Regenerative Skills

Welcome back everyone to the second of the Deep Dive episodes. In this new format the intention is to bring complexity back into the conversations around regenerative agriculture. Myself and many of my peers have been observing the discourse online, and especially on social media devolve into catch phrases and buzz words with little meaning and I want to embrace the complexity and many perspectives around many of the topics that get debated online. We’ll be testing out a mix of investigative journalism, key interview snippets, and narrative weaving, not to assert a single stance on any issue, but rather to guide listeners through the fact that there are rarely any easy answers and that there’s so much more to these conversations than the over-simplified arguments that we gloss over on click-bait titles and polarizing debates. You may remember in the last Deep Dive, we looked into the question of WHO has the authority and credentials to say what Regeneration is. As a continuation to this question, today we’ll be exploring HOW to measure the journey of regeneration. One thing is to establish standards and validity, but as we’ll see in these discussions, this is much harder to do than to talk about. This is a subject that is very relevant to my own work here with Climate Farmers because I helped to work on the creation of our our Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification program (MRV for short) and I continue to think about how such a complex and nuanced journey can be measured and communicated as I build and refine the educational programs in the Climate Farmer’s Academy.  The question of HOW to measure regeneration also contains many sub-questions, such as what is the end goal? When does the timeline for measurement start and stop? What tools and resources are available for measuring? Where do we set the parameters for observation? I mean, is it just the ecology of the farm that needs improvement, or do we need to look at the economy of the farm business and the state of health of the people involved and the community around them? It’s also very important to ask why we’re bothering to measure this at all. Who gets the data? What are they going to do with it, and how will this information affect the relationship between farmers, policy makers, and the end customer?

Welcome back everyone to another panel session. In light of all the stories of extreme weather and emergencies around the Iberian peninsula and other parts of Europe in the past months, we’re going to take a closer look at the realities on the ground for our farmers. These storms and floods are becoming more and more common and frequent, and though we’ve talked in the past about the need to adapt to an increasingly erratic climate, these points of catastrophe are an essential part of the conversation. In this session we’ll hear from three farmers in Iberia and their experiences of enduring the constant storms and service interruptions of the past months. We’ll also explore how they are recovering from the disasters, how they plan to mitigate these events in the future, as well as a longer term view towards adaptation in the face of increasing frequency of events like this. In order to get a deeper sense of the impacts and challenges brought by the storms, flooding and erosion that our panelists experienced on their farms, I encouraged them to share pictures and videos of their land in the aftermath. Obviously these images can’t be conveyed over audio, so if you want to see what we were looking at in the introductions, you can see the video version of the panel session on the Climate Farmer’s YouTube channel or through the links in the resources page on our website at ClimateFarmers.org. So with all that out of the way, let’s jump into this month’s session.

Welcome to episode two of season ten of the Regenerative Skills podcast. As I mentioned last time, the show is changing this year: we’re moving to two episodes a month, and I’ll be alternating between two formats. The first is the panel conversations that have become a favorite over the last couple of years—three guests, three perspectives, one question that keeps surfacing inside the Climate Farmers community. The second format is what we’re launching today: Deep Dives. These are my attempt to bring complexity back into regenerative agriculture at a time when the online discourse is increasingly dominated by slogans, hot takes, and click-bait certainty. In these episodes we’ll weave narrative, investigative threads, and carefully chosen interview excerpts—not to land on a single “correct” stance, but to help you feel the texture of the problem and the tradeoffs behind each position. Today’s Deep Dive is a question that provokes strong opinions for good reason: who gets to say what “regenerative” means? Rather than offering a definitive answer, I’m inviting you to sit with the motivations and incentives that shape any definition—whether it’s coming from farmers, certifiers, nonprofits, corporations, or measurement platforms. You’ll hear from Joao and Diogo of Monte Silveira in central Portugal—one of the first large farms in the country to achieve Regenerative Organic Certification—on why certification mattered to their market strategy without changing how they manage the land. You’ll hear from Ana Digon of the Iberian Regenerative Agriculture Association on how organic standards became diluted and why her network built a farmer-led, principle-based definition to protect integrity. We’ll bring in Benjamin Fahrer, who helped guide the ROC certification process and wrestles with who should have the authority to set standards, and we’ll close with Phil Fernandez, who led Climate Farmers’ MRV work and explains why definitions become unavoidable once monitoring, reporting, and compliance enter the picture. Along the way I’ll name the many other perspectives shaping this debate online—from soil-health purists and carbon-first programs to agroecology, corporate “regen” initiatives, and the often-overlooked critique of appropriation from Indigenous and peasant traditions—and we’ll end by pointing to the deeper issue behind the whole mess: the loss of relationship and trust in our food systems. Next month we go practical: measuring regeneration—what’s worth tracking, what gets distorted, and how we stay grounded when dashboards start pretending to be truth.

