424 Benedetta Kyengo - The Green Revolution stole her paradise, now she's bringing it back through syntropic agroforestry

As a child in Nairobi, Benedetta Kyengo spent holidays climbing trees and eating mangoes and papayas at her grandmother's food forest in eastern Kenya. Eight years later, every tree was gone, replaced by maize and beans, and her grandmother, who used to send food to the city, was depending on money sent from it. That reversal, from abundance to dependency in a single generation, is the wound this episode is about healing.

Benedetta, founder of Feedback to the Future and a practitioner of syntropic agroforestry in Kenya's semi-arid east, bought five acres of severely degraded land in 2020 and spent the next four years turning it into a 100-species food forest. She describes how terrible droughts almost forced her to quit, why she teaches farmers to be "greedy with water", stealing runoff from neighbours' plots and slowing every drop into the soil, and how training hundreds of farmers across 300 acres has measurably changed local rainfall patterns. She also explains how she plans to make this food accessible not to wealthy Nairobi consumers, but to the slum communities she grew up in: by stripping input costs to near zero, saving indigenous seeds, and packaging in the small quantities the slum economy actually runs on. For anyone asking whether regenerative agriculture can work in brittle, semi-arid landscapes and at a price point that serves ordinary people, this episode is a field report from someone already doing it.

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Transcript

A Paradise Lost To Maize

Koen van Seijen 0:00

She saw the Green Revolution taking away her paradise. Her grandmother's food forest, where she has a tree, killing trees, eight money was into it. And a couple of years later, everything was made in these. Her grandmother went from sending food to the cities in a row to being the pain of money and food coming from the city. And went deep into permaculture and eventually found forestry to find answers and solutions. It wasn't always easy. Terrible drugs almost made her quick. And more importantly, they train so many farmers and so many neighbors that the whole landscape is regenerating with noticeable differences in rainfall, aka they get a lot more rain in neighboring areas. And he teaches farmers to be greedy with water, to slow it down, to store it, and let it infiltrate. Another next challenge. Many things you're able to do is by radically cheaper production with very limited input costs and smaller, more accessible packages. Because that's how the flow economy works. Enjoy. It's a special collaboration with the Organic Guy Podcast and supported by Routico, a regenerative venture studio rooted in East Africa. 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.

Childhood Food Forest Vs Bare Fields

Koen van Seijen 1:40

Welcome to another episode. Today with the founder of Feedback to the Future, which is dedicated to the co-creation and operation of circular and regenerative innovations to promote a sustainable development of local communities in Africa and elsewhere. Welcome, Benedetta.

Benedetta Kyengo 1:53

Thank you. Thank you very much for having me, Kuhn. This is such an honor to participate in the podcast.

Koen van Seijen 2:02

Absolutely, and it's so nice to have you. I made you move to have an even nicer background before you were more on an inside an inside structure or covered structure. Now you're actually in the garden. And you were asking, is it okay if there's background noise of birds, etc.? I don't think anybody will complain. If you have any complaints, email them to me and I will answer them in a not nice way because the more birds, the better, in this case. And this is part of our region African Frontrunner series, which we're hosting together with Brian, the organic podcast. So we're very happy to have you here and just to unpack your fascinating journey. And there's a very lush background now, which is not fake, people cannot see it. We'll bring you there visually, people don't worry. This will be an audio, a visual, and a sound journey. But to start with a question we always like to start with, which is a personal one, and it can be a long answer, which is no issue whatsoever because we have time in this podcast. How come you spend most of your awake hours and probably your not awake hours thinking and acting around soil regenerative agriculture, specifically syntropic agroforestry?

Benedetta Kyengo 3:05

My journey actually started a while ago. I this is like uh it's a combination of my both my childhood and also uh my adulthood after my studies and interacting with different people who are in the permaculture and food forest environment. So I grew up in the slums in Nairobi, Mukuru slums, and I had two grandparents. My paternal grand grandmother was living in a very so he was living in Kajado, like the southern part of Kenya, and my maternal grandmother was living in eastern part of Kenya. So my paternal grandmother, the Green Revolution had caught up with her. So she was practicing mice and beans, and my maternal grandmother had a very nice uh food forest, I would call it, knowing what I know now. But at that time we never called it food forest. As a child, it was so much fun going to her land. You climb up the trees, eat the different fruits. But my paternal grandmother, it was just bare land if nothing if there's no rain. Just a lot of work. When it rains, you have to keep digging and damaging the soil. At that moment, I didn't know it was damaging the soil.

Koen van Seijen 4:28

Yeah, you could see the difference.

Benedetta Kyengo 4:30

Yeah, as a child, I could see the difference, and it was way much you get coming from the slum. It's it's like what we I used to call it, I call it an iron sheets jungle with a lot of iron sheets and all the factories around, it's really I don't know, polluted. And then you go to my grandmother and the relaxing environment, you become a child, you run around bare feet, so it was really nice. And so I went to boarding school for my high school, and then because of the complexity of spending time away from home, so you go back when you go back home, you want to spend time with your parents. So, for like almost four years, I did not see my grandparents, and then yeah, so we lost touch with my maternal grandmother and also my paternal grandmother, which I didn't like going to her place, you have to visit anyway. But then after six years, or it was almost eight years, when I visited my maternal grandmother, yeah, it was such a pity because the childhood paradise was taken away from me. So I went there and she had cut down all the trees and everything was just transformed had transformed to like maize and beans field. That was really painful. So I promised her, I told her one day, I will either turn your land back into the way it was, because this is not it's not fun anymore to come to the village, or I will have my own land and get a copy cut of what you had. She didn't understand why I wanted it to go back there. She was like, Yeah, but we need maize. I was like, no, I I love the fruits and playing like climbing the trees. So a few years after that took like almost, yeah, it was more than uh 15 or almost 20 years later, yeah. I managed to buy uh five piece of five acres piece of land, and it was super super degraded, nothing was growing here. So uh my mom bought it for me because that was like my first job after when after I came to the Netherlands. So I decided to invest in land, and then when I came to see the land, I was like, oh, this is not what I was hoping for. There was nothing here, it was just like even the cut the the acacia trees were not doing well because their soil was so degraded. So yeah, I didn't blame my mom because at that time I was also like in the movement of permaculture people in the Netherlands. It was also like something Food Forest was really picking up. Yeah, and then after and that time, I think John Lee had released released his green gold documentary. At some point, I it was disappointing, but I knew with a lot of work this was going to be possible to transform the area. So we started in 2020, that's when we were like, okay, I was like, okay, fine, it's time now to take action. And then because the land was just like that, so I wanted I asked my neighbors to come, and everyone was looking for a job, so I hired them for labor. But then we started having conversations, like, yeah, why are you planning to plant all these trees? Where will they fit and where will you grow

The Green Revolution Sales Pitch

Benedetta Kyengo 7:55

food? I was like, Yeah, but the trees are food.

