407 Tania Rodriguez Riestra - Systems change investing done right

The food, agriculture and planetary systems, for that matter, are all in serious need of change. No news there. 
But how? Individual investments and grants, however large, will never be big enough to move these systems. What we need is a serious, deep analysis of the food and agriculture space within a certain context: hundreds of hours of interviews with many stakeholders to map the players, the positive and negative feedback loops, and the intervention points with huge leverage (or not), trying to make sense of the messiness of a system. No, a map is never the territory, but it’s better than no map.

Then what? How do we go from mapping to action? It is key to build dedicated funding vehicles for-profit, low-return, no-return, philanthropy, the whole capital spectrum concentrated on the highest leverage points in a system. And then, and only then, we might have a chance to move something.

CO_ is one of the most interesting regen investment vehicles we have come across, combining deep systems research with long-term, on-the-ground work, weaving until you have a common vision, and then deploying serious capital to make it work.

More about this episode.

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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.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

The food, agriculture, and planetary systems for that matter are all in serious need for change. No news there. But how do we do that? Individual investments and grants, however large they will be, are never enough to move these systems. What we need is a serious deep analysis of the food and agriculture space within a certain context, hundreds of hours of interviews with all the stakeholders, or as many as you can get, to map the players, the positive and negative feedback loops, intervention points with huge leverage or not, trying to make sense of the messiness of a system. No, a map is never the territory, but it's better than having no map at all. And then what? How do we go from mapping to action? Build dedicated funding vehicles, for profit, low return, no return, philanthropic, the whole capital spectrum concentrated on the highest leverage points in a system. And then, only then, we might have a chance to move something. Today we do just that with one of the most interesting regen investment vehicles I've come across, combining deep systems research with long-term on-the-ground work, weaving until you have a common vision, and then deploy serious capital to make it work. Join me in a long one where we walk and talk with some dogs and helicopter noise, but trust me, it's worth it. We talk water, landscape scale regeneration, investing in the global north and south, investors' mindset, relationship to wealth, what is enough, inequality, biodiversity hotspot research, and funding, equity versus debt, and why Wales, yes, Wales, will be on the investment committees soon. Enjoy. 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. So welcome to. I'm saying that way too often in the last six months. Very special episode. We're walking the land. In this case, a park, not just a park, it's one of the biggest, I think, in any city around the world. It's definitely by far the biggest here in Mexico City. You might hear some dogs, there are a lot of dog walkers in the park. We hear some traffic, but we're shielded, we're under the shadow of some very big towers around us. A big bank, BBVA, Ritz Carlton, and a playground. So we'll see how that goes. And I'm very happy to be joined by Tanja. Welcome, Tanja. Thank you. This has been a joy yesterday to see a snippet because there's so much work you've done into investing in through blended finance, and we'll get into that, into food and agriculture systems and into biodiversity. You gave some snippets of that work in a presentation yesterday and also your colleagues, and I really look forward to it. It was a perfect pet for this one. But there's so much more. I know I've seen some background case studies actually, which I'll put it in the links below. But we start out with a personal question. And it's very fitting here. You could be doing many other things with your life. And the question is always why do you spend most of your waking hours thinking about, in this case, soil biodiversity and the food system? What was your how did you get bitten by the soil bug? And why was it such a strong bite, or was your did you get inoculated with the soil virus, as some people call it as well?

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Yes. Firstly, thank you for having me. I was just confessing that I had a nice drink with Charlie and Lisa, so I'm Well, blame it on them. Yeah, exactly. We can blame it on them, but I hope we manage. So I grew up in nature, and so I'll talk a lot about the connection between nature and food systems, even though I think this podcast is very much focused on the food system. To me, they're very interdependent. And setting out to founding Co. The main driver since the outset, that was 15 years ago, which we're celebrating yesterday, has always been working at the nexus of climate change and poverty. This is not a nexus that was very explored when we started. Luckily, there's a lot of organizations that are exploring that nexus more deeply over the last few years. And so that's very positive. When we started, that wasn't the case either. There was a lot of people working in poverty issues, social justice issues, and then another subset on climate and tech. But not very often did we find investors very keen and interested in understanding what that nexus brings. And so why the nexus? I guess growing up in Mexico really brings you into that nexus in a very real way.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

It's quite in your face, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Yes, it is very much.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

Oh under all the traffic or above all the traffic, obviously. Just you know, yeah, you see the immense inequality is present.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

Yes, and probably if you would have walked past a few blocks, you would have been seen the exact opposite of that. We I grew up in this city and had the privilege to be in contact with nature and with land since a very young age.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

Do you remember that? Like what the contact with nature could be many things, like you had a pet jaguar or uh really loved insects, or what was your entry point, or your contact when you say in contact with nature, what did you enjoy? What do you remember?

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Yeah, so I I'm a big walker of nature. I've since very walking in a park, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

I'm very happy we don't sit down in a meeting, a beautiful meeting room, etc. This is way better.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Yeah, thank you for making that happen. But I love walking, and since very young, I would go to the woods and walk. And to me, it's uh now I see it as a very beautiful way to do long meditations. Before I just were like dreamy ideas when I was young. So I've walked my whole life in different geographies and always try to connect that to what those mountains or those geographies can bring in terms of how they're understood, how landscapes happen, especially in large landscapes by indigenous communities, which I've worked with my whole life. It's always so fascinating when you're walking to understand landscapes like millennia back. Have these landscapes been transformed? And most of them have, and how have they been transformed over time? And so it's always like a joy to just have that time skill, and that really helps in the work that we do, right? Just linking it to the work that we do. I love walking in nature because that gives you that time skill that we very often forget as investors. Our work takes time, and it's probably not, we won't see it in this generation what we're working on. So it is a very patient game.

SPEAKER_02 7:20

Do you still walk a lot?

SPEAKER_01 7:22

I still walk a lot, yes.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

It's a very time because you're busy. Yeah, you have to carve out, probably.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

I'm very good at carving out time, especially when I travel a lot. I always make sure to just step out and spend one or two days alone in a retreat, walking. So that really gives me a strategic perspective of what we're doing and why we're doing it. Going back to the question climate and poverty about why we're doing what we're doing, we've always been, or I've been since childhood, interested in this dichotomy. Climate came later in my life, of course, but nature and poverty has always been part of my life growing up in Mexico. And was I grew up with an indigenous person that took care of me when I was a child, and she had a very significant impact in my life. She brought a level of care, love, and knowledge that I didn't know in my own family structure. It was very mysterious when I was growing up. Why is this human being so different to what I know?

SPEAKER_02 8:34

She looks like a human being, but she seems different than.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

And she was just so such a wise and loving soul, just in pure form. So I was so lucky to spend a lot of my childhood with her, and got very curious about, and again, I was small, very curious about where she came from, what her family structure was, what her community was.

SPEAKER_02 9:02

So you went to visit, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:04

I did. I did go to visit her, and that really changed pretty dramatically my the rest of my journey because it also allowed me to have clarity on what I could do to change things, right? And as a young person, I think having clarity of what you can do to serve, to help, to support, to change things is quite relevant. And so I worked in quite a few projects in her community. So that was a very beautiful part of my life because even when young, it shed light on possibility and potential for change.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

Agency. You could yeah, you had agency. You saw the situation, were probably shocked, I'm imagining, or at least, and then you started to do things and things hopefully a bit changed.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:01

Which is a powerful notion. Like you see something and you actually move, and something moves.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

No, totally. I was in total shock because I grew up in a very privileged household, and I had running water, I had basic infrastructure, and all these things you don't know when you're a kid, you just take them for granted.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

So when you're a kid, when you're a kid, you think that's your house and it's normal. And I've been privileged to work with a few privileged families, and then until you go to another person's house and you see it's much smaller, you don't realize that that your house is gigantic and like your perspective and context until you see it, until you experience where your caretaker comes from. Maybe you see it through TV, maybe you see something, maybe in a way, you don't really see it until you step into their house in their context, and you're like, oh, this is different, especially if you're six, seven. I don't remember, I don't know the age, but that context, yeah, until you experience it, you don't see it or you don't sense it.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Yes, that's correct. I took two years to convince her to take me to her village because I was quite young. And I was just telling her, like, look, you know everything about my life. No, I don't know anything about you. I don't know anything about you. This is just too weird.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

This is not fair.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

I want to know. So what convinced her?

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Was it the two years of drilling, or was it that you make a really good argument at some point?

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Well, I just uh dra I thought about the escape plan because we couldn't tell our my parents. So I just came up with a plan where I could pretend I was going to my best friend's house, and then we just went.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

Ooh, there was a level of planning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Level of agency and planning. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

And so when I got into it's a beautiful spot of Mexico, it's a very naturally beautiful spot in the hills of Hidalgo. And when I got into her house, there was this very strange mix of so much joy and love for me meeting this other side of my family, if you will. And then this like heart being shrunk with what I was seeing and sensing. No running water, dirt floors, tin roof, everybody sleeping in under one same roof. And it was just so hard on my body like to contain those emotions.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

How old were you?

