What's the one key important message you would like to share with the listeners today?
Peace and health.
If anything,
I think all people become ever more aware that's the most basic conditions.
And peace and health need to be grown.
And they need to be grown by regenerating democracies and regenerating our ecosystems.
And we hope to contribute to both.
And in the history of humanity also,
farmer movements were always at the forefront of growing that.
And we hope that ERA can support all of us Europeans and beyond in growing that without being some cocky leaders,
but being the humble mycelium below and in between that help us all.
to be better stewards.
Welcome back to the Deep Seed podcast.
This week is the last episode of season two of the Deep Seed.
And
I want to start by expressing my gratitude to everyone listening right now and to everyone who has been listening to this podcast over the last couple of years.
years.
The community has been growing more and more every week,
which fills me with joy and pride and happiness.
And yeah,
in fact,
for the second season,
our episodes have been listened to more than 100,000 times in total.
That's already amazing,
but I don't intend to stop here.
I already recorded the first 10 episodes of season three,
and I can safely say that we We've raised the bar even more with some top,
top-level guests.
and super high-flying conversations.
These will be published from January 2026 onwards.
But in the meantime,
let's turn our focus back to today's episode.
My guest today is Simon Kramer,
who is the Executive Director and Policy Lead at EARA,
the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture.
This episode is divided in four chapters.
One,
we'll start with a conversation about farming revolutions of the past and why we need a new farming revolution today.
Two,
we'll talk about EARA,
its history,
its mission,
how it functions and so on.
Three,
we'll talk about the recent report published by EARA looking to compare regenerative farming in Europe
to conventional,
bringing hard data to the table to demonstrate that no matter how you look at it,
Regenac is just miles,
miles better.
And finally,
the last chapter will be about the CAP,
the Common Agriculture Policy,
and about IATA's proposition to change it in order to support regeneration much more.
This episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital.
I am your host,
Raphael,
and this is the Deep Seed Podcast.
you said that in the past farmer-led movements were always at the forefront of peace and health do
you have any examples to share i would add to peace and health liberation so there are many examples for example we europeans
came out of feudalism in which basically all of us,
a part of a very,
very few,
were slaves.
We were owned by other people who could decide where we ought to go,
where we cannot go,
for what we could be killed or to whom we could make love.
And the first movement really in Europe to break out of that
At the same time as the Evangelical Revolution on Luther was
Thomas Münzer and the Farmer Revolution in southern
Germany and Austria,
which actually in this year has its
500th anniversary.
And those farmers went way beyond of what Luther demanded.
But we never heard of them because they wanted more.
They wanted true liberation in the sense of a re-indigenization of Europeans.
Equality of women and men.
Equality of all among themselves.
not only just the reform of the Kleros,
who was part of this ruling power.
Then,
for example,
when what we now consider as representative democracies grew in the
17th century in England,
where we know,
still some of us know,
the name of Cromwell,
Well,
no,
which fought for the liberty of the
English against the king.
Actually,
there wasn't the most radical and liberating.
Those were farmers,
which are called the true levelers.
It was a farmer movement led by Jared Wynne Stanley,
which if you today read what they have written then,
is like beautiful liberation across the board again.
those movements standing up for the equality of women and men,
which at those times wasn't really a thing in any other discourses.
And then there was,
for example,
the Yeoman Revolution a little bit later on.
And that's just part of
European history.
I mean,
in Spain,
for example,
there was even a movement in the late
19th century and early 20th century
which was already in its name carried the name regeneration.
And that's still European now than when we couldn't look,
for example,
at the Sankara in Burkina Faso in the
80s.
They were completely dependent.
They were just liberating themselves from colonialism,
completely food dependent.
so
They had to import all the food the country needed.
And that's a huge part of imperialism.
If I can't feed,
as a people,
I can't feed ourselves,
well,
I always got to suck up to the one who's putting food in my belly.
And in only four years,
they went to being completely food self-sufficient.
And until this day,
it's probably the most successful four years in regreening the Sahel and stopping the growth of the
Sahara and the desertification of the Sahel.
We can go to India.
I mean,
I'm a little nerd on that stuff.
I mean,
for example,
the Magnitsky,
which were a pharma revolution during the great...
Russian Revolution 1917,
where today again our sisters and brothers,
Ukrainians,
Russians and others,
are dying at the hand of machines and guns and other interests.
There,
when the Red Army fought the White Army in Russia in 1917-18,
all the way until 1920,
In Ukraine,
there was a free movement that was not led by a Bolshevik party,
that had a real,
true,
direct democracy,
like the original Russian revolution,
which was a
Soviet. I mean,
Soviet republic is a paradox,
but the Soviets are originally also farmers that liberated themselves and did communes.
That's what a
Soviet did.
And there under Nestor Magno...
They were able to basically fight both the Red and the White Army to keep a free space of Ukraine where they organized themselves.
And again,
always a good indicator of a true liberation movement,
equality of women and men.
And there,
as farmers deep down...
closest to our re-indigenization was also the only space in those years where we didn't do pogroms against Jews.
So while both the Red and the White Army did pogroms against the Jews in that liberated,
pharma-led,
direct democratic space,
there were none of it.
Why do you think it didn't last,
though?
Ah,
because they both wanted him dead.
He died.
He rode,
he fled,
he fought on,
and then he fled,
and then he wrote some reflections,
Néstor Magno actually,
from Paris,
and then he died shortly after.
But I think they don't last because,
it says,
with feudalism.
I mean,
we liberated ourselves from feudalism only to then to suffer the enclosures of the commons.
And it's,
if we can't,
Marx said,
if you take the soil away from the people,
Then you can put them into the sweatshop and make them work for you.
I can still freely decide if I'm going to live as a smallholder farmer there or if I'm going to work in your sweatshop for a wage.
Conditions seem not favorable enough to have enough people in the sweatshop to keep the spin wheel of compound interest growing.
Do you think that we need this kind of liberation movement of peace and freedom and health?
In today's world,
the globalized society,
we can talk about Europe,
but the world as well.
Do you think we need it?
And do you think,
do you see that happening?
I think we desperately need it.
I think also it's happening,
as I think also it's sprouting,
has its greatest potential in the deepest of crises.
Because it's most easiest for people to awaken out of the trance of affluent consumerism.
And it's also easiest for people to refocus on what's really necessary.
At the same time,
I think...
You said health.
I mean,
we can go into the ugly details of the exponentially growing non-communicable diseases or how we are becoming important or even then
in agriculture the diseases.
that are pressuring both our livestock,
arable,
perennial,
all kinds of production.
