408 Ivan Mandela - Unicorns can wait, African farmers can't

Seeds, seeds, seeds. It all starts with power and who controls the seeds. But who is actually building scalable companies in this space? Today we have one: a decentralised seed company in Uganda that only works with indigenous seeds, is farmer-owned, and gives power, value, and control back to the farmers. The farmers are trained to select seeds and to grow them, and Emmanuel Luwemba, the founder of Eden Seeds, helps sell the best varieties to other farmers without extracting all life from the countryside like most seed companies do.What about yields? Emmanuel went deep into what farmers actually need. Of course, yield is important, but so is profitability. Dirty little secret: hybrid seeds are often very expensive and need a lot of very expensive inputs to perform. They often don’t perform in challenging circumstances (droughts, extreme weather, etc). Taste, flavour, and nutrition are important too. Indigenous seeds are naturally high in iron, for example and there’s no need for a multimillion-dollar, donor-funded GMO or CRISPR project to change hybrid seeds to add extra iron. Just breed, grow, and eat the indigenous variety selected over time for iron. That’s not to say we can’t develop these seeds further or that they are frozen in time, of course we can and should. If indigenous seeds got a quarter of the funding hybrids get, they would outperform everyone.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSEThoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! =======🎙 YouTube channel🔗 Linkedin📸 InstagramJoin our newsletter!=======The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.Feedback, ideas, suggestions? Get in touch!

Why are we completely ignoring our biggest organ, our skin? The skin care and cosmetics industry is a 200 billion industry and growing fast, often with great margins. Most of it is filled with barely legal chemicals, but there is a fast-growing natural, even regenerative, beauty space and we talk to one of the leaders.We cover everything with Pierluigi Scordari, Sustainability Manager di N&B Natural is Better: ferments, probiotics and prebiotics, the skin microbiome, how they started, why they are fully vertically integrated, why they specifically grow plants for their active ingredients (aka nutrient density), and why processing fast (less than 2 hours after harvest) is so crucial, otherwise the ingredients aren’t alive and thus not working anymore.Does it sound familiar? There are so many overlaps and similarities with the food space, except that this skin care space is full of really well-built brands with great margins. So, we have some work to do! And for many regen farmers, growing something for the skin care industry could be very interesting. Many plants which thrive almost naturally in the hard Mediterranean climate (rosemary, lavender, olives, etc.) are fundamental ingredients.Yes, this involves frequencies, thinking about playing music to the plants and asking permission before removing leaves, all to achieve the highest possible quality and effectiveness. We spent a lot of time unpacking the almost superpowers of the queen of healthy plants: aloe vera.More about this episode.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! =======🎙 YouTube channel🔗 Linkedin📸 InstagramJoin our newsletter!=======The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.Feedback, ideas, suggestions? Get in touch!

Carbon is life, not the enemy. And in this wide-ranging conversation with the legend that is Paul Hawken, we get into all of it. Paul is an activist, entrepreneur with Project Drawdown and Project Regeneration and prolific writer who started a natural food brand back in the 1970s. We trace his journey through writing Drawdown, Regeneration, and Carbon: The Book of Life and why people loved Drawdown so much even though that was never really the point. Regeneration got closer to the core. And Carbon is chuck-full of nuggets of wisdom about the magical, magnificent role carbon plays in our lives. Yes, there’s too much of it in the atmosphere, but there are also many places it can go, quickly and safely.We talk about his work with large food companies, and the pure joy of bringing top executives to real regenerative farms and watching the lightbulbs go off, followed immediately by the panic of realising just how far their current supply chains are from anything like that. We get into food as medicine, and how furious Paul was with the healthcare and food system after he cured his lifelong asthma at 18 simply by changing what he ate. He had never taken a full breath of air until that moment. And we talk about his genuine excitement about the new generation of scientists coming up.One advice: just go outside for as long as possible, and listen to this episode somewhere beautiful and alive.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! =======🎙 YouTube channel🔗 Linkedin📸 InstagramJoin our newsletter!=======The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.Feedback, ideas, suggestions? Get in touch!

