Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast features the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
374 Birker, Bösel, Mazzola – The Regenerative Agronomy Gap: who do farmers call?
A conversation with farmer Benedikt Bösel, farmer and regen agronomist Matteo Mazzola and Philippe Birker, co-founder of Climate Farmers. We need regenerative agronomists. Because let’s face it — most farmers trust their agronomist, and the chances that their agronomist is trained in regen are pretty small. We’re moving from the first group of super ambitious, entrepreneurial, and slightly rebellious farmers who have made the transition, to a larger group who want to transition but can take less risk and will need support. So, who do they call when they want to start their transition? Current agriculture schools for agronomists are still very much focused on extractive, highly input- driven agriculture. Farmers often want a checklist and a protocol to "go regen" — but it might be more about asking uncomfortable questions.
So how do we go about changing that? This is three-part conversation today with:
- Philippe Birker, who is setting up the Regen Agronomist Training in Europe, a 6-months intensive training program designed to equip agronomists with practical and theoretical knowledge in regenerative agriculture, with the first pilot happening this year.
- Benedikt Bösel, farmer at Gut&Bösel, whose farm will serve as a training farm, while sharing his experience with getting help taking his first steps into regen.
- Matteo Mazzola, regenerative farmer at Iside, who also works with many others supporting their transition.
==========================
In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
==========================
👩🏻💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE
💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORK
- Join Gumroad
- Share it
- Give a 5-star rating
- Buy us a coffee… or a meal!
==========================
🎙 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST AND SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL OR WATCH IT ON 📽️ our YouTube channel
==========================
FOLLOW US!
==========================
The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly lic
Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!
https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course
Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:
https://gen-re.land/
Feedback, ideas, suggestions?
- Twitter @KoenvanSeijen
- Get in touch www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com
Join our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P!
Support the show
Thanks for listening and sharing!
A slightly different episode today, where we talk about the need for regenerative agronomists Because, let's face it, most farmers trust their agronomists and the chances that their agronomist is trained in region ag are pretty, pretty small. We're moving from the first group of super ambitious, entrepreneurial and slightly rebel farmers who have made the transition to a larger group who wants to transition but can take less risk and will need support. Who do they call when they want to start their transition? Current Ag School for Agronomists is very much focused on extractive, high-input-driven agriculture, so how do we change that? We have a three-part episode today with Philip Berker, who's setting up the Regen Agronomist Training in Europe first pilot is this year and farmer Benedikt Beuzel, whose farm will be a training farm, about his experience with HELP taking his first steps in regen. And Matteo Mazzola, regen farmer, who also works with a lot of other farmers in their transition. Farmers want a checklist and a protocol to go regen, but it might be more about asking uncomfortable questions. This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast, where we learn more on how to put money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return.
Speaker 1:Welcome back in a special episode, which is going to be in parts. We're going to glue it together as we couldn't all be in the same place. Unfortunately, we're in a spectacular farm. We're outside, we're going to hear some place. Unfortunately, we're on a spectacular farm. We're outside, we're gonna hear some wind noise, not wind like some trees talking to us. But we're gonna try to get over that. And I wanna welcome you back, philippe, to the podcast. I'm gonna put our previous one, obviously, in the show notes, but this is a very different one and a very specific focus on education. Everybody, oh, education. Schooling, yes, but specifically for farmers and agronomists, which is a subset of the education system that needs the trees, agree, needs desperate change. So what brought you to the education piece and dedicating a good chunk of your working hours currently to figuring out that? Nod, let's say.
Speaker 2:Pleasure to be here and especially pleasure in this beautiful location here on benedict boesel's farm in brandenburg. Yeah, what brought me here? I think the farmers brought me here in the end. I had the pleasure over the last five years of really building a community of practice with farmers at the center, where farmers are learning from each other on farms and online as well. And while that is beautiful especially, I think, for people who just want to get into it and it's a good starting point we also realized that there is a problem when farmers want to really take the next step and really take the transition serious and get a transition plan created. Because, first of all, there's not a lot of agronomists actually out there which are able to do this right now. We think in Europe there's less than 100 and we really looked quite thoroughly. And then, second of all, those few ones which are out there, they are in very high demand.
Speaker 1:So if you can get them, then they easily take a day rate of 1000 2000 euros, if you could even get them and if you're able to pay, there's a whole different story.
Speaker 2:But it's just greatly under the market, is greatly underserved for practical, hands-on, regular help if you want to transition now exactly, and at the same time, what we also see is that a lot of young people are very interested in regenerative agriculture, like Benedict's documentary on Disney Farm Rebellion, like Kiss the Ground.
