That’s it! I’ve now returned to Denmark after 10 months on the road. And sometimes it can be hard to see the forest for all the trees.

Whilst I’ve been traveling around Europe, the most obvious opportunity to start farming regeneratively is right where I came from: At my parents’ little 3ha farmstead in Næstved, Denmark. From August 2024, I will be starting to build and experiment, plant/transplant trees and sharing all the worksheets, designs, blood, sweat and tears on this farm log.

Here’s the basic idea:

• Dual purpose chicken breed, breeding for foraging ability (bring down feed cost, avoid soy)
• Maximum animal welfare, always out on fresh pasture, under trees etc.
• Multiple crop-income streams from the same plot of land (eggs, chicken, mushrooms, berries and other tree crops etc.)
• Documenting biodiversity development, monitoring effect on the land, carbon/water/nutrient cycle etc.
• Selling everything directly and before production starts

Let’s see how we go. Everything could go wrong still 😄

Monique and Frank Glorie (originally Dutch) run a 80ha hilly farm 1hr south of Toulouse 🇫🇷

They have 300+ Sheep and goats on Pasture, silvopasture and in woodlands, running an almost zero-input low cost system, as well as a tiny flock of hens for personal egg consumption.

Enterprises:

• Lamb meat (sold directly to consumers)
• Live sheep and goats from breeding program
• Woodland products (fencing poles, wood beams, firewood)
• Rental (caravan parking + upcoming glamping w/ view to Pyrenees 🏔️ )
• Considering dual-purpose chicken + guinea fowl but would like to partner with someone external to manage that on a bigger scale

Frank is a vet and it shows 🤓 To keep himself sharp and supplement farm income, he works 1 day a week at a veterinarian clinic in the area. He’s written a book about sheep health which was translated to 10+ languages and used to run the Dutch “sheepdoctor.nl” vet practice.

Monique is originally a physiotherapist, and apart from the farm she has been doing mental health coaching both in-person and remotely, and she is quite involved in the human side of the regenerative equation (regenerative living), which also includes singing.

‣

Daily life at Les Côteaux

• Bottle feeding lambs and goats whose mother died 😢 aka. 5x daily cuteness overload moments
• Checking on the sheep and goats (gathered in one big herd)
• Preparing new fencing (netting) for moves onto new pasture every 1-2 days
• Doing forestry work 🌳🪚 clearing out for fencing around silvopasture and woodland areas
• Hatching 8 chicks and housing in IBC-tank while maturing
• Building the foundation for a Glamping site
• Enjoying the birdlife that is returning to the farm, among others the beautiful bee-eaters

‣

Sheep Autopsy

After finding a dead sheep in the electric fence one morning, we wanted to figure out what the cause of death was. So we did an autopsy outside the barn, looking for traces of damage or infestation in the organs etc. We did not find any clear source of the problem, however general widespread signs of stress in the body were apparent, noticed from the colour and porosity of among other things the lungs. Best guess was that she was not in the best shape, got intangled in the electric netting and was not able to get out, thus dying slowly from repeated shocks. What a way to go 😞

