The Surprising Potential of Climate Farming: Philippe Birker

Eduardo: [00:00:00] So in today’s episode, we have Philippe Birker. Philippe is the co-founder of Climate Farmers, supporting regenerative farmers in Europe, in their important work of regenerating our soils through Climate Farmers, aiming to unlock the full potential of regenerative agriculture in Europe. Welcome to the show.

Philippe: Pleasure to be here today. Looking forward to our chat. 

Eduardo: Excellent. So let’s start with your journey, Philippe, like, where did you get started? How did you get started? And how do you end up on a mission of unlocking the full potential of regenerative agriculture? 

Philippe: Well, starting point is probably day one. I’m I’m born in the countryside in Germany. My godmother had a farm, so I grew up in a farming context. And so also the struggles of conventional farmers early on, I would say. And then I did what most young people did in my generation.

I left the countryside, [00:01:00] moved to the city, worked for seven years and different impact startups. Had a great time living in the cities, really enjoyed the nightlife, really enjoyed the music, but also really enjoyed the people. And especially in Amsterdam, which was the city where I was most it’s, a beautiful city, but it’s not very nature focused.

And so I was always looking at how can I bring the people that I meet and love and align with in the cities, to the countryside. And the idea was to start something like a village community, essentially. And I found this country on the west coast of Europe called Portugal, which is very empty as well.

Most people have left the countryside and we found an old abandoned village there back in 2017. Cost nothing back then, but 30,000 euros were a bunch of broken down houses and a few hectares of land. And started building this up as a fun project, essentially with some friends. And then early, 2019, we arrived kind of in the 20th century, I would say.

So we had running water, electricity, a roof over the head. So I started looking at the land and then through permaculture, I got into regenerative [00:02:00] agriculture. And then I went down the rabbit hole that I think a lot of people went, especially in the last year, two years and felt like, how is it possible that we have an answer to so many of our issues?

And so many of the problems that we’re having, but we’re not implementing it. And we had studies from the eighties already, which are showing the carbon sequestration potential and that cows are actually not bad for the climate as it is right now claimed everywhere. But that’s just the way how we are managing them. And from this, I kind of went on the journey of basically visiting farmers.

I had the luxury of being able to travel back then already. And it was before COVID, so it was a little bit easier. And so I visited in total around 60 farmers. This was pretty much all the regenerative farmers I could find back then. And I spoke with them about what they think are the issues, why it’s not scaling, how it’s going for them, what they think needs to happen.

From those conversations, essentially emerged climate farmers and emerged the idea that, Hey, we can, we can maybe do a part in helping these farmers and helping more farmers to transition. And that is in my opinion, the best thing that I [00:03:00] can do with my time right now, because I do believe that regenerative agriculture is the best angle that we have to mitigate or even reverse climate change.

And if we don’t work on climate change, then what are we doing nowadays? 

Eduardo: Can you expand a little bit on what Climate Farmers is and and what it does? 

Philippe: Sure. So that goes back to the conversations with the farmers. I guess it was always the same three issues that kept on coming up.

The first issue being. It’s not sexy to be a farmer. So farmers are not very well regarded in our society, which is crazy because they’re feeding all of us. But young people don’t go into farming. The farm of my godmother also ended in her generation, her children didn’t wanna take it over. And this is a picture that we’re seeing everywhere in Europe.

And old farmers are not necessarily changing their ways anymore. Right? So the average age of the farmer in the European Union now is in the fifties, and it’s very hard for them to still change the practices. So if we want to get things changing, we need to get young people excited about farming again. Hence the name Climate Farmers.

Hence the fact that we did a lot of storytelling initially we create a profile of farmers. We told the stories, we explained why we believe regenerative farmers are the heroes of [00:04:00] our times. We’re working on a video and then came Kiss The Ground. We were like, okay, that job’s done. We can’t do a better video than these guys.

We can’t get a better narrator than Woody Haroldson. So we focused on the second issue and the second issue, which the farmers were highlighting was access to knowledge. It’s very hard to learn about regenerative agriculture. There’s no European university teaching it, which is crazy. We’re talking about hundreds of agriculture universities.

