The Regenerative Agroforestry Podcast

Francisco Alves manages 700ha of montado, a traditional agroforestry system of Southern Europe, with herds of cattle, goats, sheep and the famous Alentejo pig. His experience at Herdade Sao Luis exposes us to the future of recently planted silvopastural systems. We discuss important topics such as how mature trees interact with pasture, the optimum tree quantity per hectare, how they contribute to his animals' health and growth, as well as the key management constraints...

We have an extremely practical conversation with Tom Wahl, co-founder of the Red Fern Farm, convincing us he has developed a very functional and economic system. The team there has chosen a variety of rustic crops that need little care, are high in demand, and picked by the customers themselves. Planted on fantastic soil for growing trees and you have a system where all Tom and his team need to do is 'mow the grass'...

Farms are an expression of a climate, soil and farmer's potential. All need to be considered in order to create holistically functional systems. Reaching this depth is a complex task, but thanks to the work of innovators like Darren Doherty we have tools and techniques that help us make smarter decisions.

This episode deals with the big picture: the patterns, the behaviours and the context that are vital to any farmer and his 'whole under management'...

We have a discussion with Fabien Balaguer, director of L'association Française d’Agroforesterie (AFAF) where Fabien provides an overview of where agroforestry is at today in France. This is a great episode to understand the methodology l’AFAF is using to scale agroforestry but also to understand the specific challenges that come with that mission. For example on-field technical expertise is a much greater limiting factor than access to funding...

There are many claims that agroforestry can benefit ecosystem services and biodiversity. Delving into the nuance of this subject, we start our journey with Tom Staton, PhD student at Reading University, who has been conducting research in the UK at some of the farms who's farm managers we have interviewed on the show. Tom has been measuring insect populations (of predators, pollinators and pests) in silvoarable vs arable systems...

Matteo Mazzola from Iside Farm, Koen van Seijen from Investing in The Regenerative Agriculture podcast and your host Dimitri (founder of Mazi Farm) sat down to answer one of the most prominent questions we received whilst reaching out to you: how to get started farming.

Matteo and Dimitri have both been through the process of creating a farm and educating themselves in agroecology, whilst Koen has been engaged in the financial side of regenerative agriculture...

We have a conversation with Oliver Hanke from 12Tree finance to understand what scaling agroforestry looks like. With 160 million $ already invested in 12 projects, 12Tree is bringing large investors into agroforestry. We go into some detail on their largest project in Guatemala to understand its implementation. We understand who is investing in agroforestry at that scale and their motivations for doing so...

One of the pillars of agroforestry is the production of timber as a product of farmers. Rowan has been working for the past 30 years as an academic and farmer, developing a unique approach to agroforestry. He explains the importance of timber on farms, firstly as a key tool for conservation and sustainability objectives, and only secondly as a valid source of capital gain and financial return for a farm...

Garrett Miller has an unconventional path into agriculture, starting his farm at 22 and growing it into an extremely diverse enterprise since then. From cider production and a cider house, to strawberries and agrotourism, we were extremely interested in asking him questions about how he manages his business. Diversity is an inherent part of agroforestry systems, so understanding how farms manage a variety of productions is key...

In our previous interviews with Iain Tolhurst (#10) and David Wolfe (#6), both mentioned the research undertook by the Organic Research Center on their farms. We really wanted to go one step further and understand what came out of these research projets. The result is a great interview with Sally Westaway and Jo Smith where we discuss interactions between crops and trees, the productivity of agroforestry and the results of their trials on wood chips...