• As the young bulls were put back together with the herd (to give them a chance to mate with the cows before the older bulls arrive), they were fighting for mating hierarchy even with the 2yr old steers and losing, so a decision was made to let go of the steers slightly ahead of time
• A team of landscape arcitects and scientists have come to make a thorough analysis of optimal use of the land at Pajaretillo, taking weather, soil type, typology, animal impact and plans for different enterprises into regard, will be interesting to follow!
• Very interesting day, and new connections made - seems very sensible/logical that we’d end up collaborating but let’s see what the future brings
• A steer died from an intestinal infection leading to massive bloat, seems difficult to prevent 😢
• Lead to 100+ vultures coming to the fields. They are huge!
• Our equivalent of Gerald from Clarkson’s farm (Juan) 😄🥰 is really progressing with the access ways around the farm, what a difference it makes! As Joel Salatin says, if you dont have roads you just won’t go there (totally paraphrasing here)
• According to Manuel, the investments in farmroads is like buying back the pieces of land previously inaccessible 😎
• Planted 23 trees and almost lost a dog in the La Ina project (with Iñigo, Elena & co.)
• Planted mangos 🥭 peach varieties 🍑 and avocado varieties 🥑 to see what works best on the site
• Quite a lot of wind for the young trees so we’ll plan to make a temporary cloth-based cover while a hedge can grow
• Made an interesting microbiology-boosting infusion with our tree experts
• Based on three big handfulls of hyperlocally found good active soil (you can smell the activity level!) mixed with well-water, a slight bit of sea-water (for the minerals) and two cooked potatoes 🥔 🥔 (food for the microorganisms)
• Chugged it all in a used cloth tote bag, submerged it in a 50-liter water container and mixed it by hand
• Then used the tote bag essentially as a tea-bag, left to infuse over the next 3 days
• Returned after three days to irrigate the trees, set up automatic irrigation and distribute the microbiology infusion (diluted 1:9 in well water)
• This last day is also when we almost lost a dog because he was let loose by one of the kids 😅😇
• Had a few nice barbecues with the crew as farewell parties 😍
• Did a presentation on my way of working with Regen Farmers on the financial side for the team at Pajaretillo
• Said my goodbyes and went about my way 😊😇

General updates

• My Spanish speaking skills are really being put to the test when (trying to) communicate with locals from the pueblitos (smaller villages), as the accent is strong and people tend to not open their mouth a lot when speaking 😅 Especially love the all-round machinery and infrastructure/road building worker at Pajaretillo named Juan - such a hilarious pleasure to (almost) always misunderstand each other, leads to a lot of laughs
• He is essentially the Andalusian version of Gerald from Clarksons Farm 😄
• Some cultural observations, the unwritten rules and norms remind me a lot of what I’ve learned and observed from people in my life with middle eastern origin
• The paternity is strong in general 😅
• Its almost a war to try and pay for dinner before another (always male) dinner participant sneaks out to pay
• Mañana really is a thing - time perception is different in Andalusia, but that’s not very surprising 🤓😍
• Had an interesting (and stereotypical) conversation with Victor (Dutch volunteer) around the fact that people in general are always late here, his point was that society could progress much faster if this wasn’t the case
• I concurred, but also suggested that perhaps our northern european always-busy mentality is a big mental problem and perhaps we could learn something from a bit more relaxed/patient relationship with time - while questioning what is the kind of progress we really want? So far this ‘progress’ we’ve achieved in Northern Europe has destroyed ecosystems and mental health on a large scale. Not sure we want more of that.
• Perhaps optimum is a sense of respect for one another’s time with good levels of communication while also not obsessing about arbitrary deadlines and square-minded box thinking (which I am certainly guilty of at times).
• Progressing much more on the direction of travel and focus of Humus Sapien (my silently launched company to help regen farms succeed financially) 🤎

Daily life at Pajaretillo

• Setting up corridors (10m wide passageways) across the farm for moving the cattle longer distances between fields is working really well, super impressed with how they would have even managed in the past without them
• Answer: with a lot of people and sticks 🤓
• We’ve had 30+ calfs born so far, a few times they were almost left behind when moving the cattle between fields, very important to keep track of births and observe the behaviour in the days after calving ☝🏼 (and yes, there’s an app for that)
• Using QField (Qgis app, I believe) to plan water distribution, farm dirtroads to be made, fields and parcels for grazing etc.
• I somehow still manage to fuck up pretty basic knots sporadically when setting up fencing 😅 not sure why
• Discussed the overall business plan and how we could possibly sell more directly to the right segments of restaurants
• E.g. They should be nose-to-tail kinda chefs ideally
• Rule of thumb: cows eat around 10x as much grass as a sheep
• Some of the young bulls to become steers were castrated using a very low stress solution, which I appreciated
• Essentially it’s a rubber band that is tied around the base of the testicles using a metal device which closes off blood circulation, such that eventually the testicles will stop working and nerves become numb. Essentially the testies will fall off as far as I understood. No real pain involved.