None of them speak about regenerative agriculture. And if you wanna learn it, you can learn it online through YouTube. There are some pages, some leading people, you know, like Gabe Brown, John Kempf was advancing ecological agriculture, Richard Perkins, which are pushing things forward, but it’s still a very inefficient way of learning.

And there’s also no communal learning. So hence we started the Climate Farmers Academy, which is a nonprofit, which is essentially bringing farmers together to exchange knowledge with each other. We build a community of farmers. We’re about 600 farmers in there right now from all of our Europe.

We’re very Europe focused. This is where I live, and this is where I know how things can operate. [00:05:00] And we asked them what they want to learn. And we asked them who they want to speak to. And we invite these speakers. We organize panel discussions. We enable WhatsApp groups and we essentially help the farmers to figure out with each other and to learn from each other in order to get better and basically manage the transition towards with regenerative agriculture, which can be tricky at times.

 And then the third part, which is a for profit part of the company is essentially payment for ecosystem services because the issue that farmers are also facing is that if you transition from conventional, towards regenerative agriculture, you have a transition period, which is very context specific, but it’s usually three to five years.

And in that period, you need to start focusing on building up soil health. That takes time. And that also means that in that period, you will have less produce and you will have less profit. And that needs to be bridged because most farmers are already with their back against the wall. They already don’t have a lot of financial leeway, so they cannot handle that loss and that prevents them from transitioning.

And in order to help with this [00:06:00] we’re generating carbon plus credits, or as we call them with generation credits. Which essentially, measure the ecosystem services that the farmers are providing such as increase in biodiversity, increase in soil water holding capacity and increase in carbon. And we enable the farmers to get paid for that.

And we can also model for the farmers upfront what they would look like and how much money they would likely get if they stick to these practices so that they know with what money they can calculate. And through that, enable them to essentially embark on that transition period and then support them with the community around it.

So essentially everything that climate farmers is doing is being a support network for the farmers, which are doing the real work and the work on the ground and doing whatever we can to make it as easy as possible for them. 

Eduardo: Do you mind for our audience recapping, what is the problem with today’s agriculture and what is the impact of agriculture on the planetary boundaries? What’s happening? 

Philippe: That’s a big one. I guess the problem is today’s agriculture is the problem that we have a lot in, in many areas of society is that we have a focus [00:07:00] on money and we have a focus on output.

So the way how we have been doing farming, especially in the last 60 years is basically only focus on how can we get the maximum amount of produce, right? And in order to reach that purpose, we started implementing techniques such as, for example, using glyphosate or other pesticides or herbicides which essentially help with having a higher produce in the short term, but in the long term, they destroy the ecosystem and they destroy the soil health. And what we are seeing now is that we are reaching the point where our soils are so destroyed and our ecosystem are so destroyed that plants cannot really survive and cannot really thrive in this soil anymore. And that’s why we need to put more and more fertilizers on top of it in order to keep a broken system running.

And what you do in regenerative agriculture is you go back to nature. You essentially look at how does nature operate, what a natural system. There’s always diversity in nature. You would never find one forest was just one kind of trees. And through [00:08:00] this diversity, the plants support each other and you have something going on, which I always call it like a Turkish bazaar that goes on below a soil. Where any kind of plants through photosynthesis, take carbon out of the atmosphere. They store it in the plant, they bring it through the roots into the soil and then they trade it there with microbes, with fungi, was other plants against other nutrients.

And that is the best way that we have of bringing carbon out of the atmosphere right now. And if we would be doing this everywhere, we would actually be able to take more carbon out of the atmosphere than we are putting out with all of our human emissions, but due to the practice of plowing, for example, we’re releasing that carbon again.

So essentially in one similar word, Regenerative agriculture is agriculture that focuses on building up soil health. And through that building up of soil health, we have a lot of other positive benefits, which are good for our society, such as increase in biodiversity or increase in carbon in the soil.

Eduardo: And what are the specific planetary boundaries that are being crossed by the current agricultural system? 

Philippe: That’s a pretty long list actually. So there’s [00:09:00] nine planetary boundaries and all of them are affected by the agricultural system as we have it. Some of the main ones are definitely water related because of the high usage of nitrogen and phosphorus.