Koen van Seijen 7:58

That's a really good thing. There's so much self-pack there. Let me go back to a moment on your grandmother, because you mentioned like you could really see the green revolution in those eight years basically taking shape, and you called it the mice and beans generation, like they went from paradise, not easy at all. Let's not naively call that, but for at least as a child, amazing. So, what was the trigger or what was the narrative? Because I think narratives and words and language are so important in this, that managed to convince your grandmother and all their neighbors to let go of that, to cut everything, and to plant mice and beans, and of course, a lot of inputs because that was the big part of the narrative. Like, what made that land in those eight years and not before or after? What happened? Very interesting that you could see that actually. Yeah, very interesting that you could see that sort of shift almost happening. What was the narrative that made them that convinced them to join? Because we've seen it in other places, of course, but it's maybe way more back, so you actually have a sort of window in time where the shift happened. What was successful in the mostly the input trade?

Benedetta Kyengo 9:00

Yeah, I think it's just the whole idea of agribusiness. So for them it was like, oh, you can grow this and then you get money, and of course, because the land was not as degraded as it was before, the first few years the yield was pretty good. So this was like a good deal that they were getting. So you get the first two years, the yields are really doing good, and then you feel like this is it, yeah, and then eventually everything starts going down, and actually it was so painful because normally uh my grandmother would send food to us in Nairobi, but by that time my mom was actually sending money for her to buy food, which we had like completely turned around because yeah, you plant maize and beans, and then you have, I don't know, five bags, they can't sustain you for a long time. But she had so many bananas, so many different fruits, and she would bring them every Wednesday, every Tuesday to the markets. So she used to keep to sustain her life without having to depend on my parents or my mother. But now yeah, she became fully dependent on my mother. And yeah, it was also, I think because I asked her, like, why can't you just go back again? But she was like, No, but everyone else is doing the same. So there's also that part of yeah, I can't do something different from what others are doing because they see you as a lazy person, or yeah. So she was like, No, everyone is doing this, so I'm not the only one who is struggling. So we are struggling, all of us, but I'm like, Yeah, but you can compare like a few years back and now, but that logic never applied to her for some reason.

Koen van Seijen 10:48

Interesting. So she never was sorry, which is probably a good thing. Like, she what's she ever because when you said I want to turn it back into, she didn't really understand. It's not that she wanted, or it would be amazing.

Benedetta Kyengo 10:58

She was like, No, she was like, No, I don't want that. I was like, maybe at some point I'll manage to convince you, but she was like, No, everyone else is growing maize and beans, and we need maize anyway for the food. Because for sure you can keep maize for long as compared to fruits, and probably I think one of the triggers also was maybe I think there was a period that there was drought, and then also fruits did not do so well, so there wasn't enough food.

Koen van Seijen 11:26

Yeah, of course, climate change is happening, is hitting as well. Like these are the two things like there was the Green Revolution pushing with very convincing arguments, and the climate change weirding is issues.

Benedetta Kyengo 11:36

Yes, and then you just get like one season, things don't work as you as they used to, and then you give up. You think like the alternative is way much better. And of course, it was better for the first two years or three years, but then later it was yeah, it went back down.

Koen van Seijen 11:53

And are you growing maize? Are you growing maize now in your system? Not at all. But would you theoretically could you in tropical reforesting systems there are ways as well along in between the rows? I mean you could satisfy both needs. You could.

Benedetta Kyengo 12:06

The only thing, the only reason why I don't grow maize is because I honestly don't like maize because of my paternal grandmother. And also, this is a semi-arid area, so it doesn't make any sense to grow maize. Even yeah, most of the time when we even discuss with the farmers that we work with, if you do the calculation, it never made any it it doesn't make any sense, but they will still do it in the next rainy season. And they can see this is not working, it's not making sense financially and even to any human being, but they still do it anyway. Yeah.

Koen van Seijen 12:45

Yeah, and I think it's that's such an important point of there's not a lot of rational, if you think about just rational time and effort and money and resources, a lot of the things we do now in this agriculture system doesn't make a lot of sense. Doesn't mean people are stupid, or it doesn't mean but we created a system where it still makes sense to keep doing something that doesn't make sense. I think John Kemp, I think he mentioned it on stage at Grant School, I don't remember a long time ago. It was like if we would invent the current agriculture system with all the chemicals, etc., and we would propose it as let's do this now, it would never be legal. Like we I'm probably butchering this quote, but it would never it would never even cross our mind that this makes a lot of sense. It doesn't mean that it's easy to change, etc. But it means just for all of us who are not farmers also to realize how ingrained some of these are, even if it's only one or two generations ago. This is not we've been doing this forever, blah blah blah. No, this is but it's very strong. And so going back to when you said I I hired some of the neighbors because everybody needs work and invited them part of the planning process and the design process basically of your farm. And they were asking that question, okay, why are you gonna where are you gonna grow food if you have all these fees? That already creates a very interesting, that's a very interesting narrative, let's say, in agriculture, like you have only one piece of land, and actually in centropic or in agroforestry in general, you're going 3D, let's say, and in centropic you're even going 3D in time, like 4D or whatever that D is. And so how was that then? How do you answer to that? What's your without going into all Ernest Goethe's let's say heritage and really let's say overwhelm them? What's your dialogue process?

Benedetta Kyengo 14:17

Yeah, for me, I it was really, I don't know, I think I was also naive because I thought, yeah, why would you think uh this is not food? Because yeah, fruits are food. But at the end of the day, I was like, okay, look here, we have something called climate change that is happening. And for us to be able to really figure out how we are going to eat and still build the environment, we need to figure out how to incorporate all this together. And then for some reason, uh I don't know whether they are

Buying Degraded Land And Starting

Benedetta Kyengo 14:50

they were old, it's because of the age or something, but they did not understand even what was happening with the climate change. So I realized I have a lot of work to do to try and start explaining what is climate change, how is it happening, and they feel the effect. It's just oh yeah, it's just normal droughts, and but this time it was too extreme. Yeah, they don't really they were not really getting it. And then I I had like a small book, like a baby kind of book that explains what climate change is in really like a very dummy way. So I had to really go back and look at the book and understand and then come to explain to them what this climate change means and how it's affecting them, and why it is important we keep the trees and we grow trees together with with the food, with what food crops or whatever they call food because trees can also provide food. Yeah, but actually the first time when I started in 2020, we had not we were not doing like syntropic agroforestry. I was just following the the food forestry concepts and the different layers and how to arrange it. But then I realized uh I needed like after explaining to them, but still they were not convinced. Then at some point I realized okay, I need to give get them something that will they can relate to with the system that they are used to, but then at the same time we are restoring the the ecosystem. And

Explaining Trees As Food

Benedetta Kyengo 16:25

of course, I was also looking at a yeah, I did not have an idea of Hans Gusch. Gosh, his name is Had. I did not have everyone, I think. It's like yeah, so I did a lot of research and then I was like, oh, I came across Syntropic.

Koen van Seijen 16:44

And do you remember when or how that was the Life in Syntropy documentary, or like what was your entry point?

Benedetta Kyengo 16:50

Yeah, I saw yeah, it was a documentary that was made, it was about Ans Gotch and the way and his trans the transformation he did in Brazil. And he was being interviewed, and I was like, Oh well, we could use this. This is a good idea. So I went ahead into details, really figuring out how this works, and luckily I got some reading materials. Tried also to see if there are some kind of people that are doing it here in Kenya.

Koen van Seijen 17:23

Did you find anyone?

Benedetta Kyengo 17:24

Yeah, at that time, right?