We sit down with Olusola Sowemimo, a lawyer-turned-farmer and founder of Ope Farms in Nigeria, to unpack how grief became a blueprint for organic, traceable, and profitable agriculture. Her catalyst was a cancer conference in California where survivors only ate what they could trace—an idea that reshaped how she thinks about soil, inputs, and integrity. Back home, the early days were rough: antibiotic-laced manure wiped out hundreds of tomato plants, a strong tobacco extract burned cucumbers, and buyers were nowhere in sight. What changed? Relentless record keeping, strict organic standards, and smart design—corner plots with buffer zones, on-farm worker housing, and a refusal to cut down trees.Olusola details how rabbits and carefully managed poultry helped her close nutrient loops, why fruit trees are the most underrated cash-flow asset for new organic farms, and how processing gluts into shelf-stable products saved revenue. She shares the playbook for market fit—from salad staples to premium greens like kale—and the power of traceability in winning home deliveries, retail partners, and even international lab validations for turmeric and ginger. We also explore the human side: training that prevents avoidable mistakes, social media that tells an honest story, and the mindset shift needed to move beyond "organic is impossible".More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKThoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! =======🎙 YouTube channel🔗 Linkedin📸 InstagramJoin our newsletter!=======The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.Feedback, ideas, suggestions? Get in touch!

It’s a very interesting time for African agriculture and food, the continent is realising it’s potential to help feed the world, money is flowing into infrastructure to unlock this, more and more talent is coming into the space and the realisation that agro ecology or regenerative agriculture is no longer a nice niche with big margins but has the potential to become the predominant way of agriculture is performed. After putting over $20 million to work in East Africa, Ivan Mandela, founder of SHONA Group, has learned the hard way: chasing Western style so called unicorns might not be the right approach for a predominantly agricultural society. So he shifted his approach and started investing in real companies, to help create a functioning main street a functional real economy where unicorns will naturally start to occur. We discuss why Ivan ends up mostly backing female entrepreneurs, his tips for young students and his takes on nutrient density and quality.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! ==========================🎙 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST AND SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL OR WATCH IT ON  📽️ Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! =======🎙 YouTube channel🔗 Linkedin📸 InstagramJoin our newsletter!=======The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.Feedback, ideas, suggestions? Get in touch!

The food, agriculture and planetary systems, for that matter, are all in serious need of change. No news there. But how? Individual investments and grants, however large, will never be big enough to move these systems. What we need is a serious, deep analysis of the food and agriculture space within a certain context: hundreds of hours of interviews with many stakeholders to map the players, the positive and negative feedback loops, and the intervention points with huge leverage (or not), trying to make sense of the messiness of a system. No, a map is never the territory, but it’s better than no map.Then what? How do we go from mapping to action? It is key to build dedicated funding vehicles for-profit, low-return, no-return, philanthropy, the whole capital spectrum concentrated on the highest leverage points in a system. And then, and only then, we might have a chance to move something.CO_ is one of the most interesting regen investment vehicles we have come across, combining deep systems research with long-term, on-the-ground work, weaving until you have a common vision, and then deploying serious capital to make it work.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy usThoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! =======🎙 YouTube channel🔗 Linkedin📸 InstagramJoin our newsletter!=======The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.Feedback, ideas, suggestions? Get in touch!

Think about where and how you live. Close your eyes and picture your ideal neighbourhood. We bet it looks something like this: a walkable neighbourhood designed around a fully functional farm, with different types of houses built from healthy, non-toxic, natural materials, multifamily, aging-proof, small but not too small, with plenty of privacy, and affordable. The neighbourhood is designed for meeting your neighbours, hence the word neighbourhood. Cars are confined to a designated area, and most importantly, there are lots of free-ranging kids and chickens.Why are we talking about real estate? Because so much agricultural land is being swallowed up by “development”. Cities are expanding, often building super ugly, incredibly toxic suburban homes on that land with big gates and big cars parked in driveways or garages, and kids who never go outside.At the same time, real estate is very good at raising money and investing it, often without taking negative externalities into account. So, what can we learn, and how can we use the highly developed real estate capital markets to build agrihoods and thriving regenerative farms, enabled by well-planned, healthy neighbourhoods? And yes, we can achieve market-rate returns. Happy to welcome on the podcast Neal Collins, founder of Hamlet Capital.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! =======🎙 YouTube channel🔗 Linkedin📸 InstagramJoin our newsletter!=======The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.Feedback, ideas, suggestions? Get in touch!