We have a lot of fresh water use pollution, and we also have the massive effect on climate change due to the carbon sequestration. And we have a massive effect on any kind of biological diversity through the usage of the pesticides that we’re having. 

Eduardo: It’s like if we were living… like maintaining the life of a human with artificial organs all over the place, plus a bunch of chemicals. 

Philippe: It’s crazy how we live in this agricultural system that’s so exploitative. And most people are just not aware of it. And this has a lot of other side effects as well, such as nutrients, for example, which the nutrients nowadays in the fruits and the veggies that we eat are like one fifths to one tens as nutrient dense as they used to be. Because obviously they don’t come from natural, healthy salts anymore.

They come from outside added pesticides and fertilizers. And This is just not healthy for the human body in itself as well.

Eduardo: [00:10:00] As a farmer, what are some of the key upsides for the farmer to jump in? 

Philippe: So here we are, again at the, at the situation of long term and short term perspective, right? So the, the big problem that we are facing right now is that there is not a lot of short term benefits for farmers because they are not getting paid for the ecosystem services.

They’re not getting paid for increasing biodiversity. They’re not getting paid for storing carbon, in the soil. They’re not getting paid for regenerating the soil and for storing water in the soil. But they are getting paid for produce. And this is all that we care about right now. So for a farmer at the moment, it’s a very brave decision to say, okay, I am not getting paid for this, but I know that it’s the right thing to do.

And I want my farm to be sustainable in the long one, because that is the issue that we’re having with the current agricultural system farmers see their soil depleting every year, they see that you need more pesticides every year, they see that the soil is broken down. They see that the water’s not getting stored.

They see that the biodiversity is going [00:11:00] down, but they don’t know what to do about it. And that is the big problem that we’re having because the incentive system that we have set up in our system is going in this detrimental direction and what we need is to start shifting that detrimental system towards a system which rewards farmers for positive side benefits, which they are providing to all of us.

This is what we’re trying to establish. And there’s a lot of other organizations trying to do the same thing, and that is where we need to go. But right now, the main thing that you can see is, and that’s where we’re trying to create is if you visit regenerative farms, you see that their higher soil health leads to higher climate change resilience.

And in the end also leads to higher profits. But those profits will only be there after the transition has happened. So that is this critical period of these three to five years through which farmers need to go because they can really reap kind of the positive repercussions of the transition. 

Eduardo: And what to do on those three to five years?

 Is there some kind of financing mechanism? 

Philippe: I mean, that’s exactly what we’re trying to work on at the moment. Right? So part of this can be the carbon plus credits essentially which can cut a part of the cost.

[00:12:00] Part of this should be coming from essentially from society from governmental institutions. For example, subsidies of the European Union are right now, mostly given out based on size of farms. They should be given out based on regeneration that’s taking place, which is taking place from year one, essentially onwards.

And then also we should be rewarding this as a society, we’re paying a higher price or premium price for regeneratively produce produce, which is also what is not happening at the moment unfortunately. These incentives are, are not existing yet, but we’re in the process of setting them up. We’re also collaborating with some corporates which are interested in financing this transition, we’re talking with some insurance companies to see if they will be willing, because money is out there. And the only thing that we need is to help farmers with bridging that period that could be through subsidies that could be through zero percent loans that could be through payment for ecosystem services.

All of these together would definitely be able to cover the loss that a farmer would have during the transition period. 

Eduardo: I will think that insurance plays a big role in this one. Right? Because by going regenerative [00:13:00] the whole system becomes a lot more resilient. And therefore there has a huge impact on insurance, doesn’t it?

Philippe: Yes. We have one very interesting pilot project, which we’re running right now with a Dutch insurance company called Nationale-Nederlanden and they realized that they are not able to ensure farmers against crop loss anymore because the risk is too high for them to take, which is an insane one to let sink in, right?

Like that insurance companies are not willing to take that risk anymore. So now together with them, we’re developing a climate change risk assessment tool focused on that farmers so that Dutch farmers can see what the effects of climate change on their specific farm and their specific context will be over the next 5, 10, 20 years.