To start off the year, I wanted to explore a topic that often gets swept under the rug. Mental well-being, or the lack of it, in farming communities has reached epedemic levels. Farmers in Europe face a nasty mix of chronic overwork and poor recovery, high uncertainty and low control in their work, and heavy admin/compliance pressure, often while working in social isolation with a culture that can discourage help-seeking. Those pressures stack and reinforce each other (less sleep and more stress lead to worse decisions, more conflict and injuries, tighter finances, and even less time off) driving burnout, anxiety/depression, and in some contexts elevated suicide risk. The stress factors for farmers are only increasing too, as weather variance, economic pressure, bureaucratic stress, and social factors mount. For this reason my hope in this panel session is to shed some light on mental health, and some ways to avoid burnout in the upcoming season from a number of different perspectives. 

There’s no way around it, governance of the agricultural industry has a massive impact on how farms and the agrifood system are managed. Policy, regulations, and incentives are driven by many forces and stakeholders. Yet the political machine is slow and heavily influenced by financial interests. Where does this leave farmers themselves, and most notably, farmers who strive to steward their land and ecosystems in ways that policy hasn’t caught up to or in some cases, doesn’t even allow? In this panel we’ll explore these and many more questions with speakers who are closely connected, not only with the political side of this discussion, but the growers and land stewards affected. Is there hope for positive change and better incentives, or will those committed to advancing regenerative agriculture continue to swim against the current?

Welcome back to another episode in our panel discussion series. In this edition we’ll be focusing on the challenges and opportunities of climate adaptation with examples of farmers in different key and representative zones of Europe. There's no question that the climate is shifting in severe and unpredictable ways. The question is how can agriculture adapt to this new reality. Like all systemic challenges we'll take a look at this broad topic from a number of farmer perspectives as we explore the adaptations that can be made on the land, in the business, and the support mechanisms needed from the wider agri-food sector to assist in the transition.

Alex got a chance to follow up with Luwayo Biswick in Malawi. Luwayo had been on the Regenerative Skills podcast when it was still Abundant Edge for episode 71 in 2018.    As the Founder of the Permaculture Paradise Institute, Luwayo and his family have built an enterprise that helps local farmers throughout the whole country learn how to integrate regenerative practices. The Institute works on a trainer model that helps farmers get access to the tools, seedstock and livestock they need to create a steady stream of productive, diverse foodcrops. As a country with thousands of smallholders, the gap between conventional agricultural practices and resilient abundance requires peer learning, and access to new tools and techniques.   You can learn more and support the institute on their website: https://permacultureinstitutemw.com/ -- you can also learn how to sponsor farmers and farm training there! 

In our tour of Sub Saharran Africa, Alex followed a recommendation from Thiang’o to talk with Ripura Hewick. Ripura is based in Namibia, and manages a dryland farm for the non-profit Steps for Children.   Ripura started as a traditional Agrobusiness management student University of Science and Technology (NUST) graduate with a Bachelors of Agriculture  but left conventional agriculture, disappointed in the business. After a hiatus he returned to as a farm manager of a permaculture project connected to one of Steps for Children’s schools.    In this interview, Ripura describes the unlearning and relearning process he had to go through to figure out how to successfully build a community integrated market garden, that provides nutrition, education and seedlings for the local community.

400 episodes down and some big changes coming.  It's been almost 9 full years since I started this little show and I'm amazed at the journey that it's accompanied me on, from my apprenticeship in bamboo building in Guatemala, to starting a homestead, leaving it to move to Spain just ahead of the pandemic, and where I am now, putting down roots in central Catalunya on my little farm with my partner Alba.  This is hardly then end though. despite a tough year where I've even considered shutting down the show, some new opportunities have come up that will take this podcast in a new direction.  I would love for you to be a part of how the show takes a new shape in the coming year. Please take the time to fill in the short survey here if you'd like to guide our new direction.  And of course, a sincere thank you to all of you who've supported this podcast and it's growth over 9 years. There's no way I would have persisted this long without you. 

Welcome back everyone and welcome back to the monthly panel sessions. In this session that I hosted with Climate Farmers, we dive into the lives of three passionate farmers, Julia, Anne, and Mateo, who are not only dedicated to regenerative agriculture but also deeply invested in their communities. Each farmer shares their unique journey, challenges, and successes, from establishing cooperative farms to activities that bring people to participate in the work and bounty that they’re creating.    This conversation explores the essential role of social design, community engagement, and the diverse activities that make their farms resilient and impactful. We also go into practical steps on everything from building relationships with local communities to navigating cultural differences, all while highlighting the importance of personal growth and understanding in fostering a thriving, regenerative ecosystem.