the US

31st December 2019 koenvanseijen 1 Comment

A check in interview with the co-founders of Propagate Ventures Jeremy and Ethan after our interview 1,5 years ago! A conversation about how they are scaling up agroforestry to every farm and what they have learned in the past years.

Harrie, Arnout, Koen – Where we plant billions of trees vs climate change?

30th April 2019 koenvanseijen 3 Comments

Harrie Lovenstein, Arnout Asjes and Koen Kramer work for the Land Life Company, an ecosystem restoration company working to reforest hundreds of thousands of hectares.

Russell Wallack, which trees to plant where? Answering the oldest question in agriculture

16th April 2019 koenvanseijen 2 Comments

With Russell Wallack of Terra Genesis and co founder of Brasa, we cover a lot of ground but try to give (part of the) answer to the key question in agriculture, what to plant where and why?

Jeremy, Harry, Ethan on planting millions of productive trees with farmers on their farms

21st May 2018 koenvanseijen 3 Comments

An interesting conversation with Ethan, Jeremy and Harry, the co-founders of Propagate Ventures, who are scaling up agroforestry to every farm. Our conversation ranged from chestnuts to crowdfunding and how to get more impact investors into the agroforestry space.

Tag: trees