Planetary Regeneration Podcast | Episode 19: Tom Newmark
This blog is a transcription of the 19th episode of the Planetary Regeneration Podcast, hosted by Regen Network’s Chief Regeneration Officer, Gregory Landua.
In this episode, Gregory interviews Tom Newmark, cofounder of The Carbon Underground with previous guest Lary Kopald, and leader in the soil-centered regenerative agriculture movement. Listen on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher; or read the transcription below.
Gregory: Hello and welcome to the Planetary Regeneration Podcast, I’m your host Gregory Landua.
Hello regenerates. Welcome to episode 19 of the Planetary Regeneration podcast. This time my guest is Tom Newmark, who is a leader in the soil-centered regenerative agriculture movement working with the Carbon Underground that he cofounded with Lary Kopald, my previous guest, and it was really a pleasure to get to connect with Tom and I think you will find this a very inspiring conversation. Tom is always inspiring and uplifting in his articulation of the potential of soil and regenerative agriculture to transform the climate crisis into an opportunity for a much different relationship between our human economy and the agricultural sector and food and textiles and Earth and soils and we hit on a lot in this podcast. We discuss the work that Tom has done to bring soil health and regenerative agriculture to the center of conversations with C-suite level leaders in the corporate world. The work that the Carbon Underground has done internationally with governments, and generally explores the top down nodal approach of transforming the understanding of global leaders to their fiduciary responsibility as it relates to ecological health and specifically soil health in our agricultural systems. Yeah, fantastically fun conversation with Tom and I think startup leaders, corporate leaders, investors and the general public will find this conversation enlivening and deeply useful as well, because Tom carries with him a wealth of experience as a corporate leader. So, his perspective there, I think, is compelling and important to consider in how the movement towards regenerative agriculture as the cornerstone of our civilization with food and agriculture being the world’s largest economic driver — the world’s biggest industry and the world’s biggest contributor to climate change. If it can be transformed to be carbon negative in the way that I do believe is possible and we can achieve the transformation of the game that is to say how companies become profitable and reintegrate ecological value into that economic game. It transforms competitive dynamics and it will transform society. I hope this is an enlivening and interesting conversation for you all, thanks for listening in, and feel free to leave comments and questions. I’ll do my best to engage, and for those of you who are regular listeners, please do hop by the Regen Network telegram channel and post questions there because it’s hard for me to — I don’t know what venue most people are listening on and it’s easier to have a central point of engagement and I’m pretty active there at the Regen Network telegram group. Hopefully I’ll look forward to chatting with you there if you’ve got questions or comments. You can also of course ping me on Twitter, Gregory_ Landua on Twitter and I’ll do my best to respond there as well. Stay healthy and hasta la [inaudible] siempre. Enjoy the show.
Gregory: Welcome Tom to the Planetary Regeneration Podcast. I’ve been looking forward to this for a little while since started the podcast a few months ago. You’re always one of my favorite people to get into deep conversations with. Thanks for joining in the middle of sort of the shelter at home corona virus global weirding moment.
Tom: It’s a pleasure Gregory. And I’ve so enjoyed our conversations over the many years that we have been together, worked together, dreamt together. I consider you a young elder to me. You have really inspired me and enlarged my thinking on topics so precious to the regenerative movement so it will be a delight to have a conversation with you.
Gregory: Thanks for those kind words, I feel the same. My first question to just kick off this conversation is, what are the opportunities for the regenerative movement that this particular moment in time has? Like sort of seeds of opportunity in the corona pandemic.