Speaker 2:All of the storytelling that has been happening, all of the work that has been happening by us, by EARA, by top 50 farmers, has really led to young people being interested in this. But they have the problem that there's no education available. If we look at our current educational system, especially in the agricultural context, it's a very sad perspective. Like most of the education is conventional, there's a little bit of organic and there's no single regenerative agriculture master existing in Europe right now. We had Schumacher College, which was a private college in England that was offering one. They had to close down now as well. And we have a few front-running universities with Wareningen, boku, vienna or Reading in the UK, but even these ones they are heavily involved in regenerative agriculture research and maybe they have a module in regenerative agriculture within the wider master, but a whole education specific on the topic, preparing young people for work in the regenerative space, potentially supporting farmers, does simply not exist.
Speaker 1:So this specific project you've been shaping and framing and puzzling together is aimed at that help piece.
Speaker 1:Like a farmer should, anywhere in Europe, be able to pick up the phone or Google or Ecosia or DuckDuck or whatever, and find context-specific help, preferably nearby that's a few years down the line but to have a ready supply of experienced people that understand context where they are.
Speaker 1:Because currently, what most farmers rely on is their agronomist to make decisions, and we know that the agronomist has been through the traditional farm education system, meaning that he or she, nothing against their current operation, is very unlikely to be able to help, which means either the farmer gives up, which I think happens most of the time starts Googling, YouTubing and goes down the rabbit hole, which is amazing, but it requires a certain amount of self-learning, and which we've seen the pioneers do here. We've seen the pioneers here on this farm and many others. But that next goer, the farmers. We can't expect them to rely on YouTube to make massive changes to their livelihoods. Exactly so they need to be able to call somebody that can hold their hand, visit regularly and point at other transitions that have been done successfully. And so now, what are you? How are you attacking that issue and getting thousands of agronomists trained in region over the next years.
Speaker 2:Small pressure- Step by step. For a start and I think you phrased it very diplomatically, I would call it out a bit more like right now, the consulting in farming is very much dominated by the agrochemical industry, that's the business model. That's the business model. So most agronomists or consultants are basically sales agents for the agrochemical industry and through that they basically come to the farm to advise the farmer in quotation marks, but also specifically to sell the input. What could possibly go wrong? Right?
Speaker 2:What could possibly go wrong here, which also means that farmers are not very used to pay for these consultations, right which is also a side effect of that and, of course, that in these consultations you will not very likely end up with a farming system that faces out the very much inputs which these people are selling.
Speaker 1:But the point you made before of these few consultants you found in agronomists that are in extremely high demand and able to charge, meaning that there is a demand not from everyone, but there is a group that's willing to have very few interactions with these agronomists because they have such high demand and pay for that and still find that valuable. Few interactions with these agronomists because they have such high demand and pay for that and still find that valuable.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's suggesting that there is an interest in alternative education or alternative ways For sure, but I think what we see right now and I think this is a great thing that the interest of farmers to go in that direction has very much outpaced the possibilities that we have with agronomists that can be advising farmers in this. And I think, especially there on the young generation, it makes a lot of sense because it's harder for people who have been doing something for 20, 30 years already to change their minds and also, let's face it, they will not be working that much longer. But if we have people who are right now at the beginning of their careers, who can still build up a wealth of knowledge and experience as well, and also who maybe don't need to charge the same amounts of money as someone that has to feed a family, then we can really train the next generation of people that can drive the whole movement with us by supporting farmers on their journey, learning more and more and then basically starting to train the next generations.
Speaker 1:And so what's the plan we're in 2025? What's the yeah, what are the steps to get to thousands of these amazing region agronomists?
Speaker 2:So the interesting thing was that this whole project basically really started about eight months ago, when we created, with Climate Farmers, a systems map of the European agri-food system and we also identified their education as one of these big blockers. And then I had the pleasure of being able to talk with a lot of the front-running farmers which we have in Europe, such as the one that we're standing on right now, and as well as Not literally the land, yeah and as well as talk with many of the yeah, basically the leading agronomists and consultants worldwide on that matter. And what was very clear from those conversations was that, in the end, regenerative agriculture is very context specific, but it's also it's very much embedded in practice and in learning and understanding the context of individual farmers. So we developed a training program which is very practice oriented, where we basically invite young people who just freshly graduated from an agricultural degree to come for two times one month on an already very advanced regenerative farm.
Speaker 1:That's going to be an interesting shock. Yes, a de-learning exercise, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of our training farms, actually Felix from Rickenhof.