SPEAKER_01 12:27

I was 12.

unknown 12:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

I was 12.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

And why were your parents not? Why couldn't you tell your parents why do you need did you need an escape plan? Or let's say a good excuse.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Yeah, I don't think they. I don't know if I even needed it, to be honest. I just thought they wouldn't let me go. And so I just make sure you went. Went for the escape plan. I haven't talked to them about this, so I hope they don't hear this post-podcast.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

Maybe they were like, of course. I mean, if you're 10, 12, also in your mind, you're thinking a lot about what other people may potentially think, and you create rules that might not even be there.

SPEAKER_03 13:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

And then so you worked a lot then in that specific context. And then there's always this interesting step when it's, let's say, on this, you work on this on the side, you work maybe on as a volunteer or as a philanthropist, but there's a moment or there's a question, okay, now it's gonna be my work. It's gonna be, I'm gonna work on these things, the eight, ten, whatever hours people spend working, working, or your study. Like, did how did it start influencing your quote unquote and doing air quotes, which of course nobody sees work? What was that decision? Like, I want to work in this, I want to use my skills and not just my, not just, but my voluntary time.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Yeah, so a few things happened in that first experience. One of them, which was I had the privilege of being welcome into that community because of her, which brought me into a new world of what community structures looked like. My own community structure growing up was radically different from this one. So that was one big subset, let's say, or door opening in my life, where I've I'm still super curious. I'm still always marveled at what communities driven in that way where they really spend time listening to each other, understanding each other, which is something that I believe we've lost in many other communities, if they even exist. And so I saw this possibility right in front of my eyes of saying, okay, these people don't have perhaps the economic privilege, but they do have so much more that I don't have, and that is so powerful and connective.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

And so that was one aspect of the without being naive, of course, and without not seeing a lot of the circumstances.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

So I was quite young. I couldn't figure out, I couldn't distance myself like I can now and speak about it like I can now. But it just I was just so attracted to it. I was like, okay, this feels so different. This it was, yeah, it just it was totally new in in some way. And then the other one was being very practical to me was okay, no running butter. Where do we get water? This house is too small, I'm gonna build an extension to it.

SPEAKER_02 15:39

And so I how was that received by the community?

SPEAKER_01 15:43

So before it was just Leo's mom, Leo's my nanny's name, it was Leo's mom who was very happy to have me, and she's she had heard in the same way that I had a lot about me growing up, and I invited a few friends over.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

How did you get your friends on board? My friends are wonderful, but I just were gonna build running water and an extension company.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Yes, and they were like fully in for that. And they're still my friends, they still work in very similar issues to what I probably shaped them as well. I definitely think it did. We've shared a few of those experiences over our lifetimes, and it definitely did. And so for me, the very practical application was I need to figure out how to build houses and basic infrastructure, which then took me to study architecture and master planning. So that was a sort of thing. Bring you to London, yes, in into that world, which was a whole different adventure.

SPEAKER_02 16:50

And then how come food then and sorry, but continue. I'm just curious then how food wiggles its way into and yeah, the food system is very attached, of course, to land use and very attached to poverty, and very attached to real estate to a certain extent. Probably when this is out, we have a few episodes on that coming out. But it's also feels like a very different silo.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

It is, but it I mean, it these uh when you work at that nexus, it's all very interlinked. So I study architecture and master planning and then came back as an offer to then volunteer in a project with a dear friend of mine that came to our school and said, I want shared a beautiful picture of an absolutely deserted landscape and a few people hugging each other and said, I want to make this desert into an oasis. He was a very good speaker, and I was like, okay, I'm in, let's go. So I spent two years of my life in Oaxaca with that project, and literally it was desert soil, very tight soil, no water. And we worked in that project for a year and a half, and today we're using permaculture, key line design, like we tried everything we could get our hands on at that stage. I was quite young still, and again, the community aspect of that experience was very crucial. We spend a lot of time in participatory design sessions with a community to understand what they wanted, what they needed. And because of that, then technically we worked a lot physically to get that going. We had a hundred K grant from the Kellogg Foundation at 19, is a lot, it seems like a lot of money.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

It is a lot of money, and it's nothing at the same time, yeah. And so how does it look now?

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Is that like it's still up and running? It's still up and running, and we did turn it into an oasis. It still is a community-run initiative called Instituto Tonantin Glanli.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

It's so powerful as a 19-year-old. Like that image, we I think many people have experienced that. I think many people who are listening have seen that before and after photo or the fence line photos of farmers or land that has been managed differently versus where you see, yeah, it's the same soil, the same weather, the same rain patterns. The only thing that's different is management and how to do it, which means we could all do it. Like it could be anywhere. Yes. And so why isn't? And that all I think for many they've seen either Jun Lu of the Green Gold and these very powerful images of oh my god, this is not easy, not cheap, but super possible in a lifetime. There's a and that from desert to oasis, it's yeah, it's very powerful. If you see that at 19, yeah, you get hooked probably.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Absolutely hooked. And you trust nature's capacity for restoration, which is still a big driver in the work that we do. We fully trust nature's capacity to restore and soil's capacity to restore. And that I think you can only trust when you do it with your own hands in a way. So I still live in a farm, it's biodynamic, we still eat every day from that farm. And so that experience of going with my children to pick up the carrots every day or beetroots is just a very different world from my investor hat, right? But it's interlinked and very deeply connected. And I think one important point around that uh particular project in Oaxaca is that I was one of many working in that project, right? And this understanding of the collective capacity, there probably was like 20 friends. We lived like in a commune for a year and a half.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

In a yurt or some kind of structure. Yeah, I think people have the many, they go to ecosystem restoration camp or they go woofing, or such a fundamental piece. Go and work on the land somewhere and see the power.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

So I think after I left, of course, a lot of people, I don't think that center would be what it is today without other people caring for that land for many years. So I was just a little part of it. And I think that's also important because it also gives you a sense of what it needs. It's not a one-person show, it's not a one moment in time situation. It takes continuous energy, persistence, and this is where community comes in as a key factor in I think success of landscape restoration. If you are not there, and this is always a question that we hold as investors, we cannot be in the places that we invest in at all times. That's impossible.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

Unless you only invest in your own backyard, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Exactly. And so then the partnerships, the collaboration, the community we've Aspect of our work is absolutely essential to any transformation that we want to see. So we always come into investments and landscapes with this idea of saying, do we have the right partners, the aligned partners? Do we have enough time to weave the future with the communities that are there? If we don't have that time, if we're not willing to spend the time to do that, our perspective is that you shouldn't even enter because it's just not gonna work.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

Yeah. And then at 19 or 20 at the time where you live there a year, let's say you've seen that it's such a powerful transformation, not only for the land and for the community, but also for you. Then what happens next? Or what brings you into co at some point? And now really we're recording this at the beginning of 2026, really honing in on the food system, the food nexus, of course, connected to landscapes, connected to health, connected to poverty inequality, but really putting that center stage.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Yeah, so I came back from my experience in the UK and in Oaxaca in that case to work in quite a few projects with indigenous communities in Mexico. And they were all large landscape projects, and they were all the food component of them was absolutely crucial and essential. I'm still very involved and supporting this absolutely amazing project led by a dear friend of mine, Marco Antonio, in the south of Oaxaca. His organization is called Gaia. And the level of sophistication of land management that he has is hard to believe. It's just it gave me access to understanding. Again, that is not only possible. For example, Instituto Tonant Sin Tlali, that experiment was quite small. This is very large landscapes, 34 communities woven in with the same vision at scale. And where again, coffee production is at the core. It's a layered landscape, right? And so for me, when we talk about food systems, it's hard for me not to translate it to landscape. For me, it's not only about the actual food that we bring out, but it's the landscapes that these species inhabit collectively. And so having working with these projects, these large landscape projects, really allowed me to understand the complexity of large landscape restoration and food systems that is required.