So I think that's desperately needed.
And that regeneration has to grow from the root,
because otherwise it's hollow.
And that is both how we organize among ourselves as people and as we organize ourselves as people with nature.
Okay.
You said...
It's easiest today to free yourself from consumerism?
What do you mean?
It feels very hard today.
It feels like we're kind of stuck.
Yeah,
I would maybe easiest today is not proper.
I would say easiest in crisis.
So the larger the crisis,
the easier it is to question your worldview,
to come to a new mindset.
Maybe also to be induced to do some lifestyle changes.
And then we can see if we can grow something differently or alternatively or complementary.
Okay,
yeah.
I saw this video earlier today of a
French thinker who used the famous phrase,
the tree falling makes a lot more noise than the forest growing.
It was referring to the fact that the tree falling is the old system that's making a lot of noise,
that's grabbing the headlines everywhere.
But the forest,
according to him,
the forest is growing.
Is that kind of what you...
You mean as well?
I totally believe also the new forest is growing.
And the new forest and grasslands are growing,
if I may be allowed to come into degrowing some,
let's say,
ecological science racism against the poor grasslands.
In a sense,
all of these pioneer farmers.
part of IARA are a bit like pioneer trees in an ecosystem,
preparing the ecosystem for the rest of biodiversity to thrive.
And maybe here today by talking about this we're acting like the mycelium,
sharing the information and the resources around to help spread that.
I like this image anyway.
Yeah,
I love that image too.
And I think it goes way beyond the farmers of Eara.
I mean,
it's on all the other continents.
It's growing also in our youth.
And
I think also the women movement is...
is a great part of the liberational potential we are seeing today.
So you currently work for EARA,
the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture.
We mentioned
EARA many times on a podcast before because I've had,
I think,
maybe six or seven different farmers from the group.
But we never had an opportunity to do an episode focused on EARA.
So I'm looking forward to learn a bit more today.
So maybe you could start by explaining what it is,
the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture.
the story behind it and what it is that you're trying to achieve.
GLELE.
So it is basically a pan-European pharma association.
So the new kind of evolution,
I think every agronomic innovation leap goes with a new kind of pharma associations.
And we came into being now more than three years ago,
really.
by several convenings of people hosting the space and bringing the movement together.
And then several farmers felt the need for farmer-led voice for regenerative agriculture.
And the friends from
Climate Farmers and
Also from the Spanish Association for Regenerative Agriculture,
together we started hosting the space and then we had a kind of a startup accelerator which supported us and it was a young market gardening farmer from
Denmark.
me and our earliest colleague,
Natascha,
where we hosted the first online meeting of about 65 farmers in Europe,
where we tried to bring together really the pioneers with always an attempt to steward for.
diversity.
So we say learning from how the pioneers do at their soils.
So we try to have more or less a woman and a man from farmers from each country with as big of
of a farm type diversity as possible.
And then in those first online meetings,
the farmers decided to hold a founding conference,
which we held then with about 55 farmers from all over Europe,
from all ages,
from all diversities,
farm types.
Super beautiful.
And then we founded Deara.
And to me personally,
The most powerful thing is still the peace among the farmers themselves and with their capacity to collaborate.
And that's just become much more productive,
just as our ecosystems and their farms,
when they get diversity to work.
in symbiosis and not in competition that's amazing so just from that first online meeting you all collectively agreed to meet in person to create an organization so that you could collaborate together on these big questions correct
yes and how did you well you mentioned that you've selected farmers because you wanted a high diversity of farmers but
I suppose this is a regenerative agriculture association,
so there must have been also some criteria for selecting the farmers initially.
Yeah,
we...
I try to say,
and I ought to add always with humility,
because we don't want to create new borders.
So it's not like that's a good farmer,
that's a bad farmer or any of that kind.
We wanted to have the pioneers to be able to get the most productive organization that would be strongest in helping all other farmers to achieve as fast as possible this innovation leap in their production methodologies.
and also in their mindsets,
worldviews,
as those others.
And the criteria were very simple.
We set pioneers in two ways.
One really...
in their way of producing food with nature.
So the most sophisticated symbiosis.
Back then we didn't have any kind of
KPI system or the like to look if you have to increase your photosynthesis at least by 10%
per hectare a year over the last 10 years.
And then we didn't have anything like that.
And then the other...
Criteria was being pioneers in the way they would commit to help the movement beyond their farm.
So if that's like
Yannick and Alfonso in Spain with their own region academy schools,
if that's
Beate with soil biology schools for farmers,
if that's farmers who are doing their own machinery producing,
if that's farmers who are doing...
agronomic advising and so forth so really being pioneers both in food production with nature and in helping the movement yeah incredible i've i like i said spoke to a few of the farmers from the organizations and whenever
i asked them a question about iara i saw their eyes lit up you know and something they pretty much all told me is that it was a huge thing for them to not be alone anymore.
to be connected to a network of farmers who might be living a different life,
different conditions,
different type of farming,
but who had similar types of problems,
similar types of visions of what farming should be like,
and being able to exchange problems and solutions and experiences with other people they felt.
much less alone.
And that's really important,
right?
Yes,
I think.
I mean,
that's just beautiful.
Me personally,
too.
I mean,
when we have meetings with the farmers or we meet in person more than ever,
which is always a privilege because,
you know,
we are a pan-European organization.
So
It takes resources to meet,
it takes time to be away from the farm to meet and so forth.
So we are not meeting so often in person.
But when we do and also online,
it just empowers each other,
I think.
And that's super valuable.
Where is it going from here?
It started,
you said,
with 65,
70 farmers.
Has it grown since in the last three years?
Is it looking to grow more,
include more regenerative farmers from across Europe?
Yes,
so it has grown.
We have taken always an approach of quality over quantity.
And so we didn't have any goals of growing super fast at any costs.
We are not an American startup.
So with the farmers in,
I mean,
we are organizing in us.
So we try to practice a regeneration of democracy also.
So.
We try to have a direct democracy in which all decisive decisions are decided by at least eight of our farmers making a consensus decision.
So it's not like our farmers elect some kind of executive director once a year and then they make all the decisions and then after the year again we complain about the failed policies or decisions.
But we really try with online meetings and stuff.
I have a direct
PharmaLab decision making.
And the farmers also co-created in such meetings with such decision making processes their own methodology of how to take in new farmers.
And now basically our farmers can invite whomever they believe fitting to join the family as a farmer.
And then we have a non-bureaucratic,
but a personal assessment methodology where each new farmer needs to be sponsored by two existing farmers.