Speaker 2:He also had in the past often students coming which were staying with him as part of their agricultural degree, who often he says he also had in the past often students coming which were staying with him as part of their agricultural degree, who often he says he had to unlearn what they just learned in university.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of unlearning to do, but I think there's also this beauty of there's nothing more convincing than going on a regenerative farm.
Speaker 2:I think if you come here and you see the work that Benedikt is doing on the farm and the impact that he's having on the ecosystem team and the team that is implementing this as well, and the birds that we see and the whole, it's such a beauty that I think I really want to ignite young people just after their graduation into this right, because I think once you go region there, you're never going to go back, and so the idea is that they start with this and they spend two times one month on a farm. They really immer immerse themselves in that ecosystem, they work with the farmer, so they're actually also practically supporting the farmer in the farm operations, and then they have two months of online input where we basically ask 20 of the best agronomists that we know, ranging from Nicole Masters, from the US as well, or Joel Williams to people like Nick Steiner, for example. Who's really driving right now water cycle restoration in Europe?
Speaker 1:forwards. Follow him on Instagram and. Linkedin if you want to be inspired Exactly, burning plants and stuff.
Speaker 2:The Johnny Depp of Region Egg, the Johnny Depp of Region Egg.
Speaker 1:I haven't heard. That's a good one actually.
Speaker 2:And I had so much fun putting this together and talking to these people and and it was also amazing because they're all characters and everyone said yes, I reached out to all these farms that I know across Europe, in Spain, in Portugal in Greece we always talk about the scarcity mindset, abundance, etc.
Speaker 1:In a scarcity mindset you would think they wouldn't say yes, because it might be competition. But you also realize they're all way too full over their head in work and they would love to have others.
Speaker 2:that's exactly it, and I think that's the beauty of the movement as well, that we are seeing like these agronomists. They have way more work than they can handle. They keep on pushing the day rates up and people keep on paying it, so they don't have to worry about that and they all say economic theory doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and in the same way I'm amazed that also these farms say hey, I see the need for this and I'm happy to support there because that's another point a lot of before we get a big machine passing by soon with stones, a lot of farmers top ones end up being consultants and agronomists as well, which is not ideal because they already have running something. But they get called and asked and we're going to hear from a few other characters, let's say in this episode but that's not an ideal solution because they're running a farm and they're also running around as an agronomist and consultant.
Speaker 2:It's just yeah, Exactly these people. And this is the beauty about it they have such a drive to drive this movement forward that a lot of the farmers which are the front runners are now consulting farmers, even though they want to focus on their own farms. And I think matteo mazzola, who's going to speak later, is a perfect example.
Speaker 2:I don't know how many other farmers he has trained, but I don't know how many hours in a day he has, that's my bigger question yeah and and then the final piece and I think this is for me maybe even the most exciting one is that we're also open now for farmers that are at the beginning of their journey, that say, hey, I want to go regenerative but I don't know how that they can apply as a transition farm.
Speaker 2:And then the students, after having learned on the training farms and after having gotten input from these agronomists, they go again on the farm. They stay for two months on the farm this is in January and February so that the farmer has also the capacity and the mindset to work on this and then, together with the farmer, they will create a transition plan specifically for that context and and they will get advice from one of the consultants in the program who will check that the transition plan makes sense. And then, as climate farmers, we will measure over three years. We will take a baseline measurement and we will measure over three years what the effects are and what the regeneration is that is taking place, based on the implementation of that plan, so that we can track how this is actually working out and that the farm also knows how they're performing and that the students can also really show basically that the transition plan that they are creating is having an input and is working out, and so are you still open for students, like what's your ask?
Speaker 1:to make it not transactional, but still Like what do you need? How can we help? And I'm saying the larger, we meaning everybody that listens. What's the like? How can we help and participate?
Speaker 2:So we originally decided to have 10 spots open for this pilot program because we also we didn't know how many people are going to be willing and able to apply, and now we have already more than 40 applications coming in.
Speaker 2:So we are considering right now to actually maybe expand it already, which means we also have to get a few more training farms on I think there are a few more that I can think of and we also have to get enough transition farms. We have right now 14 applications for farms that want to create a transition plan. So if you're listening to this and you're a farmer or a farmer that is interested in going on this regenerative journey, then they should definitely still apply. And if we see that we can find a good match with a few more training farms on board it and a few more transition farms, and maybe we can even expand the pilot and otherwise, we will definitely run the program again next year and my goal is that now to do it with 10, maybe 20 in the end, and then the year after was 50. And then the year after potentially was 100. So this is the one way that we want to go, and the other one is I would love to talk with more universities and to really see how can we increase the amount.