SPEAKER_02 25:23

Yeah, because we all agree it should be a landscape level, but still you see very few successful ones, it seems, because it's such but it's also at the same time, as an investor or farmer or fund manager or food, like region food entrepreneur, if you're interacting with a certain farm or certain suppliers, and you are interacting with the landscape. Like you can't ignore the fact that it's part of a bigger system. This comes to system thinking. And but you would almost argue you can't invest in something in food production unless the whole landscape is moving in a certain direction instead of moving backwards. Also, from a very simple approach from water and fire and pesticides and community, like as even as a most direct, quote-unquote cynical investor, I'm investing in blueberries or coffee, you would want the whole landscape to move. Just as you invest in real estate, you would like to invest in a neighborhood that's not going down, but hopefully is maintaining or becoming. And somehow that notion in ag doesn't seem to be so present, which is weird. As a good investor, you would say, okay, what is happening around me? No, we invest in this farm. And it's like, yeah, but do you have water in the future? Is your neighbor like your neighbor goes bankrupt and it becomes whatever super water intensive something, that's a risk. Yes. The community is going depleted, everybody's moving to big cities, that's a risk. And somehow that notion seems disconnected or something. I don't know why.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

Yeah, so as a my architect hat coming in and master planner, you cannot, you wouldn't invest in real estate and just one building or property without really understanding the value, the flow of that neighborhood where it's projected, doesn't have access to all sorts of things, right? And so we tend not to do that to your point in the food sphere, right? And so I've seen so many farms that don't understand like the projection of water over time.

SPEAKER_02 27:25

Which is really the basics, let's be honest. That's without water, you're done. There's not really, there's not probably a more important point.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

So again, water management, I think indigenous communities all over the world for millennia, like you still go to visit Peru. I'm I'm just stunned by the level of water management they had.

SPEAKER_03 27:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

And at such a large landscape, right? They weren't thinking about the small farm and how do we fix a problem. They were thinking about hectares and hectares landscape level, which of course gives the whole thing massive resilience, right?

SPEAKER_02 28:04

And network effects and strength, and like you said, resilience. And it's very interesting. But it could also be the hook to get people back, like water is such a it's so in people's mind, much more than carbon and biodiversity and etc. And so it could be as well a hook to see, okay, how do we get people in a landscape together? Often, shared friends, Steph and Vicky in the Muga Valley, the shared threat literally is the river. And it's about employment, and it's about the forest, and it's about all of that and agriculture, but the shared threat is the river. And somehow, I don't know, I feel like there's a beautiful book out that I ordered and haven't read yet, Low Tech Water of Julia Watson. Like somehow I feel like water could be a bigger, an easier access point. It's not easy, but to get people around the same table, different political views, different, a lot of different other issues, but at least we all agree we need water management. Too much is bad, too little is definitely bad. Do you see that as well? Like, water is that a common threat with people or something that resonates and a narrative that people are leaning into more than maybe others we've used?

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Absolutely. I wish we were walking in our farm, and I hope you can come visit because it's not so far away from here. But you're making me curious.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

Yeah, we have to catch a flight later, people. That's why we're here. This was logistically an interesting puzzle, just to say that's why we've helicopters coming over, and I don't know how many dogs I've seen already. Like the walking dog scene here is interesting. If you need it, it's uh an interesting subculture, but we're in surrounded by trees, so we're making it work. But definitely we'll do a walking a land at some point.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Yes, let's do a walk in the land. But I think to your point, I worked in sort of land restoration practices for eight years with a firm before setting up Co. I also launched that firm with a few of those crazy friends that I worked with in Oaxaca. So we just said, okay, let's do this professionally now. We know it works, we've done it before, let's just go for it.

SPEAKER_02 30:01

Let's replicate, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

And doing it at scale. So we worked in quite a few landscape restoration projects, and the key element was always water. That was the weaver, that was the sort of what gave that landscape possibility. So, to your point, and what brought people together. And so, to your point, I do think that water is a tremendous enabler of conversation, of possibility, and just in general of restoration. So that's the first thing that we look at when we approach any project or landscape. What happens with the water? And we've analyzed funds that are projecting food production for many years in the future without considering climate impacts on water. And so a lot of our work is okay, you're not doing it, we can do it. This this area will have significant water strain over the next 20 years. How are you gonna deal with it? What's the strategy? And so this is always a constant conversation for us because then you come into soil fertility and richness and possibility, but without that, it's just very hard to do, especially in regions like we have here, where I guess this is different in different parts of the world, but we have very seasonal, very strong seasonal changes in water. And so managing that and being very smart about that is just absolutely key.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

And it's getting probably more extreme, unfortunately. So the seasonal swings are massive. I mean, I think we're recording this as the south of Spain is getting an amount of water that they've never ever seen in recorded history because of some air rivers or rivers up in the sky that are just kept dumping. And yeah, at some point it's full. There's a and then probably they will have a horrible drought this summer. Unfortunately, I hope not. That's not gonna move somewhere. And so, but then you did eight years of that. What made you change? Because was it successful? Were you happy, satisfied with a group of friends? Like we're doing these big projects. What's better than that? You're doing big landscape projects, things are moving, hopefully.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Yeah. What was the funding? The funding was a problem. We were working with government funding because these were large projects, and we were weaving communities. So it I didn't know about the existence of private capital in that form. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

Funding is tricky, even with a group of friends, because you come from a privileged background. How did that become okay? We need government funding, which we all know is the easiest money in the world. No, of course not. And large-scale landscape regeneration probably is one of the trickiest things to fund in general. What did you like at some point? You think, okay, we need to figure out a more structural way to do this?

SPEAKER_01 32:51

Correct. We were quite successful at funding with government up to a point. And because nobody had come out with these types of visions back in 2004, 2005, it was totally new. And so they were like, Oh, we can sell this. This is new, this is quote unquote sexy in some way. I wasn't counting in corruption at that time, I was also beautifully naive, and then got hit in the face with a lot of corruption, and that just broke it all apart. I just couldn't take the fact that we were building community vision, participatory vision design, spending so much time and energy. And then once it was there, which is incredibly powerful, then the money got lost in corrupt officials. So that took me to one year of redesign of my career, thinking, okay, how can you do the same work without government funding? And so that led me essentially to Co., which I founded in 2010-11.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

I feel like we have to spend a bit of time on the year. What did you do in the year?

SPEAKER_01 34:04

In that year?

SPEAKER_02 34:05

Yeah, how did you redesign? I want to do the same work, but I want to be independent of government funding. Where do you go?

SPEAKER_01 34:10

Where do you so again uh Co the organization is called Co. because it's always been collective in nature. And so what I did that year was talk to a bunch of people that I admire and and that I had worked with, and I invited them to five workshops to understand not me as an individual, but really the problem, what could be potential solutions, and did that with a friend of mine called Carlos Mota, who is an amazing system thinker, and worked with him on all sorts of systems maps that we now use on our everyday work, but really helped me weave an understanding of a different pathway to do the work that I've I think I've always wanted to do. It's never changed. It has always had the same objective. And so that was a very fun and interesting year and a half of just open exploration, talking to a bunch of people, leading and facilitating workshops. And I think the DNA and Blueprint of Co. came out of that.

SPEAKER_02 35:17

Did you work with the presencing institute at that time as well? Because a lot of the landscapes use CRU and Otto Sharmer and all of that.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

So I think I went to their first or second gathering in Berlin in 2009 or seven. I don't know. I'm bad with memory. And so, yes, I have been influenced by amazing individuals my whole life. I think that is one of my biggest privileges. And then got very in-depth for a few years with Araguana's work in presence in theater and spent a bit of time learning the technique and still use it today.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

So you use it with fishermen, I heard.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

Well, not only. I think the the objective is to weave the collective, and I think that's a bit of our obsession, if you will, because we find it such a powerful tool for change, even though we might not have capital to invest in all that comes out of that collective vision. It just the fact that you can collectively visualize it makes it very powerful. And so again, I've been doing this work for well, yeah, no, like 25 years since Oaxaca. Always the same method, always starting with a collective vision, having people listen to each other, ideally not through the intellect, but also through the body, because it makes it so much more powerful.

SPEAKER_02 36:52

Anyway, the last one before we crossed. We were talking about presencing the theater and the methods. And then you started investing, you started Co. You started an investment vehicle a bit broader than food and agriculture. So really building and developing and facilitating the same more impact investing and impact space in Mexico in general. And now recently, and we'll unpack some of those pieces, really going deep on food systems and biodiversity. Like it's really like how you've done some analysis, and it would be great to talk about that. On okay, that's the nexus, food and biodiversity globally, like not just in Mexico, but globally that's the lever or the two levers, but they're connected, obviously. How come even doing that analysis came up because of all the work you could be doing? Another fund relatively broad, maybe a bit bigger, like the steps were relatively straightforward. You said, no, we're gonna go back to the drawing board, we're gonna do the full analysis of the system where we you saw the Stockholm Resilience photos yesterday or the graphs. Where are the biggest levers?