One optimally as regionally close as a new farmer and the other one from a similar farm type.
And then they basically have a few chats and then they say if there would be an enrichment for our community.
Okay.
And there has been many new farmers?
Yes,
now it's,
I mean,
we started slow because also it took a lot of time to come to these processes and set up our own protocols in that sense.
And now we are growing,
I think,
with about five to ten farmers every one to month.
And now we have our next annual gathering.
In December at Pulicaro Farm.
And I think then again we will make,
the farmers will let creativity and symbiosis sprout and then we'll make further decisions in terms of where our next successional stages will go.
With
ERA, you recently published a report.
Where you collected data from a lot of regenerative farms across Europe and you compared that data to conventional farms in the same areas.
Is that correct?
Yeah.
Yes and no.
I can,
yes,
clearly go into it.
So maybe just before,
maybe some of you,
we really wanted to show,
and that's part of the story of hope.
that our pioneering people are already able to produce with nature more than we even believe possible.
Like we are now sitting here in Brussels.
In Brussels the whole Green Deal discourse only two years ago and even now.
Most people in DG agriculture,
most people that claim themselves to be scientists.
All people are young to speak on objective reason and empirics.
They wouldn't even doubt the assumption that if we reduce pesticides and synthetic fertilizers by 50 and 20 percent respectively,
we necessarily would reduce European yields.
And they wouldn't even believe that until 2040 or 50 we could reduce pesticides and fertilizers by those numbers without reducing yields.
And yes,
in that report we show that some of our best farmers in Europe already today,
the last three years,
produce the same if not more
with much less inputs.
Indeed,
that's some of the highlights I wrote down from the report.
They say that you observe a 2%
lower yield,
so pretty much equal,
while using 61%
less synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and
75% less pesticides,
while making
20% higher gross margins per hectare.
That's quite incredible.
That's what we would call some of the empirics on the fourth agricultural revolution of humanity.
And to these 2%
yields,
it ought to be added that our farmers or the farmers in the report produced those yields without any feed imports from outside Europe.
Actually,
98%
of the farmers...
produced those years with feed only from their own region.
And the one farmer who still bought some soya for his chicken from
France while he was in Spain is now buying regeneratively produced soy in
Spain. So that's amazing stuff.
Yeah,
incredible.
Yeah,
those numbers are already impressive in themselves,
but they don't tell the full story.
I would like to dig deeper into this report together,
but to start with the name.
So it's called
Farmer-Led Research on Europe's Full Productivity.
Could you please explain what we mean by farmer-led research and
Europe's full productivity?
So,
PharmaLed is also,
we have been working on this research in our working groups with the farmers for one and a half years.
We were,
relatively to other kind of public research programs and so forth,
really fast in producing this report and that's also comes,
we have a principle in the hour which is hurrying slowly.
But our farmers of course are completely aware of the urgency of
societal and ecological breakdowns and want to power ahead as they do on their farms in contributing to solving this so pharma let says that it was co-created and designed by
farmers and full productivity is really
We believe much more is possible.
We have forgotten what nature can produce.
If you go back to the books,
for example,
there's an amazing research on American,
North American or Turtle Island food systems before colonialism.
They were much more productive,
of course.
There was still
8-9% organic matter in the soils and not like 1-2%.
Same around Berlin.
If you look,
Albrecht Thea is a famous German agronomist from the
19th century.
He said around
Berlin the soils were 4 to 8 percent.
Now it's like 0.5 to 1.5 or something.
So
I said before this narrative that we would have to sacrifice yields and that producing more for nature is in trade-off with producing for humans.
We want to debunk that and sow hope.
Because we don't even know anymore what our productivity can be if we engage in the most sophisticated symbiosis with nature.
So we have this idea that the current industrial conventional systems are highly productive,
but they do produce big quantities of food,
right?
So we have the impression that this is the most productive system there is,
but you're saying that it's not?
No,
like for example,
you know,
when we were still indigenous here in Europe,
so we have archaeological...
Findings from before the birth of Christ in Germany,
where the staple crop of the indigenous
Germans at that time were basically hazelnut and balrush.
And balrush is a kind of wheat that grows in swamps,
more or less.
And the productivity to produce kilocalories and proteins of that bilirush per hectare is still a lot,
lot higher than even today our most intensive,
most sophisticated wheat yields of 13 tons per hectare.
I know some Europeans even excel that.
The very first phrase of the report says this.
Conventional agricultural models are not fit for purpose in the face of Europe's compounding crisis in soil health,
biodiversity,
food system resilience and climate stability.
These challenges cannot be solved by current input-intensive farming systems designed for short-term yields.
Such models now expose Europe to critical strategic vulnerabilities,
reliance on imported food,
feed and inputs,
Unturnable rural livelihoods and fragile production systems increasingly disrupted by climate extremes.
I'd love it if you could unpack that whole statement,
because I feel like this would be the perfect base for the rest of the conversation.
I mean,
I can put figures from the top of my head to that in the sense of how...
Yields are reducing now for the first time since we started after the Second World War with fully employing the Green Revolution.
So the logic of that is also for failing itself.
At the same time,
we have halved the amount of people who...
are farmers in Europe in the last 20 years,
and the trends look like we are going to do that again in the next 10 to 15 years.
And then we need to think about where our food is coming from.
And then on the other side,
which is not so poignant in this,
we have political economic crisis in terms of oligopolies in food retail markets,
for example.
We have other problems with our governments putting priorities on competition rather than collaboration.
And I think as any
European, especially with a continent as densely populated as ours,
we need to seriously think how we can help farmers,
help young people get into.
farming and then help everyone to farm differently.
Okay,
and how does regenerative agriculture help solve these issues?
I think from a very basic perspective,
this fourth agricultural revolution of humanity,
the pioneering farmers have indigenuated or have innovated.
ways of producing more photosynthesis,
more biomass,
more microbiology on their land while producing food and using this more in biomass and microbial life to substitute the
inputs that they have.
enabled us to produce such high,
though empty,
and at other points destructive yields.
Just a quick post to tell you about the official partner of the Deep Seed podcast and that's
Soil Capital.
Soil Capital is a company that accelerates the transition to regenerative agriculture by financially rewarding farmers who improve the health of their soils.
They are an incredible company,
I love what they're doing and I'm super proud to be partnering with them for the Deep Seed podcast.
Something else I found in the report is on the topic of the greenhouse gas emissions.
The report says that 75%
adoption of regenerating forms of agriculture could more than offset the EU emissions coming from agriculture.