Tom: I think there are two that leap to the forefront. Number one, we in the Carbon Underground, and that’s the NGO that Larry Kopald and I created and you’re certainly very aware of our work Gregory. We in the Carbon Underground do a lot of work with major corporations and governments, whereas two years ago it was hard to get people’s serious attention focused on regenerative sourcing and it was really difficult to the point of impossible to get government leaders to treat the topic as top of mind within all of the issues confronting government. Now, it’s a different story. We recently were authorized by the government of Thailand to help the 35 million farmers there transition from conventional agriculture to regenerative agriculture. There are a lot of nuances and lines of energy and finance involve in that. The basic concept is just what I said, you’ve got one of the largest food producing, food exporting nations in the world resolving to support a transition to regenerative agriculture. That is a reflection. Thailand is the pioneer. They get credit for being the first at a national level to announce that intention. But we’re hearing the stirrings the first steps being taken by other governments around the world. And there are governmental subunits that are in different parts of the world making similar declarations. Now the proof of this — the proof of the power to actually have this advance their regenerative mission will be in the soil pudding, right? Let’s see what happens, but at least in terms of a national government announcing its intention to support and actually put the Carbon Underground and our work in creating a regenerative standard into the national agricultural agenda for the nation, that’s happened. So that’s an important sign. And then correspondingly, Lary and I are in conversations with many of the world’s largest food purchasers on a supply chain level. It’s hard to imagine corporations larger than the ones with whom we are dealing, and many major corporations are declaring interest in having their commodities sourced regeneratively and to build a regenerative component into the specs that these corporations will be insisting upon and in turn, once they’re in the specs, that means management within those companies are rewarded for delivering those specs. So, you start to have enormous corporate power in the hundreds of billions of dollars of purchasing looking for regeneratively sources food. And it’s not there yet. Not at that scale.
Gregory: Yeah, it’s not. Not yet.
Tom: Right. This is a remarkably exciting moment. It’s pregnant with opportunity, Gregory, because you have national and international leaders on a governmental level saying, “We have to fix the broken agriculture systems in our counties because the soil is disappearing.” I mean, when I was meeting with, and I won’t specify the leaders and I won’t even specify the country because I think they deserve the confidentiality and the disclosure is appropriate, but where national leaders are saying, “Our farming system is broken, the soil has been killed. It’s being washed away. What’s remaining is inert and unproductive.” This is happening worldwide there’s a book coming out, George Monbiot and his blog a couple of days ago mentioned a book that was coming out. I don’t remember Gregory the name of the book, but we could easily find it and have it be a reference note to this podcast. The book was talking about how with a 1.5 to 3 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature there will start to be major breakdown in the productivity of the major crops that feed the planet. That amount of temperature increase from where we are right now, that’s inevitable. That’s not something that is really up for debate. I mean right now, it’s just baked in unless we do something very dramatic to reverse the arrow of global warming and global climate chaos, which you and I know is possible. Because if a large enough area of the world converts from conventional, extractive, exploitative, totalitarian agriculture to an agriculture that nourishes the commons that restores and regenerates the commons. Then there’s and opportunity globally to reverse the direction of the climate crisis. But even locally there are data locally showing that in — for example in the northern Great Plains in the area that bridges the United States and Canada. There was research a few years ago showing that the conversion of land over to permanent cover cropping from the type of bare Earth, [rocrop], heavily tilled agriculture that the conversion over to permanent cover crop with no till was enough to have a dramatic effect in that large regional area where the temperatures in that regional area and the rainfall in that regional area normalized. You and I have seen this around the world where it is possible to change the — change in the global climate is incredibly ambitious. I think it’s doable, but ambitious. But we can actually affect change at a local level that is quite dramatic.
Gregory: Yeah and I would push back on the — I mean, A) I super appreciate the prudent conservatisms of not being handwavy about being able to affect the global climate, but I just want to say, we can and we will. Cause we already have. Look, we already have. Just sort of like preaching to the choir, we already have affected the climate. For our listeners, one of these core premises I think to the regenerative movement is embracing the understanding of not just the effect of carbon emissions on global climate change but the effect on the changes of land use. And that’s what you’re speaking to, which is when you don’t have bare Earth and instead you have cover crops or native prairie, it radically transforms and normalizes climate and what people miss in the climate conversation is the effect of the hydrological cycle on warming and cooling. I think it isn’t a linear — like the greenhouse effect isn’t just about carbon. It’s about the hydrological cycle as well and rainfall and the cooling that happens when precipitation happens and the effect that that positive feedback cycle has on photosynthesis and then therefore on soil carbon. There’s this really beautiful upward spiral of regeneration that takes place when we change certain ecological thresholds in our farming practices, and I’m enormously excited about — for me, for the corona virus opportunity everything you’re saying is resonating. And I think just landing it in the — finding a way to have global awareness of the regenerative potential of living systems. What happens when you stop flying globally for a few months, what happens — and then correlating that in our storytelling to what happens if you change all of the cropping to no-till? What happens if you change all of the grazing to wholistic management? What happens if you change all of the tropical production agroforestry? All of a sudden, wow the planet is transformed in a way that– I’m hopeful that this moment of kind of like a shakeup and a disruption in people’s day to day. If we can as a movement if we can invite that understanding and relationship between our economy and the planet and just sort of lay out these pretty simply factual interactions at the intersection between agriculture and ecological health, I think we could see some very swift galvanized action. And what I’m hearing from you that the seeds of that action are already there. Nation states like Thailand are already saying yes, big corporates are already saying yes. I mean it’s just so invigorating. And I think in times like this, having something to be invigorated by is really important.