Link to Instagram: @finca_pajaretillo

General updates

• A bit of trouble with the accelerator of the car again 🫣 8hrs of driving like that was a bit tense, but no real danger
• Had a great catch-up call with Marcus from New Foundation Farms while on the road. Seems like we’re mooving in a very compatible direction, both dealing with how to help regen farmers with better/easier business development and financial success
• Arrived at the beautifully hilly 475ha holistically managed cattle farm (the only regen cattle farm in the county, it appears!) with plenty of woodland areas
• I was greeted by Manuel Troya, who is the guy in charge of running his family farm, passed down through generations
• Talking to Manuel, I got a decent understanding of the history and vision of the farm
• Used to be a very conventionally run and desertifying cattle farm, and made a gradual big change from set stock and feedlots all the way to grazing-friendly genetics and grassfed with up to 4 daily moves within the last ~5 years - impressive progress!
• Genetics used to be a mix between the local Retinta breed with high heat tolerance and fertility + the feed-focused weight-gainer limousine breed
• Now introducing Angus genetics into the herd, both for the grazing fit but also smaller animals to deal with less forage availability in the dry Andalusian summer months
• As most other regen farmers, especially on the Iberian peninsula, Manuel has met a tonne of social resistance locally in various forms - it’s been a very big change of mindset and sometimes when you stick your head further out than the rest of the crowd, people some tempted to slap you in the face.
• Essentially, the vision of the farm is to move towards creating what could be labelled a southern Spanish version of White Oak Pastures, with all the land regeneration, rural community and economy boost plus the diverse farm enterprises being added over time
• Towards end of January, a Dutch couple arrived in their autocamper to volunteer at Pajaretillo for a while as well, Karolien and Victor

Daily life at Pajaretillo

• Monday planning meeting is great - gives a better structure, overview and alignement in a very dynamic farm and grazing system with a high need for flexibility
• Daily morning coffee to check-in with the team alongside Manuel, Cesar (Catalán Cowboy 🤠 living in Jerez), Karolien and Victor
• Setting up water-tubes from the watertanks and pumps to key access points and different paddocks around the farm
• Building permanent corridors and fencing to prepare for very frequent cattle moves
• Setting up daily temporary fences and moving the cows between paddocks
• We implemented 4 daily moves that matches with the cows daily eating pattern, and it seems to work really well!
• Grazing and residual level close to ideal and great distribution of manure
• Discussed that it would be great to set up a cow-chicken follower system to spread the manure even more evenly out and improve soil activity/health
• Discussed the idea of setting up a butchery, we’d likely need more volume than what pajaretillo currently have
• Discussed the idea of co-farming at Pajaretillo - someone external setting up an enterprise in the land and co-investing + revenue sharing

Meanwhile, in the camper 👨🏼‍💻💡🔧

• Beginning to set up resources for and the contours around a type of farm internship to land access program with Saba
• Working a lot with Planton Farm (Especially Clare and Annie) to develop the Planton farm enterprises into profitability and make the visions of pushing the boundary of what’s possible within profitable regenerative farming more concrete and actionable
• Excited to learn about Family-grouped cattle, Food forests w/ animal integration, dual purpose chicken, pastured geese, pastured (no-feed) pigs and other possibilities
• Love the new mantra “No agro without forestry”
• Discussing with Silas Hedley-Lawrence how to collaborate om making useful open-source resources for farm financial management and business case development accessible for European farmers
• Considering opening up for more farm business development & finance clients!

