Hi <<First Name>>,

Welcome to the July highlights!

Wow, what a month again! 5 interviews (a new record I think :)) with so many great guests. We dove deep into birds and beef, how to scale agroforestry and attract institutional capital.

John Kempf came back on the podcast for a deep dive into how he prioritises his projects, publishing a book and working on an AI Agronomist. Plus how would John invest a $1B investment fund?

Thanks for listening, sharing and getting involved,
Koen

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How German pension funds are investing significantly in sustainable agroforestry
Interview with Richard Focken, 12Tree

Topic: How to make agroforestry investable and bankable, the barriers for institutional investors to invest and the successes 12Tree achieved after years of research and hard work.

My thoughts:
Everyone talks about getting institutional capital (pension funds, insurance companies, etc.) investing in regenerative agriculture and food, very few are able to make it work. In this interview you get a rare insight into how actually close a deal like that (hint: it takes a lot of time and then some more).

Listen to the conversation with Richard

Scaling agroforestry by complexifying growing systems using software
Interview with Paula Costa and Valter Ziantoni, Pretaterra

Topic: The wonders of agroforestry, the opportunities, the challenges and why it is having its breakthrough now, how to systemize agroforestry design, complexify growing systems, as well as the financial aspect of design planning.

My thoughts:
The potential of agroforestry is enormous, but how do we get there? Very few people are able to answer those questions and actually build those systems, and even fewer think about how to scale it. That's why I enjoyed the conversation with Paula and Valter so much!

Listen to the conversation with Paula and Valter

What to do with a 1 billion dollar investment fund?
Interview with John Kempf, Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA)

Topic: A check in interview on why healthy plants are hardly ever affected by pests and diseases, John’s priorities in creating new projects, his new book and his work on developing an AI agronomist to make regen ag advice accessible to all farmers and to nudge farmers to observe better and more and ask better questions.

My thoughts:
John has so much experience and knowledge in the space so I wanted to dig deeper into his decision making framework and how he decides to work on one project over another. Plus, of course, I was curious about how he would invest $1B!

Listen to the interview with John

Using birds to sell climate positive beef
Interview with Russ Conser, StandardSoil and BlueNest Beef

Topic: The story of how a former Shell engineer and manager discovered the potential of soil carbon and the key role of regenerative entrepreneurs to find profitable business models to get regen products from the farmers to the consumers.

My thoughts:
It is very rare I get to discuss the Gaia hypothesis, birds, climate positive beef and methane in the same conversation. This was one of those podcasts! I hope you enjoy it :-)

Listen to the conversation with Russ

Growing large scale Brazilian regenerative organic agriculture
Interview with Fabio Sakamoto, Rizoma Agro

Topic: How do we scale regenerative organic grain production to the point where it is cheaper than conventional extractive agriculture? After 15 years working in management consulting and private equity, Brazilian entrepreneur Fabio Sakamoto decided to join his partner Pedro Paulo Diniz on a mission to revert the climate crisis by scaling regenerative organic agriculture.

My thoughts:
Few people are so public about wanting to close the yield gap in soy and grain and outperform extractive farmers. Fabio and Rizoma are and they are building a very ambitious platform!