First of all,
can you explain how you arrived at that conclusion and maybe what it means?
And I may say I think that is a very conservative figure.
I have written with the Boston Consulting Group,
for example,
a big report on outcomes of application.
adoption of regenerating agricultures in Germany.
And the figures we arrived at so far still is basically you take coefficients of scientific literature on different practices.
And then you see how many practices are we using now?
What kind of emissions are they having?
What can we achieve?
And then the adoption,
you model the adoption rates across different farmers.
But that's not all.
That's on very different ways still a very poor assessment of what's possible.
How so?
So,
A,
if you assess,
so for example today let's say we have a standard arable farming and on the books of standard life.
cycle assessments and standard science,
maybe we would say a hectare of arable farming has something around 2 to 2.5 tons of emissions per year,
CO2 emissions.
However,
that assessment is already fraud.
Because,
for example,
the emissions we cause by erosion,
erosion,
so by the soil that's
put,
swam away by rains because of plowing,
are not taken into account.
So the way we today account for agricultural emissions in the standard science is flawed because that science is made up from the minds and the interests
Of the green revolution,
of those selling tractors,
selling industrial livestock meat,
selling pesticides,
selling nitrogen fertilizers,
they did due care that they wouldn't look so bad as they should.
That's one part where it could be much better.
There's,
for example,
now new peer-reviewed literature,
where then instead of the two and a half,
it's more like six tons.
It's a huge difference.
That's just one example.
And then on the other end is,
of course,
not only how much worse are we actually today than our numbers say,
and then how much more can we sequester than our...
How much better can we be than our numbers say today?
And there are also some methodological flaws in what we believe we can do today.
That's also what we wanted to show with the report.
Because in the report we are not looking at literature anymore.
We are measuring on the ground of the pioneering farmers.
Not the specific CO2 emissions.
That's the model,
but I'll later share,
I think,
the still by far most hopeful and amazing insight from the whole report.
But what we have in terms of our CO2 sequestering capacities is,
if we always just do a satirical study,
so
In science today you have to isolate all the other variables so you can prove a causal connection between two variables.
So in agricultural science this means we leave everything the same and just denote it.
But we keep the same nitrogen fertilizer,
the same pesticides,
the same phosphor,
whatever.
Okay,
and then we see the difference.
And then we do that for another and for another.
And then we add them together.
But we'll never see synergies by that.
But farmers would never do it like that.
They are never innovating like we do in scientific practice today.
Because they would,
okay,
I go naughty,
I reduce synthetic fertilizer 30%.
I save some insecticides and I put some foliar spray.
Science has no idea what's going on then because...
according to standard scientific positivist practice we can't even know and then that's one part then comes soil science this is a little bit controversial i think
we are all going to learn it's it's a positive thing so i don't know if you are deep into the discourse of
We think at some point our soils can't take in more carbon.
No?
Yeah.
That's a hoax.
And that comes back to our racism against grasslands.
I say that also provocatively because I think it's funny.
But grassland soils work different than forest soils.
And we have looked at forest soils for one.
That's a problem why we have some thought problems on understanding that.
The other thing is we say,
okay,
now the soil has 6%
organic matter.
Then we need to know the bike density and then we basically know how much carbon is in that soil.
And then we say,
yeah,
you know,
we are not,
if you look at the famous graphs,
let's say of Gabe Brown,
he came from 2 to
8% organic matter and then our S-curve is flattening out.
Yes,
that's a curve of a relative number.
But in absolute terms,
we can take more because we can build soil.
In material terms,
because so far we were never able to measure.
So we say,
OK,
we take the soil test 30 centimeters.
Maybe sometimes now we want to do 50 to see the deep carbon also.
But just imagine every year you're putting amazing cover crops or you have a grassland and you put biomass on top and inside.
Carbon on top of it.
But you're also going to grow.
So if you measured 10 years ago 30 centimeters,
10 years later you're measuring the top 30 centimeters ago,
maybe we are one centimeter higher.
We didn't know so far.
We couldn't know.
Now we have super new satellite guided soil testing where we can look with the satellites if the distance is actually still the same.
So the theory I'm spinning here.
We will find out soon.
But also,
for example,
the biggest soil scientist in Germany,
Axel Don,
he was a firm believer that at some point you just couldn't put more carbon into the soil.
Well,
last year he came out and he's like,
no,
guys,
sorry.
Actually,
there is no limit to the carbon you can put in the soil.
I never thought about it in the way that you explain now,
but it actually makes a lot of sense.
And I'm just thinking back of...
However...
of a farm I visited in Portugal recently.
It was Antonio at Terra Centropica.
He showed me one piece of land that recently planted a new system of trees and there was almost no soil.
It was just rocks and a tiny bit of soil.
And then he showed me a system that was six,
seven years old,
not even that old.
And he dug a hole and he put his whole arm into it to dig up this fresh soil from under there.
So he created...
in just a few years time these 60-80 centimeters of soil.
And so it does make sense that if you go from one centimeter of soil,
which has a certain percentage of carbon in it,
if you build a lot of soil,
Maybe the total percentage,
the percentage of organic matter in that soil arrives at a threshold at some point,
but the amount of soil you can build doesn't.
Is that what you're saying?
And we have built those soils all around.
Today we are fighting in Ukraine about the Black Earth.
Well,
no one heard of the archaeological findings of the so-called megasites of 4,000 to 5,000 before the birth of Christ.
When we basically had a permaculture mega city in that area,
maybe they built that soil.
The Amazon,
we now know,
we humans built that soil with terra preta and stuff.
And in the US too,
I mean,
we still know the black earth of the savannas of the bisons of the...
We weren't.
They weren't the buyers by themselves.
The indigenous people there,
they stewarded that.
Architects of Abundance is an amazing book on those stewarding practices.
It's really special when you think about it.
People are talking about the environment,
climate change,
the problem of carbon emissions.
And wherever you look at any industry,
It seems like a very complicated problem.
I don't know,
like the transport industry,
for example,
you could say,
well,
we're going to reduce or use a fossil fuel,
we're going to use more renewable energies,
electrify,
change the way we organize our cities,
become more circular.
Like you can find all of these solutions that are really,
really difficult,
first of all,
to put into practice,
and that will allow you to kind of reduce your environmental impact.
But here,
when we're talking about agriculture,
we're talking about something that has the potential to
not only become emission neutral,
but actually become,
would you say positive,
negative?
It depends on how you spin it.
You can go way,
way,
way beyond just the zero.
And that's very unique to agriculture,
isn't it?
Yes,
and we don't have to reduce,
but we have to do more.