Koen van Seijen 17:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was thinking we we've had him on because I think what's sometimes maybe from a different generation, but the reaction is oh, that looks great, but it works in Brazil, or it works in Uganda, or it works somewhere, or in the north, or somewhere else, but here we're different. And I saw, and and Sven, and but I don't think it's Sven, maybe it's Sven that mentioned it on resilient food stories. By the way, shout out to Hanukkah and Ruth for amazing photography, amazing interviews. I'll link it below as well. An amazing book coming out. Maybe when this is out, it's already out. But anyway, there's an amazing book about resilient food stories, which in hindsight, resilient is probably the best word they've chosen because that's what seems to be resonating now. But I saw Sven there mentioning something like actually looking at the exact biomes or where in Brazil they've done this work and saying, actually, if that's possible there, in if Brazilians can do it, we Kenyans can do it as well, because we're very similar. But often the reaction is oh, that's somewhere else, so it works there for whatever other reason. Was there any skepticism when you saw because the transformation of Ernest Farm is off the chart. If you see the before and after, it's oh my god, what kind of drug?

Benedetta Kyengo 18:28

But was there any skepticism or you were mostly like, oh my god, this is the I I was immediately I fell in love with what he was doing immediately because I knew, yeah, when I came here, this place was it was like in the tipping point, I would say it was you'd see a lot of patches, dry land patches, which is sometimes also a sign of desertification in really extreme weather condition. And I saw I was like, Yeah, this is something that we can do. And I didn't even think oh that happened in Brazil because I was like, it's tropic, so we are all in the tropics, so yeah, let's go for this. Yeah, I actually and then because I yeah, the the trainings online were really expensive, so I did a lot of reading myself, and then also there was one of the of Sven's worker, so I also started working with him.

Koen van Seijen 19:20

So we developed Did you visit any anything in Kenya? Like Sven was already doing things. Did could you visit something like say relatable in drivable distance or was it?

Benedetta Kyengo 19:31

That was not because he was in Tamalu at that time. He was not yet yeah, I think he probably he had already started in Limuru, but I only knew the farm in Tamalu, and then at some point I heard that the farm was closed down. I don't know because of drought and something, but I don't know whether that was true. Then I was like, okay, then let's let's try to get us done. Yeah, so we did it, and so it was we started like with a very small piece, and then I was like, I called the farmers back again. I told them, No, we have a new system and we are going to learn it together, and we are going to do it together. So every time we had trainings, farmers would have their own space, they create their own bed so they can come and check the progress of how it's doing. And then we had the first training in 2021, 2022. We did a lot of trainings, and of course, by the way, our trainings were donor funded, that's why we were able to train farmers for free because we work with we're working also with very poor farmers who cannot really pay uh yeah for their training. So thanks to shout out to Dune Foundation and the Compart Foundation for really and BioVision for really trusting in us. So we trained, yeah, we trained our farmers and they started making all

Discovering Syntropic Agroforestry

Benedetta Kyengo 21:00

these different tropic gardens.

Koen van Seijen 21:02

Yeah, and in their own place.

Benedetta Kyengo 21:05

Yeah, because we were just we had uh we had designed our training in a way that it was we do we do theory, and then because farmers yeah, they don't like too much jargon, so we give them like briefly the theory and then we go and do the it practically so they can see what needs to be done. So at the end of 2022, we had really bad drought. So we had to skip the whole yeah, 2022 and 2020 so it was 2021, 2022. 2022 was really bad, and I think that's the year that uh Hanukkah visited us.

Koen van Seijen 21:45

Yeah, because if you see the video, you see you being interviewed inside or and you don't see the land. And so it's and did that make you doubt things? Like you knew, like what did that do to you and the farmers as well? You've been training people, you've had a lot of workers come. Coming over a lot of this is a system that's gonna work, and then of course you're being hit by the worst drought, etc. Like always happens. What does it do to someone trying to kick start a system that then is being put under so much stress?

Benedetta Kyengo 22:12

Yeah, so I almost gave up. But the funny thing is, I had a team of three, and they had bought the idea more than I felt like they had bought it more than I had.

Koen van Seijen 22:25

They drank the Kool-Aid more than you did.

Benedetta Kyengo 22:27

Every time I would feel like giving up, they would be like, Yeah, we can't put all this work, and then you say that this is not gonna work, so it's going to work. Yeah, they were struggling a lot. Like sometimes I at some point I came here and checked, yeah, they we were really struggling to get the water everywhere. We would feel like there is water, we'd just go there and really get as much water as possible. And then, yeah, in 2023, beginning of 2023,

Drought Doubts And A Borehole Breakthrough

Benedetta Kyengo 22:55

yeah, the drought was really bad, and we felt like this is almost yeah, impossible. If nothing happens, then it's not gonna work. But we were also lucky and had just gotten some funding, and we managed to drill a borehole, which it was like our third attempt, and this third attempt was very successful because we had done the first two attempts and no water. No water, no. So the third attempt was really good. We got a good amount of water, and the moment we just got the borehole, it started raining. So it rained so much, and then within a period of one month, yeah, it was so much like the change was so visible, like you wouldn't even believe.

Koen van Seijen 23:45

Did you take a lot of photos? Did you take a lot of photos at the time just to see front before and after?

Benedetta Kyengo 23:49

Actually, there was also a video that was taken by Dune. It was just like a day a day before it was like one day after the rain had started, you could still see how dry it was. And then later, one month later, it was totally different environment. And since then it has never went back. So even when the rain stops this year, the first since December, January, and February, it was really hot. But still you would see it was the only it was one of the big green area. So we are very happy and it has become like a big inspiration to farmers. So every time they come here, they're like, Yeah, we are trying to compete with you.

Koen van Seijen 24:39

Which is a good which is a good competition to be because that's such a an important point to make as well or to emphasize, because a lot of places turn super green when finally the rains come. If you're

Training Farmers With Small Plots

Koen van Seijen 24:50

in a semi-arid area, most people listening to this cannot imagine how that is to live. Parts of Spain, etc., are and Italy are definitely going there, and parts of Europe as well. But like when the rains come, it life explodes, everything is green. The problem is when it stops, in many places, if it's degraded, it turns back to dust very quickly. And is that's not a healthy cycle. You're saying in your place, and with the amount of life and with the amount of structured, layered syntropic agroforestry systems, etc., that life stays and will make it to the next rainy season, of course, unless there's the worst drought ever. But like it's way more resilient, literally, and it's way more able to create an o its own microclimate and its own. And of course, you have some water, but you also cannot use that endlessly because then you have to dig another one, another borehole. So there's a there's this prolonged or there's this storage of, and then of course, using that water as well because you probably don't have any runoff. And so when that moment happened and it started to rain and everything came to life, etc., how did the relationship with the farmers change that you had been training? Is that now spreading as well? Do you see this sort of spillover effect? I think you mentioned it somewhere. To you've trained many, you've many people are setting up tree nurseries because of course you need a lot of trees, otherwise a lot of nurseries and a lot of siblings. And is it spreading beyond? Is the mice, maize, and bean generation starting to integrate around you, starting to integrate more trees and in the nests and the systems that you have been developing together?