Speaker 2:You want to keep doing this work. Exactly this is supposed to be to really show there is a demand, there is a possibility, and I would love to collaborate with universities on making, first of all, university education more practical and, second of all, to have regenerative agriculture playing a larger role. Starting with a module, my dream goal would be to actually have a regenerative agriculture master so that young people that want to go in this direction can apply directly and can really learn this from the ground up and, like the applied universities, the high, not the high school yeah, the habeo.
Speaker 1:And because that's where many people get trained as well, yeah, that's where a big lever lever is as well, thank you, thank you so much for coming and share and doing this unconventional under a tree that made a lot of noise, and for the work you're doing my pleasure, pleasure.
Speaker 2:I'm really excited about being able to do this right now and I'm really grateful for all the amazing farmers that are participating and the agronomists and for your work as well. And, yeah, I think we're on a very good path right now to really start changing the food system into a more regenerative one.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Thank you. And to conclude, obviously these kind of things outside the current education system need to be funded and in that sense you're probably looking for more funding as well if you suddenly expand to 20 or 50 or whatever. But the current pilot is funded by the DataMars Foundation, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, we're very grateful there, because when we started thinking of this concept, it was clear that we need to have a philanthropic funder to make this happen, and the DataMars Sustainability Foundation has been very much supporting us there from the first day onwards to really develop this together, to think along and also to finance it, and now, in the next phase, for scaling it, we would definitely need further funding, and anyone that that, of course, is happy to go in that direction we would love to hear from. I think we we need to start realizing that it's not just about data. Data is relevant, but funding also needs to flow, especially in education, because without a change in education, we're not going to get to where we want to get yeah.
Speaker 1:So education is your itch, yeah, and if this is scratching your itch, definitely get in touch, because it's such a big lever to give people, specifically farmers that want to, the tools and the comfort that somebody is by their side to help them through it, because it can be, as we've seen in many places, extremely lonely and, yeah, we can't expect many farmers to go through that by themselves. Exactly so, welcome, benedikt, from the farmer perspective. Of course, you wear different hats, but really are in charge of a super large, complex organism 3,000 hectares, of which 1,000 is arable organic, in Brandenburg, east of Berlin, and you've started your journey quite a few years ago. If you remember, seven plus.
Speaker 1:It feels like a lifetime, probably also for you, but if you remember and we'll link other episodes we've done together if you want to go deep into the farm and we just launched an animal episode or a walking land episode on the animal side of things but and you also talked about a bit about your, the beginning of your journey there but when you started exploring regeneration and the transition, where did you go for help? Or where did you go for help? Or where did you go for inspiration? And quote unquote I'm doing air quotes here. Handholding in that transition, or was there a place to go?
Speaker 4:That's an assumption, not really, I think, in a sense, what helped me was that I never had an official education in agriculture, but rather I grew up on and around animals and farming, so I had a more sort of instinctive connection to natural processes. And after my first 10 years in the financial industry, once I took over the farm, we were doing industrial ecological agriculture, so monoculture, plowing, the whole drill without any animals, and for a while I hadn't yet arrived at the philosophy that we all share today, which is soil, health goes first and biodiversity, and then everything else follows. And back in the day there was really no one talking about it. Regenerative agriculture wasn't a thing. It was, of course, for sure, but it wasn't a thing that you would talk about in any context agricultural, technological, innovation-related fields, right.
Speaker 4:So I found it through, first of all understanding that the way that we were doing industrial ecological agriculture is basically not going to enable me to pass on the farm, going to enable me to pass on the farm and then knowing that I don't want to go back to the conventional model, and then really being stuck in a place of darkness for quite some time, not actually knowing how I can in any case keep this farm alive and help it to prosper and to repay debt, etc.
Speaker 4:Etc. Only then to start writing to people all over the world emails saying look, I've got a 3000 hectares of sand that I'm responsible for and I don't know what to do. So in case you are working on how to grow food and make a living on sandy soil, then you know, let's cooperate, you can come here, whatever. And it took thousands and thousands of emails until finally someone wrote back and said have you heard something about agroforestry before? And then suddenly had the first term to use for searching it further because if you don't know the term to put in google exactly what are you going to search?
Speaker 4:you can put in.
Speaker 1:Now we have llms. You can say if I have sandy soils, what should? I do? Not that it's true, but in google you need it or you need. This sounds really like old man talk, but you needed a good question, like for sure, and unless you had a super open one, it open questions just didn't lead anywhere so that was for me the buy-in.