Tom: And there’s a corresponding and it operated when the government, Thailand are a major international food brand. When they go public with the regenerative agenda, everybody notes it. But we’re not seeing is what’s happening much more quietly on the level of the commons. And since you’ve directed me to reflected on COVID-19 and what is the maybe message or opportunity that we’re perceiving because of that. We’re seeing it around the world a rising up of a more caring, loving, supportive community spirit. It’s really — there are some people you look at and you grimace and you go, “What’s wrong with humans?” but there are so many examples of people’s sacrifice and people pitching in to deliver medicines and to deliver food and to be supportive and to help the healthcare practitioners and emergency responders. I’m inspired by this stirring. When everything is super, when everybody is making lots of money — which by the way, when did that ever happen? But when there’s this perception that everything is just humming and moving along perfectly, maybe it’s not the moment to test the love and the resilience of the human spirit. But this is a moment where we’re gripped in such an existential health crisis that it shakes our souls and it stirs us up, and many people around the world are responding in a beautiful way to take care of their fellow human beings. And part of that may well be in having people reexamine their relationship to their soil and to their food production. I’m seeing that. Even in New York. I have a friend that runs and organization, local roots, I don’t know whether you know [whenjay], but she is a remarkable local leader of the local organic food scene and she and her organization are delivering locally grown, beautiful produce to people’s apartments in New York. To me this is a moment where the human spirit can rise. Sometimes in these crises, dark and unpleasant aspects of humanity manifest, but I think more often what we’re seeing right now is a really inspiring stories of people caring for one another. I’m right now — my corona virus area of shelter in place happens to be — and I’m calling you from Hollywood Los Angeles. You know I live in Costa Rica, but I also have a little apartment here in LA because we have children and grandchildren here. And just everywhere for the last month people have been so caring, so tender, and so loving. It’s everywhere we go, every interaction we have. We’re experiencing is the interactions [suffused] with a caring supportive energy, and imagine if that translates over to our farmers and to our farmland. I think that we’re in a moment where the human condition is being tested and I have the feeling that we will rise and show — the glory will shine. That’s certainly my hope and that’s my, perhaps, inordinately optimistic perception (crosstalk) [inaudible 00:24:56] –
Gregory: So, may it be. Make it so.
Tom: Yeah.
Gregory: I mean I resonate with that. I mean I think the opportunity in times like this where our humanness and our interconnection and you know — and gosh just the stark awareness on a couple of levels. Like one is, wow, having a secure relationship with food growing in destabilizing times, unstable times is essential. So, if a place like New York city could be producing 60–70% of its food in rooftops gardens and nearby farms and then have a local food shed supporting the rest. If we can transition our global supply — wow look at how much better off people around, I think, economically and health wise. But also the glaring reality that our healthcare system is only as good as other countries’ health care systems and other countries’ health care systems are only as good as ours, because if you have a global pandemic that overwhelms a country, it comes to your country next and coupling that with climate — there’s just — I’m hopeful that this mix that we’re in, it just shows the interconnectedness. It’s sort of like cares for each other and care for the world or else. because you can see what happens if you don’t. It can resonate. It’s like the beautiful opportunity where altruism and selfishness intersect in care for your other humans and the greater than human world is just like care, Just care at all of those levels and we’re all better off. We’re more fulfilled, we’re healthier, and in times like this, we survive.