• Said my goodbyes at Terra May and went to see Simon, an old friend who has moved to Portugal
• My camper is old so I used a 7day gap between two farm stays to try and fix a few things
• Only partial repair success 😅

• Enjoyed time with family and friends (surprise)
• In connection with my consulting gig for Planton farm, I went deep into settling the future financial situation of Planton, happy how it turned out with a clear path ahead
• Visited Saba and Stin on their farm in Sweden again
• We decided to start collaborating more concretely on how to pave the way for more talented people to contribute impactfully to the regenerative movement in Europe
• Starting with organising an internship program on their farm with a focus on creating more leaders, not followers
• Very unexpectedly met an amazing woman ❤️ in my hometown (of all places) which did alter my travel plans ahead, since I am now significantly more inclined to come visit Denmark more often 😇

Nov 20th - Dec 17th

• Started learning from my new tree sensei Gualdino 🥋🌳
• Everything from making room around the stems to grow, by removing thorny bushels that cover too much for the sun to which trees work best for what microclimates, how to prune and transplant tree cuttings as well as the crucial planning aspects of how to gradually create shaded water streams aligned with the keyline design and swales on the farm and practically how to plant for the trees to thrive
• Very exciting to learn about which trees provide pioneering new root systems that other trees can later make use of for sharing resources via the wood wide web 🤓
• Alongside Bea and Liseth Planted 700+ trees in an area that can work as a mini watershed 4 ish years down the line, using streams and a few pond-like areas
• Planted from seed: ash and almond trees (they failed as transplanted seedlings last year)
• Transplanted a local type of willow trees directly into the stream, unguided and happy with the result - let’s see
• Planted ash all the way along the farm roads and around a big pond around the entrance to the land
• We used a mix of cuttings and small naturally propogated trees that had sprouted around the pond in an interchange of species next to each other to get the wood wide web started

Nov 6th - Nov 19th 2023

• Was struck by the sheer amount of people needed to run such a diverse operation, 25+ employees + a few volunteers at a time
• Learned about how difficult it is to restore the small water cycle on farm when you have basically no rain from April to End September
• Especially when local authorities limit your ability/allowance to create water catchment structures
• Slightly stressfull time, I arrived just when next year budgets were being finalised and aligned between the owners and investors
• A bit of a mixed reception socially, some were very open, friendly and funny while others were quite reserved, I suppose at least partly due to language barrier
• Went to two farms in the area Jerez de la Frontera (outside villages “La ina” and “San Jose del Valle”) to meet future potential collaborators
• Iñigo & Elena - completely new agroforestry and fruit production project in La ina, with ambitions to create a model farm from scratch that can be adjusted for context and replicated elsewhere
• Manuel - Big Family farm gone from conventional cattle operation to Regenerative and holistic management, with ambitions to add more enterprises, processing facilities and direct sales
• Both encounters very positive and inspiring, definitely looking deeper into how we can collaborate

Week highlights

• Hot take: Increasingly, the Savory institute seems like a bit of a messiah-seeking existence with a godlike guru and a lot of their tools end up not being super useful for many farmers I’ve talked to. Yes, I said it. So sue me.
• Many farmers have merely built on the (very valuable and great) approaches and ideas and left out the borderline cultish (my way on the highway only) part.
• Looks like the the user experience of the tools needs a bit of a reality check
• Please prove me wrong (it would honestly make me happy)
• See more under “week 9-11”
• Experienced an example of how a group of young people from northern Europe is re-establishing a village (almost from scratch) in the mountains of central Portugal 🇵🇹 while maintaining their professional life (startups, NGOs, freelance etc.)
• ‘Riperian’ is the word if the week = relating to or situated on the banks of a river. Planted 700 riperian and other trees in Foz da Cova w/ the people of Climate farmers among others.
• Arrived at Terra May 😍 www.terramay.com
• Harvested 4 tonnes of olives 🫒 on the first workday 😄

Week notes

• Started the week in Foz da cova
• Went on a campsite for 2 nights, spent some of the time figuring out how to retrofit the gas mount for my caravan to the portuguese standard (why does it have to differ from country to country??)
• Portuguese still sounds a bit funny and even slightly slavic to me at times 😅😘
• I can get by with Spanish surprisingly easily here though

