Hello everyone and welcome back to The Deep Seed.
In today's Rewind episode I have selected a passage from my conversation with
Swiss regenerative farmer Peter Thrölich.
Peter challenges a common problem in regenerative agriculture.
We spend too much time arguing about which practices and which tools are regenerative or not.
But what actually matters is not so much how you farm,
which tools and practices you use,
but...
What are the results?
What are the outcomes generated by farming?
Before we listen to Peter talk about this,
here are a few reasons why I think that this mindset shift and the way we view farming and food production matters.
First of all,
flexibility.
Every farm is different and operates in a completely different context.
And therefore,
the methods and tools used to achieve certain outcomes
for a particular farm might not apply to another farm.
So allowing farmers to choose the methods and tools that are most adapted to their context to achieve the best possible outcomes seems like a smarter idea,
right?
Another huge benefit I'm seeing here is that it allows us to move past the ideological debates about farming,
about what tools and practices are better or worse,
about what?
label,
whether that's organic,
regenerative,
agroecological,
conventional,
biodynamic,
and so on.
We don't really care about this anymore.
You know,
anyone's free to choose what they prefer,
what they like the most,
or what works the best for them.
Every farm is being analyzed,
measured,
and judged,
not based on an ideology of what farming should be,
but based on a universal set of outcomes that everyone
can agree on.
The third and final huge advantage I'm seeing here is the credibility it adds to the whole regenerative movement.
Because right now there's not one clear definition of what regenerative agriculture is.
And if we define regenerative agriculture by its tools,
by its practices,
like reduced tillage,
reduced chemicals and increased soil cover,
for example,
well,
a big ag food company could potentially take
every single one of these boxes and therefore call themselves regenerative despite still operating within a very much linear extractive conventional system.
But if what we decide to look at is a set of outcomes that are easily measurable,
verifiable,
transparent,
then there's no way to cheat.
Either you are regenerating or you're not.
Okay,
so this was a very long intro,
I'm sorry about that,
to sort of clarify the reasons why.
I personally think that looking at outcomes is the way forward for regenerative agriculture.
But we'll hear it now from
Peter himself,
who will explain this much better than I did,
but who will also go into much more depth,
more detail about which outcomes should we look at,
how do we measure them,
and why.
This episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital.
I am your host,
Raphael,
and this is the Deep Seed Podcast.
If there's one key message you'd like people to hear today,
what would it be?
I would say it is that we as a society cannot fail on implementing regenerative agriculture because that's our ecological income,
I feel.
So it's really something that matters enormously.
And it's not only about the food,
it's also about our environment.
You know,
I feel that we're currently,
when it comes to climate and biodiversity,
more looking at what we...
lose and what our cost items are and not so much on the revenue and i'm sure that region ag is able to manage this in a way it has to be so we should start to swap from just looking at cost into what's our revenue and also drive that one you're
talking about ecological income and revenue here.
Could you expand on that?
Yeah,
so if you look at the state of our planet,
or let's...
call it differently.
The biomass productivity of our earth is pretty much linked to our cost items.
So if you see what we're using at a society,
it's actually everything biomass based.
So when you say using,
you mean everything we consume,
products,
energy,
everything.
And let's,
for example,
look
into concrete,
you could say,
okay,
stones.
But no,
because when you sit in front of that rock,
how do you actually work it?
You need biomass,
you need something to heat it.
That's either oil,
gas,
coal,
wood,
and so on.
And that's all biomass.
So people don't actually make the link of oil,
gas,
coal,
plastics,
petrochemicals,
medication,
wood,
any fiber that you could think of textile.
food that this is all biomass based.
And even at concrete and iron,
you couldn't work without biomass.
So pretty much all we use is biomass based.
And in history of earth,
compared to the peaks in biomass productivity,
we have reached a level of less than 50%,
constantly declining.
And when that's what we use,
then that's our ecological income.
Okay,
so the amount
Let's say each year that the earth is producing biomass and how much we actually use.
Yeah.
If that's in balance,
we're fine.
Yeah.
Then there's no excess climate emissions because you produce as much as you use,
which puts it back in balance.
Right now,
farmers are just looking at the biomass productivity of the sellable yield,
not of the entire plant productivity.
And the slash in biomass productivity we have seen.
is mainly related to deforestation.
And even when you look at latest climate calculations,
that's still a large chunk land use change and deforestation obviously.
And what we actually want to do is to create the awareness of the farmers that there's more than just a sellable yield.