And by doing more,
we can hear this almighty rift of humans,
culture.
and nature,
all the other rifts that are kind of growing from this initial rift.
And also to add,
we also often forget,
but until,
I only know the numbers until 2019,
but until 2019 still,
we had caused more emissions.
with land use change and agriculture compounded over the history of humanity than with fossil fuel emissions.
In the report you also present an index that you've created that's called the regenerating full productivity
RFP.
First of all,
what is this index?
What did you create it for?
And second,
can you please explain how it works?
What's the methodology behind it?
Yeah,
clearly.
I mean,
we wanted to contribute something,
the whole regeneration movement everywhere.
We have come up with new protocols on how we understand regeneration,
which is not practice-based,
but process-based.
We are also on our first founding meeting that we spent the whole conference on,
on defining regenerative agriculture along our four principles.
together
And then now slowly,
let's say in the supply chain,
so also now with certification standards,
in the private sector,
we are getting some food on the soil in terms of spreading that understanding of looking at agriculture.
In the public sector,
still not at all.
So we wanted to create again a mycelium in the middle,
a language which could translate between the worlds so we can connect our national economic worlds,
the Eurostat worlds,
the thinking worlds of our people in the agricultural and economic ministries,
to the regeneration world.
and at the same time also come up with something that just a discussion we had or we have to reduce emissions we have to reduce our impact we have to scale back we have to give land to nature again well
we are part of nature and i'm a big fan of degrowth economics for example or steady state
...economics,
now so-called donut economics.
But they all have one flaw.
They never mention what we have to regrow.
Yeah,
we have to degrow a hell of a lot of things.
Yeah,
well,
let's start with our military,
with our nukes.
We have to degrow a lot of stuff.
But we have,
even more importantly,
as we just found out at the climate issue itself,
but the health issue and so forth,
we have to regrow.
the capacity of our biosphere to grow complex life.
So we wanted to bring out also an indicator that could be used by national economics and whole societies to steward their most underlying production factor,
our land,
in regeneration.
So that was a big goal.
And now I can go into how it works,
which...
I would love to.
Just before you go into how it works,
just another question.
There are so many different indicators and different organizations working on different ways to measure and monitor the health of farms and ecosystems.
Why did you decide to create your own?
What was sort of missing from other systems?
Yes,
and we can now do an hour on history of certification or the history of the organic movement in the
80s, late 80s,
beginning of
90s, kind of like the regeneration movement now with,
you know,
more than hundreds of...
private certification standards.
Where they are right now we are doing a benchmarking study,
hopefully soon we can publish a report where we put all the private certification schemes on region claims into an overview and comparison.
But the other thing is really the language was not,
no one did the effort of trying to speak the language of our public servants.
If we are not into the game of destroying our nation state tomorrow,
then at least we should try to educate our public servants so that they can think more on how they can make policies that help us to steward for life.
So we didn't see that anywhere,
this attempt to speak.
a little bit more the language of our public servants out of this pioneering movement.
And the other part is that it ought to be pharma-led,
because we are producing a lot of data.
I mean,
now we don't even have to start on AI and so forth.
But we believe
in the double use value of data.
So every data point we want to measure at the farm should first help the farmer to farm more with nature.
And then,
okay,
the data can also inform regulation,
subsidy or supply chain,
secondary standards and so forth.
So that were our two outsets where we wanted to bring added value,
which we didn't.
which we were lacking.
Right.
So every measurement should be a measurement that's actually helping the farmer in his operation,
not just something bureaucratic that is a problem for the farmer to measure and to communicate.
And then ultimately also be completely non-dogmatic,
that is to say,
not rely on any practices and associated coefficients from some...
flawed literature analysis but really measure results and outcomes.
Okay sweet so we can get to the question of well how does this work actually in practice?
So we assess a regenerating full productivity performance per unit of land because
Land is the most finite defining resource of our journey here on Mother Earth.
And then we look at a list of indicators per hectare of land.
We have two indicators which for us are most decisive,
which is photosynthesis more than any other.
Yeah.
because regenerating photosynthesis is a almighty task of humanity today.
If you look into...
Our biosphere had seen many more climate changes and many more mass extinctions.
Today is the fastest and most steep one ever.
But the dinosaurs,
for example,
they were living in a much,
much warmer climate.
But they had a stable climate.
And that's because we had more than double the amount of living plants on this planet.
which means of course also more than double the amount of living soils.
And we basically assess how much food you produce for humans and for life,
with what efficiency,
and that's it.
So we look at kilocalories,
proteins,
your gross margin and then what so that's what you produce in terms of human food and pharma food the gross margin and then we look at how many what kind of inputs did be used with what efficiencies so all
the fertilizers pesticides fuel and water
And then we look at the ecosystem services which most decisively is whole year photosynthesis and soil cover.
Then we look at land surface temperature and plant diversity and evapotranspiration.
I want to add also this is
was the first report on an ongoing research program.
So there's,
of course,
a very long discussion section because it's by no means perfect.
It's a project and a process.
It's not the perfect closed system.
Yeah.
It's a work in progress.
This is the first version of it.
And of course,
this is going to expand.
You're going to have more data.
You're going to refine the methodology to improve all of that.
So you mentioned quite a few indicators already,
and I want to try and understand how you measure them.
You started with photosynthesis,
is that something easily measurable?
Yeah,
so we are now pretty good in measuring photosynthesis via satellites and we have big NASA projects and so forth.
And then we have publicly available satellites,
so for example all the satellites we use there are owned by us.
It's European satellites.
Then of course also you can take other satellite now we have a lot of private satellites you know like the mask satellites sending our fascist wi-fi or we have these cost
a lot of money.
So we had very little money for this report.
I mean,
we did the report on about 120,
the whole study on
120K.
So we didn't have any money to buy better satellites.
Hopefully in the next one we might be able to buy better satellites.
Because,
for example,
then our data on surface temperature is a strong indication.
It's amazing data.
But it could be much better because unfortunately the satellites we use,
they take their picture,
which were free,
at 10 a.m.
We all know on a hot summer morning at 10 a.m.
it's still relatively cool.
If I want to see how cool the forest is against the desert,
I better measure at
3 p.m.
or something.
So satellites today are capable of doing all of that,
of measuring the amount of...
photosynthesis the temperature of the ground at any given times yeah not at any give depends i mean satellites are you usually specialized on something and then we send them up and they do their thing and
then you have a lot of different satellites which you can utilize in different ways but yeah for photosynthesis it's quite good
But then,
for example,
another problem is,
let's say,
okay,
for the surface temperature,
the problem is the satellite is doing its picture at 10 a.m.,
which should be better at 3 p.m.