And then afterwards we can device a plan together with them. And how far transition towards regenerative agriculture would be mitigating those risks. And then Nationale-Nederlanden would be interested in being an insurance company that would be ensuring the farmers in their transition period against the lower crop loss with the outcome afterwards that they afterwards know that the farm has higher [00:14:00] climate change resilience and higher profitable. And through that also a better customer for the insurance company in the long run. So this is great because it’s a forward thinking insurance company that wants to basically secure also their own future for the next 40 years. But also sees that the best way to do that is to be in line with nature and to be in line with the climate.

And we hope that there will be more companies following that suit. 

Eduardo: Philippe can you break down for us a little bit what does it take for a farmer to shift into regenerative farming? What are some of the resources or enabling technologies or infrastructure that a farmer will need? 

Philippe: I mean, the most essential thing is the mindset shift.

Essentially the mindset needs to shift from the focus on produce to the focus on soil health. And then everything is very context specific. So there is no one size fits all solutions. There are a few principles, of course, which you can stick to like always having the ground covered, not having bare soil. I always compare bear soil to an Irish man lying in the Australian sun.

It’s just not a good idea. Diversity of plants is always a good idea. But everything is generally context [00:15:00] specific. So what we do is we usually sit down with the farmer. We take a look at their holistic context, which take a look at their business context and we see what would make sense in their soil conditions, in their weather conditions.

And then we match them with one of our consultants. We have around a hundred consultants with different expertise, from different regions in Europe, which they can help the farmers to create a transition plan together with them. And then ideally I would always recommend to do it gradually and season by season and to transition with parts of the farm at the same time, because it makes it easier to follow the transition and then you see the results there and then you can transition more and more of the farm.

Right? It’s a longer journey. It’s not a one year thing. The regenerative journey. It’s probably a lifelong journey, but the most important thing that needs to happen is to have the mindset shift of: as a steward of a farm, I need to focus on building up the soil health of that farm. And then you have this thing from healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy humans.

And if we can manage to make that mindset shift in all of the farmer’s minds, Then we already have a huge success [00:16:00] because farmers in the end, they know best what to do on their own land. We don’t need to tell them what to do on their land. We just need to reward them for doing the right thing. And for building up soil health.

Eduardo: Can you talk to us a little bit about the higher level landscape, you know, what is the political legal tax landscape like today and what needs to change so that this takes off?

Philippe: Yeah, that’s a big one. I mean, this is this thing in the European Union, right? Everything is, is very centrally regulated. So the main agricultural policy is a common agricultural policy by the European Union, which is giving out 444 billion euros in subsidies to farmers. But as mentioned,

unfortunately these subsidies are not really given out based on soil health. And they’re not really given out based on regeneration, but they’re mostly given out based on size of the farm. And they’re not really encouraging the right kind of farming practices. So what needs to happen is to start shifting these subsidies, to look at what is the actual outcome on the land.

What [00:17:00] is the regeneration that’s taking place and then to reward farmers for doing these right steps and for basically building up their soil health. That would be, if I would have a magic wand, that would be what I would want to do for sure that we go in that direction. The good thing is there are definitely politicians out there.

We are already in conversations with Cem Özdemir, who’s the German agricultural minister. We are in great conversations with Christian Holzleitner, who’s the head of the sustainability committee of the European Commission and they see this and there’s EIT foods which is an organization from the European Union, which is focusing on food innovation.

We are also in a program, so it’s not like it’s not moving in that direction. I would definitely say that there is a lot of politicians which are realizing that we cannot continue in the way, how we’re doing things. And luckily people are voting more for the green party, which is definitely also helping in that direction.

So I see the right movement. It’s just the question if the movement will be quick enough. 

Eduardo: All right.

So we have a context in which we have, first of all, a mindset shift, and then, okay. Well, the second part of that [00:18:00] transformation needs to be a financial incentive of some sort. So expanding a little bit on the financial side. That’s a key bottleneck to overcome.

What do you think is the type of financing needed to, to transition and who provides this financing? 