Day 82: Thursday November 2nd 2023

• Arrived at Terra May (terramay.com)
• 580ha in Alentejo, Portugal
• Very mixed farm with big market garden, cattle, laying hens, goats, horses, sheep, syntropic agroforestry and old silvopasture systems
• Also run a restaurant and deliver food products among other places all the way to Lisboa (almost 3hrs away)
• Among other things they’ve really started to go forward in making food products from their produce with longer shelf life
• Met with Elias (my contact), the owners David and Anna de Brito as well as some of the farm workers there, we had dinner and wine together

Key Learnings:

• The olive oil price is going bananas (up) this coming year, due to shortages in supply
• Because of extreme weather, among plant pathogens as well
• Shows the risk of too similar genetics in any predominantly monoculture production
• The olives are generally more firmly stuck to the branches this year, so harvesting becomes a much bigger pain and the processing facility is receiving a lot of branches for filtering and separation before moving on to the oil press
• Process (without heavy machinery) is roughly:
• One team goes around with hand-held electric tools that shakes and cuts branches of with olives, which land on a large extended net on the ground
• Another team separates the olives from the biggest branches using neat hand tools and plastic tarps, and chugs the olives into 40kg bags, which are then transported to a processing facility that separates the olives from the branches much more finely
• Yes, we packed, transported and unloaded more than 100 40kg bags into the processing facility 💪🏼
• We had to wait for the other olive oil producers olives to be done processing completely before loading ours, because ours are organic, the others were not.
• Olives are then sent to the coldpress facility
• Et voilà - your olive oil is ready for bottling

• Started helping Planton farm on the business development snd finance management side, excited to do work remotely for Clare & co.
• First job is to update and refine the existing financial model and turn it into proper a cash flow management tool
• Crazy ~2000km drive from England to Pamplona and thereafter Portugal, through heavy rainstorms on highways and steep mountain roads with a faulty throttle-sensor on my car (sporadically kept accelerating even when I took my foot off the speeder) and a 1.3 tonne caravan-home hitched to the car. Nimble and swift, eh.
• Spent an amazing week catching up with friends in Pamplona, working remotely and reading
• A realization dawned on me after re-reading the Holistic Management book, talking to people who’d done the official HM training and people who’ve had a lot contact with the Savory institue, as well as digging a bit deeper into the grandiose claims made by Allan Savory himself:
• What Savory and the organisation has managed to mobilise within Holistic Management so far is astonishing and deserves a lot of credit. But we should also take care that our heroes organise things in a progressive and sensible way
• The Savory Institue seems to have a few of the characteristics typical for a sect/cult
• There are grandiose worldsaving and universally applicable claims being made, some of which seem at least slightly out of proportion and are yet to be supported by replicable scientific evidence (as far as I am concerned)
• There is one singular guru figure who’s words don’t really seem to invite any real challenge nor progressive discussion (apart from a disappointing debate with Monbiot where Savory basically vomited on the microphone with almost zero useful arguments apart from “oxidation”? Which I honestly did not understand)
• The tools are presented as universally applicable and farmers are “required” to follow them to the teeth, but many farmers are reporting that they find the tools not very suitable nor practical for their situation,
• also core aspects or planned rotational grazing like calculating demand/supply of forage/grass appears to be inadequate according to a few farmers I’ve discussed this with
• Am I wrong? Please tell me I am.
• Planted 700 trees in Foz da Cova with a great bunch of people I’d bever met before, all involved (or on their way to be) in regen ag somehow
• 8 people from northern Europe has come together to revive a tiny dead mountain village in the Coimbra district
• Avoiding urban gentrification (e.g. The gentrification case of Lisbon now being too expensive for most Portuguese locals), reviving and integrating into a rural community

Key learnings:

• The design of a tree plantation/agroforest is vital to survival and productivity of the trees, putting trees in appropriate microenvironments and next to compatible trees
• Walnut trees send out a toxin through the soil web to other trees/plants so that it might keep the space more for themselves!
• if you have issues with your throttle sensor, and you’re driving in mountain ranges with a big caravan attached - its very important to be quick in turning off the engine and using the handbrake before you drive off a cliff. Go reeeally slow.
• Having a 4x4 car with some engine power is literally a lifesaver in situations with steep mountains
• Sometimes it helps to be very insisting towards portuguese mechanics that you just need help for 10minutes (we actually managed to make a band-aid solution that allowed me to continue down south in Portugal without dying).