SPEAKER_01 38:18

Yeah, so I've always been very science-based in part of the work, and then which part? Probably probably very heart-based. I think like the biggest weave that we do in our work is shifting from heart to science. We constantly do that. And back. And back. Yeah, yeah, no, it's not just it's not a one-way street, it's a weave. And so in the more intellectual science-based, I do spend a lot of time reading and understanding and listening. And of course, the moment we are in today, which I spoke more about yesterday, is absolutely crucial to answer the question, right? We are hitting at a very fast pace, and I know this since probably 25 years ago, the trigger points that we were talking about. And so, yes, you could build fund one and for fund two, but also a deeper analysis. So, again, I think you know this broader awareness of okay, yes, you can do, you can be doing your own fund, but the broader of awareness of systems has always been embedded in my life. I love physics. I've I'm a big physics fan. And so the zoom, and I think architecture action, the zooming in and working in small details, and then zooming out at a master plan, at a city landscape, that capacity to zoom in and out in different skills, I think is part as how I've been built. And so, yes, you can do a fund, but then zooming out to what is the bigger problem, the bigger challenges that we're having today as humanity, and then what would be our role, our small role in addressing it, right? Because these are massive issues. But what can we best contribute given the time, the capacity, the call it polycapital that we have to actually serve this mission of shifting the system in the way that we can.

SPEAKER_02 40:22

The polycrisis.

SPEAKER_01 40:23

And so, in that regard, all roads lead to Rome, put in one way.

SPEAKER_02 40:29

If you do, yeah, no, but if you do research, if you do interesting that it all ends up with a few 30 centimeters under our feet, but more.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

But there's no way around it, right? Like the crisis is in such a moment, and I was saying yesterday we can get so distracted with geopolitics and policy, etc. But what is a fact is that we're losing life at a very fast pace, and we need to focus and regain energy and momentum and synergy in protecting life as we know it, and it's really not evident right now.

SPEAKER_02 41:04

Which is interesting is if all roads lead to Rome and everybody listening has drank the Kool-Aid, let's say, has bitten by the soil bug, etc., how come not everyone is on the bandwagon yet? What's what have you seen? Because you've been talking about the food system and the poverty angle and the climate angle for a while, and now, of course, you're fundraising and working on a fund. What have you seen resonating with people, in this case, investors, family offices, et cetera, to have them see that? Once you see it, you can't unsee it. There's a very clear, I think everybody that does the deep analysis gets there, but everybody doesn't might run after climate tech and other things, which are also important, just not that impactful or potentially systems moving. What have you seen that works? What have you used in terms of both heart and head in weaving to get people to lean in, to buy in, to potentially invest or to work with you on this?

SPEAKER_01 41:58

Yeah, that's a very intricate question because it has it's multi-layered. We are not an organization that is out fundraising in the world in a traditional sense. The road show. We believe in deep relationships. Again, as I started, right? We don't believe change happens at a transactional level. In no part of this system change that we're talking about. So for us, it is more about building deeper relationships with a pretty broad group of stakeholders that then understand and see that this is what needs to happen. And of course, we can bring the science and the data and the research, and we do a very heavy lift. But it is essentially for us the viewing of that potential and that collective vision that, and so, for example, it investors that might want to join, we're just bringing them into that collective vision. Making them co-deciding this is what we're going to do. And because we're smarter than everyone else, actually, we always start in the opposite, saying we don't know absolutely anything. Even if we're a bunch of geeks, we're just standing in ignorance and then listening to the.

SPEAKER_02 43:23

Join us in this fund of ignorance. No, I'm joking, but there's a humbleness there that some investors might maybe then they're not ready and they don't need to be into that in a sense of, yeah, but I'm joining something and they don't know what they're doing. What does that make me do? We don't really know what we're doing. No, in terms of there's it's yeah, let's go here. There's a humbleness of saying, okay, like when I talk to very experienced farmers in in on their regenerative journey and ask, what did you know? Do you feel like you know more now than 10 years ago? And they say usually yes, but we also know we know a lot less. Like the world became a lot bigger, our knowledge also increased, but percentage-wise, probably went down. There's a and that learning journey piece is not what most fans, and of course yours is fundamentally different, are presenting. Because they're presenting that they figured it out, they know an angle, they know an edge, they know blah, blah, blah. And yeah, you'll be silly not to join. That's the usual sphere, of course. In reality, it ends up being different. But that relation, relational building, takes longer, but it's also fine. And in those relational buildings, what have you seen? What are narratives and stories and because I absolutely agree, research is fundamental, but we leave, live, and move on stories. What have you seen? Is it visiting your farm? Is it bringing people to Oaxaca? Is it bringing probably on the land, probably not in an office somewhere? What have you seen as things that work to get people? To lean in and then if they invest or not this is second, but to lean into this work in this space and hopefully do things because we want more people to do stuff.

SPEAKER_01 44:55

Yeah, I think being I just to answer a bit the previous question, but being honest with the fact that nobody knows what is going on and what will go on in the future will get hyper complex hyper quickly. And so I think anybody who can say that they know very well what is happening and what is going on is just yeah, I would have my big doubts as an investor. So one is just the best possibility that we have to know what will happen is if we make it happen at the scale that we can. And to make that happen at the scale that we got we can goes back to that it will not be done by a single family office. It will done it'll be done by more of a movement of collective collectivity and voices. And I wanted to bring that topic up because you were mentioning region ag. And for us in the global south, it's more tending towards this other term called agricolity, and there's so much discussion around that. But essentially, the core of the discussion is that one is technical and one is collective. Of course, we can go into another rabbit hole discussing that whole thing, and I'm not attached to definitions, but what I am attached to, I think, is that if we want to shift any system, it's not a one man or one woman show. And so the capacity to sustain conversations, to understand where people are, what they're willing to do, how they're willing to move, is an essential capacity of any investor working in this space. And so just looking at what you're doing now and what you've been doing with your podcast, this is exactly what I'm talking about. You're spending so much time listening to people, understanding what values will hold, what do they see, what are the blockages, what are the possibilities. This is very similar to what we do. We just don't publish it in a podcast, but we have probably, I don't know, thousands of hours of interviews recorded of understanding what people are seeing. And so for me as a body of work. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 47:20

You should transcribe it, saying for a friend and make it somehow AI accessible.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

Yes, maybe we should do that.

SPEAKER_02 47:26

And uh as a research project, it's just fascinating. And we do try to then translate into reports, but it's a different because you can't really interact. We're like juggling with that or wrestling, I don't know which metaphor is better, but how to do that and how to make our small, I mean it's 400 episodes, it's not enormous, it's not small either. There's a lot of knowledge because of our guests in there, but it's also locked, like it's locked in audio. It's not locked because it's in lives in us and the listeners, and you all listen and you do things with it, which is great. But it could be extra layers or more to do with that. We're gonna work, we're working on it. It will come at some point.

SPEAKER_01 48:03

Well, I was hoping you can help with that, help me think like what do we do with all this like gold of narrative and information and storytelling that we have.

SPEAKER_02 48:13

Oh, that knowledge of people that have spent decades in this, and you've captured their essence in an hour or two hours or three hours, and it's yeah, locked in audio somewhere. And of course, you wrote a report and you wrote insights, but that's we're working on that, people. Well, stay tuned. We'll be a project on the list of many. But it's I think it's very relevant. That's where large language models and AI can play an interesting role because you can argue you can access it or discuss or see lessons learned that see patterns that we're not meant to see or we don't see across such large body of work.

SPEAKER_01 48:48

Anyway, on a tangent, you but and so here's the thing: it's a tangent, but not. It's a very important point because we don't look to convince people or to storytell in the best way possible. We look to connect to people. That's the main, that's the objective. We if we can understand their world, if we can understand their the possibilities they see, the blockages they see, the capacity they hold. And for us, it's not about fundraising, it's about connecting to a again a very diverse group of people, some of which are investors, and some of which, through that connection, then see, no, I want to be part, I want to enable this collective change.

SPEAKER_02 49:40

And one of my forms of capital is well, it's financial, and I will do it, but could be many other types of capital that we desperately need.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

Yes, so I would say we're facilitators in that regard. I wouldn't say we're storytellers, we're actually quite shit at storytelling.

SPEAKER_02 49:57

Which is, if I can make an suggestion, is to get better because it's such a powerful, not because you're shit, but you say it's your own, it's your own assessment. Sorry, that went wrong. It's important to because we need to reach people, and we need to reach people with things that connect to them and invite them into this world where we see fruit on the tree, like here, and where we and many people don't, they are far away from this. So, what are stories or what are and stories very broad, I think. If you look at what the definition of stories, it's quite a broad thing. What are things to connect? It could be movies, documentaries, podcasts, short film, long form, poetry, art. There's so much, and then the science is there. People go deep, they go into rabbit holes, they but first we need we need to hook them somehow, or we need to have a door that's open that they could walk through it. Otherwise, yes. And stories are so where everything we tell ourselves are narratives and stories.

SPEAKER_01 50:48

So I hope you interview Phil because I am surrounded by wonderful storytellers. I'm just not one of them, but I am surrounded.