Philippe: I mean, I think this needs to come from the, from the whole system essentially. Right? So part of it is subsidies and I mean, to put things in perspective, most farmers income right now is 60 to 80% subsidies. If that doesn’t shift, then, then that’s already 60 to 80% of the income, which are not touched. And then we have to produce side of things, right. And here we have the situation that right now, for example, we work with some amazing regenerative farmers in Portugal and they have regeneratively produced milk, but they’re selling it for a normal price.

They’re selling it for the same price as a conventional milk. Because there is no awareness yet about regenerative agriculture is at the level that people go to the supermarket or they go to the normal market and they’re [00:19:00] asking for regenerative produce and they’re willing to pay for a premium price because we also don’t have a regenerative label yet.

And it’s also hard to do it because with organic label that we have, there’s a lot of issues as well. You essentially have a checklist. And if you tick off the checklist then you get the label, if you don’t, then you don’t, but they don’t really look at the results again. And what we need to get to is to look at the results and to look what’s actually taking place on the land.

And not just based on am: I crossing off a checklist, which someone created somewhere in a building that might not be able to assess if this is really working on the agricultural land and out there on the fields. And so that’s the one thing. So I think society can help, purchasing for example, directly from farmers.

So that’s one thing that everybody that’s listening can do is figuring out who are farmers in my area, which are maybe working with generatively. And how can I purchase from them. I’m buying most of those things that I can get, I get a fruits and veggie box, which I pick up this Wednesday again, from a farm around the area, which is always a beautiful experience to do.

I order my cheese and I order the meat that I eat only from a generative farms. I ordered straight to my house. And [00:20:00] through that, I’m helping them was essentially getting the price, which they should be getting for their products. And that then extends of course, to the food corporates. Because most of the time, most of the farmers are selling to food corporates, which also need to be willing to pay a premium price and to support them in the transition.

But if they get the demand from the customers, then they will follow that demand and they will support farmers. And then they might also be able to support farmers in the transition period because the pockets are deep enough to be able to say, Hey, we finance you now with another 100,000 euros for the next three years.

And afterwards we know we can source regeneratively from you. 

Eduardo: Okay. I see. Well, that leads to my next question, which was like, what is the role of big food in this transition, you know, big the big industrial agriculture is often seen as the evil. And I wonder, what are you seeing from big food? Are they accelerating or detracting from transformation?

Philippe: In my twenties, I was very active, for example, in the whole water as a human right movement. [00:21:00] So I organized a lot of water development projects. So in my head there was a lot of organizations like Nestle, so which are always evil.

Right. But what I’m slowly coming more and more to realize too is also companies are in to some extent living organisms, right. And they are changing. People in leadership positions are changing. And I think what you start seeing is that there’s a, that there’s societal change happening due to the work, I think of organizations and also due to the larger effects of climate change that people are realizing, oh, maybe this whole climate change thing was not really a hoax from the Democrats.

You know, maybe there’s something to it. And then luckily, a lot of these people also have children or they also care about the future of their children. And they also suddenly start realizing, oh, maybe I have an interest in the next, generation’s not finding a completely screwed up planet because of me.

Maybe I don’t wanna go into the books as the person that destroyed our planet. So what we start seeing is major food corporates, which actually really interested in the transition towards regenerative agriculture, which are reaching out to us, which is saying, [00:22:00] Hey, can you help us? Can you help us understand this?

And obviously we’re not talking about their big budgets yet, but I can definitely say there’s a movement and there are people in top level management of some of these organizations. They are aware that this change needs to happen and they want this change to happen.

And they’re trying to figure out how to make it happen. I have to say part of the reason why I started the project in Portugal was also because I saw the world not going in right direction I was like, Hey, if shit it’s the fan. I wanna be with some people that I love someone in mountain village grow my own food, have my own water and kind of be like I’m done.

But since starting Climate Farmers, my hope has definitely been rising. Like I have met a lot of amazing people that wanna do things same as the politics as in the industry, as in the farmer side. So I think we have a chance if we will be able to turn things around quick enough that I don’t know because of course there’s still a lot of barriers in the way, but there’s definitely hope.

Eduardo: Well, this is another one of the big arguments or counterarguments. It’s like, Hey, this is not really a system that can scale. And [00:23:00] I mean, what can you say about that? Is it really scalable? Regenerative? 