Tom: I’m inspired. I’m energized, I feel the richness of opportunity at this moment. You and I both know that regenerative agriculture has the ability quickly to revive, recharge, replenish damaged ecosystems. It really doesn’t take more than a few years for the biology and the soil to begin to celebrate and flex its remarkable muscle. And when that happens, food production is more reliable, the water cycle is restored, the soil water battery protects communities during periods of climate — we’ve seen it. We’ve seen it all over the world. Gregory. Even before I was aware of the term regenerative agriculture when my daughter Sarah Newmark and I were in India meeting with spice farmers, herb farmers in remote areas of [cornatica], we would go to one community where the rivers and streams and pond had disappeared and everything had dried up. The communities were basically dust in the wind there was nothing there, there was no future. But just ten kilometers up the road in a different community that had organized around the principles of regenerative, more conscious, organic farming — the streams had recharged, the rice paddies had filled. The production of food was 2X what it had been even just a few years before, and it was literally night and day. It was dust versus lush green. It was dried rivers and cracked lake beds versus abundant water and this is before I even heard of the concept of regenerative agriculture and it’s possible, the people who are listening to this, there’s probably a self-selection, people know that you are a leader of the world regenerative movements so people are coming to your podcast already probably believing in the opportunity, the power, the glory of regenerative agriculture. But if there are some folks who were hearing about this for the first time, let both of us assure you that this is not some laboratory hypothetical academic concept that remains to be tested to be proven. This has been proven in the laboratories of millions and millions of acres of small holder agriculture already all around the world. We know that this works. We’ve seen it work. There in fact there is no alternative because the current agricultural system which rely on synthetic chemical inputs of fertility and pest control, that system is failing. So, the only possible way to feed the world is to do so with the help of the countless infinities of microorganisms and the soil who were eager to recreate the tills of the soil if we just give them a chance, and that’s what we’re doing. Right? Worldwide.
Gregory: That’s right. At the time of the airing of this, which will be in a few weeks from the time that we talk probably. I may release earlier than that. Anyway, at the current rhythm of release, this will be out in a few weeks and preceding it, this will be episode 19, preceding it back episode 17 which hasn’t quite been released yet is with Loren from A Growing Culture, and so listeners who got a chance to listen to that will already be familiar with sort of the campesino pheasant small holder farmer agro ecological revolution that’s been taking place for many years and there also was a — like a place holder and I think a conversation I’m excited to have with you is, in Loren and I’s conversation. Loren sort of has a critique of what he sees as a blind spot of the, in quotes, regenerative movement around the emphasis on ecological regeneration and ecological performance as what we have to drive towards, and you know he’s a very passionate proponent of social change and evolution of our society to be more just and fair and connective which I know you’re also passionate about, but I have the sense that there’s like a healthy and dynamic tension between this sort of strategy and mission of Carbon Underground to accelerate and scale and to engage existing governmental and corporate structures and just say, “Hey, let’s regenerate soil while we do this.” And sort of stripping out the social justice lens of that conversation, versus Loren’s perspective which is sort of like the social change has to come first somehow. So I’d actually love to just have a conversation about that because I think one of the things I hope this podcast serves is sort of long form conversations in which we realize the distance between apparently different positions actually seems to shrink as we get a more nuanced understanding of what people are actually saying I suppose. Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts on kind of the relationship between and strategic imperatives at the time of climate crisis between emphasizing ecological health and addressing social justice and where those are connected or where they’re opposed and what comes first and when and why just from your perspective.
Tom: Really important question. Of course I have high regard for Loren and his work and I think that any loving caring thoughtful human being needs to be concerned about the unconscionably unjust and unfair economic and social structure that we have in place now, it’s not sustainable. The crushing burdens on so many of the world’s billions really feeling the brunt of the ecological collapse and they’ll be the first to experience the pain and they’re already experiencing the profound pain. It moves anyone with a heart to want to have a revolution in the way in which people are treated in the world. Whether you call it a redistribution of wealth or whether you refer to it in terms of the poetical democracy being allowed to actually work where the voices of individuals are allowed to actually speak and be heard and to organize. Who looks out at this and says, “It’s okay for the overwhelming majority of people to be crushingly destitute and starving and worried about whether they’ll have another meal or the subcontinent of India looking at the absence of water in ten years where hundreds of millions of people can simple not be able to sustain their existence. So yes, of course you have to look at social justice the organizing the ligancy of the current system which allows for people to be treated as cheap, fungible, and replaceable cogs in production. So that’s just not going to work long term, but what we and the Carbon Underground do is we say, “Okay, who’s got power right now? Right now, right this second.” And this is not to say this will be the case in five years or in 15 years, but right now, who’s got the ability to move the needle in a way that can buy the planet and the current species that occupy the planet time to sort out those social issue. I mean Loren and I have had this very conversation as you can imagine.