Week highlights:

1. The example of Riverford’s “exit to community” is really interesting and could pave the way for other companies to follow the same route 🏆
1. This way we co as a society/business world better avoid purpose drift and stay true to original intentions. Very inspiring! (see more below under the Mark/Marcus visit)
2. “I know more vets that are now not vets than I know vets that are still vets.” Clare Hill
1. Some vets have stopped believing in the reactive and highly medicating practice in favour of going towards things like integrated pest management and preventive measures
3. Most agricultural banks/lenders are not geared to financing regenerative farms 💸
1. Companies like MAD Capital (US) and Oxbury (UK) etc. exist, but is it really enough? Should (some)one help equip traditional agri banks to perform proper risk assessment and Due Diligence for regen farms?
4. It appears that most farmers don’t really have an in-depth financial model 😮 nor farm economics tool/spreadsheet that allows then to gain valuable management information
1. Such as where/in which enterprises the farm is really losing/making money and where it would make sense to focus on commercial/sales vs. operational improvements
2. Am I wrong? Please tell me I am.
1. And tell me what software/tool they use or how they do it more manually (pen/paper mode) if that.
5. Some farmers don’t believe that I am sincere at first when I contact them
1. Someone wrote to Clare and basically asked “Is this guy for real??” 😄
2. It seems too good to be true? I don’t know, shouldn’t think so.

Mark Drewell & Marcus Link, New Foundation Farms

Sunday Oct 8th - Wednesday Oct 10th / Devon, UK

A check-in with upcoming collaborators

• Delivered the Breeding flock chickens to Marcus’ place, Hercules quickly claimed dominance given his turkey-sized statue
• Explored what deep regeneration really means from different angles (environmental, economic, social)
• Talked through the example of Riverford (organic food delivery), which is local to Devon, right around the corner form Mark and Marcus
• Their ability to keep quite high ethical standards and pay+treat their people well
• How they’ve organised themselves to not need external finance at all, basically (except for the exit)
• How the founder did an “exit to community”
• Instead of selling his company to a private equity fund for ~£20m (which he allegedly was offered), he decided to set up a Trust owned by the employees that could buy him out for ~£6m (I believe), financed by a bank loan to the Trust based on balance sheet and cash flow projections.
• Riverford seems to believe that their approach with organic (but not regenerative practices, really) is the end goal and that regenerative is essentially a stepping stone towards organic. This seems a bit backwards and I’d love to understand why they believe this.
• Went out for a drink and among other good people met Pete Russell, co-founder of Ooooby, the company that makes it easier for farmers to sell directly in their local area with a software system (based on 10+ years of actually manually operating this kind of business themselves).
• I honestly think that solutions like Ooooby is a key piece of the puzzle to scale alternative routes to market (as opposed to commodity markets, supplying retail etc.) annd therefore a central success factor in regen farming
• Talked through some collaboration options in the long- medium- and short-term future
• Once again the local social dynamics between neighbours with different worldviews and habits were highlighted as an issue.
• Interestingly, Chris and Lana (living on the land of Marcus and Clare) is another example of young people finding an alternative to the classic living situation. They were allowed to build a winterproof yurt on the land in return for helping out with practical things and effectively farmsitting e.g. when the farm family is travelling. This could become a great way to allow young people to save up money, gain more agricultural experience and get access to a friendly local community, while also helping farmers sleep better at night (and have actual vacations). I think there is something to this, but I also see a lot of potential pitfalls in case not everyone is aligned.
• Perhaps (some)one could set up a good alignment process and even standardised formal agreements to make sure everyone’s covered as good as possible