Benedetta Kyengo 26:14

Yeah, so actually, there's there's a very huge landscape transformation,

A Greener Landscape And More Rain

Benedetta Kyengo 26:20

it's not just like our space. So, what is happening? Uh people have come to appreciate the value of trees. And and also when we came here, when we started with the first design and everything, we had to buy seedlings from Nairobi. But now we don't need to go to Nairobi anymore. Of course, we have our big nursery here, but there are seedlings in the market now. It's every time there's a small like a few drops of rain, then the seedling market becomes such a big thing in the market. So it's and before you wouldn't find that. So it is slowly picking up. And so, for example, where I'm seated, if I look on the other side, I it before when I came here, it was easy to just even shout, and my neighbors will hear. But now I can't even see. Sometimes you would see them walking from one house to the other, but now you can't see. They're fully they've started to be covered by the by different vegetation. One of the interesting things is how they are keeping the indigenous trees because they are really they're the backbone, they are the pioneers species that you can really have when you're kicking start you're kickstarting any system or any restoration system. So it is really and actually one of the amazing things that also we are seeing here is before the rain would just pass this area and rain somewhere else.

Koen van Seijen 27:50

Yeah, because that's Hanukkah said that. I think she wrote something like that. And they were staying 30 kilometers away, and there it had been raining for 30 days, for three days in a row, like con constantly. So it was super local. And are you suggesting now? It's totally different, maybe coming to you.

Benedetta Kyengo 28:10

So it's raining all the time here. I yeah, like people complain sometimes it it rains here, and people are like, Yeah, it didn't rain in our place. What happened? But you can also see by the amount of harvests spending here compared to other areas, so there's a huge change, and people are really seeing that is happening. It's not like we have to keep telling them this is happening, they can see it. So it's becoming now like everyone I've had like our area chief has had to deal with a lot of different cases of people reporting to her that yeah, animals as my neighbor is feeding their animals on my trees. So this has also become something that people are very much aware. If an animal gets into your farm and you have trees, then they know they're really getting so agitated by that. So it's it's also getting people to find a way of really not messing up with other people's property. But it's also a good thing because for us we feel like oh, yeah, the fact that they want to protect even the few trees that they have, it's something.

Koen van Seijen 29:18

And how big of the area do you think? Because this is such an interesting point, you're influencing the small water cycle, like you're influencing where rain falls, which we've covered many times on the podcast, and we know the ancient stories of the rain gardens, the sacred rain gardens in uh in India and certain regions where they were protected because they knew where the clouds, let's say, had to do the little hop, and basically they were feet. Uh but how in a couple of years, because we're talking 22 to 26, we're recording in 26, it's four years, which is nothing. It's a lot of time if you're planting trees and having to prune, but it's also nothing in the grand scheme of things. How big do you think is the area you're starting to influence? Have you any idea on that? Do you lose some remote sensing or maybe drones? Like just to and then we'll do a bit of a walkthrough just to have people because I can see behind you what's happening, but nobody does. But how big, like how small or big is in your area the size you need to start actually seeing a meaningful difference in in precipitation?

Benedetta Kyengo 30:15

Yeah, I mean like my land itself is like five acres, that's pretty small, but the whole area it's let's say a hundred, no, not a hundred, it's uh like three hundred acres, acres, not hectares. Acres, yeah, it's a bit yeah, acres a bit smaller than hectares. Yeah, it's around three hundred hect uh acres that you can see the transformation. Yeah, so it's mostly like also the area like where we have I have my land. You can see like around the area, people are really planting trees, and and because what we did, we also did first we did a syntropic, we have a place where we've really planted different varia varieties of trees, including also exotic species. And then we also left like a space where we also have the indigenous and really replacing also the the species that are at threat of getting extinct. And you also see farmers now with their small pieces of land, some of them are leaving like a space with all the natural vegetation, the indigenous ones, and then they focus on planting on their land. So what like now because it's raining, many farmers are increasing their syntropic. So it was the good the beauty of syntropic is so we ask them, just try it. Don't transform your entire land.

Koen van Seijen 31:40

Just do a small which is probably usually the worst advice anyway to any environment. Let's do everything. Let's try.

Benedetta Kyengo 31:46

Just try a little piece of of land, and that's 15 by 7 meters. It's a small piece, and then see the results.

Koen van Seijen 31:53

So you really designed it to be modular and fractal almost, like it can grow. So 15 by 7 meters, you can risk it. It's small. If it if nothing happens, if it's all if you don't believe us, and this is all not working, then you didn't lose too much of work. But if it does, it's you can expire. Okay, let's people let's imagine that, and then what do you work with them to plant on those 15 to 7 meters?

Benedetta Kyengo 32:16

How do you so we focus on on the yeah, so we mix almost everything. So we have fruit trees, fruit trees, which are like the majority. So like in that small piece, we have different fruits that have different strata on different layers. And then so we make sure that so we have different trees. We have also biomass trees, which are also very important for the mulching and also for soil building, because we also use a lot of really the biomass we use is also nitrogen fixers, yeah. The loose look lucina, like those kinds of plants. But yeah, so we really design a very small one, and then we also add vegetables, the annuals, which are like companion plants, like we they are pioneer plants so that they can kick start the whole process as they wait for harvest of the trees. But some trees also we mix also with the trees that are short, like they they need a very short period for them to start harvesting. And sometimes they can see like there was a farmer who was explaining to us like he earns more on what he gets from his syntropic as compared to what he gets on like a whole acre, piece of land planting maize and beans. Wow, yeah. Then at this moment, because it's raining, more most of them are now increasing their their syntropics and adding more. But also we've been trying a lot to really support to invest in the farmers because that is so important, investing in the farmers, and what we do, we just sit down with them and then they we find we figure out what what is the biggest challenge that they are facing, and then we find with the grants that we have, we invest the in the solutions that they are coming up. So, like for example, in December we we invested in a lot of water pants so that they can collect water. And the previous year we had also dug a lot of big water pants that can collect water and also help us to recharge the groundwater because it's really important to yeah. So our goal we want to make sure that we bring back the rivers. Before when I was a kid, we used to go fetch water at my grandma's place because my grandma doesn't live far, my grandma's land is not far away from here, it's 20 kilometers from here.

Koen van Seijen 34:42

Is it still a dream to re regenerate that piece as well?

Benedetta Kyengo 34:46

It has some family politics, but hopefully. As it does, yeah.

Koen van Seijen 34:52

Because yeah, yeah, how is the family responded to you to you to you? You went to study, you went uh abroad, you studied everywhere and worked everywhere as well, and then you came back. And in some places, I know I don't know in your context, obviously. Let's say going back to the land, and it has a bit of a stigma to it as well. You're gonna farm, like why would you? Is that how is that landed, let's say, in your family in your family?

Benedetta Kyengo 35:15

Initially, my mom was actually also skeptical. She didn't think this was going to work.

Koen van Seijen 35:21

Rightfully so, probably.

Benedetta Kyengo 35:22

Yeah, she was like, No, that system cannot work here. I was like, Yeah, it worked in my grandma's land, and she was like, No, that is not the same. This is different. I was like, No, it's the same. This one has a name. What my grandma used to do didn't have a name, but it's the same. Yeah, she was a bit skeptical, but but she did buy the land. She bought the land for me. So it's just I wanted the land. But then she was not expecting me to really focus on working on the land myself. She was like, Yeah, we can plant maize and beans and then you can stay in Europe, make money, send money back home. That was like her thinking, but really like building a business on the same land that she had bought that was highly degraded, it was not a cup of tea for her.