That you really should grow plants on every meter square on your farm every day to maximize its productivity.
And that's what RegenEgg can do.
Okay,
so it's not just about producing the sellable crop.
It's about producing biomass in every possible form.
Yeah,
and I would even call that ecosystem services.
I see it on my farm when I look back.
So with the biomass increase,
with the more plant growth,
you have also the biodiversity,
the soil,
everything coming back.
So it's positively linked.
So in many cases,
we see extensification as a solution.
And my personal belief is that that's a mistake.
We need to have intense productivity on the fields,
but we need to focus on the entire thing and then the ecosystem to have the positive effects more than the negative ones.
And we can do that.
So I can clearly demonstrate on my farm that with region ag approaches,
this is possible.
But it's more complex than just doing a bit of no-till or doing a bit of cover crops.
When it comes to outcomes,
you need to define what they are.
And there's physics.
But then there's also finding an agreement amongst the stakeholders that are having to drive this.
What we identified is the stakeholders to drive this are the farmers,
but it's also the industry.
And then even more,
it's all the NGOs that are there and trying to make a living out of it by sometimes objecting or at least checking that things are working well.
And then obviously it's always also the internal view of whatever company is,
that's the employees.
So what we're trying to do is create
AgriPurpose, which is a purpose venture.
So what it does is it splits the capital rights from the voting rights.
So the voting rights you would have in a general assembly,
the ones that decide what happens on a company.
And we try to unite in this those four key stakeholder groups to then define with them.
which outcomes should be actually monitored and to find a way to define them,
but to measure and validate them and to improve them.
And I think something neutral like this,
and we're looking there into just four buckets.
So we look at biomass productivity overall,
we look at soil cover overall,
we look at soil health,
and that includes for us the soil organic carbon.
So it's the bulk density plus the SOC percentages
but also pH and macronutrients,
because long-term sequestration only happens when those are in balance too.
And then last is the efficiency.
So what's the yields you have produced?
And there we only look into sellable yields.
Meaning,
if you produce corn on your fields that you use to feed your cows,
We don't count it in because that's not something you sell.
So sellable yields,
that can be any crop.
It can be milk,
wool,
meat whatsoever,
eggs.
And then the inputs you have used for that.
And we just look at six items.
So it's fuel,
it's energy,
it's nutrients used.
So that can be fodder purchased or sold,
mineral fertilizer purchased or sold.
or actually organics brought to the farm or taken from the farm.
Always just what matters to us is the nutrients inside.
Water,
the crop protection use.
We look at money because the stuff is value priced.
So it's actually if you use less money,
you have used less.
It's harder to do it with any other stuff.
And then it's the animal load because if it's too low,
it starts to harm soils.
And if it's too high,
it starts to create excess emissions.
And that's pretty much it.
So we try to validate on this one.
Okay,
so sorry,
because there's so much information here.
I want to make sure that everyone stays on board,
including myself.
Okay.
I'd like to think that
I'm in a good position to do these interviews,
not because I am knowledgeable about these topics,
but because I'm not.
And so I can ask the silly questions and make sure that everyone stays on board with me.
So you're trying to define the outcomes.
that we could build an outcome-based system on.
And here you were just citing all of the different metrics or the different things that you look at to define outcomes.
And so let's go through them again really quickly.
So first you talked about net primary productivity.
Yeah,
it's the biomass productivity.
It's linked.
It's not exactly the primary productivity.
It's linked to the net primary productivity.
And what we know is that one is linked a lot to soil health.
So actually,
the more net primary productivity you have,
the more soil organic carbon you have,
the healthier your soil.
And then you have this positive feedback loop finally.
So the intention is first maximize net primary productivity,
then protect this.
So the protect is the soil cover.
Because what you should try to avoid is that your soil overheats more than 40 degrees.
For that,
it needs to be covered,
never any dark part of the soil being exposed to the sun.
Then it actually should not be exposed to water and wind erosion.
And that's the cover.
So the more time of the year it's covered,
the better.
And it doesn't count when you have planted something.
The thing is when is actually there some green growing or some structures remaining from plants that you can see with satellite.
So these are the first two that we checked.
So again,
biomass,
which is linked to net primary productivity.
And soil cover.
And that gives you an indicator,
you get certain results.
Yes.
So how we do it is we compare those values that the farm achieves with the neighborhood.
So we do that automatically.
Automatically?
Yeah.
And then anywhere on the planet.
With satellite data?
Yeah.
