In this week's episode, Agri-EPI's Thomas Slattery spoke with Johannes Scheibe, the co-founder and CEO of ruumi. ruumi's app helps farmers plan fertiliser-free grazing rotations that result in more grass, improved soil quality, and healthier animals – without worrying about potentially expensive mistakes. It also helps create records made up of remote sensing and on-the-ground datasets. This unique capability allows ruumi to generate carbon credit certificates of truly exceptional transparency, quality and value – to farmers, companies who want to offset, and the environment generally.
Johannes co-founded ruumi together with Daniel and Paddy, built the first version of the ruumi grazing app, and is now CEO. He grew up among trees and sheep in a tiny village in the middle of the “Woodlands” in Thuringia (Germany). That may explain his height and love for sausages! He enjoys wearing socks with cute duckies on them and improving his dad jokes. He has a background in machine learning, working as a Data Scientist at Maersk and eBay, then as Head of data at Drivr and Karhoo, and finally as an Engineering Manager at Daimler Autonomous. He also co-founded a startup that uses AI for remote physical therapy, which taught him how to fail gracefully.
In this week's episode, Agri-EPI's Thomas Slattery spoke with Johannes Scheibe, the co-founder and CEO of ruumi. ruumi's app helps farmers plan fertiliser-free grazing rotations that result in more grass, improved soil quality, and healthier animals – without worrying about potentially expensive mistakes. It also helps create records made up of remote sensing and on-the-ground datasets. This unique capability allows ruumi to generate carbon credit certificates of truly exceptional transparency, quality and value – to farmers, companies who want to offset, and the environment generally.
Johannes co-founded ruumi together with Daniel and Paddy, built the first version of the ruumi grazing app, and is now CEO. He grew up among trees and sheep in a tiny village in the middle of the “Woodlands” in Thuringia (Germany). That may explain his height and love for sausages! He enjoys wearing socks with cute duckies on them and improving his dad jokes. He has a background in machine learning, working as a Data Scientist at Maersk and eBay, then as Head of data at Drivr and Karhoo, and finally as an Engineering Manager at Daimler Autonomous. He also co-founded a startup that uses AI for remote physical therapy, which taught him how to fail gracefully.
Good morning, and welcome to another episode of Seedling Sessions. This morning we're speaking to Johannes, the CEO and co founder of ruumi. Good morning, Johannes. So it would be really great if you could just start off by telling us a little bit about ruumi, you know, potentially a bit about the the founder story and how the business was started. Yeah. Good morning, Thomas. Great to meet you. Thanks for having me. Yes. I'm Johannes. I grew up in a very small village with 70 people. We had sheep at home. We were growing potatoes and all that. But when I was young, I never wanted to do that. When I grew up, I didn't really want to have anything to do with farming. I thought it was boring. And, you know, you always try to do something that's different from what your parents do. So I ended up studying math and computer science and basically lived and worked in big cities my whole professional career. After I've been a grownup, I ended up working at Daimler, the company that makes Mercedes car on autonomous taxis. And that's where I met my cofounders, Patty and Danny. And one day we looked out of the window at our office building in Berlin and saw a massive protests from farmers. So they came with their factors on a motorway in Germany and just blocked the whole city. And for us, that was really a sign from the universe to make a change and to think about where we actually came from and if we're doing something that has a purpose. So we looked at agriculture, tried to understand why farmers are so angry, and that's how we learned about the emissions problem. And also that legislation is getting tighter and that consumers want to change, that farmers are really pushed and pulled from all sides, but I'm not really getting a lot of help in changing and or transitioning to a more sustainable future. And we thought maybe we can help with technology, I think. I mean, I went on a similar journey a number of years ago, although I came not so much from tech, but even from kind of marketing, communications and particular to consumer brands. So I often look at things looking at from being consumer brand point of view. When you realised that food, farming and agriculture was an area that had such a possibility to go from a net negative to a net positive, how did you and your founders land on transition financing? Out of the many barriers there are, why was that the one that you land on? Yeah, so we first actually started figuring out what type of agriculture should we work with? And we started with wine, because we really like drinking wine. Then realized that it's maybe a bit too small of a market for what we're trying to build and what we know, then thought we could build something that just works for all types of agriculture, but then we started talking to farmers, to a lot of them, maybe 100 or so, and realized that you cannot generalize so easily. You need to really understand your crops. You need to understand a lot of details. And every farmer is kind of different. So we thought, hey, we focus on one crop, grass. Even though there's a lot of distinctions there as well as we learned more later, but it's the biggest market from a land use perspective. 