Speaker 4:I had the first term, and then, through agroforestry, sooner or later I I found ernst gertsch, of course, that was working in brazil, and then from there I found alan, alan Savory, and I found Gabe Brown, and I found all these pioneers all over the world that were doing very different things, and I was like that was for me the aha moment, because I was thinking why isn't the whole world talking about these tools, these methods, that philosophy of land use?
Speaker 4:And once I figured out what they were doing and funnily or funnily enough, how they were all in such a different environment but yet had the same philosophy and were doing completely different things, I knew that's it, that's the way. So for me at at an early point, it was never about then going there and then visiting them and reading all the books about whatever they were doing, because in the very first moment I understood like how they were seeing agriculture from an instinctive point of view, and I knew that, whatever it is, the only thing I can do is to implement it here, start small, observe, adapt, learn and then hopefully find a way to scale it. So that was for me really the way in and then, in the end of the day, it was youtube, it was english speaking short videos on on what they were doing, and and that was everything for me at the time until I found the first couple of books. But then I was already deeply intertwined and trying to establish it myself.
Speaker 1:And like on the farm, like with the at that time the farm was running, as you say, industrial, ecological, organic agriculture. You had us have a staff, and had a staff, obviously, and also advisors. Like how did that land? When you came, you took over the farm and suddenly you, after coming out of your dark days or in a cave, saying, agroforestry, we're going to do trees like how did that land? In terms of acceptance? Or they said, okay, take a few fields and just start trying, but please don't do it too big. Like was there resistance? How was that met? Let's say, when you started dropping these kind of holistic management, the grazing side, animals, trees and things like yeah, it's a very good question.
Speaker 4:So when I took over responsibility, both the forestry and agriculture were just about to hit the worst years, the worst economic sort of financial years that they've had ever experienced. So both of them became more or less fighting for bankruptcy or fighting not to be bankrupt for four or five years counting, due to storms, particularly, of course, the droughts in agriculture. So I had the situation where, on one side, I was completely overwhelmed by having to manage companies that were fighting for survival and, at the same time, I had that new world that I knew that this is where we have to go. I knew that this is what it's going to be, and those two worlds have basically nothing in common with each other.
Speaker 4:So I did basically everything wrong that you can do with regards, specifically to communication within the team, with communication towards my family, and there was really no one to talk to about it. There's a handful of people I could have talked to about it, but none of them would have had the experience of having to run an industrial agricultural company with huge debt, with huge responsibilities for not only the people that work there but also the whole process and value chain that you're stuck in. So these were super, super difficult times and it felt for the first years always how those two worlds kept dividing and, having tried or trying to keep both of your feet on top of them, the split got wider and wider. You were always just thinking when is it going to crack?
Speaker 1:It's that famous.
Speaker 1:I don't know the video of what is the guy called, the actor that's doing the Volvo truck commercial, I think, where he stands in a split and then slowly the trucks slowly start departing, just to show how parallel these trucks can drive, with special stabilization et cetera, and he does a life split basically and of course at some point comes back again because otherwise it would fall. But yeah, you'd be basically torn between two or three worlds, like, if you look at the Horizon 3 or the 3 Horizon model of systems change, horizon 1 was struggling, the industrial model, horizon 2, wasn't really there, and you were also thinking about horizon three like a completely new world, and but those two are not connected unless you're building things in the middle, which is horizon two, to get there and and so, yeah, I can imagine it's quite lonely, yeah, I think loneliness is something that you always endure when you take a lot of courage and responsibility and you have an idea that you want to follow, like that is part of the price that you have to pay.
Speaker 4:So that was okay for me also, just because I have been raised as a lone wolf anyway. But the difficult part is like because, for me, in the very moment I found all these pioneers, I knew deep within my heart something I had looked for 10 years, which is this is what I'm meant to do. This is my task in life is to do exactly this bring it over on our farm, prove it and it's such a sandy and low precipitation context that they work economically, but also ecologically and socially. Have the science to back it up and then try to bring it out to people and show how agriculture can also look like. But at the end of the day, just from a technical standpoint, of course, I didn't know if we were doing it right.