Will & Charlotte, Stream Farm

Wednesday Oct 10th - Oct 13th, Bloomsfield Somerset, UK

Farm: Eggs, Poultry, Cattle, Pork, Trout, Vegetables on 250 acres (~100ha)

• Arrived and had to deal with car issues, left the car at local garage and had a nice run back to the farm from there 🏃🏼
• Helped out with moving firewood to a drying location
• Rain was pouring down heavily so did some office work and a few calls 💻
• Helped catch 220 chicken for processing the next day 🍗
• Nat the poultry farm-share farmer has only been there a short time but is rocking it!
• Quite the job in finding and separating out two specific steers in the herd of 170 cows
• Went to the abattoir with 4 sheep 2 cattle
• Spent way too much time organising things for the car repair since the spare part needed is not being manufactured anymore (obsolete, essentially) - finally found one on ebay
• Talked their operation through incl. deliveries and order handling/tracking (very manual via phone and email and tracked on a whiteboard)
• Discussed their farm share model 💡
• Set up in a way that allows the share farmer to build an asset for themselves for later use + aligns them with the rest of the operations
• It essentially comes down to building the right culture on farm as well
• A strong common denominator for the farm team is their christian faith, which they practice actively and discuss values and bible interpretation alongside a friday prayer
• Somewhat convinced Will that fritatas 🍳 are actually amazing and he should eat them more often by making one using more spices and veggies than your average fritata 😄
• Loved the ingenuity of the trout basins and how they’ve thinking about dealing with “waste water” (high level of nitrate due to fish poop)
• One good option on the table is to grow herbs in a aquaponic-inspired system which fits well into their delivery box scheme

Silas Hedley-Lawrence, FAI Farms in Oxford, UK

Friday Oct 13th - Sunday Oct 15th Farm: Mainly cattle enterprise + corporate research function

• Went through Silas’ grazing planning and their rather impressive achievements in terms of farm performance, outwinthering and bale-grazing system
• Especially considering that some of the farm is essentially wet flood plains that are under water in a large proportion of the annual cycle
• Again, it turns out that grazing planning comes down to knowing a few key numbers (demand/supply of forage) with consideration to the lay of the land and micro climate
• On this farm, the cattle graze 25% of forage of each parcel in spring, 50% in summer and 75% in autumn, because of how the pasture has reacted historically, with a need to go easy on pastures in spring otherwise you stunt the growth later in the season
• We agreed to take a stab at just making a simplified document to how farmers can approach calculating the demand/supply and use that for the planning
• I understood that some people do spend a lot of time setting up a digital grazing plan which serves the purpose of aligning the team pretty well, but is then never actually followed nor really used throughout the season.
• Interestingly enough, they’ve chosen to scale back the diverse enterprises (used to have poultry, eggs, sheep, pigs) - among other reasons because of the direct connection to FAI farms research purpose (it’s not the cow it’s the how) with their corporate clients
• Went out and moved the cows a few times, really nice to meet Luke (farm ops) as well
• Small but great detail on the quad-bikes is two jointed pipes forming a fender in the front of the quad for being able to drive over electric fencing with no hassle, hadn’t seen that before

Edmund Sutcliffe, Burntwood Farm, Winchester, UK

Sunday Oct 15th - Monday Oct 16th Farm: Cattle enterprise + rental properties

• Went out with Edmund for a tour around the farm and to provide hay bale for cattle
• Talked through challenges with the ongoing project on the farm
• Discussed challenges around establishing new rural farm communities with a young family currently staying on the farm
• A community project aiming to provide young people/families with a path to a life away from the mainstream and into the regen farming world
• Once again it appears that misalignment and interpersonal difficulties can become immense barriers and turn into real struggles, especially given the fact that families going down this path move their whole life to the new location
• Finally found someone who could help me out with my car 😀