70% of all agricultural land is grassland on the globe. There's a lot of emissions and that's how we landed on grazing. Eventually we look at software that existed and saw a lot of software is really old and outdated and we know a lot about image processing and there's great free satellite data available out there. And we thought we can help farmers create by having or creating actionable insights that can help them optimize grazing. So first we thought we want farmers to be independent, so we're just going to charge a fee for every month for using our software. But we soon realized it's a bit of an antagonist relationship that you didn't get right because you need to convince farmers that they need to change their habits and they need to pay for it. Which didn't make a lot of sense. So we thought, why don't we turn this around and figure out how we can help farmers change their practices and then certify that so we can help them create a proof which then can be used for financing. So that's how we ended up where we are now. We are helping farmers basically prove to either their buyers, right, so it could be a milk coop that actually they're doing implementing sustainable practices and they qualify for whatever program is already running on a new program. Or if you're completely independent as a farmer, you can also just help you create carbon credits that you can sell or we sell for you actually on the voluntary carbon market. Okay, so that's an interesting and sort of classic startup story where it sounds like there's been some, if not complete pivots, definitely some slight pivots in there. So just to focus in on the app for a second and clearly that's developed a bit. So what exactly does the app offer to farmers? Yeah, so what we learned as someone who came from outside of farming was that grazing actually needs a lot of handholding throughout the season to do things right. You need to avoid overgrazing, you need to split your fields in an optimal way. But at the same time, you always have to make sure that you have enough food for your animals, depending on what stage your animals are in and what you're trying to achieve right now. Right? For example, do you have pregnant cows or not? Right? Trying to fatten your animals or are you just maintaining weight? And that means that your demand also after your calving, you suddenly have a lot more mouths to feed, you have higher demand and grass, and hopefully that coincides with all of you having more grass outside. But you constantly need to kind of rethink which animal groups should be assigned to which fields, how should you subdivide those fields so that you avoid overgrazing, have enough recovery time and at the same time feed your animals. Right. And we optimize also your grass utilization because it's free food that's out there. So that's what the app does. Right. So we provide satellite imagery that helps farmers understand how much grass they have currently, how much we expect it to grow using grass, which a lot of farmers are familiar with. And there are more features coming in the future, like a feed budget planner for the whole year with recommendations as well. You can also input your plate meter readings, if that's what you're using, to help us improve our satellite based model. And just to be clear, I think you did mention earlier, I think it's quite important the app now is free for all farmer users, correct? Yeah. So we want to make this app available for free to any farmer on the planet because we think we want to make a transition or help as many farmers as possible on the planet to be more sustainable and to get the most out of their land. And we also realized not every farmer can qualify for carbon credits because there are very strict rules around additionality. For example, if you are a farmer who is already doing everything right today, unfortunately you won't qualify for common credits. Right. Which is really unfair, in our opinion. But we still want to be able to give you our app. We want to learn from you. We want you to also help your peers, if possible. And we want to work together with buyers who, for example, want to offer a premium product to actually get you more revenue as well. Right. So if you're doing things sustainably as well, we can create the proof for you and you can earn more money per kilo of produce. Yeah. Fascinating. I think you mentioned this to me earlier before we got on the call, but knowing how hard it is to get farmers using technology, even when it's free, you've hit a milestone of over a thousand farmers who are using technology, which is very impressive. What is that split across in terms of markets at the moment? And where are you looking to expand kind of next steps? Yeah, so far we've actually been focusing 100% on UK and Ireland. We have some farmers who are from outside of that area that's maybe 100 or so from across