Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food

After three years, Thomas Hogenhaven, founder and managing partner of Planetary Impact Ventures, is back on the podcast. Thomas and his team just turned down a $7 million investment in their fund. That’s right—said no to $7 million. And this wasn’t some shady source of capital either. This was a serious, institutional investor, fully compliant with KYC requirements. So… why walk away?

More about this episode on https://investinginre...

Ichsani Wheeler, co-founder of OpenGeoHub and Envirometrix,  challenges dominant assumptions in land use and agricultural design, making the case for more large animals in our landscapes—not fewer. She explains why understanding the maximum ecological carrying capacity of agro-ecological systems is essential for restoring function, productivity, and resilience in both natural and farmed environments. Wheeler advocates for granular,...

A conversation with Béla Hatvany, pioneering entrepreneur in the automation of libraries and the information industry, born in 1938, turned into angel investor and philanthropist, on his journey, what’s enough, the role of AI and EI (empathetic intelligence), and the potential of precision fermentation.

Growing up during WWII with bombs literally blowing through his window, Bela's early anger about the state of the world transf...

A conversation with Anthony James, host of The RegenNarration podcast, a Prime Ministerial award winner for service to the international community and Honorary Research Fellow at UWA. He has had many legends at his microphone and joins us to share what he’s learned, what he sees, and what he thinks is coming next in regenerative food and agriculture.

The pioneers who spent decades developing innovative approaches to land stewardship...

A conversation with Austin Unruh, founder of Trees for Graziers, about the investment case for silvopasture. What if we could plant hundreds of millions of trees on degraded, low-value pasture land and make money from it? What if we planted trees that are beneficial for livestock—ruminants, pigs, and poultry? The market for meat and animal products is fairly stable (unless we get a massive breakthrough in precision fermentation soo...

A conversation with Philip Kauders, CEO and co-founder of Courageous Land, working on reforesting landscapes via large-scale biodiverse agroforestry. 

We can invest hundreds of millions into regenerative agroforestry, maybe even billions. No, we don’t need new regulations or new technology (drones that prune, for example— sure, they’ll help, and they’ll come, but they’re not essential). According to Philip the puzzle pieces for maki...

A conversation with Paul McMahon, co-founder SLM partners, about forestry being the gateway drug for natural capital for institutional investors to put money to work. Why? Because they are used to investing in forestry — it is a well-established investment sector with very long-time horizons. Rotations here are 30+ years, but it’s also one with many challenges: current practices usually mean cutting down a forest after 30 years and...

A check in conversation with James Arthur Smith, founder of Seatopia, about their data-driven focus on nutrient density (plus mercury/microplastics testing) resonates more strongly than abstract “sustainability” marketing strategy and it ultimately driving real ecosystem restoration. We explore how Seatopia defines regenerative aquaculture in a multi- trophic system—integrating finfish alongside shellfish and seaweeds, how they mea...

A conversation with Mike Velings, co-founder of Aqua-Spark, a global investment fund for sustainable aquaculture, about how an invite he should have never received lead to the creation of the largest aquaculture fund in history, with over $250 million in assets under management (AUM) and ambitious plans to grow to $2 billion or more. This conversation goes beyond the billion dollar question—it’s already been answered. We explore wh...

A conversation with Herb Young, farmer who, after 36 years in the chemical industry working for Bayer, retired and bought a small farm in Georgia—where things quickly got out of hand. While researching organic premiums, Herb came across regenerative agriculture—and fell deep, very deep, down the rabbit hole. For over a year, he read everything, listened to everything, and then planted his first trees. 

A few years later, Herb is now...

A check- in conversation with Ethan Soloviev, Chief Innovation Officer at HowGood, about how regenerative agriculture is truly taking off, its position within large food and agriculture companies, and whether we risk watering it down or falling into greenwashing (Spoiler: Surprisingly, we're doing a lot about it!). We also get an update on HowGood—they're doing well and focusing more on nutrient density-, plus, we talk ab...

A conversation with Louis De Jaeger, international keynote speaker, author, award-winning filmmaker, and landscape designer, about dreams, action, and storytelling—how to reach and touch people. We discuss why storytelling is highly underrated and underfunded, and why he is organizing a festival—not the next Burning Man, but a regeneration festival.
He shares his excitement about small water cycle restoration, the biotic pump, ...

A conversation with Laimonas Noreika, founder of HeavyFinance, about providing loans to farmers, bringing innovation to the traditionally stagnant agri-loan sector (some numbers: over €70M loaned to farmers and over 13,000 individual investors have invested through them). 

The profitability of regenerative agriculture isn't just a theory—it's backed by hard data from hundreds of thousands of hectares across Eastern Europe....

A conversation with Kiira Heymann, Director of Strategic Partnerships at the Non-GMO Project and the Food Integrity Collective. After the success of the Non-GMO Project in the U.S., which is now featured on almost 63,000 products, the team is launching the Non-Ultra-Processed Food verification. In this conversation, we discuss why—why introduce another label? And why is it so important for the food sector to focus on increasing con...

A deep dive into the world of intensive—or super-intensive—tree crops, particularly olives and almonds with Dimitri Tsitos, co-founder of Agrosystemic, the Regenerative Agroforestry Podcast, the Arbo-Innova project and Mazi Farm. In Portugal, the sector is booming—highly profitable yet highly destructive—due to its high- input, high-output nature, with heavy reliance on fertilizers and chemicals.

This raises the question: can there ...

A long-overdue check-in conversation with Tom Hengl, director at OpenGeoHub, one of the leading scientists in earth observation and remote sensing—one of the most cited in his field, belonging to the top 0.1% (based on Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers). We discuss the significant changes in the world of remote sensing, satellites, and the hype surrounding AI, machine learning, and large language models over the past three years. ...

An overdue check-in conversation with Dan Barber,  chef, co-owner of Blue Hill restaurants and co-founder of Row 7 Seeds, where we dive into the fascinating world of seeds and how breeding is evolving with the explosion of AI and other technologies. No, we don’t need GMOs, CRISPR, or other risky blunt instruments. We discuss the implosion of the fake meat hype, which was at its peak when we last spoke four years ago, why insane uma...

A conversation with Sébastien Crépieux, founder of Invers, developing a decentralised insect farming supply chain for animal nutrition, placing farmers at the heart of the model. The role of animals and livestock in farming is something we cover frequently, but we’ve never discussed insects which can transform immense amounts of agricultural waste—such as leftovers from beer brewing or wheat milling—into high-quality protein and fa...

A conversation with Matt Schmitt, founder of Structure Climate, about how to get institutional investors invest in the regenerative food and agriculture transitions. These are big terms we use regularly, but what do they actually mean and, more importantly, how do we get there? How do we get novel climate technologies- like biochar machinery, chestnut agroforestry systems, biofertilizer plants, or weeding robots- bankable? Novel te...