Gregory: I’m sure.
Tom: Right. And we don’t agree, but it can be a respectful disagreement so when the Carbon Underground looks out to the world and does an inventory of who’s got the power to pull the levers. Well, world governments have the power, right? So that’s something to think about. But who’s got power over the world governments? And in fact world governments are serving what master? How about the incumbent regimes of economic power? The trillions of dollars in the agricultural — I mean agriculture whether it’s for food or for textile it’s two of the top three businesses in the world. Textile, food, fossil fuels, that’s it. So, we’re looking at enormous concentrations of wealth and power and those concentrations of wealth and power actually control governments. So, if you want to affect change right this second, one way is to go right to those that have power and make a very simple statement. And I did this. I used to be the CEO of a multinational very substantial company in the food industry and I have lots of friends who were in the C-suites of major food companies. And I recently did a telethon survey and asked, “How many of you are already having your supply chains disrupted because of climate chaos — the climate crisis?” And every single one of them said they were. Every single CEO or head of supply chain of the major international food companies that I talk to, every one of them said that their supply chains are threatened by climate chaos. I was in a meeting six seven years ago with a major clothing company and Larry Kopald and I asked this clothing company, “When you’re doing your risk assessment for those events that could blow the wheels off your wagon and destroy your business, are you calculating in your risk assessment that the world supply of cotton in 20 years may simply not be there because of the destruction of soil, the absence of water, and the overall collapse of food production?” And the answer was, “Yes, we are aware of that.” But you see, every responsible business person, here if there are CEOs or COOs or major investors in companies that are in the food or textile space listening, ask the question, “If there’s no soil, and there’s no water and whatever precious soil left has been depleted of biological activity and has no structure, how’s my company’s ten year forecast looking?” How’s my investment looking if I’m a fiduciary of a pension fund and I’m investing in food or textile companies and those companies’ supply chains cannot right now see a way to secure the foods and textiles they need to support their business in ten or twenty years, which every single CEO I talk to admitted was a risk that they were trying to manage. Well, bingo Gregory. Now we’ve got people with power with everything — again, it may be unjust, it may be unfair, it may be unequal, but it’s right now what we’ve got and if trillions of dollars of business are dependent on the ability to produce food during this time of climate crisis and by the way that means a broken water cycle, so yes, the hydrological cycle is broken, the soil cycle is broken, the carbon cycle is broken. It’s not just temperature, it’s all of those things are broken and they’re all whipsawing us into a position of incredible vulnerability, so now you go to a major cooperation that orders tens, hundreds of millions of dollars of name it, name your food, cacao, rice, sugar cane, doesn’t matter, name it. All of them are worried. They all understand that their very business model is subject to global climate pressures that they don’t know how to manage, but we do. That’s why these corporate leaders are embracing the regenerative opportunity. And let me just say one last thing to Loren and to all those who put social justice first, like I’m with you, it’s heartbreaking to look out at an unjust world, but what we and the Carbon Underground say to ourselves every morning is, “Let’s salvage what we can of life on Earth. We think it can be abundant and beautiful. Let’s do everything we can right now to reverse the existential threat of the climate crisis and then we can worry about the flavors of the utopia that we will create. And then we will get to that, Gregory. We will get to that. But I want to debate the flavors and the perfumes of utopia after we’ve saved the [patience]. And that’s our strategy.
Gregory: Yeah. I mean I think there’s a couple of different layers here. I think sort of invoking triage here is worthwhile. I also think it’s very likely not an either or, there’s sort of a complementarity. and I would sort of say we have to do top down and bottom up at the same time, and the nice thing is there’s different people to focus on different layers here.
Tom: Absolutely.