the globe who kind of heard about us and thought it would be cool to try out. So we started in the UK and Ireland because it's a grazing nation, a lot of farmers are already grazing quite a bit. And we had a unique advantage because of the way that we stitched together radar satellites and multispectral satellites that we can actually also offer insights when there's cloud cover. But we are now expanding also to the rest of Europe, North America and Australia together with our partners. For example, we've just integrated with Agriweb who we're working together with. So we provide the grazing management tools and certification services and a lot of farmers are already using Agriweb around the globe. Yeah. So just to stick on the grazing management for a second, the grazing management, the app, I can see very easily how with something as complex as that, it just could be sort of explain to anyone who's listening to this what are the main benefits for the farmer about firstly the grazing management and then we can kind of come on to sustainability and regeneration. Yeah. So the great thing is if you do your grazing management right, you're going to be more profitable and more sustainable at the same time. Right. But it's going to require some initial investments and that's where the carbon credits and incentive schemes come in. So what happens is right now a lot of farmers, they might use monoculture rye grass and a lot of nitrogen fertilizer to make that grow. But fertilizer prices have been pretty crazy the last couple of months or the last year or so now actually. So that gets more and more expensive. Right. Also, if you don't manage your grazing platform optimally, you're going to need more concentrate feed during the winter time because the grazing season might be shorter or if you cut your grass for silage or hay at the wrong time, then that could also actually mean have big impact on your winter feed. So essentially what we do is we help reduce your need for nitrogen fertilizer, ideally to zero. I think we can actually achieve that for all farmers across the globe and we help you extend your grazing season to the maximum possible. And our goal is to actually not reduce productivity. Actually we have to do that. So the certification scheme that we are using demands that you cannot reduce productivity by more than 5%. You essentially need to stay at the same level while becoming more sustainable. And when you talk about being able to help reduce and I think it's a really good one to talk about, given where we're at with the cost of heating crisis and fuel and fertilizer, et cetera. So what is it about optimizing grazing management and what you're saying? Let's say that allows you to, in theory, bring down input costs while still not affecting productivity. Yeah. So the grazing app is one component of what we actually do. So the first thing we do is we create transition plans for each farmer. So we learn what have you been doing on your gradient platform the last couple of years? What are you doing right now? What are your plans for the future? And then we try to figure out how can we get from where you are now, which otherwise you wouldn't talk to us, seems to be suboptimal, or you don't think it has a future. The way you're managing currently to a state that's ideally a zero input farm by date x, what we typically would do is we would figure out what kind of grass species can we sow on your land, depending on the salt type, how much it rains, if you have dairy or beef, cows or sheep. So, for example, going away from monocultureright grass to a grass mix, maybe with five, seven, or even more, up to 17 grass species. And those different grass species, they have different root depths. Monoculture red grass actually has a quite a shallow root versus, let's say clover has deeper roots. The root is made of carbon, right? And every time you graze or you cut off the grass, essentially some of this carbon from the root gets shed into the soil, right? And more carbon means, actually more productivity of the grass itself, more organic matter. And some of these grass species, like clover, has nitrogen fixing properties, so the nitrogen is made available by the plant itself. So you actually don't need any synthetic fertilizer that you need to apply. So with all of this together, essentially what you're doing is you're increasing carbon and you make the nitrogen available naturally in your soil, right? And that means you can actually reduce fertilizer usage if you then add on top that you don't over graze, meaning you actually leave a postgraduate cover of, let's say, 500 diameter. So you never have bare soil, no erosion, you don't damage your sword, right. And you leave enough recovery time. Ideally, you let your grass grow quite tall before you go in again, which reflects the sun more. So in the drought year like this, the mop grazers have actually seen a big difference in productivity. So that's where the app comes in, right, where we actually help throughout the season. And the transition plan is like, you know, how much can we actually reseed every year without jeopardizing, without reducing productivity? And how much fertilizer can we reduce every year so you don't go down for activity? Could be 10% every year, for