Philippe: It’s a hundred percent scalable. I mean, I think that is a very big difference that I would say between, for example, permaculture and regenerative agriculture, right.

Permaculture is, is a way of life. That’s very amazing for homestead regenerative agriculture. There’s a lot of permaculture principles applied to large scale farms. And I have seen farms that are operating regeneratively in Europe. And there’s a lot of studies on farms in America.

Such as for example, Gave Brown, which have shown that there can grow wheat and corn in a regenerative manner. Same as meat can be grown in a regenerative manner. Obviously, if you have holistically grazed cows, which are moving daily on the grass products and only eat grass as cows should thereby storing carbon in the soil, instead of causing climate change, you need more space than in a locked up stable where you cramp a few thousand into a very little area.

That is clear. We cannot eat the same amount of meat that we’re eating right now. If we want to eat it in a regenerative way, but we all can eat meat once a [00:24:00] week or twice a week, which should certainly be enough. In a way that the meat is produced, regeneratively with a healthy, happy animal, with a healthy happy soil and a healthy happy planet and human being in the end.

And the same goes for all the other produce. So regenerative agriculture can certainly feed the world. And it also has to, because the conventional way is not gonna feed the world. Like 66% of all of our soils are already suffering from the effects that we are having from conventional agriculture.

And they will not be providing food anymore. So we are leading towards the point of actually not being able to feed the world with the way how we’re doing agriculture until now. And regenerative agriculture is actually the only way forward. 

Eduardo: And what is the timeframe from a degraded soil? That depends on chemicals right now to even produce something? How long is that transition typically?

Philippe: So it’s always contact specific, but we generally work with a house number somewhere around three to five. So you would say that three to five years is a transition period. And after five years you should be able to have a healthy soil and to have more [00:25:00] produce than you have before the transition.

And one, one very interesting indicator of this is always the earth worm population. So one thing that I always say is that you start building up a nice house for your earth worms. And if you dig in a degraded soil, you will not find a lot of life. You will not find a lot of earthworms. And then once you start reviving your soil, essentially, earthworms will be the main people doing the job there, and you will see that population increasing and then populating. Then you will also see the soil getting softer. And it’s incredible. If you ever have the chance, go on a conventional field with a mono mono crop and try to dig, you will not be able to dig with your hands.

The soil will be so hard. And then if you ever have the chance to go to a regenerative farm, try to dig and you can dig quite softly in the soil. But that journey to get from the one to the other will take you three to five years.

Eduardo: I saw on your website, you have a Climate Farmer’s conference coming up in October. Yeah. wanna tell us a little more about what what can we expect from the conference and what the call to action is for farmers out there in Europe. 

Philippe: Yeah, it’s, that’s definitely one of my, [00:26:00] one of my, one of the highlights of my year.

It, it essentially came again from the farmers as is almost everything that we are doing. So when we started setting up these skill cards and we started running our pioneer program, we started matching farmers together to accompany each other on the journey. There was a strong desire for people to meet in person.

Right. And to see each other then personally, especially, this was still in the pandemic times last year. And then last summer, I met this incredible human being, which is Rudolf Buehler, which is a farmer in the 14th generation. And he was setting up a farmers association in his twenties already, which he’s now in the sixties became the biggest farmers association in Southern Germany with 1,600 farmers fighting for better prices and better rights for farmers to build up soil health.

They started making a lot of money with their products. So he bought the castle in which his ancestors were the vessels of the aristocracy several hundred years ago. And then they turned that castle over to the foundation one by farmers. And now it’s the house of the farmers and it’s to my [00:27:00] knowledge, the world’s only farmers castle.

And then that castle, they had their first world Congress of peasant rights, 10 years ago where they wrote the declaration of peasant rights. And in my conversation with Rudolf we both agreed that we need to have a manifesto for regenerative agriculture as well, because the term is also getting hijacked by a lot of companies right now, because it is not defined and the definition should come from the farmers.

So you made the decision to organize the first European conference of regenerative agriculture led by farmers. And we had 50 farmers from 16 different countries present. Some of the leading farmers in Europe driving the forward. This year, we’re gonna invite 100 and most of it is via invite, but we also have a few grant applications, so people can go on the website.