SPEAKER_02 50:56

I think you're doing a not a bad job in the last hour. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:00

And I think they bring to co again, like I've always tried to do a very diverse subset of funders, of people, they bring this aspect to our work. And we spend a lot of time thinking: how does this happen? How does this shift happen? And if you ever interview Phil, he'll talk about awe and the capacity of humans to transform through awe and wonder. And I just find that absolutely fascinating. And we are still in the journey of figuring out how to best do this. Is it through filmmaking? Is it through narrative? Is it through gaming? Is it through art?

SPEAKER_03 51:38

Probably all of them.

SPEAKER_01 51:39

We are experimenting, and that's part of our journey because one of the pillars of co works in these issues of mind shift and consciousness and how we can better shift consciousness regarding food systems, regarding biodiversity. Hopefully, a lot to come, and I hope I can speak more about it with in the near future.

SPEAKER_02 52:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:02

Our experiments in the near future.

SPEAKER_02 52:04

It is experimentation to. Like we're very good at doom and gloom stories and clicking and the media very good. But we also see some examples, like what is it, Andrew Willinson doing amazing YouTube restoration films and going viral, like properly viral. Not a bit, but properly viral, and then connecting it straight to fundraising. Like you can help this project in Hawaii or in the middle of the Sahel, and very well filmed, very well. He found a way to work with the YouTube algorithm, which is not easy, and reach a lot of people. But we need way more. Like one is ridiculous. It's amazing, but it's not gonna move. But if you see the comments under those videos, people, it gives people hope. Like this is possible. Oh, we can actually do it. Why don't we do it? And it's coming back to the agency piece. If you don't have a Oaxaca experience at 19, a video might trigger something to move you into. And then, but still coming back to then of in all of this palette of work, this portfolio, not investment portfolio, but portfolio of projects and all the different ones. What made you, and you as a larger you here, decide to okay, we need a fund focused on food and biodiversity. That's the one that's missing. Or one of the many things probably, but that's the one we want to do, we can do, we can play a small role in this, but a meaningful role. It like passed all your criteria on systems change and what to focus on. By the way, the food smells amazing.

SPEAKER_01 53:32

Yeah. So Co started, and this is important to mention, Co started through an NGO. So the first entity we created and built was Co-Plataforma, which is still up and running. That's the organization that does systems analysis, all these interviews I was talking about, systems maps, collective co-creation. And that still is very active and going on. And we supported 12 accelerator programs through the NGO that still support a lot of entrepreneurs every year, about three to four hundred entrepreneurs per year. And so I had the enormous privilege of just sitting in all these mentorship programs and seeing all these amazing entrepreneurs with super creative solutions. And so the natural then next step is okay, you can have a six-month accelerator program with village capital, which they do an amazing job. But then you also need the capital.

SPEAKER_02 54:32

You need a village and the capital.

SPEAKER_01 54:34

And the capital. And so at some point, after supporting that work for eight years, we saw the absolute need to support them with capital and then structured our first fund, which has been very successful. And when we ended the investment period for that first fund, is when we asked the question, shall we continue? And it's not evident. Has our work finished? It hasn't, of course, hasn't. And then went into this research project that I mentioned before on what are the sectors that we need to focus on given the reality of the world today and where we're heading in the polycrisis and did the whole research, right? So that took us a year and a half. We interviewed more than 200 practitioners through that research process and then landed on, as I said, all roads I guess lead to Rome if you do deep research and deep listening. It is at the nexus of biodiversity and food systems that we need to be working in. So we, because we did this whole listening process, again, that by nature creates a collective, a community of practice of people that we will sustain over time. So for us, it's not just one interview and ciao, thank you for your time. For your knowledge. It's more do you want to stick around? Do you want to keep on participating in our monthly calls and be part of this? And so that takes a lot of time. That's done by the NGO.

SPEAKER_02 56:09

Cannot be in a fund, basically. Fee wise, etc.

SPEAKER_01 56:12

That's no, yeah, no, it cannot be done in a fund, I think. Or maybe we need to rethink fund structures, but that's another topic.

SPEAKER_02 56:19

It's another round.

SPEAKER_01 56:20

And so that's how this fund started. And people that we interviewed along the way and talked to along the way and have been part of the journey were wanting to jump in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:33

And you sense there was an interest, there was a need, there's an interest to lean in. Then now coming to what do you then structure? Because also there probably the scenarios are 50,000, just a complete random number. But what do you end up saying? Okay, because it's one thing saying every all the roads lead to Rome, food and biodiversity. Great. And then what does it translate then into practice into something that's workable, still meaningful, obviously, that you can also raise for because that if it's great to have the most ambitious fund design ever, and but if nobody leans in, then it doesn't go anywhere. Like, how do you make it practical? I think is my question.

SPEAKER_01 57:14

Long-winded. So we learned a lot in our first fund. I'm very lucky to be partnered with Alberto, who has a long journey in investments, private equity, and then worked in Acumen for a few years. And he's a super creative investor and very technical. Through our first fund, we structured capital in very creative ways. We mostly do debt, and there's a whole conversation I think you heard yesterday around debt and why debt, when you're working in the ground with cooperatives and farmers, is so relevant.

SPEAKER_02 57:52

And also for companies in general. We saw that yesterday. There's some companies that have been also get private equity and RVC capital, they almost all also need good, interesting, relevant debt. There's almost no, I don't think any company would say no to well-structured debt because you can't really go to a bank and you can't really access that elsewhere. And so it's a missing piece. I think friend Fernando likes to keep saying, I think you mentioned it a lot in the interview as well, Fernando Russo. Like debt is way more exciting than equity at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 58:24

We think so. And you said structured, and I would add flexible debt and adapt it to context. And so for us in our first fund, we structured different structures, different debt, different interest rates for every single company. So there is not two companies that are alike, which is hard to do for an investment team. And so there was a big learning. Now I think we can see patterns of debt structuring depending on projects that we can go a little bit faster. But I think this is the type of legwork that you oh, this is a monarch. We can spend a long time talking about monarchs and the migration and uh I just saw them two weekends ago in their home.

SPEAKER_02 59:09

Such a stunning thought it would be big idea, absolutely spectacular, without knowing anything about butterflies and monarchs.

SPEAKER_01 59:17

The color is so that is a female, they have thicker lines.

SPEAKER_02 59:25

Do they both make the migration?

SPEAKER_01 59:26

Or is it one so the those and this is all my friend Maria José, who's a director of WWF, who took me and shared all her knowledge. But it seems which is absolutely stunning, they so there's this super monarch that actually does the migration from Canada to Mexico, and they they don't use their reproduct reprodu reproductive organs to keep energy and be able to do the run or the flight. And then when they get to Mexico, they have the capacity to then switch on the reproductive system, which is crazy, and then they mate, and then it takes four butterflies, four generations of butterflies to go back up.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:16

So it's one generation that generation that comes down, and then four go back up. And so the one that goes comes down never has been in Mexico before.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:24

Never.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:25

Even their parents and their grandparents and their grand-grandparents, yes. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:30

Isn't that stunning?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:31

That's four generation thinking, not seven, but it gets pretty close. Wow. Okay, I didn't know anything, I just know migration and the name, pretty much. It's fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:44

So I don't know where we left.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:46

Coming back to fund design. A little interlude, people. We sell some nature, which is nice. Yeah. And so flexible depth we were talking, or well structured, adaptable. And so now with the new fund, you're keeping that, I'm imagining. Because in the food system, there's just as much need as anywhere else.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:05

Absolutely keeping that. And I would say maybe because every structuring is a heavy lift, then you learn and you can go quicker. So I think in terms of capacity to invest and support more organizations and more cooperatives on the ground, this is where we need to get really good at, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:28

But that with time, at the end, there probably there will be a menu of depth options. Correct.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:33

And not we already have one.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:35

With a few variables and a few things, and the time spent on okay, what we're gonna measure is gonna be revenue share, it's gonna be this, what's the will greatly reduce. And there are other people doing that around the world as well, not so many, but there are others. So at some point there will be a menu option and with some variability, and probably the speed won't be the same as with equity, but a lot faster than what you did now.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:00

Yes, no, absolutely. That's why we're also part of investor groups to share learning so faster. And I think Oni Pat and Powell is doing an amazing job at that, just putting us all in a room and just sharing term sheets, which doesn't sound like the funnest thing to hang around for.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:21

Show me your term sheet so I can learn, please. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:24

So yeah, we spent time doing that and hopefully sharing our learnings.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:28

And the design choice of a fund of fund, where did that come from?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:34

Right, so we have three strategies, we have three teams, we have three structures at the capital management side. Yeah. One team is focused on investing in global managers. Because we just don't have the depth of knowledge to invest in other territories. I think it is urgent to invest as much capital as we can into ecosystem restoration and shifting food systems. So that is one team. Another team is doing direct investments in Latin America, which I think we are pretty good at. And the third team is working at a bioregional level. And so we are, we did another big research project which it hasn't concluded with metabolic, with evergladic, on how to select key bioregions in the world that are absolutely key for planetary stability in the future. And that is not such an evident answer. If you weave existing biodiversity, but then put in the complexity of their politics, economics, migration patterns, climate change, water cycles, trigger points. So we're working on that model. It's very exciting work to me.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:54