Gregory: Being a person who’s worked from both angles, from small holder campesino farmers around the world as well as big companies and currently my aim is to try to create the framework and platform where there’s a level playing field for the only objective shared reality which is ecological health to be transmitted through the value streams and through the economic relationships. I just sort of see it has to be both. You have to have both one way or the other because — for instance in order to achieve transformation for two billion small holder farmers and their local communities and their small farms they have to be engaged in a way that uplifts them and honors them. So, there’s a demand that you empower their cooperatives and their communities and shift the — and we started this conversation talking about care and how care is somehow fundamental to unlocking the regenerative potential of landscapes. I think the same thing is true when we’re talking to the biggest corporates and the biggest governments that they start to understand, again, that if they’re responsible [fiduciaries], if they’re responsible stewards and governors of the state or the commons and the private sector they will understand that the health of the farm and the farmer are inexorably linked so I sort of see that — I kind of applaud both strategies in essence. I’m very moved and agree with — I’m in heated agreement with your analysis of the imperative of the moment to engage the powers that be, the powers that are with the reality of their opportunity and their responsibility to right now take action to transform around agriculture and the industry that stem out of agriculture so it’s very compelling, it’s very exciting. I sort of want to ask you as someone who’s come from a substantial leadership in the private sector in the natural products industry and maintains relationship and you sort sat — you’ve been in positions of leadership and have connections with leaders and I wonder if you wouldn’t mind commenting on, from your perspective as a former [fiduciary], what are the right way, I’m imaging there’s a couple of them depending on the circumstance, to internalize the previously externalized costs associated with degenerative agriculture in a way that fiduciaries are connected in their balance [seat] and their responsibility to shareholders with regenerative performance outcomes. What’s the way that that’s going to work best for corporate leaders in your mind?
Tom: As you would imagine, I’ve had many, many of these conversations with corporate leaders and I have a point of view. I have a strong point of view on how that works. So I’m going to again strip this example of the names of the individuals and the identity of the company. I was in a meeting with the CEO of one of the many multi-billion dollar food companies that I have fortunately been able to have dialog with and this person and I were talking about their current food supply chain and the damaging consequences of the current nature of the agriculture producing the food for their supply chain. I said to the person, “So, you’re smart, you’re a brilliant person. You understand how the ecology works here. How does the movie end if we don’t change?” “Oh the movie ends with three or four large industrial agricultural concerns dominating the agriculture in our region. It ends with family farms being wiped out. It ends with the destruction of the ecosystem and the death of the myth of ecological integrity of our product.” Wow, right? So, I asked the CEO, “How does the movie end?” Every CEO, “How does the movie end?” every CEO. Game theory is really simple, you announce the rules of the game and you determine the starting position and the outcome is determined. So, the rules of the current game, the rules of the current agricultural extractive destructive system, we know those rules. The rules are to disregard the wholeness, the biology, the lifeforce of the self-repair regenerating energy of the system and just consider soil as dirt and pour into the dirt chemicals to force it to produce food in a way wholly inconsistent with how nature produces food.
Gregory: That’s brilliant framing, and I guess a better way of maybe articulating my question is –
Tom: Wait. Gregory, let me just give you the punchline of that conversation with the CEO. I said, “Okay, so if that’s how the movie ends, what could we do to mobilize the extraordinary organizing genius and innovation and creativity and energy of a corporation?” I’ve run a big corporation, I know, it’s exciting Gregory. People who have never had the pleasure or the panic of running a big corporation. To actually have all the creativity and the energy and the pride and the maybe the hubris right after of all of the people working together it’s remarkable. How do we harness that? And so I said to the CEO, “Well if you know that your future is imperiled because of the current agricultural method and if you are aware that there are ways of producing foods that recharge and regenerate the ecosystem, why don’t you build into the key performance indicators, the KPIs, that’s a term of art within the business community. Why don’t we build regeneration into the KPIs every single manager in your company so that people are economically rewarded for the regeneration that they are achieving because that will benefit your company and that will mean your company will have a 10 or 20 year business plan. Because people will do what they’re paid to do and you can only manage what you measure. So, can we build into your KPIs criteria standards measuring tools and then compensation for people engaged in regenerative conduct? And I actually created a model KPI for this company and the CEO said, “Okay, that’s great. But are there measuring rods, are there metrics, that I can use because this can’t be purely subjective and I responded by saying, “Well first of all, it can be purely subjective. You’ve got lots of KPIs that are purely subjective, so don’t tell me that it has to be all 100% based on observable quantifiable data. But there are also data points that can inform each of these KPIs and we’ve built them out. Now, to date, I have not seen one corporation, one major international food corporation as of yet adopt KPIs of regeneration into their company at large so that all people are judged by it. But I believe this is going to happen. Just as surely as people are judge and evaluated and rewarded or punished for not meeting your sales targets or not meeting your quality control targets, I believe in the next few years everyone involved in major food agricultural business will be evaluated by, “Is what you’re doing for the company destroying the basis of the company’s future, or are you engaged in activities that are securing your company’s future and therefore value for the shareholders?” that’s coming. To me, the strategy is, work with big power centers at major agricultural corporations and then build into their management KPIS that will measure and then reward regeneration.