Koen van Seijen 36:08

And now?

Benedetta Kyengo 36:09

Wow, she loves this place. She's uh very proud. She brings her friends over and be like, Yeah, you should go and see what she's doing there. Because I moved from Nairobi, I only go to Nairobi like on a day trip. I go there to have my meetings and then I come back. Or if we need to do some purchases, I do that and then I come back.

Koen van Seijen 36:30

Do you bring fruits to Nairobi?

Benedetta Kyengo 36:32

Yeah, so because actually, besides just doing the farm and training the farmers to do syntropic, we are also creating our we are doing a market linkage for the products that we produce. And having grown in the slum and also lived in Europe and organic food is always seen as something for the rich people with money. So we decided to go the other

Affordable Nutritious Food For Slums

Benedetta Kyengo 37:05

way, the opposite, and say, like, why don't we make this food accessible to the same people in the slum? Because my mom is she still lives in the slum, she doesn't want to get there out of the slum because her social network is there. So besides her, I have so many friends that I grew up with who still live in the slum. And if I was not lucky enough to leave the country, I would still probably maybe I would still be living there, or if I yeah, I don't know where my life would have been. So I don't take it for granted that these are also people who need nutritious food, like healthy nutritious food. So that's we decided for our products, our first shop is going to be in the slums, and we build a market where we can access also most like most common Kenyans who are not really they don't have so much money. So the idea of having so many farmers and really trying to support them and investing in them is just to make sure that we also have enough products to meet the demand of a common Kenyan without having to put a premium markup in the products that we are selling.

Koen van Seijen 38:20

And you have seen, because that's often a point, obviously, accessibility of, and of course, everyone has the right, but not necessarily the access to highly nutritious food. How are you overcoming the barrier? I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's not an easy because it would be easier just to sell to the rich in Nairobi and be another premium one, let's say. How are you approaching that challenge or that opportunity as well? How do we get this to common canyons that are basically ignored by this market until now?

Benedetta Kyengo 38:48

So it's not an easy one. And sometimes I also say, yeah, I wish we had also the luxury of time, especially if you're uh sometime uh if uh you're a donor-dependent, because the luxury of time you don't have. So yeah, it we've not been able to meet the demand because even though we are supplying, the demand keeps increasing and we can't meet the demand yet.

Koen van Seijen 39:12

Our goal Which is a good problem to have. That's uh that's uh that the other way around would be challenging. Would be more challenging. But yeah.

Benedetta Kyengo 39:18

And of course, what we've realized also is there are some products that that yeah, because of the process that go they go through, then you cannot really yeah, sell them at a really yeah because of the process, they just automatically attract higher price. So what we've done is we've created, we've copied the economy of the slums, like really packaging in small quantities the way they like it, and really focusing on what they really they consume on a daily basis. That is the main focus, like fruits, leafy vegetables. So for us, we are doing the African leafy vegetables. We don't we are not doing the common kills, no, we just do the indigenous ones. And so that is one of the things. But then for us to meet the demand, we also need so many farmers to be able to produce. That's also why I keep insisting that it is so important to invest in the farmers because if the farmers, if you if the farmer cannot produce, then even with a sensitized consumer, it will be impossible. So to create the access, we need the farmers to do their job in the best way possible. And so at the moment, also we are working in a consortium of three different organizations program that is supported by Biovision. We're working with Diabetes Awareness Trust, the Alliance of Bioversity and CEAT, and Feedback to the Future. So the Alliance is helping us with the a lot of research to figure out the teeny tiny things that they're implementing partners like us, we don't have time for. And Diabetes Awareness Trust, they are very much on their consumer awareness, getting them to be to know why it is important to eat healthy food. And for us, we are here with the farmers. Yeah, so one of the things is uh people always think that because it's a semi-arid area, so it's so easy for people to think, oh, let's go to the highlands where it rains very much and all that. But the challenge of highlands is also the lands are becoming very small and it's rapidly, especially like if you look at the central Kenya, a lot of spaces are becoming very urban. So then you we are constantly losing the food production areas in the most productive areas in the country.

Koen van Seijen 41:49

Yeah, uh competing with stones.

Benedetta Kyengo 41:52

So then then semi-arid big areas become the next important spaces. So if we rehabilitate them, we give them we give them a bit of love, and then they treat us, they give us back the love with uh rain, right? And food and the soil, we build it, and then we have healthy food. And because the land are still big here, so it's also possible to achieve a big landscape transformation in the area.

Koen van Seijen 42:20

And the scale is yeah, the prices for sure. And on the accessibility piece, you're saying you're mentioning smaller quantities and packaging differently in that sense. Is that enough to reach a price point that's accessible? Are you subsidizing it somehow? What's or not? What's the the ways you are reaching the common canyons in at a price point that is accessible?

Benedetta Kyengo 42:41

So one of the things is in our regenerative approaches, we've tried to reduce the use of external inputs because nature has given us almost everything. So we have different ways, like we do have vermicomposting, we compost. So, for example, with the fertilizer, if you have vermicomposting, you have compost, we have the black soldier flies, we have rabbit urine, all these are natural and locally available material, then you don't really need to buy expensive fertilizers or biofertilizers.

Koen van Seijen 43:15

So your costs are significantly lower.

Benedetta Kyengo 43:17

Yeah, so they are lower, and then we are also doing a lot of seed saving. So we use the indigenous seeds so that we can multiply the seeds, and then if a farmer can be able to pro to have their own seeds, then they don't go to the aggravate to buy seeds. We also have different methods of pest management, which we prefer to use the natural ones because we need the pollinators. We don't believe in killing the insects. And with a lot of integration, like intercropping, if you have a lot of different plants grown together, that biodiversity in itself is a natural pest control. We use these different methods to really make sure that production. Cost has gone low significantly, and then with that, the farmer doesn't feel the bar burden of yeah, of selling the products as compared to buying. I don't know, they always say you have to buy the first the first layer of fertilizer, then there's a top layer, there's a foliage, like they can give you like a schedule of so many of them. Yeah, if you have a few rabbits, you don't need a foliar, you can use it as a foliar. So it's yeah, it's really something that we're really trying to emphasize for the farmers. And of course, there are different other different ways of creating like pest repellent concussions using the what we have in the farms. Yeah, so this is we with this we hope that the farmer doesn't incur so much cost in the production and then they don't have to sell their products at a very high price.

Koen van Seijen 44:54

Which means you're suggesting, and we'll see, and that probably is gonna happen, you can hit a price point that is accessible and still have, I as the farmer you mentioned before, making more money on their centropic plot compared to the whole hectare or acre they were farming on mice and beans and of maize and beans. And so that's very compelling and goes against the narrative. It always has to be more expensive, it always has to be more dis, it always has to be more labor-intensive, which it might is, but maize and beans are not labor-intensive, which is the same.

Benedetta Kyengo 45:24

Yeah, also and it fails.