example. That's fascinating, because I naively thought that transitioning to say, you know, a rye red clover mix and then on to something even more kind of exotic than that could be done in a year. And clearly it takes longer than that. Yeah, you need to basically win off the land right off the fertilizer and do it step by step. And it's coming back. This idea that even some of our grasslands, and this is something I think a lot of people don't realize, is even these kind of permanent pasture and grasslands are also, in a lot of cases, affected by this addiction to artificial inputs. It's not just the Arable croplands. It's also the grasslands as well, which of course make up such a huge percentage, particularly in the UK and Ireland. So, yeah, very exciting. So that's the grazing measurement, it'd be interesting to understand a bit more how that moves towards certification and then inserting and offsetting around carbon credits. Yeah. So in the transition plans we agreed on, what kind of grass species are you sowing or seeding is it going to be reseeding or overseeding? How much fertilizer are you going to wean off year over year? And so that's what we agree on with the farmer to make sure actually this is doable. Farmer feels confident that it's doable. And for each of these practices we have a good idea of how much carbon that's going to save in fertilizer reduction and in increase in soil organic carbon. What we then do is we with the grazing app, right, and the satellite imagery, we make sure that actually what we agreed on with the farmer is actually happening. And after a defined period of time, could be three years, could be five years, we would then verify that these emission reductions have happened using soil samples. So typically we would take soil samples in the beginning and towards the end of the project, the all credits that we create are done. Exposed. That's a fancy word for after they've happened. So we only issue credits after they've happened and then we kind of balance out our estimates. The farmer gets actually paid every year if they follow the plan right, based on the data that we provide. So that way we can actually move the future forward, but we can actually create this financing for making a decision happen that's essentially the same for both inserting and offsetting. On the offsetting side, we are independent as ruumi and with the farmer to decide which measures we want to actually take and pay for what is the incentive scheme. And on the insetting side, sometimes companies have already a plan that they want to carry out. They all have very specific measures that they want to implement and maybe they've tried already and they already decided how much more, for example, in the form of a milk price increase, they want to incentivize farmers to do that. And then ruumi comes in and basically helps Coops or other companies to actually implement these measures in a way that's doable for the farmer and to check compliance so that the companies or the coops know that we're on track to reach these emissions reduction goals. So it sounds like a very well thought through process that you've created. I think everyone can acknowledge that carbon credits, offsetting and insetting has become quite a boom area, particularly the last few years. And there's lots of people in the market, there's some skepticism about particular carbon MRV in some cases. Rightly. So it's really good to just understand, and I'm sure you're aware of this kind of how it is that you feel you differentiate yourself and how you feel. You can give people on both side of that supply and demand around the carbon credits confidence that you're doing it in a way that isn't going to come back. Yeah, there have been a lot of bad actors. Voluntary carbon is a bit of a wild west because there's very little legislation right now around that. So our view is, and that's what we see from regulators, that you need to have the standards authority that's independent, that creates the carbon credit standard, and you need to have third party verification bodies to make sure that the initial decisions for which you create these carbon credits are actually happening. A company should not be able to say this is how we measure, and here we created these carbon credits and someone can pay me for it because then you have a conflict of interest. In our view, you will always try to issue as many credits as you possibly can at the lowest kind of scientific rigor. So, yeah, that's the important thing. So we're following a Verra standard. So Verra gold standard are the highest standards on the voluntary carbon market, where they also account for like 70% to 80% of the total trading volume on the voluntary market. And it's important. So not every Verra gold standard project is of high quality, but it increases the chance massively. And we follow a Verra standard and every credit that we issue has followed this standard and is issued on the Verra registry. So coops, for example, they choose themselves essentially what methodology they want to follow. We do follow the same standard currently. Right, but because those credits are not traded freely on the voluntary market, you don't actually need to issue the credits in the same way. Fascinating. What are your thoughts on