Paddy Long, Co-founder of ruumi.io, York, UK

Tuesday Oct 17th - Thursday Oct 19th

Not a farming visit, but a catch-up with a friend and ex-colleague currently working on a grazing app and carbon farming programmes

Pamplona visit

On my way to Terra May in Portugal 🇵🇹 I stopped by Pamplona (North Spain 🇪🇸) to see my friends there (used to live there until July2023😇)

Returned to Planton Farm

Tip of the iceberg:

• Why are so few talking about the need for open source hardware in agriculture?
• So many farmers find it hard to get access to equipment and hardware infrastructure, sheds and chicken coups etc. that are well suited to regenerative farming
• It seems almost like a no-brainer to me that there needs to be a development of regen farm commons that everyone can use and improve on together
• Especially given the local focus and massive size of markets that can be targeted (meaning less competition pressure, more collaboration possible)
• There are still plenty of ways to make money and grow/sustain a business (open source does not mean non-profit nor charity in any way, examples are plentiful)
• Very inspired by Precious Plastic and how they’ve thought about developing an ecosystem for a new industry (in this case Plastic Recycling, open-source)
• What might the equivalent look like for Regen / Agroecology / Agroforestry?
• Could some of the current Regen mapping efforts be leveraged?
• Why is there not a FarmStarter? Like Kickstarter for Regen farms?
• Solving the issue of access to startup finance + early customer commitments, lowering risk for new farmers
• Could it work? And how would it work?
• How would one vet the farmers? Some kind of course and/or commitment?
• Perhaps one would need to find enough customers in a local area first?
• Inspiration/collaboration can be drawn from
• https://gosteward.com/
• https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/transition-finance-series/

• Breeding for regenerative operations is also something that needs more work, although there are things happening, but perhaps not at the scale needed if we want to make regenerative mainstream
• This goes for seed development/breeding too, where currently there seems to be a tension between the more “open-source” way of distributed seed development now and bigger companies that want to patent and own everything
• Not hard to guess which side of the fence I find most attractive
• How will CRISPR change breeding of animals and seeds?

Week 4 highlights:

1. WTF = Where are The Farmers? In many cases, I’ve understood that farmers are not really brought into the discussion around what the future of agriculture can/should look like. Recent example being the Regen Ag conference in Amsterdam.
1. Favourite quote from a Climate Farmers webinar this week: ”If you’re not at the table, you’re probably on the menu.”
2. Most farmers don’t have/make enough time nor do they feel competent enough to do business/sales development, which is highly needed to establish profitable (and more direct) sales channels for the farm produce (or better yet, food products).
3. Company structure, bylaws and new co-ownership (even joint-venture) models are aspects that a lot of regen farmers are just grasping now and there seems to be a need to simplify and create some useful models that can be applied more generally.

Week 3 highlights

1. Participated in my first cockfight. Sounds terrible, but it was necessary. I was essentially being attacked by ‘The Tormentor’ and had to put him in his place. Maybe we’ll end up having to cull him for his aggressive behaviour.
2. When the neighbouring cows were separated from their calfs (for weaning), they were crying out very loudly for several days. Honestly quite heartbreaking.
3. When starting a regenerative farm, it can be very hard to juggle the different enterprises that need to come together in a profitable synergy all at once, and it seems like there needs to be a better if-this-then-that kind of guiding principles.

Week 2 highlights

1. Farming gets you deeper into the habit of always thinking things/the day better through before going to the next tasks, in order to avoid going too much back/forth from yard to fields
• It has honestly already improved my way of thinking and planning on-the-go 😲
2. The decision making around rotational grazing is more complex than anticipated and usually requires you to be on the spot physically in order to plan rotations and fencing properly
3. It seems that a lot of AgTech companies are creating solutions for problems that aren’t really a problem, or at least not a problem that is well solved by digital means due to practicalities and farmer preferences.