Then another thing is,
okay,
the satellite makes a picture with a pixel,
which has a 10 by 10 resolution or a 30 by 30 resolution or could also make much smaller,
but then it's getting more expensive.
Okay,
so this information coming from Satellize is available easily for farmers to use,
or do they need someone,
like an organization like you,
to help them collect that data,
pay for it,
make sense of it,
and so on?
Theoretically,
it's now free of use.
We're trying to bring...
a system where it's kind of in the comments of the farmer we are trying to create a kind of open code methodology for example there's also open teams which is doing great work um where basically the farmers could have that free at
some point that's our goal for sure free and most importantly with the data sovereignty being on the farm with the farmer
How do they use this data?
Is there some kind of interface that allows them to make decisions on the farm?
What kind of format does it come in?
We worked here with a startup which was founded by one of our founding farmers,
which was now transferred to a purpose venture,
which is now called AgriPurpose.
Peter,
which was also a previous guest on the podcast.
Nice.
So,
yeah.
Peter.
co-developed there with a lot of researchers peer-reviewed studies governments around the world but there's also a lot of others so it's not so uncommon i mean when we speak of precision agriculture and so forth you know by a climate field view and all these guys they work
with the same that same basic thoughts and on the basic same infrastructure okay
Another part I picked up from the report on this topic,
on the
RFP index,
it says that
RFP can enable harmonizing,
monitoring,
reporting,
and verification structure for a blended...
public-private transition finance system.
I've been to a few conferences where people talk about this concept of blended public-private finance and I have to admit that I don't really understand it and so this may be a great opportunity for me to learn something new,
if you could explain what it means.
Let's take a specific example,
let's take some
Usually we now say supply shed,
but let's say some bioregion or some municipality where we have for simplicity,
let's say,
100 farmers.
And we actually,
the local mayor,
the people have an interest in all of the farms going on the regeneration journey.
Maybe it's a flood-prone region,
so they need better infiltration capacities of the fields around the houses as fast as possible.
Then,
of course,
there's other interests.
They could buy the food from the farms locally and so forth.
And now we basically today the farmer is there and then he's getting some money from the public.
So they are getting some common agriculture policy money.
They are getting maybe some offer for some carbon credits.
Maybe they are getting some offer for some water credits because a local water supplier is also for either having problems with the quantity of the water or there are too many pesticides or nitrogen in
the water.
And then maybe also the farmer is getting an offer from his bank for reduced interests.
on their loan if they do something more sustainable.
The problem is now the farmer has a revenue,
let's say something around 2000 bucks per hectare and each of them is offering a few bucks.
But for every buck the farmer has to do a new round of paperwork.
For every buck someone is prescribing the farmer what to do and they do it because they are getting the buck.
So they have basically zero headspace for focusing on what they should be doing and what they are the best agents in our society of,
trying to understand how they can heal their soils and work with nature.
So what we want to do is,
if all of them...
could agree on the same basic language in terms of the data that we need from the farmer.
If then the same data is designed in a way that actually,
firstly,
that data helps the farmer to farm more with nature.
And then we can all put...
in the money in the pot and the farmer gets it without having to do so much paperwork without being told what to do because that inhibits pedagogically the farmer's capacity to innovate in the future and adapt to his context and
then we have a public private partnership
Which is,
yeah,
just ugly language we got to today.
I see.
Yeah,
okay.
And so this index helps,
this financing system helps and indicates sort of the results of what the farmer is doing rather than at the source prescribing what he should do.
Exactly.
We hope that it contributes to a coalescing of all of us who are in this space.
The bank has its way of looking at the practices they want for sustainability.
Maybe the off-taker has its way already of looking into what they define as regenerative.
Maybe the water agency needs reduced pesticides and less plowing.
Maybe the flood insurer also needs less plowing and some earthworks or whatever.
And so that we can all speak the same language without being reductionistic but giving the capacity to the local context to grow new kinds of diversity.
Is there anything else you'd like to mention about this report?
Anything that's worth talking about still?
You can read me like an oven book.
Yes,
totally.
Because there is a...
Which I didn't see coming,
which,
I mean,
that's the beauty of collecting that data and then looking where we stand,
no?
And we had already the topic of the S-curve today a little bit and not photosynthesis.
There's one figure in the report which...
To my humble understanding,
it is one of the most hopeful figures we have seen as humanity,
definitely as Europeans.
Because you see in that figure how much photosynthesis per year and hectare the pioneering farmers do on average.
And we always compare a field of a pioneering farmer through three random fields of other farmers in the same pedoclimatic regions.
So the same conditions for growing photosynthesis.
And then,
you know,
what's interesting,
if you're a farmer who's already very advanced in your knowledge of new production methodologies,
or
a farmer more still in the old ways.
A bad year is a bad year for a good farmer as it's for the other farmers because that depends on climate and nature.
If we had too early frost or shitty rain so it was too hot or a drought you know that's something that influences photosynthesis always a lot.
And we always see in the curve so we start
with about 5%
more photosynthesis in 2018.
And the curve goes of the normal farmers and the pioneering farmers,
and they grow always.
So then in the end,
we are at 8%.
But always when the average farmers go down,
the pioneering farmers also go down.
So when it's a bad year,
they also sometimes produce less than the year before,
not because it was a bad year.
And now in the last year,
We see the almighty decoupling.
The average farmers have a worse year than before.
And the pioneering farmers keep increasing.
So we are hitting some exponential point.
If you look at the S-curve of grass,
for example,
or any successional forest ecosystems.
So I think those pioneering farmers which...
Started around the same time,
maybe those fields are now 10,
15 years,
maybe some a little bit shorter in regenerating management.
They basically hit the inflection point of the S-curve.
And we did that while climate change is getting tougher and tougher.
You know,
there are also those who tell us,
oh,
climate change,
we can't put any new carbon into soils because...
Due to climate changes getting more difficult,
actually we see we are just getting started.
The indicator you're talking about here,
is the total RFP result or it's just photosynthesis,
right?
Okay,
so you're seeing that photosynthesis is increasing on average for the pioneer farmers in a year where it's decreasing everywhere else.
Yes,
and that's the first time.
They didn't manage to do that from 2018 until 22,
and now they are able to do it.
Somehow it clicked this year.
Something happened.
Maybe the fact that they're now grouped together in an alliance where they can learn from each other and feel part of a family,
of a community.
Who knows?
But that was 23 to 24.