Speaker 4:I knew that I wanted to do everything at the same time, which made the situation even worse, because everyone's saying well, why don't you focus on one thing? Why don't you just do agroforestry? Or why don't you just do composting? Or why don't you just do integration of animals, or why don't you just do this or that? And I said no, the focus is all of it, because all of it is the whole point of it, because it is a system, it's a, it's an ecosystem, it's a context of a larger philosophy, and I would have wished to have people or numbers or experiences or processes that I could have compared myself with, I could have talked to, I could have went into sparring, because the most difficult questions are not the complex, technical ones. You will get to them anyway. The most difficult questions are the simple first steps, because you can do anything Once you find this world that is completely different to what you might have done in a more controlled, standardized, industrialized system. The world, the universe is. You're just discovering a new universe, so how to start, and how to start has a very strategic, liable approach with regards to your context, your farm size, your values, etc.
Speaker 4:So I think, with regards to that, I think education and talking to people that have experienced these things and have gone through these difficult processes is incredibly helpful.
Speaker 1:And are you doing that now? No-transcript questions. And then what do you answer to that? Like, how can you play a role in that? Do you play a role in that and how does that? Not hand-holding, but being relevant and, yeah, relevant for another group of people that wants to go into this transition and might not have rightfully so this, like I'm going to sell my car, which you did, and just going to do it. That's a very different kind of group. I think that now is starting a transition, like with the next in the early adopters, like in all the adaptation curves. There's now a group of farmers that really wants to, but maybe doesn't have the super entrepreneurial spirit and inventor spirit and the lone wolf and be okay to be lonely for a while energy. So are you helping them? Or is that something that that happens now that you get those phone calls or those messages on instagram?
Speaker 4:yeah, for sure, we haven't yet built, let's say more institutionalized where we do advising, oh but you had so much time but?
Speaker 4:but firstly, if I have a personal connection to people and they ask, then of course I love what I do and I love also sharing, of course, the experiences and some of the thoughts. So there is a few people I do this kind of work with where then I also go travel and stay on their farms for a while, have a look around, talk to the people and then I tell them the things that I see, and never with the intention to be able to tell them what to do, but rather just to share my observation or my experience from being on the farm, for instance. And then usually it's not something where I would make an analysis and then work out a plan and then talk the plan through with them over like a time frame of I don't know one, two, three years where they do the transition. So that's not something I would find time for. But specifically in those early first days I basically go and ask good questions that they don't want to hear and I confront them with the things that they know they have to think about, but they try not to, because that's what I mean with when I say, like the easy questions are the hard ones you have to Do you have an example?
Speaker 4:An example? Like the easy questions are the hard ones you have to. Do you have an example, an example? Well, it's difficult to give an example, but more, in a sense, of so much of our life, we are driven by what we believe is a cool thing to do, or we believe is something that you meant to do, or you think makes your parents proud, or you want to prove a point to someone, or whatever, and realizing that these are outside factors that should not influence your own decision should come from within. You should take the time to fully understand why you want to do the things that you want to do, and that sometimes is not easy, because you have to take time, you have to reflect, to think about what it is, what gives you joy, like do you want to become rich or do you want to have time with your kids? Do you want to do you love animals or you do not like?
Speaker 4:These questions are difficult to go by, and I think people that have been looking to change something have been looking to transform. They have already a process of years of wanting to do it, but they haven't done it yet. So if you then come, meet them and you put them back to a thought process that they've already neglected for a few years. They are frustrated because that's not what they want to hear. What they want to hear is do agroforestry, oh yeah, okay, all right, I can do agroforestry. All right, cool. No, that's too easy. Think about it first. What is your family going to look like in 35 years? What kind of tree will suit that idea of what your family looks like?
Speaker 1:well, so so yeah, in that sense I try to almost like holistic context and really asking the hard exactly on a personal sitting together, for sure, yeah on a personal, fascinating and yeah, that's I can imagine they want like they're excited.
Speaker 1:You come to the farm and he's gonna, he's gonna figure it out for us. Is he gonna help us and gives us at least a 10 step plan to start with this tree and start with this animal, and then step four is this, etc. And you come there and ask very relevant questions that you should ask.
Speaker 4:Yeah and also I think is farmers know this, of course, but still like it's easy to plant a tree. Yeah, planting a tree is it's the easiest thing on the planet. But planting a tree, then looking after it for years and years and years until the first return is coming, planting a tree that is also in 10, 15 years on the same spot and in the same model, and that is super, super complex, right? So you cannot focus on a approach or a tool or whatever, just because you feel like now I finally have to start doing something and getting going. Now you have to think it through, and that's more difficult.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect. I thank you so much for that perspective. We could spend a lot more time on that, but we're not. I'm going to be respectful for your time and also bring on Matteo. And now we move to another friend of the show.