The Geeky side is very happy about this, yeah?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:56

Yes, the Geeky side is very happy about that. But then hopefully we will use that tool to then go into landscapes for structuring funds, and we're doing a pilot now in the Gulf of California. And again, these are like 20-year cycles, right? So you need to pick very carefully where you're going to land because we're not gonna leave for 20 years.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:20

So that is Willem Ferrata of Common Land, yeah. It's a 20-year million hectares and a million people. There's not a number of criteria, but a 20-year, I think, is such a statement because average funds are 10, if you're lucky, and debt cycles are different, and saying this is you're gonna see results before. I had some arguments with people, like, yeah, 20 years, like it feels, but you need to before you not see the full result because you never will. This is regeneration, it's never done, but you need to at least count for 20 years, like at least the number of generations, and that gets everybody at least accustomed to this is not a two-year thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:55

Yes, correct. Correct.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:58

And so you are analyzing basically globally which bioregions are the crucial ones to intervene, plus the ones where it's possible. Is there a possibility layer as well?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:09

Absolutely, and it has to do with the right partners on the ground, as I mentioned before. We would be very silly to just think that we can drop into any territory and just invest.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:20

Congo basin and good luck, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:22

So it really we that big filter is are the are the right partners on the ground, are communities woven in a way that we can support them without telling them what to do. And so this has been a lot of the work that I've done over the years. And do you find a lot?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:41

Is there a lot of overlap between, it's not done yet, of course, where the need is the most and also potential?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:49

No, because talking about food, right? If you model breadbasket failure models, it's crazy what's going to happen. Like people have no idea about this, and again, it takes a lot of modeling power to see it.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:05

Which we have now a lot.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:06

There's but not without intentionality, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:09

Yeah, you were saying yesterday we're in the first time we have first generation that has this amount of data. And then the question is what do we do? And this amount of modeling power, but we don't use the two together necessarily.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:21

Yes, and so again, hopefully we can share the tool at some point to aligned partners. But in essence, we are seeing patterns that we are not considering today, right? Because they're just not like nobody is structuring funds and strategies, taking into account the ammo collapse. That's not happening today, or other tipping points that we're seeing.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:49

If you're an ocean investor, coral reef tipping points, ammo collapse, and ammo just for people under current rivers is not the right word, but streams not, but ocean currents that are running the world basically and are severely close to a tipping point that we will ruin, no, will will disrupt a lot of weather patterns and dust agriculture and everything else.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:13

Correct. This is our circulation system if we understand the planet as a body and it's dramatically slowing down at a faster pace than scientists anticipated. And what that there happens, and you were just telling me about Spain, is that instead of the current, the hot current going all the way up north to northern Europe, it then slows down and doesn't reach that geography. So what is essentially happening is that Europe will get much colder because you won't have the hot currents going all the way up.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:48

Because we're so far up north, actually, in northern Europe, if you compare it to the US or Canada in terms of climate and weather, climate, it's way warmer because of that. I think many people forget if that stops, we're gonna be in a similar snow and cold regime as northern Canada, or no, Middle Canada, basically. And most people are completely unaware of that France is basically in that region. Without the current, you switch off the heater basically.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:16

You switch off the heater. This is what will happen, and it's happening quite fast.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:20

And so just everybody's like perfect, climate change, we're cooling down, we're not warming up, which would be very scary, actually.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:28

Yes. So what happens then is that if you shift your circulation system, your whole body will shift. Your body is used to functioning in a way, and I'm not a doctor, so I can't picture that. But imagine your circulation system going in a totally different pattern, not feeding the organs that is feeding today, not just reverse oxygen. Like you would basically die in the case of the body. In the case of the planet, we call them game-ending scenarios, which doesn't mean that everything will end, it's just we will not recognize the planet as we do today. Things will dramatically shift, and territories are not like evolution has been slow, and plants and species have been slow to adapt. This will accelerate pattern, like climate pattern changes. And unfortunately, I don't think a lot of existing life in the planet is designed to adapt in such a fast way. So, again, our work that we're working on now is how do we understand the key organs of the planet? Like the heart and the if you're a doctor, you have to pick which organs to the other.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:46

Relevant critical patient is coming in into the IC, and what do we do?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:50

Yeah, exactly. And that's what we're currently working on, and hopefully bringing a collective of investors that want to jump into prioritizing these landscapes. And so that does not deny the landscapes that have already been determined as key, like the three three base that I was sharing yesterday. But there's a lot of landscapes that we're not understanding the value of, and so that's what we're aiming to support. So not substitute, but rather support territories that are not being prioritized.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:23

Doesn't mean we shouldn't focus on the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and let's say Southeast Asia anymore, people. This doesn't mean, oh, we fixed that. Far from it. And then how does that connect to investing in funds in the food system, like driving, and the thinking is partly to say we need to drive food systems change in mostly the global north because it's feeding a lot of, it's influencing a lot of these landscapes quite heavily. So coffee mentioned before, many other streams, not only weather streams and water cycles that we're very good at destroying at the moment, but also in general, like the weaving the connection between what we eat, what we overeat, and what we consume and what we choose is actually quite direct to a lot of landscapes.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:05

Yeah, so I think you should somehow interview our lead researcher called Vivian Valencia. She's working at Bishop's University now and she was at Wageningen before.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:16

Somehow it's easy. We set up a call and then we interview.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:20

She led our research project for food systems, and one of the concepts that I talked to her a lot about is this idea of telecoupling of the food systems, right? That you were just mentioning now. You can't fix the problem in the global south if the consumption patterns and buying patterns of the global north don't change. Which is essentially why we decided to structure a fund so that we can work in managers in the global south, hopefully in the three basins that I was just mentioning.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:49

And the other ones you're researching. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:51

And then in the global north to change consumption patterns and buying power in the global north. You need a lot of capital for that.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:00

Which is a perfect bridge to a question we like to ask. You were saying before, like, when do we get to those questions? Now we get to the questions. For sure you've thought about this is a fund structured quite differently, which we might get into and otherwise in another conversation as well. But it's targeting significant money, but not billions. What would happen if tomorrow morning you woke up and you had that, let's say, on the co-capital bank account? Probably there are multiple, let's say that happened. We're not questioning where it came from. We're not questioning if somebody should have that kind of resources, concentrated wealth, let's say, but it happened and it's there. What would you do with it? What would you, not as investment advice, but what would be big buckets if the money is not infinite, the financial capital, but definitely a few zeros more than most people can deal with? What would be the main focus areas tomorrow morning if that would happen?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:51

So, but to be transparent, we are aiming for that. I knew that, but so be that's why we're setting up structures so that it can have that capacity to deploy.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:00

So let's say this is an accelerator. It happened faster than you were planning.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:04

So it wouldn't change our strategy at all because again, we've designed for that, and so it would just accelerate our capacity for deployment. What do I mean by that and the buckets that you're mentioning is that there is a big need for this insistence that I've been telling you about of collective visioning, and that happens through philanthropy. And so part of that still needs to happen through philanthropy, in that building that collectivity, those communities of practice and practitioners, that research stream that we were talking about, the capacity to fund and metabolic, to build these complex modeling, all of that is still part of the project. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:48

If somebody figures out a business model that is not extractive to do that, please let us know. But until then, we're gonna do it with philanthropy. I understand.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:55

We need that. Yeah, it's it's essential for the work and also keeping keeping those communities of practice alive.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:03

Keeping that in the comments as well, the research you do, the research, because they're so is that a 10%, is that a five percent? What do you as a rough again? This is not an accounting exercise. An enabling 10%, if we can call it.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:18

Exactly, and a crucial enabling sense. Yeah. And so that that focus is there. And then again, we are structuring a fund the funds which has a larger capacity to deploy, to really choose aligned managers all over the world that are working on these issues and support them. And that's one big context that can accelerate pretty quickly because a lot of managers all over the world are suffering for raising capital.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:48

This is not been an easy few years, no, it hasn't to say the least. And I know a few of the ones you're talking to, and we had actually many on the show, especially, of course, if you go into even, but in general, as soon as you step out of the no, SaaS is no longer a real investment case, or let's say AI or whatever hip thing is there in this two, three, four, or five years, as soon as you do something else, food systems, God forbid, you are on like not on many lists anymore. And it's especially first-time fund managers, emerging fund managers outside the usual suspect countries and cities. Yeah, you're like for probably fishing in a 10% pond instead of the hundred. And so that is desperately needed, let's say.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:31

And that is who we're aiming. Yeah. We're not aiming to support the fifth fund of a very established manager.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:41

Additionality is important, yeah?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:42