We just had some video calls.
That's too much to say.
Yeah,
okay,
but that's very,
very encouraging.
Especially when we know that we need to build resilience in the face of climate change,
to know that it's possible to some extent.
Not only to some extent,
it's to the extent that we can be humbly sitting here saying we have no idea to what extent,
you know,
because today,
Matteo Mazzola,
okay,
he grew an agroforestry system with Paulownia,
which are now...
10 meters tall who knows maybe his daughter in
45 years is running an agroforestry system with some pine trees you know 60 meters tall and back as they were many years back in turtle island the sky is the limit literally almost
must
Hi again,
thank you so much for listening this far into the conversation.
If you're still here,
it means that you really deeply care about regenerating our planet and like me,
you believe that regenerative agriculture is one of the key solutions to do so.
Personally,
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I really appreciate it.
And now let's get back to the conversation.
I'd like to move on to kind of the second big chapter of this discussion.
Which is the common agricultural policy,
because I know it's a huge topic.
First,
maybe you could sort of tell us,
people like me who are still kind of new to these topics,
what the CAP is.
What's the kind of the history of the CAP,
what it is and why it's so important?
Yeah,
the history of the CAP is basically...
It's a big part of what makes us European today in the sense that we understand ourselves as Europeans.
We at EARA,
we don't understand ourselves as Europeans with regard to the European Union,
but of the whole continent.
But after the Second World War,
we started with basically a steel cartel,
which is a legislative policy route.
of the European Union,
which was kind of forced upon us by the Americans,
so that the Germans wouldn't get too easy free again to making new bombs of fascism.
The French were like,
that's a little bit unfair because we have much less steel than the Germans.
We have a lot more agriculture.
So let's do also a common agricultural policy,
not only a common steel policy.
And the Americans resisted that from the very beginning because we Europeans before.
the second world war first world war all those hundred like since the industrial revolution we were never able to feed ourselves and we were dependent on russian wheat we were dependent on american wheat and other imports and
they actually wanted to keep that and then we had the common agriculture policy which enabled us europeans to become food self-sufficient by in the beginning paying farmers.
for what they had produced if the market price,
the demand,
fell,
so that we could artificially,
by public policy,
keep the demand up so that farmers wouldn't go bankrupt if global prices fell.
And then at some point we had a reform because the World Trade Organization told us that's unfair.
market practices.
We are creating an artificial competitive advantage for our farmers.
And then we switched to paying the farmers for the agricultural land they have.
And now lately,
last 20 years,
we try to pay them also for the ecosystem services they provide.
While it ought to be mentioned throughout that time why the CAP did build this
Food self-sufficiency for us Europeans,
at the same time,
it basically helped to degrow the food self-sufficiency of our sisters and brothers in Africa,
because we then dumped our,
we basically also had export subsidies,
so that the milk that we here produced.
in way more than we could eat,
would arrive in Africa on some village market to a price that no one could compete with,
even although their labor costs would be much lower than here.
And then the local farmer had to close because they were buying the cheapest milk and not the local farmer.
Okay,
so let's continue the story.
You said that the
WTO put pressure on Europe with the cap to change the system.
There was a reform.
When was that?
I think that was around the
90s.
And then...
bringing us to today around the
90s we had a shift and then slowly while not only paying the farmers for the land they kept in agricultural production also for
what they would do for nature or less harmful.
So first it was called greening measures and eco-schemes,
agriculture and environmental climate measures.
And there's an infinite list of acronyms,
AECMs and so forth.
And basically they work all the same way.
We again per hectare say,
okay,
dear farmer,
if you do a flower strip,
This flower strip costs you X amount of money in seeds and you could have also planted wheat so you lose some income.
So let's say that was about
250 euros.
So now you get 250 euros per hectare if you plant a flower strip or if you do some other stuff.
Always a practice and we tell you to do it and we offer you some money for it.
And you can take it or leave it.
That's basically how our CAP is today.
Okay,
so two things.
One is sort of Hector-based subsidies.
And the second one is these payments for...
Measures you do on those Hectors.
These really are practices,
right?
If you do this in this way at this time of year,
then you will get this extra money.
Exactly.
Right.
How would you...
Imagine changing that system.
What's the vision of
IARA for changing the cap?
Basically bringing the innovations in the mindset of the regeneration movement into policy.
Because paying the farmers for the specific practices is innovation inhibiting.
And the farmers are not able to.
do what they need to do.
So for example we have,
let's say there's a practice here in Belgium actually on cover crops and then there's a specific date by which you need to have planted the cover crops.
With climate change maybe it was raining three weeks in a row.
Now the farmer needs to go out to get that money because it's actually a lot of money relatively to what they can earn sometimes.
So we can even do more harm with...
money we pay for practices while of course also completely inhibiting the farmer wanting to learn to understand okay when is the perfect mix for seeding i can go out with the tractor without doing compaction there will be a nice sprouting of the cover crop and so forth that's
a pedagogical problem and we want to say again very simple outcomes Thanks.
We don't prescribe you anything,
farmer.
You are the expert of your farm,
of your local context.
You want to bring this farm to the next generation.
You want to help society have healthy food and a resilience in climate change.
So we just look at your whole year photosynthesis and soil cover with the satellites.
And we look at it in two ways.
We look at the total amount you produce and how well you improved to last year.
Because like this we can be fair to the pioneering farmers who are already producing the most for us.
But we also have an even higher obligation almost.
Because it's our taxpayer money who's paying that,
no?
For the young farmers or new farmers that are taking over a farm that is degraded,
we want to give these people the biggest support possible to regenerate as fast as possible.
And there we look very simply,
we say you are regenerating if you improve photosynthesis and soil cover year over year.
That's also why we actually did a large part of this study,
because we wanted to prove that photosynthesis and soil cover are good enough proxies to measure for all of the other things we can measure,
like pesticides,
nitrogen use,
and so forth,
which we cannot measure in the CAP,
because we don't have enough money to measure it,
and we don't have access to that data as our public bodies.
Okay,
so you're not using the full
RFP system.
That's much more complex,
but you're focusing on these two outcomes.
Photosynthesis,
soil cover,
because they're good enough to prove that there is regeneration happening and therefore reward farmers who do improve these outcomes.
But they are free to choose how they want to achieve that.
They're free to...
to find out what works best for their context,
for their land,
for their system,
depending on the weather and things like that.
Exactly.
And we choose it like this because we have to be also real politically feasible.
So its policy is very path dependent.
You know,
our bureaucrats are not the people who embrace radical changes.