And if you are a farmer and you are, you are operating regeneratively or you’re interested in operating regeneratively you can fill out the application and we look forward to discuss what needs to happen and how to scale regenerative agriculture in Europe with 100 farmers from hopefully all over Europe in October in this farmers’ castle. 

Eduardo: [00:28:00] Sounds, like an amazing event. Where can people learn more about Climate Farmers? 

Philippe: We have an incredible social media and marketing team. You can follow us on LinkedIn, you can follow us on Instagram.

I’m also sharing whatever I find interesting on my own LinkedIn page. And you can also go on the website and that’s, I think the, the three main channels, and then we have a newsletter of course as well.

Eduardo: Let’s jump into the rapid five.

Number one is what’s your top author or book? 

Philippe: It’s an interesting one. I love reading. So I read every morning and every day. And I guess I would just give you the two books that I’m reading at the moment, which are both amazing. I always read one storytelling and one knowledge book.

The knowledge book right now is All About Love by Bell Hooks, which is an incredible book that I would recommend to anybody to read because love is a topic that touches all of us in our lives. And I think we don’t deal with it enough. And the other one is The Overstory by Richard Powers. Which is an incredible book about the well, several stories of the relationship of humans and trees. It’s beautifully written and it teaches you a lot about trees and how much [00:29:00] more they can do that we are not really aware of yet.

Eduardo: Number two, what climate leader do you look up to or inspires you?

Philippe: I guess one that comes to my mind is is definitely Christian Kroll. And the work that they’re doing with Ecosia. Ecosia is like a search engine that’s planting trees, and they have been doing this since 2009 already so way before the current height. And that’s doing a lot of work on in terms of combining technology with reconnection with nature and also turning it into a purpose led company.

So I think that’s someone I’m definitely looking up to. . 

Eduardo: Number three, I think you kinda answered through the conversation we had, but if you had a magic wand, what would be the number one thing that you will change or problem you’ll fix? 

Philippe: I think the core issue that we have in our society is all revolving around the true cost of things. Right? So the issue is that we are not paying based on what the cost of something is outside of the financial mean. So this comes down to your phone or your laptop. This [00:30:00] comes down to your clothes. On all of this we just look at the monetary cost, but we don’t look at the cost to the environment, we don’t look at the cost of people. So the magic wand that I would like to have would make this happen, that we would pay everything to the true cost of things. And suddenly if you wanna take a plane from Amsterdam to Barcelona, you’re gonna have to pay 2000 euros for the flight.

If you want to take the train, you’re gonna have to pay 150 euros for the train ride. And the same goes for everything, right? And that is essentially the issue that we’re having. That if you wanna be sustainable, you need to pay more. How crazy is it that anybody that wants to act in a sustainable way is punished by having to pay more than people that are acting unsustainable and causing harm to the planet.

That we, as a society are accepting this and are doing this is, is incredible. So that would be the magic wand that I would definitely like to wave and fix. 

Eduardo: The thing is that lot of those prices are now artificially being kept low, which is the problem. So subsidies as a whole are a big problem.

Number four, 

who do you think we need to have in the podcast? 

Philippe: How about [00:31:00] some farmers? How about talking to one or two farmers? So that they can share the journey themselves, how they got into a regenerative agriculture and how the journey was for them.

I’m happy to recommend a few names there for you. Excellent. 

Eduardo: Let’s do it. And number five, do you think we’ll make it?

Philippe: Yes. I think we will. I think the mindset changes there. I think there will be a lot of suffering. I think there will be a lot of challenges coming up for us, which we are not expecting, which will be way bigger than the coronavirus.

But I do think we will make it. I think the suffering that will be there will be more than than what it needed to be, because unfortunately there’s still some forces fighting against it, but I think a lot of people are slowly realizing what’s going on and are slowly changing their behavior. And as I said, I do think things moving in the right direction.

It’s just the question if we are fast enough. And enough meaning then as fast as possible.

Eduardo: Thank you for being with us today, Philippe. 

Philippe: My pleasure Eduardo.