Speaker 1:I think we had a great collection today on this episode Matteo Mazzola, calling from the car because of logistics, which always happens with, obviously, with farmers, and what I would love to unpack with you is your journey. We've captured that number of times. We actually did the first walking the land with you, and now we did number four or five with Benedict, so that's a nice journey as well. We'll link that below. But you started advising and I don't think consultant is the right word, but of course you've got a lot of people.
Speaker 1:You're farming just north of Brescia, in northern Italy, the Lago di Seo and you've been working with a lot of farmers as a farmer and turned advisor as well, because many people I've known I've seen that on the farm as well come to you and ask, call you WhatsApp. You call at night, in the morning, come by, et cetera, to say, okay, help me, because I have a farm in Rome or I have a farm in France or I have a farm somewhere and I need and I want to transition. How did that come about Like? Was that a natural path, with the farm to also start helping other farmers, or did the helping other farmers come first and then the farm came? Like? How did that journey work out?
Speaker 3:It was not really a linear process because in the last 20 years, since I've finished my agricultural studies at high school, I was able to have many different experiences and starting different farms and moving from one farm to the other. So it really depends. But basically what I've always liked to do has been experimenting and because I tend not to be afraid of doing mistakes and I tend to like to use functional creativity to reach my my objectives. And so once you try out things that most of the time people are not able to try is very useful and enrich. The possibility to go to other farmers and to spread and to share the knowledge, the mistakes and the processes and so on. So I would say because it hasn't been a linear journey, I would say that is more the aim rather than how. It has been always okay testing, understanding and then spreading and sharing the knowledge. So I don't really see myself as a consultant or as an advisor. Most of the time I become a real good friend of the farmers that I'm going to help and I really agree with Benedict, at the beginning it's not really a matter of agronomical practices or appropriate technology or fertilizer, compost or this or that. At the beginning it really comes down to the individual perspectives or the collective perspective if the farm is managed by a group of people.
Speaker 3:Often my work when I go outside from my farm, but also in my informations out there. So much knowledge really easily achievable. It was already from my point of view. It was already like this 20 years ago. I did my first course in holistic medicine in 2008, as well as my first biochar composties in 2007. The first biochar compost is in 2007. So informations were already there because internet, if you just search in order to embrace techniques, practices and appropriate approaches in the most sensible way, it's like planet Earth doesn't really care of what we are doing.
Speaker 3:It always has the ability of regenerating itself. So basically, we are doing for us and for our ethics to regenerate. If we don't think about the psychological and the social aspects, we're just doing another industrial style agriculture or just another productive agriculture. Okay, you produce ecosystem services Fantastic, it's already in evolution. But from my point of view, it's not the point. If we don't change society, if we don't change the consumer, if we don't change the farmer as a consumer, we will not really get to that connection, real, really deep connection with nature, entering the processes rather than going parallel, entering the processes, rather than going parallel to the processes.
Speaker 1:so yeah, I'm not yeah no, it's like lauren tucker of re-nourish studios likes to say if we focus on soil health, that's what we're going to get healthy soil, but not all the other benefits that could come or can come or should come from regeneration.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100%. It's a long time. That's not enough. It will be never enough, but already it's quite a long time that I'm approaching agroecology, regenerative agriculture, ecology and so on, ecology and so on, and I really see that now we were amazing as a community of new approaches, developers and experimenters and researchers and so on. Now we have the toolkit in order to reach high production, high quality ecosystem services, and now, naturally, I think, we have to get more to the social and psychological part in order to potentiate the regenerative approach itself, which is basically, I think, is a journey backward, towards becoming again indigenous, towards becoming again, again an element of the landscape, rather than being on the landscape, being in the landscape or being part of the landscape. And yeah, it's a sort of social regeneration and individual regeneration, which is very important important.
Speaker 1:We have to understand yeah and do you see that like, do you select on that as well? Because I know you get a lot of requests to work with you, to travel, to come and visit farms and to not advise but to be part of that journey. Like, is that part of your? Let's say, you don't have a shortage of work. If you wanted to, you could be on the road constantly. Do you select for that as well, like, now that you have this sort of abundance of work in terms of people that want your help, do you select for people that are that seem to be ready and, if so, how that seem to be ready for the social regeneration as well, or is that sort of a self-selection as well, that they reach out to you because they're interested in that and not just for a technical plan? Okay, first year we do this. Second month we do that. For 15th month, we do this, etc.
Speaker 3:Etc yeah, both of them. Both of them I start. I can't start because I don't know. I I can't prejudge without seeing and without knowing, without speaking with the farmers. So normally, first or the second visit, I really, really understand if I can be functional to that system and if that system, that farm, is compatible with my objectives.