Gregory: Great, I agree. Have you seen the work of the reporting 3.0 group?
Tom: Actually, no.
Gregory: Well worth looking at. I actually think Bill and I, who’s the founder there, are going to have a chat here on this forum sometime in the next few weeks. Yeah, it’s sort of an international group. Many large corporates engaged with that in sort of the reinvention of corporate reporting KPIs and key performance indicators and associated incentive structures, etc. so there’s a lot of cool work there. There’s actually a pretty robust body of work that if folks who are listening are engaged in the corporate world, which I know some of my listeners are, just sort of a pointer there to reporting 3.0. there’s some great work happening where people are sharing an open sourcing. Companies that have taken steps one way or another are sort of open sourcing that and sharing what works and what doesn’t. So, it’s a cool community there. And I sort of wonder, how do we — I agree that from a decision-making perspective, sort of baking in a new way of recording and accounting into corporate structures is a needed step. I’m also curious to hear your thoughts about the role of markets, be the carbon or biodiversity or ecological quality, trading schemes, and/or other forms of sort of contractual or legally binding agreements with society. I’m intentionally blurring the lines here between market mechanisms that are built to value public goods, which are considered in classical economics market failures and more common spaced, are community driven agreements because I think they’re trying to achieve the same thing. Just curious, what the agreement, not sort of within organizations but between organizations and communities, what are your thoughts there? What might work? Are there any examples that inspire you? And what’s the role and relationship between internal reporting and sort of external contracts about performance around the health of the commons.
Tom: Well I will observe that I think you’re much more of an expert on those points than I am Gregory, so I appreciate you’re asking me my opinion, but I’d certainly refer to your years and years of work on this. We, in the Carbon Underground think that we have to create mechanisms for ecosystem service payments, rewards, recognition for those farmers and ranchers that are doing the good work. It has to happen. In order to make that possible, and again, this is where you and I will have a pretty rich set of information, we need to have scalable economically affordable measuring tools to be able to — first we define the ecosystem benefit and then we can affordably on a broad landscape basis, on a national basis, the measuring capability. And there are so many people chasing that right now. And there’s so much debate right now as to whether it can be done by satellite, whether it can be done by modeling the sort of comet modeling approach, whether we’re soon to see, which I believe we are, very affordable soil sensor technology that will be pennies per acre for really precise real time data. Once we get that, and I would prefer to see it not on a modeling basis, but on a real data basis Gregory. I’d like to hope that either through flux [powers] or satellite imagery or through soil sensors, and from what I’m seeing and hearing and in my conversations, I think we’re maybe a year to two years away from really having breakthroughs there that are dramatic. But once that happens, then I can go to — I can imagine myself going to a CEO of a major company in the agricultural industry and saying, “You’re now responsible for these many millions of hectares of destruction, and if we build into your management KPIs that reward regeneration, here’s how we can real time measure quarter by quarter measure how much soil you’re creating, how much water you’re being able to more effectively manage, how much biodiversity you’re actually helping to revive.” And then I think there’s no stopping us, Gregory. Once we have those scalable, affordable measuring instruments that can really tell you on broad regional and national levels how much soil organic matter, the water holding capacity, the biological recharge of an ecosystem, and you and I both know that we’re on the lip of that. That we’re at the dawn of that new age of biologically enhanced farming that will result in the regeneration of the world and we’re close. And once that happens, I think in a couple of years, this conversation — it will be interesting to replay in because it’s going to be old news. The regenerative revolution will have won once we can get that measuring technology perfected.