So we want to offer something to them which can make sense and seems feasible for them.
So let's say a Regenified
Certification
Methodology, or a Soil Capital Assessment for a Supply Chain,
um
of a corporate customer is much more granular in the data.
But in terms of what our CAP payment agencies and policy design bureaucrats can deal with,
it's on the moon.
We are just saying you're already paying farmers for every hectare of land they have.
Now just look with your own satellites on them and adapt the amount you pay them to how much photosynthesis and soil cover you see.
So simple enough to actually put in practice that it could happen,
technically speaking.
And politically from a kind of political discourse,
while at the same time good enough.
To plant that seed in all of the minds of the farmers which have yet to engage on regeneration.
Because in the end,
very simply,
what all the pioneers are doing is increasing photosynthesis and soil cover.
If you're doing mob grazing,
if you're doing cover crops,
if you're doing undersown crops,
if you're doing no-till,
if you're doing agroforestry,
all of that in some way or another is increasing photosynthesis and soil cover.
So if the idea is to start from the existing
Hector-based system,
but then we modify the amounts based on these outcomes,
there will be some winners and some losers,
right?
How do we get the losers to agree to this?
Yeah,
because then we ask for more.
Because,
as you said,
if we just pay those people who already own the most land,
the most money,
that's not really socially regenerating,
is it?
We still want to also incentivize the big landowners to go towards regeneration.
We also...
propose that those payment rates per hectare are adjusted with discounts and bonuses.
You can think like a progressive income tax.
If you earn a million euros per year,
maybe you pay
40% income tax.
If I'm doing
20,000 a year,
then I'm paying maybe 50%
or nothing.
And that's the same for the farmer.
So if you are a very small farmer...
You get multipliers on your performance-based payment.
If you're a very big farmer,
you get always a little bit of discount on your payments.
And then we want to do the same for young and new farmers to get a bonus.
And then still,
yes.
Yeah,
that makes a lot of sense from a neutral perspective of someone who wished to see more regeneration happening.
all around but as far as i understand the big land owners are very influential they have a lot of influence in farming unions in policy making so
if they're the ones who are going to be losing from this system how do you get that approved how do you get that into policy with them
opposition to you with the broad catch-all social movement because we all know we can talk a lot about and do research on policy design and how we would like to have the policy but of course in the end we need to create the political pressure to push it through and
for that it's important to understand that at the brussels level now we are just doing the framework on how the cap
How then the CAP really arrives at the farmer is decided in Paris,
in Berlin,
in Rome.
We have now two years.
to build a movement that is led and guided by our most amazing farmers.
But we really believe that this regeneration narrative,
as we started,
peace,
health,
brings out and can unite.
All of the different factions,
from the peace movement,
the women movement,
the youth movement,
the climate movement,
if they all understand regeneration and regenerative agriculture as we here discussed it today,
then we need to mount a struggle,
a march on Rome,
when it's time decided in the parliament in Rome how the common agriculture policy will look in Italy for the next seven years.
And that will still take two to three years until we're at that decision point.
And we are now trying to start and plant the seed.
We are more at the inception style stage right now.
Because if we want them to decide like this in three years,
you know,
they are still in a different world.
They don't talk about photosynthesis or about more everything we discussed about the research.
When we discuss it there,
first of all,
we have to...
two hours of plain doubt like that's not possible that's only possible on that farm but on all the other farms it's not possible you know they don't even our corporate supply chains now believe it's
possible on every farm our bureaucrats are much still further behind unfortunately you're hopeful that within the next two to three years you will be able to build a big enough movement to make that change?
I am very hopeful that the rootstock,
you know,
is a uniting one.
We can see.
If we are then able to already graft the nice fruit tree on top of it in two,
three years in all of the European nations,
probably not.
But I think trying it is worth the learning journey and will grow with it.
That's also a very,
very nice image.
Is there anything else you'd like to add on the topic of the CAP?
Any important points that we haven't mentioned yet?
Yeah,
I would ask.
I mean,
it's very technical,
but it's...
Article 39 of our Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union.
And as Europeans,
it's really,
really important to understand what the Cup means for us and our future,
because it was always at the heart of geopolitical struggle.
And now we are bombarded with so much information,
you know,
we think
AI is deciding how we live tomorrow and we have no agency in the world that has started or supported in our name and so forth.
if we come together to fight for
how we support and enable our farmers to grow our food,
that's the most liberatory act we can do.
And I hope that through a movement building with youth,
with women,
with peace movements,
and through this peace among the farmers,
we can stop sliding into fascism and regenerate
into the more liberatory democracies that so many amazing pharma movements here in Europe have tried to grow before us and whose great history we will try again.
Well I sure hope that will move towards there.
the right side of history here the right side is a dangerous side saying the right side but when we're talking about a liberatory regenerative movement or a fascist one i mean i feel pretty safe in in choosing which side i believe is right yes um i just have two more questions before we close this amazing conversation first of all but thank you so much for all this incredible knowledge and for taking the time really appreciate it um
If the EU gave you one minute on the floor of parliament to speak directly to every policymaker,
what would you say?
I would ask them if they believe that we,
as Europeans,
as federalizing people of that continent,
have an obligation.
to grow the peace and the health of our sisters and brothers and of our children and of the future generations that are to come.
And if they not,
I would ask them to refocus on a common...
agricultural policy that regrows and regenerates our european democracies and people instead of attacking other people blaming other people and exploiting
most of european people and last question on a lighter note
If you could organize a dinner party and invite any three people present or past,
who would you invite,
why and what would you cook for them?
I'm already ashamed because three male names come to my mind and of course
I would hope I'm...
So I would say three names in the full conscious that there is a huge women movement behind them.
It's just because we know his story that we don't know those names.
And I would invite some of these pharma leaders of these great liberatory pharma movements.
So I would invite maybe Thomas Münzer,
who was one of the leaders of the pharma wars in southern Germany in the
16th century.
Gerard Wynne Stanley,
who was the leader of the true levelers pharma movement during the
Civil War of Cromwell.
And
I think he's called Joaquin Costa,
who had the education and food regeneration farmer movement in Spain in the late
19th century.
And I would cook what we nowadays cook on our tiny,
humble...
not so quickly regenerating farm yet in
Sicily for lunch,
working lunch,
which is pasta from local grain with ricotta from local farm with dried tomatoes and some veggies we usually put.
And olive oil.
Of course.
Maybe a glass of red wine.
Wine could be nice,
yes.
Some coffee.
Brilliant.
Thank you so much,
Simon.
It's been a real pleasure.
Thank you for having me.