Yes, additionality is important.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:44

And then you those funds are there because if you say, let's say we have 90% left, I'm not saying all 90 should go to, and they need it, is that maybe a billion is a lot, but or 900 million. The DC in terms of what they can absorb, are we in that kind of range speaking? Like we say, actually, I wouldn't have too much trouble putting that amount of money to work in not in a month, but in a year or so.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:08

We never think in anything in a year, but if you're talking about a five to ten year span, then yes. Yes. Um that's one component. And then the direct investments to us is crucial.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:25

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:25

We know we are here, we have amazing partners here, and the capacity to touch the ground and see what works, as I mentioned before. To be honest, the fact that I have an very involved in our farm is giving me the capacity to become a better investor because you know what works and what doesn't.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:48

Is your BS radar has that improved over time?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:51

I didn't want to say that, but in some ways, yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:55

But it's good because many people are jumping on the regeneration bandwagon and saying a lot of things that take with a pinch of salt is probably the good strategy. And but as an investor, if you don't have that experience, or a fund manager, or you have later, you're in charge, you're choosing resort, where resources go, like we can be convinced there are many things beautiful before and after pictures, this works everywhere, it's magical, etc. It's fast, all those things. I've seen quite a few investors, investors unfortunately, make very obvious, not BS, but just very optimistic stories, let's say. And that turns out to be yeah, tricky in food and egg.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:36

Especially on the timing and the scale, right? How much time do these things take? How much scale you can get so quickly? That's honestly, you have to see it with your own eyes to say, dude, that's not real. Nature has an immense capacity for restoration, but it's not gonna hockey stick. It's just not no.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:58

And yeah, also because we've degraded it so badly in most places, not everywhere. That doesn't mean they're like the capacity is enormous, but the damage and the trauma is the same level, probably. And thus it needs a lot of restoration work in community, in people, in soil and everything. So it's and then they're amazing examples. Like once you get through some tipping points within regeneration, like things pick up a speed and a surprising, and if you see certain centropic agroforestry systems, it's amazing. But it's not a hockey stick.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:33

It is at some point, but it's not a two, three-year one that we're and it's definitely not a hockey stick that fits like typical investor criteria because that's what we know in in San Francisco. This is not how the world works down here in the global south. It's a very different story. Yeah, I guess going back to that, the capacity to practice in a way in landscape and then also the capacity to listen to many stories, many actors, gives you a tremendous capacity as an investor. Point blank. I do think we are better investors by doing this work. There is no way that we cannot be because we have spent the time listening to potential roadblocks, blockages, what is not working, what policy is stopping what? And so we are a bit like awareness of where we're investing is it just broadens. And through our investment committees, we have a bigger capacity to ask questions and see zooming out to the bigger picture. Okay, yes, I'm investing in this one company, but then how does that play out in the bigger picture? And how does the bigger picture influence the capacity of this company or cooperative to be successful or not?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:47

So how would you split then? We have the 90% left between direct and fund of fund. I know some people are keeping track, so I'm just bringing us back.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:56

Okay. I think the work that we're doing in bioregions has an enormous capacity for shifting and for absorbing capital as well. And again, that takes time. So these are long bets. But once it the model is right, once the vision is collective, once you can see what we call transformation pathways, then you know, yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:20

So that's and other capital becomes available. This is not the only like there's so much capital looking for things and looking for easy things, of course, quote unquote. But once these landscapes start to move, there's a lot of other players that could bring different kinds of capital, but definitely also financial.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:39

Correct. And two other buckets that we currently are not deploying a lot of capital to, but would be essential if I had a bit more capital to deploy than I currently do, is this shifting consciousness, or I don't know how to call it, because it can go in many ways. I'm careful with words, but it is how do we shift our relationship to food and our relationship to nature? And as you mentioned, that happens through storytelling, through art, through narrative, through video. So that's a whole exploration bucket that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:17

Would you include the relationship to wealth there as well?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:21

Absolutely. That is a key aspect, like this wonderful question that I that were asked in many groups about how much is enough, and how can you put apart from what is enough in your own life, really put the other capital to restore. And as I said yesterday, we spend so much money in life insurance and health insurance, but we're not spending enough money in planetary insurance, like in life insurance at the broadest sense, and it's pretty urgent.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:56

So the insurance case was made probably a few decades ago, yeah. But we're like, we're still we haven't really paid that insurance, and thus we're in a lot of this trouble.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:06

Yeah, it just stayed as an idea, but it's it would be good if somebody else does that. It never come, it never came out of your monthly bank account, as far as I know. It's anyways, deviating from the fact.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:16

No, but it's interesting. Like, how has your relationship to wealth changed over the last decades of doing this work?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:24

Huh, that's a big topic.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:27

And we go to another repertoire. Sorry, people. I knew this was gonna be tricky to do on time, but I'm trying.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:33

That's a big topic. So I think my life's work has been weaving those roles. Yeah. I lived, I grew up in a very privileged environment, economically speaking. Let me be clear, I do not think wealth is equal to economic capital. I think wealth needs to be defined in a much broader sense, right? You being wealthy or well-rounded or well-being is way more than having capital in your bank account. And I think if we have the capacity to redefine wealth in that sense, a lot of things will shift. So your connection, your relationships probably give you more well-being and wealth in the broader sense than what is in your bank account.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:20

Which is what you sense when you walk into the house or your help there.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:24

Exactly. This is these are incredibly wealthy people. They live in a stunning environment. They there's love to coming out of the windows here, connections, storytelling, narrative. We spend hours talking after dinner the first night I came, and just this capacity to be curious about the other. But I think we've lost very significantly.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:47

With thick walls and gates and things.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:50

That's the end of it. Curiosity, forget it. Why would I talk to another human? I can get all the answers from my phone. This is, I think wealthy individuals have beautiful relationships. This is the biggest privilege of my work, point blank. I just have beautiful relationships. I'm walking here in the park with you. This is wonderful. This is what life is about to me. So that is my absolute biggest privilege. And so I question the paradigm of wealth through that lens. And so whatever I don't need to like have a roof and water and it all goes to restoring landscape and community in my life. And I think that is where I become really wealthy.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:33

And I'm conscious of our time as well. There's a lot to discover in the enough work, let's say.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:41

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:42

There would be an interesting angle on what's enough in the other capitals as well, not just your wealth capital, but that's a whole different rabbit hole. We're not getting into. But I want to ask a question we always ask. If you could change one thing overnight, you have a magic power, you don't have the fund of a billion, even though you get there at some point, you're working on that.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:59

But I forgot about the policy bucket, so I'll just drop it.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:02

Oh, the second, the second bucket. Sorry, yeah, you were saying two other buckets. Oh well. I got distracted about enough. That's right, no, I got distracted about enough, which is so fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:10

Which is something that I don't usually very strategic lobbying.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:13

What would you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:14

On the policy bucket, look, I think like governments all over the world don't have capital today. Not even economic capital, but just the human capital to do the work that we are doing, right? And so as an example, and I don't know if I'm gonna I probably will get into trouble if you're sharing this story.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:34

But let's make it slightly higher level.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:37

Yeah, higher level.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:38

Example that people can learn from, but it doesn't get you into trouble.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:41

Yeah, so I think the work that we do and the reports that we publish are actually quite useful in policy.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:48

You're saying it in a way that other people have questioned that, or what do you mean? They're actually quite useful, the reports. Like, do you do you get some pushback on oh you're writing a report?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:56

And it's no, but the beauty is that those reports have helped policymakers. You mentioned it yesterday.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:03

Yeah, the people were flourishing. Well, it's just useful.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:06

Somebody has done the heavy lift for you. You don't have to do it anymore. Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:10

And you can lean in and you have the pathways of transformation, and you can act as a policymaker, which hopefully was the reason you got into the work to begin with, to drive change, and you probably got frustrated and slightly annoyed, and all of those things in your work, which because you have a lack of capacity and money and for sure time to do the fundamental. Yeah, yeah. So reports are a good if they're done well.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:34

To be honest, we bring policymakers into all the workshops and to bring their voice and their their So even without the report, they would have probably taken some of that. Yes, and so I think, anyways, policy is a big shift. And to to the reason why I mentioned it is because to your last question, I think like what you would change is what only one.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:58

That's always we have so many people say, Yeah, I would do this and I would do that. Okay, like this, which is an impossible question in a such a complex system as food and agriculture and biodiversity. But I'm again, I'm not, as I said in the pre-conversation, I'm not interested, I'm interested in the answer, but also in your reasoning. Like if you act if you in this limited world could only choose one thing, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:20

What would it be? So I think it would be yeah, we could start heading back. It would be the incentive structuring or architecture around soil.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:34

That's what it would be. Tell me more.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:36

We don't all our economic structuring and our policy structuring is really designed to extract from the soil. And so if I had a magic wand, I would change the incentives to really put soil at the center and really understand how our economic architecture and incentives really enable soil restoration at scale.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:06

Because as somebody said, show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome. Yeah. If we don't change those, we're toast anyway. And what's your main message to invest towards? You do a lot of speaking, a lot of convening, a lot of, and I always like to ask, let's say we do it in a theater somewhere. There's for sure, and I don't know enough about the city, which is not good, but a beautiful theater here, somewhere. The room is full of people managing their own wealth, people managing other people's wealth, and we have a beautiful evening, beautiful food, a lot of, or maybe we do it on a farm. But anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:39

I will do it on a farm.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:40

We do a very nice farm walk. Let's switch this question. But people go back, like maybe it was Friday, they stay over, but they go back on Monday morning, and they're at Their laptop or computer in their office, what's the one thing you want them to remember? What should be, what is the seed you want to plant in the financially minded or financially capable people?