And that's the cool bit is when you compare the farm with its surroundings,
it's actually always context specific.
So there the context specific comes into the outcome based.
And then it's the continuous improvement because we want those numbers to be improving against the region.
And think of it like algebra,
like a formula kind of thing.
And when you have things on both sides of the equation,
they usually are.
You can just take them apart,
take them away.
So weather and stuff is all the same.
So many things are kind of same farm to the region.
So you're actually kind of unraveling the fog through this.
And what we're then doing is we're always asking the farmer when he's underperforming or overperforming against the region,
what he did.
And the cool bit is with satellite data,
you can look backwards seven,
eight years now.
Meaning we can learn from the last seven,
eight years what he did.
And then what went well and what didn't.
And then you get the right focus to start where you need to start first to improve,
to actually maximize the outcomes.
Yes.
So it's not only a measure,
it's also a very nice toolkit to focus and optimize.
Yeah.
And then we go and measure the soil carbon.
Soil carbon.
So that's soil sampling.
So how does that work?
So with the satellite,
we look at the variation of your soil over the last seven years.
And then through this,
we go and sample at the right places.
Most do today that it's optimized for just soil carbon,
but we know it's more so pH is as important for long-term sequestration as macronutrients.
So we want it to be balanced.
So we sample where there's most differences and then that goes to the lab.
You get the result and with an AI,
we can then distribute it at 10 by 10 meter.
Okay.
Is that something easy to do for farmers to take those samples and to...
Well,
I don't know.
Yeah,
no.
No,
we don't want farmers to take it.
The reason being is we have seen that there is the potential to trick the system.
So we don't want them to know exactly where the sampling happens for a good reason.
So it should be external providers doing that because it's finally,
hopefully related to money.
And then you need to have some safeguards in place.
Okay.
We have a sampler doing that.
It goes to the lab with the result and an AI.
You get the high resolution soil data.
Usually see that this can help with fertilization or as I do it,
an optimization of the cover crops.
So I make an example.
When I see that I lack somewhere in phosphorus,
usually there's enough.
It's just no plant available.
So what I do is I focus with the cover crops on buckwheat because that...
kind of freeze up phosphorus we know that so i put in the mix additional buckwheat when i know it's a problem there or when it's potassium i put ceradella so it's like the same just just for the other nutrients so you can either do precision farming with all the technology or you use nature to then balance the field and
you need to see and know that even on small fields like mine like two hectares because there's sometimes huge differences and then when you have the average
It's like having one arm in cold and one arm in hot water.
You're just doing the wrong thing everywhere.
So we're trying to actually get this at rest.
That's what it does.
So we see that farmers are moving quicker and it saves them about 100 euros per hectare per year.
So it's a lot of money.
It's a lot of money,
yeah.
But so you need a lot of different samples to be able for the model to get the highest results?
Yeah,
we need three per,
as a minimum.
So small fields,
that's more,
but we only go for the
one third of the fields because with the first step we identify which soils are the least performing and then usually you also there have the right focus so you start implementing where you have to do it first so the satellite data tells you where uh
you have the biggest problems which are the biggest problems in the in kind of which fields yeah and there i do the most intense sampling so again it's the focus for the optimization yeah and then
Yeah,
the last bit is when you're maximizing net primary productivity,
protect what you have produced,
improve the soil health,
then it's actually how efficiently have you achieved this.
And there we look into the yields,
but only the soil yields,
because that's a better link to what are the calories you have produced for human consumption.
It's not perfect because you still can combine,
let's say,
corn or soy,
and it goes into fodder.
But it reduces already all the intra-farm kind of processes.
So let's say you do corn silage and then you feed it to the cows.
Again,
we do not care about this.
We only care then about the milk,
the meat,
the animals you have produced.
Yes.
And I think that's a better link to what's the efficiency in terms of human food production.
And then we just check what have been the inputs that came from somewhere else to achieve all this.
And that we want to minimize.
So we want to maximize all the rest,
maximize the yield and minimize the inputs.
In our scheme is as long as you are actually improving on those four items,
you're in the scheme.
You can have one year down performance.
Okay,
because that can always happen.
One step back to take two steps ahead.
If you have two years,
you need to book a consulting and establish an action plan on your farm to stay in the scheme.
That's kind of how we were going to do it as AgriPurpose.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
I hope you enjoyed it.
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you know,
achieve something beautiful together,
hopefully.
So thank you so much in advance.
Have a great rest of your day,
a beautiful life.
See you soon.