Lessons learned and advice by guests

(It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional before making any investment)

Rufo:

A poet and active impact investor (LINK):

- Don’t be too hasty but don’t be too slow either, set aside a bit of money you can afford to potentially lose and put it to work

- Get yourself educated and learn, but don’t waste the time of entrepreneurs and fund managers, don’t set up endless calls if you have no interest in investing

- Think about where in the value chain you want to invest, the land itself, the processing

- Think about the geographies

- Think about water, many places have inadequate water supply, so make sure you take that risk into account

Esther:

CEO of Cienega capital. Probably the most experienced impact investor in regenerative agriculture. (LINK)

- Start with some education, great place to start: the Soil Health Primer

- Do something, just do 1 thing, make 1 grant, or loan or investment

Chuck:

- Meet with regenerative farmers and have meaningful conversations

- Talk to investors who have been allocating capital to regenerative agriculture for a couple of years

- Plus learn about the food sector at large and the global challenges

Peter:

- Land tenure

- Long term commitment of the farmers/land managers

Thomas:

- Find your local Farmland Stewardship Organisation and get involved

- Look into your local CSA farms, they usually rely on expensive bank loans you could refinance

Volkert:

- Soils, farmers who are not building soil do not deserve investment capital

- Water, invest in farmers who are building their water holding capacity

- Biodiversity, a direct connection between biodiversity and the ability of a plant to withstand diseases

As the demand for organic is soaring, supply has to catch up and there is a huge investment potential to scale up and convert growers.

‘’Freeing the farmers from being held hostage by the agro chemical input business, that parasites on farming like the pharmaceutical industry parasites on your health. By selling a few pills (or agrochemicals ) with a few side effects, for which they have new pills or agrochemicals again’’

Aymeric and Josep:

To get into the comfort zone of traditional investors you need two things:

- (some) liquidity

- investment periods which aren’t too long

Ian:

- Great wealth has been accumulated in this country (US) through extractive industries. We need to collectively realise that the returns and wealth we got used to are based on extractive and exploitation.

- We need to get used to negative return, we need to return wealth to the soil, the ecosystems and communities we extracted for so long.

- We need to look at ways to compensate for sequestering carbon in soils.

Martijn:

Entrepreneur turned impact investor in Southern Africa, passionated about soil on the fight against maize monocultures in Zambia and much more (LINK)

Geoff:

Explained the opportunities for regeneration in agricultural powerhouse New Zealand and why (slowly) the ag sector is waking up. Unfortunately the impact investing sector hardly exists and thus Geoff is forced to look for impact investors from overseas. (LINK)

We filmed this episode as well! (YOUTUBE LINK)

Regeneration Newsroom Podcast

In November we started a joint venture with the Regeneration Newsroom of Ethan Soloviev, where myself and Ethan highlight and discuss the top articles, books, videos, podcasts and other news on Regenerative Agriculture and Business!

You can find the two episodes we recorded so far here and let us know what you think!

The Future of Carbon Measurement, Regenerative Meat, Australia Rising (LINK)

Global Land Degradation, Gucci Goes Regenerative, and Why Certifications Don’t Work (LINK)

2019?!

Wow what a year it has been and I’m already looking forward to next year, I’m planning many more stories as the regenerative agriculture and food space is exploding.

Of course we need to be very careful as we see already quite some ‘regeneration washing’ and we all have to pay more attention what is and what isn’t regenerative agriculture.

Demand measurable outcomes to questions like: are these practices regenerating soil, people, local communities and ecosystems?

With your help in 2019, I will be diving into:

Landscape scale regeneration

Transition finance

Return nutrients to the soil

Farmer first tech

Nutrient dense food (connection to health)

Protein, role of animals, alternative proteins

Short food webs

Payment systems for ecosystem services

Land ownership

And much more :) maybe even looking into what Victor mentioned as a wish:

How do we make the invisible more visible?

Any suggestions please comment below or reach out on Twitter (LINK)

Listen to or download all the podcast interviews on Souncloud, iTunes or Spotify

P.S. The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

P.S.2.

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