this feeling of carbon myopia that we've had and the possibility of not only measuring the carbon credits, but as we get further down this journey, also looking at biodiversity, water infiltration and other ecosystem services. Be great to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, so the great thing about carbon credits is that it's one number it's relatively easy to do accounting on, right? That's a good thing. A bad thing is things like water quality, biodiversity and so on is not accounted for. And we call those things Co benefits currently, co benefits to the carbon credit. But we do see is that companies are more and more willing to also pay for these Co benefits. Right? So if you have a carbon credit that has more Co benefits, they are worth more as well. So it's no longer that each car credit is created equally. And we think that's great, and especially for farmers, that's really good news because if you have more grass species, you're going to have more biodiversity. If you use less fertilizer, your water quality is better. And what we see is that companies in a food supply chain, they are starting to get worried about the fact that climate change is happening and that the water quality is terrible and there's no biodiversity because it actually risks that they cannot reach their revenue targets because there's not enough supply. So they're actually starting to invest in these, let's call it renaturing and regenerating practices also beyond just the carbon credits or the CO2 equivalent. Yeah, absolutely. And I think as this whole area is maturing, we're seeing the kind of practices that you're talking about have a benefit, obviously, for the farmer in terms of reduced input costs, potentially increased productivity, regeneration of the land and ecosystem both above and below ground biodiversity. You then have companies that are willing to pay for that and at some point consumers potentially willing to pay off. That all. That being said, we're in this position, I feel, at the moment where the terminology and definitions around all of this has started to get really muddied. So we've got organic and how does that stack up against regenerative? Is regenerative something that's just trendy or is it something which we're going to work out what the definitions are behind that. How does that fit in with something like the term agroecology? So we're in this kind of very exciting space where we have a direction of travel in a positive direction, but the definitions are getting more and more complicated and there is a danger almost there. And if we look all the way to the end of that scale, consumers are starting to really confuse them and make it more and more difficult for both the farmers, the middle stream, the retailers, and the consumers to understand what's what are your thoughts on that? And it's a complex topic. I think getting the perfect food label that takes everything into account, that would be amazing, right? Then consumers can make an actual choice and know what they're buying. I don't know if that's possible, to be honest. One thing I want to say about organic regenerative or whatever you put on there, that's positive and negative things about it. Like it's an organic movement. It's great. In the beginning, it was just a few pages of standards or things that farmers have to follow to be certified organic. And now it's like more than 100 pages because you realize, okay, there's so many different educators. Every farmer is different. And that's the problem because now a farmer really needs to have to read and understand a lot more to even get the labels. And the question is, do we want to do the same thing for something like regenerative or not? Or can we agree on, okay, it's just all about can we measure the improvement in the ecosystem with objective metrics and doesn't really matter how the farmer achieves that or can we leave freedom here because every farm is different, right? So you have like, you have rotations between arable and grassland. You have farmers who only have sheep or like some who have buffaloes and deers. How would you create that possibly like a standard that just works for everyone? We think it's not really possible to do that so we would focus on metrics that measure the system improvement and leave it at that. Yeah. I mean this is something which we're thinking about a lot at Agri-EPI and our conference in a couple of weeks. Which is the path to Sustainable Farming. Our keynote address that is going to be with Fabia from the Sustainable Food Trust and she's the director of the Global Farm Metric and so we're very interested in her to speak and talk about how they can so the Global Farm Metric. If you're not aware of the projects looking at before we even get into how do we even measure these things. What are all of the different things that we need to measure and can we find common language for those? Then we can look at the technology and the techniques to actually accurately measure those, which is where we think Agri-EPI fits in and Agri-EPI members organizations like yourself fit in because if we don't have an agreed set of definitions and then some agreed ways to measure those things, we can't even kind of move forward from there. That's something which we're quite