Koen van Seijen 45:27

It fails very often. And and now with with behind you, let's take us there as well. A second, I think the most labor is at the beginning, and then of course there's always a lot of pruning, but it's much more, I'd say, enjoyable than backbreaking work of planting and keep planting. So if we would be doing this live and the whole audience would be there as well, what would we see? What have you if we walk through, what would we smell, what do we hear? Of course, we hear a lot of birds, but on your five acres, what have you planted? What can you eat? What can you not eat? What are the support species? Where are you in your your 4D puzzle, let's say, of building a piece of paradise again?

Benedetta Kyengo 46:02

Okay, yeah, our farm is full of, I think we have almost if I look at uh if I look at uh the our our

Lower Costs Through On Farm Inputs

Benedetta Kyengo 46:10

list or our database, uh we have over 100 different species that are growing in our farm. Uh so we have uh the annuals, vegetables, and we have different types of fruits. So what we've done is we plant our fruits in the season in a way that most fruits here are seasonal and they don't fruit at the same time. So we've arranged them in a way that at least every month we have something to bring to the market. The big challenge is to convince people you have to wait until the next season, then you can get this type of fruit. But we are getting there because we don't have we we don't have a system that produces the same fruit throughout the year. It's okay if it's mango season, it's which is almost coming to an end. So the mango season is coming to an end, and then now we've seen that the guavas are coming up and avocados are coming up, and then after that we'll have we still also have passion fruits and and papayas. So papayas like papayas are fruiting throughout the year. We have pomegranate, so we have so many different types of fruits that a flower, I mean that fruit different in different periods of the year, and then people can you we can always have something to bring to the market. For the vegetables, before we were doing them in the syntropic, but because they are annual, they're in the they are in their end of succession, so they're not doing very well in the system. So what we are doing, we are also coming up with a we've designed like a kitchen garden that mimics the soil of the syntropic, so with a lot of worms and different composts. So we we create like a vertical garden that can produce different vegetables. Yeah, we also have medicinal plants, we have herbs in the syntropic, and now because we have these these types of species that are getting the they're getting our way of the s out of the system, we are now reintroducing also different other plants that would do better because our system is ready for plants like coffee and cacao.

Koen van Seijen 48:30

Wow, okay. So you're getting to a complexity and to a time and space where there is some for some very interesting plants that need a lot of light and shade and things, otherwise they suffer interesting. Yeah, in a couple of years, basically.

Benedetta Kyengo 48:44

Yeah. And then also we are building up the our herbaceous lay layer, which it's also very nice. So we have all these different plants, different hubs. So the whole point is to create a biodiversity build business, a business that is backed up with the biodiversity that we have. Because people always think, oh yeah, you need to have a value chain of maybe one or two specific plants that you can bring to the market, and then you end up

Walking The Farm And Its Biodiversity

Benedetta Kyengo 49:15

finding it's a monoculture that we have, but then with a few integrations of a few things, but then we don't really take time to get to the complexity of it when we think in the agro business, but because it is so important to I love the big challenges of really going into the details, the complexity, and yeah, our system now it's really complex in a way. We like when we walk around, you see a lot of different types of mushrooms coming up when it rains. Yeah, yeah, and different, yeah. I don't know. We have so much, I love it. We have also grapes, climbers, we have fashion fruits, we have different, we have mulberries because they do very well here.

Koen van Seijen 50:01

And amazing leaves for animals as well.

Benedetta Kyengo 50:04

For the birds, actually, we plant a lot of mulberries because birds love them so much, and then we hope that they're not going to really mess up our important fruits for sale for the market. But anyway, we know that whenever you see a fruit in a certain tree that has been attacked by birds, it's like really the sweetest. So that's how we also know that fruits are ready. Yeah.

Koen van Seijen 50:31

And to ask a few questions, we always love to ask. If we I usually say let's do this, imagine we do this in the theater, but actually it's way better to do it on the farm, obviously. So let's say we bring a whole group of let's say people in Nairobi from the financial sector, working either with their own money or with other people's money in the sense of the pension funds, the banks, etc. Um, and we do a tour on the farm, and of course, a nice lunch slash dinner, and then they go back. What would be the main thing you want them to remember? Of course they're inspired, etc., but people forget as well. They get back into the red race, they back into the concrete tin sheet, the jungle, as you call it. And if you can plant the seed in the minds of investors or people that work in the financial system, what would that seed be? What would you like them to remember from a visit and an experience on the farm?

Benedetta Kyengo 51:21

Oh, well, yeah. I and I would really love them to come when it's hot, not when it's raining, because that will

What Investors Should Feel And Remember

Benedetta Kyengo 51:30

also be the period when they realize okay, this is so important. Yeah.

Koen van Seijen 51:35

Okay, timing is important, very good.

Benedetta Kyengo 51:36

Yes, because it's so easy for people to look at it and be like, oh yeah, it's raining, that's why it's like that. But then I would love them to come when it's very dry, and then you can see you can feel the difference between being outside on the road, and then you get inside. The temperatures just change like this. All of a sudden, it's very cool, you're sweating, and then you're like it becomes very relaxing, it's yeah, it's not so warm, and then also the diversity of birds that we have, it's mind-blowing. So sometimes I sometimes I I look at the birds, and you see every time some kind of new birds that are around, and there's also a lot of small wildlife that is coming back, like we also have a lot of total that we don't know where they come from.

Koen van Seijen 52:29

We have some probably your points, your poems are happening.

Benedetta Kyengo 52:33

Yeah, so we have totalis, we have birds, we have so many other different animals, and we also have snakes. People are scared of snakes, but I learned that snakes don't attack you unless they feel threatened. So we also have snakes. Yeah, so the experience itself, it's just like when you walk, you walk in the jungle, it's because the forest now it has turned into a jungle. Trees are close to each other, you don't get the sun, especially because during the dry season we don't cut down the trees, so we let the canopy really stay. So when you walk inside, it's very cool. It's like you're in a different whole world. Just think of you're working in Brazil, Amazon. We haven't gotten there yet, but that's like where we will get at some point.

Koen van Seijen 53:21

It's called a rainforest for reason.

Benedetta Kyengo 53:23

Yeah, and then also there are so many different types of fruits and the smell of the soil. Before I used to feel like when when it's like in the when it's been dry and then it rains, you get like really good smell of the soil.

Koen van Seijen 53:40

There's a tur there's a term for it that I don't remember. People are gonna email it. There's a specific and it really triggers something in your brain, like fresh soil after a healthy soil after rain. There's a there's certain I don't know, molecules that go into your nose, and really we're meant to really enjoy that.

Benedetta Kyengo 53:57

And it's so like also you it's a combination of that, and then there's also like when I don't know if you've ever smelled a good compost. There's some kind of freshness that you wonder was this something that if you had added like a cow poop or animal poop, you don't smell it, you just smell like it's just soil or it's earth. So there's that earthy smell that you get whenever you get into in the middle of the syntropic.

Koen van Seijen 54:28

So I'm hearing, which I think is the first time ever, maybe people are gonna correct me, that answering this question of what should people remember is not probably because I didn't ask it, let's say, let's do it in a theater, but it's not actually they need to remember all the senses and not necessarily message, and that's the message basically. The visit at the right period in the dry season, see the difference between your airco car, the hot road, and the forest, the fruits, the insects, the birds, the smell of the soil and the compost.

Benedetta Kyengo 54:59

And then the different vegetable, not the different hubs, because we have a concussion of different hubs. We have lemongrass, we have meat. So you can imagine a combination of these different hubs and the smell. It's yeah, it's really breathtaking.