A conversation with Sylvia Banda, Zambian business woman, restaurateur and social entrepreneur about her journey started when when she was 12. She opened her first food company, and she hasn’t stopped since. She now runs a multi-million-dollar business with over 15 restaurants in Lusaka, Zambia, a food- processing company selling traditional Zambian food worldwide, and has trained over 60,000 smallholder farmers to produce higher-quality products and process them to receive better prices. We talk about why researchers should take a back seat and let farmers and entrepreneurs lead now; why the hand tools many farmers still use belong in a museum and why mechanisation is key, but with care; why processing and preserving are essential to ending hunger; and about nutrition, traditional food versus imported food, and how she taught urban people to re-appreciate what is often considered “food for the poor” that is traditional, nutrient-dense, and tasty food. To supply all of this, she set up two factories and trained over 60,000 smallholder farmers, changing many lives. Enjoy the story and the knowledge of a true Zambian and Southern African powerhouse.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingThoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! =======🎙 YouTube channel🔗 Linkedin📸 InstagramJoin our newsletter!=======The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.Feedback, ideas, suggestions? Get in touch!

We are at an interesting moment in the dairy sector. For years, smaller farmers with around 200 cows, who were also great graziers, could undercut the costs of large concentrated dairy operations, keeping costs low, taking healthy margins in good years, and surviving the bad ones.But something has changed: CAFO dairies have grown bigger and bigger (10,000 cows is now normal, and 100,000 is no longer an exception) and their economies of scale mean they are undercutting the grazers. Of course, this leads to massive manure lagoons, animal welfare disasters, and all kinds of other externalities, but nobody is paying for that yet. Not to mention that you can only push biology so far before it literally breaks.So what’s next for regenerative grazing? Joe Tomandl, 4th generation dairy farmer, founder and director of the Dairy Grazing Alliance, argues instead for focusing on the transition of mid-size farms with 300– 700 cows that have surrounding land which could be grazed but currently isn’t. You need grazing experience and a long-term offtake agreement, but it can be done.More about this episode.Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! =======🎙 YouTube channel🔗 Linkedin📸 InstagramJoin our newsletter!=======The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.Feedback, ideas, suggestions? Get in touch!

The difference between agroecology and regenerative agriculture is the deep social change we need in the food and agriculture system. As Laura Ortiz Montemayor told us once "ecology without social justice is just gardening". Million Belay, who leads the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, the largest social movement on the African continent, is very clear stop intervening with agriculture on the continent, stop imposing all kinds of rules, practices, seeds, inputs etc, which don’t serve in this context (and we could argue in the context we come from as well, how many European banned pesticides are exported to the continent?)We talk about the shut down of the USAID which was actually a good shock to the system. And finally donors, which unfortunately dictate quite a bit the direction, are talking and slowly also acting around agroecology. We discuss how through lobbying they managed to get many countries to adopt agroecology policies in the last few years, what Million would do with a billion dollar and what his message for investors is.More about this episode.==========================In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.==========================👩🏻‍💻 YOUR OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee…Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:https://gen-re.land/ Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more hereSupport the show=======In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.👩🏻‍💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE 📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE 💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORKJoin GumroadShare itGive a 5-star ratingBuy us a coffee… or a meal! =======🎙 YouTube channel🔗 Linkedin📸 InstagramJoin our newsletter!=======The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed financial advisor or investment professional before making any financial decisions.Feedback, ideas, suggestions? Get in touch!