interested in and that's why we still have these conversations. Yeah, I think you're right. So what are the big next steps? I understand that you're very close to closing a round of funding which is also super exciting. We go to hear about a little bit about that and kind of what the next steps and what you see as the future. Yeah, so we are about to close our seed round which means we can actually make our vision happen or we achieved a massive milestone to getting there. We want to grow a lot in the UK and Ireland, we want to become the trusted partner of farmers as well as insetters on transitioning grassland and we want to go into new markets together with our partners to kind of bring our mission across the globe. Our goal is that we understand how we need to manage our land in the future as climate change happens, as more and more uncertainty comes around, food security and that's what we want to basically make sure that we can produce food in the future without or with very, very few agricultural inputs like fertilizer because we already learned that it's not possible. We know that we need to get away from that. And I guess there's a kind of a bigger question what do you see as the kind of the future direction and what are they going to be the big changes driving us towards more sustainable and agroecological, regenerative, whatever you want to call it? I think as we see the impact and feel the impact more and more around the globe of what happens to our food and to our ecosystems if we don't take care of them, it's going to bring it more and more to mind. And I think what I'm seeing is that it's actually the corporates who see it the earliest, especially this year with the drouts in Europe. That has really impacted their mindset a lot, and I think that's a good thing. Right before, it was more or less virtual signaling. Yes. We're trying to do something. We're doing a pilot, maybe with ten farmers or 30 farmers, and 2030 is very far off. And now we're realizing, okay, if by 2030 we want to be in a state that's not just going to ruin our soils and our food production more and more, we need to start acting. Now there's only seven years left. It does really feel like a number of major incidents, whether it was Covid, that demonstrated the global food supply chain in the UK, and the UK particularly, I think it demonstrated the risks around food security. The Ukraine and the fuel fertilizer has kind of suddenly seemed like it has made the thought of transitioning fairly less of a risky thing to do for a lot of people. The health crisis that we're having, all of these things coming together do seem to have kind of really not and I'm sorry, also climate change actually really starting to feel that. So things are really starting to feel very real across all of these areas. And you're right. I also sense there's kind of a genuine shift that happened and you start to think we're going to see some real movement. Hopefully. Yeah, we are seeing a movement absolutely also with corporations that actually contact us. Right. So it seems like we're at the right stage at the right time now to make stuff happen at scale because we need to get away from pilots. That time is over. It's way too urgent. I'm just thinking about other members of ours. I mean, because we're obviously trying to put different technologies together as well. And it feels like what you're working on and have been working and continue to work on could fit really well with someone like. NoFence. Another member of ours that we work very closely with. Who virtual fencing. Who could take the insights that you're delivering and use their knowledge of technology. Virtual fence technology. To help with the logistics of mob grazing and to match what you've got on your app. Yeah, 100% there. We love the guys from NoFence. We're actually already running a pilot with them in the UK where farmers are using no Fence and ruumi together so we can figure out what's the best way to integrate. Right. Do we want to see the cows in the ruuni app or do we want to push grazing insights to the NoFence app? And if you think about it, that's the Holy Grail. We know where the animals should be for optimizing business and sustainability goals. Right. No Fence can make it happen. So fantastic. Well look it sounds like you're one step ahead of me anyway. On that note, is there anything else you'd love to talk about before we wrap this up? It's been a fascinating conversation but yeah, it sounds like you're a little ahead of me. Anyway, we do nothing else all day, right? And I guess you see a lot of companies who understand I hope that we get off the Hype train and think about what difference we really can make and that farmers get guidance in choosing the right tools and we obviously think we are one of them. That's all I want to say. Amazing. Well look, it's been really really interesting to get into some of the details with you and I think what you're doing is absolutely incredible. It's exactly the kind of technologies that we need particularly in trying to drive this transition towards more sustainable and agroecological farm system. So I couldn't be rooting few more I'm sure catch up again soon and thank you very much for taking some time to chat. Thank you too. Thanks for having me.