Koen van Seijen 55:16

Do you do events like that? Do you bring people? Of course, your mother is inviting her friends, etc. But are you doing any on the cooking side? Any on the I don't like the word, but experiences? Is that something you do from an Nairobi or from is that something as a do people visit in that way?

Benedetta Kyengo 55:32

Let's say yes, friends, and there are also people from the county government who have really gotten addicted to just uh visiting.

Koen van Seijen 55:43

And do people do like meetings there in the dry season? Okay, I'm coming and I'm gonna do my building.

Benedetta Kyengo 55:48

No, they not the meetings, but they just come individually just to hang around and and because also we have our buildings are mostly from Cobb. We've done the natural building. Most of the time when they come and someone spends also a night here, you it's also totally different experience. So now we are also building houses for people because these people have been requesting, yeah, we want to come and spend more days. Can we do that? But we do not have enough accommodation to accommodate people. But now we by the end of May we will have like a space where people can come and enjoy the yeah the the environment that we are that we have here. Yeah, we will this is part of the our business that we are building to have the field the farm visits, and just besides the centropic, we also have we also keep animals, and all our animals uh we try our level best not to give them medicine from from the pharmaceutical or from the aggravate. So we are feeding, we are giving, we are treating them with a lot of herbs from the farm. So this is also something that we want them to experience. If they come here, you have a hundred percent food that you can really you know that it is clean, you know where it's coming from, you can harvest or you can order, and yeah, just a whole experience. And the whole area is also transforming, so it's also a very nice and area for bike riding and for walks, so it's a good place for offloading all the noise and stresses from the city, and yeah, so that's something we are building up. Hopefully, by May we will have a possibility, it will be finished, and then people can also visit. Because most of the people that visit they come for one day and then they have to go back.

Koen van Seijen 57:48

Amazing, then so soon people can stay. And to flip the conversation or flip the question, what if you would be on the other side? Let's say you're we asked this question, not because I think anybody should have that much of concentrated wealth, but let's say it happens. You have a billion uh in this case US dollars or your uh or euros, and you had to put it to work. I have some ideas around training of farmers and investing in farmers, but let's say you and I'm not looking for exact amounts, of course. This is not investment advice, but I'm looking what would you focus on? What would be your top priorities, your biggest buckets, let's say, of investments if you had that kind of money or that kind of wealth to put to work? What would you do if you had a billion dollars to put to work?

Benedetta Kyengo 58:28

Yeah, I would invest in water because that's one of the biggest challenges here. Convincing farmers to adopt syntropic that has not been a problem, because they are very much willing.

Koen van Seijen 58:40

But then the So water meaning boreholes, ponds, ponds,

A Billion Dollars For Water And Roads

Koen van Seijen 58:45

infrastructure, water infrastructure.

Benedetta Kyengo 58:46

So I mean, because I from a very ecological point, I and the way people have misused boreholes, I am always a bit hesitant to really focus on investing in boreholes.

Koen van Seijen 59:01

Could be extractive.

Benedetta Kyengo 59:02

Yeah, they're very extractive. However, if you combine maybe one or two boreholes with a lot of different water pants that you can collect water and let it infiltrate in the on the ground and at the same time also have a uh fuel storage facilities that we can collect rain water, that would be a big game changer. Because I do believe this challenge of water is a temporary problem, it shouldn't be a permanent one. If we are able to really invest in soil building, the soil structure, we make our spoil become like so we can collect all the water and of course have a lot of vegetation trees. I believe we can bring back the rivers. As a kid, when my when I used to visit my grandma, we used to fetch water from the rivers. Now all those rivers have become seasonal. So this tells us there's something that we are doing wrong, and we can regenerate this the whole hydrological cycle. It is not I don't think it is a big it's not a rocket sci it's not rocket science, it's just us reversing or unlearning what we have learned that we did wrong and then redo it in the right way because yeah, uh I my my children will not be able to enjoy the luxury of going to fetch water from the river unless we do something, or our grandchildren that will not will be something of the past. So I would really invest a lot in the water system and of course the knowledge of the farmers so that they are more aware of what needs to be done. And lastly, I think the infrastructure really works, like the road network that will because if we don't have the road networks, then business cannot continue in these places because some places are almost impossible to get without when it rains, especially this period of rain. So if farmers have food in their farm and they can't bring it to the market, then this is also killing the farmers' spirit. So yeah, investing in the infrastructure that will be also a priority.

Koen van Seijen 1:01:24

And as you're bringing more rain, yeah, the roads are getting challenging as well. And you must be almost getting to, I don't know if you can see the effect already, but with the amount of hectares or acres that you're influencing now, like the aquifer must be getting an interesting amount of water. For sure there are many people drilling boreholes, but like you will reach a tipping point somewhere where you're actually putting more in than you're taking out. And at that point, maybe the rivers become slightly longer seasonal and at some point become annual or pernial. I don't know if you've done, I don't know if these calculations are easy at all, actually, to see okay, we need this amount of square kilometers or to start influencing to be able to see effects on the aquifer or the ground level. Probably that's yeah, that's a few years down the road, but you will start to see that at the time.

Benedetta Kyengo 1:02:12

We are still doing a lot of observation with our farm to see how the water level is functioning because for the farmers that are practicing the conventional farming, you can see when it rains, all the soil is swiped away. But most of our farmers we've trained them how to steal all the water. We tell them you have to be a grid of water. So when it rains, just try to get as much as you can on your land, let it seep. Yeah, just be very greedy because it doesn't make sense to let the water go to the ocean. But in our in our land, like in the demo farm that we have, you see we have yeah, the water, the when water comes from the neighbor, it doesn't take away the soil, it comes and then it slowly moves to different places, and then you realize, oh, if we don't do something here, there's a problem, then we do we notice that okay, this is an area that we need to take action. But we've taken a lot of water from the neighbors. The water that they don't want, we steal it. We just don't steal it because they let it.

Koen van Seijen 1:03:21

It happened to it happened, yeah, it happened to move into your land. It's not that you went there to take it, it's their choice, not to plan it, etc. Do people start to see that now more?

Benedetta Kyengo 1:03:31

My neighbour started that to you. And then so one of our neighbors here saw that, and what she did, she also dug the same swells, exactly the same, because nowadays I don't know who lied to farmers that when they're digging the soils, they need to throw the soil in front rather than back.

Koen van Seijen 1:03:49

And no, explain like what do you mean?

Benedetta Kyengo 1:03:51

Somebody explained that if you dig a swell like in front, meaning on your field, or what no no, like uh so you know, a swell, it's like a kind of a tunnel, and then when you dig, instead of yeah, you need to create a bum below the swell, right? But now they create a bum in front of the swell, which so the water actually easily gets out of the swell.

Koen van Seijen 1:04:11

Yes, that's your like you want to create a bum to keep it on the line. Yes, lower point, the bum should be there.

Benedetta Kyengo 1:04:17

And now, funny enough, we've started seeing people doing that, and there was also one of the farmers that we trained how that attended one of our um of our TOTs, the training of trainers, and he's using that knowledge to using the A-frame to measure how the the swills should be, and he's using that to earn money to help other farmers. Which is great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Koen van Seijen 1:04:43

This is water infrastructure, swales are water infrastructure. There's no yeah, you need an A-frame, you don't need a lot of technology, but you need to do it well, otherwise it could be a disaster, and it's very relevant.