SPEAKER_01 1:29:00

Yeah. So I think the biggest barrier for change in the investment landscape today.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:07

What's the biggest barrier for investors? I think we were like if you could plant a seed in their in the mind of people in the investment world, both with their own money, with other people's money, but let's say in one of these big banks, etc. They've been on a farm, they've seen, they've touched, they smelled, they but then they are back in their office on Monday.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:27

And if there's one thing they remember, what would you like them to remember?

SPEAKER_01 1:29:31

Yeah, I think different if we're I'm I would be talking to banker than if I would be talking to individuals. So individuals, let's say individuals. Yeah. Because yeah, bankers are very constricted. I think my biggest message would be that the change that I think we're all aspiring to is not the challenge is not technical or the barrier is not technical. It has nothing to do with the right tools or the right capital. It does have to do with the right, it's more epistemological, it's more mind-frame. And so we tackle and we want to invest in farms which by nature are hyper complex, but then we want to invest in it in superlinear ways with linear outcomes and linear outputs. And it's just like that does not those two models do not go together. Um and so I think my biggest message would be to really think through that mindset and question their linearity, their expectation, because otherwise they're just gonna be very frustrated investors and will, as many, this doesn't work. And impact investing is BS. And there's no region.

unknown 1:31:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:06

Like me trying something to grow a tomato on a balcony and it dies, and saying yeah, this whole AG stuff is not functional. Are there stories or narratives or metaphors you've you've used to farm as a metaphor, like what you have used in the past that have landed or at least resonated with people, not that you see the people taking their phone and then we're lost.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:26

Yeah. I like to use our bodies as a map because we know that they're hyper complex. We know that we can sense the functioning of the body, we know when we get sick, what happens, and we know that a very linear doctor will probably not be able to heal a more complex disease, right? And so the rise of like integrative and all these types of medicines that actually look at the body in a very different way. So if you have a simple problem, you can get a simple solution, but if you have a complex problem, there's just no way to address it in our with our simplistic mindsets and tools. So I think the thing is that we have to get a little bit more comfortable with complexity, and that's not an easy thing to do because it is a must. And in farming, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:20

And in science, and probably in health and everywhere else. Getting comfortable with complexity.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:27

Yeah, and it also getting comfortable with the fact that we talked about this. You don't know all of it. It's fine. Like the fact that we do systems maps and talk to a bunch of people will not mean that we know what we're doing exactly and that we're pretending that we're gonna get it right 100%. To the dot, to the coma. No. That's it's just not true. But at least we try our best to see a bigger picture and spend the time to figure that out in a whatever possible way we can.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:58

And keep learning when it's not as you thought it was, which probably will happen a lot of times, but then at least in your sort of map to adjust. Like just when you walk through an unknown landscape, the map is not the landscape, but it is in the best months, are a guide at least.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:13

Yeah, so starting back with my passion for walking.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:17

Do you walk with maps or do you walk without?

SPEAKER_01 1:33:19

I walk without maps. That's very interesting. Yeah, I love maps. I love seeing maps, right? I spend I'm just a map fanatic, and so I have never heard anybody say that.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:30

But it makes a lot of sense in this work and in general, but you walk without.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:35

You know what's beautiful about maps? If you see a map of Mexico done by Humboldt, it's Alexander Humboldt. It's just such a different territory, of course, to a map that you see now with like high-degree topographical data. But what he was trying to illustrate, and what he was trying to imagine, a territory that he couldn't possibly see, is just a marvelous metaphor of what we're talking about. Because there was part technicality, he actually walked a part of the landscape. Beautiful book. But then he also had this amazing capacity to imagine landscapes in the future and to imagine that potential. So, anyways, I think it's just a little bit of why I love maps and why I love this work as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:23

So, as a final question, which usually leads to other questions, but let's try. I have to ask you about whales and digiredos.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:33

I'm sorry?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:34

About whales and digeredues.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:39

What?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:40

Which should trigger something in you, I heard.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:42

But how did you that's why I marveled?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:46

What's the story?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:47

But what's the story for you? How did you know about this?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:50

I do my research.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:52

But I don't know what it means. Oh, you don't know what it means.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:55

No, I know it is. And I don't want to know until I ask you.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:58

So if you want to share. Oh, now you're getting all mystical on me. How did you get to that? But whales and digeritudes. So we one of our missions in the work that we're doing.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:12

To have whales play Digi-Doos. No.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:15

Well, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:19

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:20

Uh no, it's is really to shift our conception of nature, our relationship to nature in general, and how we understand ourselves to be part of nature and interdependent rather than something that is external. And this is pretty obvious.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:38

Yeah, yes and no.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:40

Not obvious as to how you achieve it, right? And so we are exploring the possibility of structuring a fund where whales essentially get center stage in decision making. And why is this possible today? Is because whale language with Project SETI is being Are we there yet? Almost there, we're almost there, we're getting there. And then with math, legal rights and voice in court for whales. And so there's this whole, and you can translate whales to other mammals and species, but they're they're such an apex species that if you protect and give voice to whales, they will protect everything underneath them, literally.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:28

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:29

And so this is very exciting work that that we're exploring. This is where we meet the edge, I think, of giving.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:40

In a good way. I'm not saying this is okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:42

These guys lost it totally. I'm not at all.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:44

I think a lot of people will be. If you're so far in this, if you're still listening, I think you're we're on board.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:50

Yes, so I think that is the future of the work that we do. How do we shift the power of decision making to others? And I've mentioned many times as to how we do collective processes, but those are with humans. And so how do we do collective processes with other life forms is where this work excites me the most.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:10

And the didgeridoo?

SPEAKER_01 1:37:12

Oh. So it was Whale Day the other day. I don't know if you were aware of that. And so in the whale day. Oh, I didn't know about Pancake Day. But in the community of practice that we work in in Wales, they shared this amazing video of this guy with a degery too in the water, and it attracted so many whales, and they were just like having a blast. Like they were like massaging themselves with a sound. And I'll of course I'll share it with you. You'll have to do that. Please do.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:46

I'll put it on there.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:47

But that's the video that we celebrated whale day with.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:51

Which made you like, oh, we can actually okay, how do we get them part of the governance committee? Yes. There's a pathway to talk or to communicate. Talk is different. Interesting. Okay, people, I don't think this was the end of the conversation you were expecting, but I'm very happy it was this one. I want to thank you so much, Tania, for the walk and talk. And we might repeat it on a biodynamic farm, but I really enjoyed the park, the dogs, the helicopters, the sound, everything that uh came over and under and around. And thank you so much for the work you do and coming on here to talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:28

Absolute pleasure. Thank you for the work that you are doing and listening to so many people. I think this is a very important part of the solution. So learning from others and sharing stories. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:45

So, what do you think? I'm super curious. Thank you, first of all, for listening all the way to the end for being fine with some background noises. I mean, that's what you get when you record inside a city of 20 million people. Very curious what you think of the approach of Co Capital, Co-Sistema, let's say the whole co-platform, and of course, of the journey of Tanya. So please let me know in any of the comments or get in touch. I was very impressed by the depth of research, which we've seen in other places as well. Like deep systemic mapping, system mapping, hours and hours and hours, probably hundreds of hours of interviews, trying to figure out where are nodal intervention points with a lot of leverage. That's one thing. I think combining it with actual action is a whole different level. Like, how do you build funding vehicles that are investable for whatever type of return you're looking for that actually attract proper size capital, so not just small, or not just a few million, but hundreds of millions potentially. How do you do that? And how do you put that to work and how do you make that, yeah, let's say, make sense in the financial world? It's something that, of course, they have to show, but they are pretty far with that. And I'm super interested to keep following this and hopefully see these methods or these protocols or these ways of working being replicated in other places. If you know any of those, please let me know. And for now, thank you so much for listening and hopefully see you at the next one. Thank you for listening all the way to the end. For show notes and links discussed, check out our website, investing in regenerative agriculture.com/slash posts. If you like 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 like 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.