Speaker 3:Further away than just transitioning from one practice to another, transitioning from using a chemical fertilizer to an organic fertilizer or to adding animals to the system, I think I'm really looking for humans rather than robots or people interested just in a particular aspect of regenerative agriculture. It's a journey. It's a journey. It's a journey. If I see that there is a spark, I'm happy. I have the energy, I have the will of continuing the consultancy and the process. Otherwise, no, there are so many people very good consultants that can help with practical, everyday, daily issues. So I'm more and more going towards working with people that wants to be or become part of the land, and this doesn't mean that the financial part and ecological part are not important, the basics. For me, that's normal. Of course we are going to work towards a regenerative approach, financially speaking and economically, ecologically speaking, but in order to reach a higher level. I believe that is very important to start from a human level, social level.
Speaker 1:And as a final question, are you also in the process of then training others or not? Training maybe not training is the right word, but trying to find others around you, because of course you cannot clone Matteo, we've tried, but it didn't work out but to have more of that approach in your context, in the Italian context, but also Southern Europe, to like, how do you grow that kind of kind of practice, not to build a big consultancy company or advisory company, none of that, but replicate and make sure more people can go on that journey? Are you trying to figure that out? Is that partly online? Is that partly with groups? Is that to try to find others that can also help people, not on the technical side, necessarily, but on that, let's say, social side to to make sure? Yeah, because there's only a limited amount of farmers you can work with or farm teams you can work with in a given year, and I'm imagining there more that that want to. How do you think about that scarcity versus abundance or that bottleneck that you are a bit?
Speaker 3:It's a complex question. It's a complex question, there is not just one answer. But I believe that in these past many years I have been manifesting in multiple ways what you're saying. So, basically, the sharing of not really knowledge, but the approach of what is possible. I hardly like to say, do this, I rather give examples. This is why I like to have fun, I like to experiment, because I rather to give examples in order to activate that capacity of observing, of risking, of trying, of experimenting, so the farmer or herself will be able to build the system, the processes, the approach, the dynamics that will allow the individual transition toward a more complex capacity of managing the landscape and everything that comprehend the landscape.
Speaker 3:So I realized more and more that I've been able unconsciously sometimes, or consciously other times, but most of the time in a subtle way to stimulate with words, with pictures, with videos, with farm tours, with courses, with consultancies and open consultancies. I stimulated that spark that, especially in people that already have a comprehension of ecological and agroecological complexities, I don't need to tell them how to do things, but to provide them a principle or an idea or an example that is opening a new world, and then that person can go deeper with courses, books, experiments and so on. So I think, within the knowledge and consultancy ecosystem, I think I'm more of a pioneer species which is producing one of the first inputs that the rest of the system then uses to increase abundance and stability and continuity of the system. I'm not a person that manages continuity. I need to change all the time. Now we are, we will soon already remove the oldest agroforestry system of Iside, because a new system, more advanced, more experimental, will take place, and of course, it has been producing until now, but at the same time, we allow ourselves to be more experimental species because we activate from farmer's point of view. We activate not just the financing of selling the fruits, but also the farm tours and courses connected to the experiments that we are able to, uh, to try out.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I'm not sure if I managed to explain it somehow, because maybe it's not really absolutely okay. So I find myself to be really in in that spot. Not that pioneers are more important than accumulators or abundancy makers, all of them. They are part of the system and they are needed in certain specific steps of the succession towards the regeneration. So then, of course, I'm passionate. I have lots of knowledge also on how to consolidate, how to maintain abundance. But if I have to look at my own specific function from ecological point of view, I ask myself where can you be highly effective and efficient in the system? And I place myself at the beginning of the, let's say, regeneration process beginning of the, let's say, regeneration process.
Speaker 1:It's such a good answer Like the pioneering species that create also the microclimate and bring up the nutrients and create the possibility for the others. And then, when the role is done, as you say now with the agroforestry system, then yeah, it's time to move on, and it's time to, and that's okay and I think it's a perfect way to wrap this up. We could do this for hours and we will continue to do that over the next years. Thank you so much, mateo, for the work you do and for being part of this region agronomy training program and, of course, for coming on here to share about it nice, thanks cool thank you for listening all the way to the end.
Speaker 1:For show notes and links discussed, check out our website investinginregenerativeagriculturecom slash posts. If you liked this episode, why not share it with a friend and get in touch with us on social media, our website or via the Spotify app, and tell us what you liked most and give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or your podcast player. That really really helps us. Thanks again and see you next time.