Benedetta Kyengo 1:04:54

So he uses that, he charges a little bit for the farmers that want it, and yeah, he's making some money from that. So it's like there are some small investment, like the training that you would think, oh yeah, it's just training, and then they'll use it in their land, and then they become also even more innovative in figuring out how they can make more money from the knowledge that you're giving them. This is also, yeah, it's yeah, it's really something that we are very happy about.

Koen van Seijen 1:05:24

And if you think about it, it's not to downgrade any of your work. You've done an a huge amount of work, but in a relatively short amount of time and with relatively small investments, there's a region now. You can start talking about bringing back the rivers permanently, you can start talking about so the like the cost benefit or the investment, if we want to use those terms, on uh in this case 300 acres already and even beyond, is very compelling if you think about it. Like how much impact there's been. Of course, you've given blood, sweat, and tears like this, not to to downgrade any of that. You think about it, like this is with one crazy team or a few crazy people that are like against the law and saying, okay, this also works here. A whole region is starting to shift. Which I think for Dune Foundation by Vision, of course, like this is a very interesting, let's say, benefit coming from a relatively small grant or investment, if you want to see it that way, which could be replicated in other places. This is not it's not impossible. It's not completely unique to one place, these circumstances are semi-arid, and it's seedlings. It's not that you need anything new invented that needs to be invented somewhere before you can do this. This is accessible, let's say. It's not easy, but it's accessible. And as a final question, if you had a magic wand and you could change so we take away the fund, I'm sorry, you're no longer in charge of a billion, which maybe is a relief. But if you could change one thing overnight, yeah, because a lot of money also attracts a lot of politics and interesting people and all of that. I don't wish that on anybody, honestly. Enough money, of course, let's not be naive. But if you could change one thing overnight, if you had a magic wand and you had the power, it could be anything, from consciousness to better taste to better flavor to subsidies or policies, or we've heard and all animals outside, we've heard many different varieties of answers. But what would you do if you had the power to change one thing?

Benedetta Kyengo 1:07:13

What I would really want to change is the way the business looks at the biodiversity. Because I I believe we've had b successful businesses that are based on biodiversity. Like on diversity, let's not biodiversity, but on diversity. And sometimes I wonder like why we even have to discuss how can we scale business if you have a very complex system. This is also one of the big challenges that you have to convince people. Oh, yeah, you need one value chain. You don't need, yeah, because it's too complex to have like multiple value chains.

Farms As Diverse Businesses

Benedetta Kyengo 1:07:55

A supermarket is a good example of a diverse business that has been successful. So I don't know. Some of why we need to convince a farmer you need to plant maize and beans, because adding trees and having uh, I don't know, like 50 different species, it will be too complex for you. Because the complexity itself brings a lot of resilience, and it's not only resilience for the environment, it also brings financial resilience. Because if a farmer has like uh 10 different products that they can bring to the market, if on a very bad season five of them fails, he still has five to bring to the market. If if you look at it from the environmental point of view, we need this by the this biodiversity because of the animals, the birds, and all that, right? Because animals will yeah, we've also messed up the whole environment and left a lot of animals without food. So that's why they are we are constantly having to struggle with, or we need to kill to figure out how to chase the birds because we don't give them their food. Where do we expect them to eat? We want to get rid of the pests because we've taken their food away. If I would really change the whole business thinking to look at it from a very diverse point of view, like a supermarket kind of approach, because a farm we should also look at the farmer, a farm like a supermarket with all these different choices that a farm can offer a farmer can offer. Of course, sometimes the supermarkets have a very negative connotation or whatever, but it's a very successful in a certain system that we created.

Koen van Seijen 1:09:45

So many people are very happy.

Benedetta Kyengo 1:09:48

If we can borrow a lot of success from the supermarket and transfer it to our farms to make the farm more diverse, yeah, then we will not be discussing the question of whether we can scale uh regenerative when it's so complex or agroecology in its complex form.

Koen van Seijen 1:10:07

We'll be asking how do we do it? How do we do it instead of should we or why? Amazing. I think it's a perfect way to wrap up and thank you so much for the work you do. Thank you for the pioneering species role you play in the system in general, and of course for coming on here to talk about it and to share your journey. So thank you so much, and hopefully, this is not the last one.

Benedetta Kyengo 1:10:28

Thank you very much for also giving me the opportunity to share. It also helps me to reflect also on the work that we are doing, and I'm happy to be part of the diverse species in this ecosystem. Yeah, thank you very much. I'm honored.

Koen van Seijen 1:10:51

So, what did you think? Thank you, first of all, for listening all the way to the end. I'm very interested what your reactions are. I think it's such a fascinating story. Somebody, of course, going back to the land with all the romanticism and all the hard work, but also really showing, I really have seen and witnessed this change. I think in many places in the global north, don't like the term, but let's use that. We have we don't remember the Green Revolution. Maybe your great-grandparents, or your grandparents probably have started applying fertilizer and seen that shift. And it's magical for the first few years, actually, for the first few decades, maybe, and then it's starting to fail. Here it was much more sudden, and uh she vividly remembers this piece of berries. Imagine you were climbing as a child in trees, eating mangoes, papayas, etc. Not saying that's perfect, of course. We need other crops

Closing Thoughts And Listener Prompts

Koen van Seijen 1:11:40

as well, but then having to having cut down everything in a mindset that's still fine, like that's good, and everybody else is suffering, so I'm fine. Um cut down everything and planted maize and core and beans, although I love beans, but it seems like not that the ideal, let's say not the most regenerative way of farming there. So I really, really enjoyed that conversation. I think uh very interesting to see how fast things are here in the tropics and semi-arid and brittle and the drought stories, and also seeing the potential. This is four, four and a half years, five years in, and they're getting to a complexity and to a level and soil level where they can actually start growing coffee and cacao. Imagine in a couple of years, and imagine at scale. And and you know me if you you listened this far, you probably listened to a few episodes, other episodes as well. My excitement when somebody mentions that they're bringing back rain and attracting rain with regeneration at scale. So it's just very hopeful to see that a relatively small, and I'm using air brackets, nobody sees that, uh, interventions on a small scale actually are changing water cycles. And so I'm super excited about this to follow this and also to see yeah, a few small grants can really kickstart a whole region. That is, of course, ready. There needs to be the mycelium, there needs to be the understory, needs to be ready to receive and then shift, but it's quite inspirational. So I'm looking forward to hearing from you how this inspired you, how this moved you. Of course, the Air Force UP is a syntropic is super interesting, but also just the scale and the speed, and yeah, rain is coming back. So let me know what you think. As always, get in touch, feedback, ideas, suggestions, inspiration. We'd love to hear from you. This is very one-directional normally. We upload an episode and that's it. But we love to hear from you and hear how things are and how this inspired you and what you did with it. So, with that, this was this one. I hope to see hear you at the next one. Enjoy. Thank you for listening all the way to the end. For show notes and links discussed, check out our website, investinginregenerativeagriculture.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 liked most. And give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or your podcast player. That really, really helps us. Thanks again and see you next time.