Gregory: I agree with some caveats, I don’t see a big — so any direct measurement — protocol uses a model. The fundamentals of the science of ecosystems — the question isn’t, “Is there a model or isn’t there?” the question is, “Which model? How is it calibrated? Who generated it? What was its training data?” So whether it’s a model that is telling you based on a lab sample if you have this much input into the sample and you incinerate it and you have that much output, there’s still a model behind that that’s like an equation, essentially that could be better or worse. So for those who are listening, [COMET] is a federally funded process based model that has taken historical data from a lot of samples and has created a predictive model that you can input as a farmer your practices and get a prediction about soil health outcomes like the carbon sequestration. So models like that are now — what I’m excited about is all of this converging into a common rigorous new scientific instrumentation where sensors sampling remote sensing models historical data are all integrated into a high integrity new censoring apparatus. Essentially I think from my perspective, one of the things that Regen Network and the Carbon Underground through your work with the soil carbon initiative and folks in open team, including COMEt tool and Quick Carbon, people who are doing satellite assessment and soil spectrometry work, new sensor development, all of these things. What we’re actually working on is the largest scientific instrument that humanity has ever created, and that is the integration of multiple different sensory apparatuses be they sentinel to Copernicus sort of European space agency data or planet scope data on the private sector side or soil sensors or these models that allow us to extrapolate and predict. They all have their roles, and to me, what’s actually happening is the creation of a unified instrument which is expanding our human censoring apparatus to reunify — I mean I tend to think of it in an esoteric way without being too hand wavy about this. I actually think that this represents our regaining of sort of a vestigial organ that humans used to have in a cultural interface with our bioregion and our place. You know, we used to be able to sense and adapt and dance with nature in a deeper and more beautiful way. And the beautiful paradox is that I have the sense that we’re going to regain that ability through science. But it’s a new science, it’s a wholistic science. It’s one that embraces and compares many different sensors and many different models and allows everyone to sort of see and calibrate accordingly, and my sense is the same as yours, which is in the next couple of years it’s not going to be very long, an enormous upgrade in the ability of decision makers and markets to internalize previously externalized costs and value is going to come online and the inevitability of that is an embrace of regenerative agriculture, because it’s the only thing that makes sense for everyone. So (crosstalk) [inaudible 01:11:05] small addendum or amendment to how you’re talking about this. Which I understand in the context of like there’s a real need for people to have rigor around what we’re measuring and what we’re shooting for is outcomes, not just practices, right? And there’s a real need in the discourse. All of those things are true, but just another step forward I guess is what I’m pushing.
Tom: The phrase you just used is a mantra for me. Which is, “Outcomes and not practices” because with — and again, I have high regard for the value and the importance of common and in the absence of — right now, currently very expensive prohibitively expensive direct measurement common has a very important place in this conversation. But it’s based on practices and yes, there’s historic, observable results from those practices, but what you once taught me probably six or seven years ago when we were having our early heated debates in the rainforest of Costa Rica is that there are people all over the world that have invented new steps to that dance with nature. That we should be out there not telling them the practices to use, but learning from them, listening to them, deserving what they’re doing, letting human creativity and imagination — letting that choreography with nature evolve and not block ourselves into some orthodox set or practices that may not apply with consistent outcomes across soil types and food types and ecosystems around the world. So, I am fully in agreement with you, Gregory, that the focus should be on outcomes and not on practices. And let me give you a really perfect example of them. Again, parking it back to that trip that my daughter and I had to India talking with our spice growers 15 years ago and we go into a small community and we talk to the agronomist there and we say to the agronomist, “So, do you ask your farmers if they’re doing these practices?” and he went, “Oh absolutely not. That’s really not valuable information. We don’t ask the farmers. We ask the insects.” If the insect biodiversity is there, then the farmers must be doing it right. See that’s what you want to do is you want — yes I mean obviously I’m a believer in organic agriculture, my farm has either been certified organic or biodynamic for 25 plus years, I’m a partisan in the and those are practices, but those practices may or may not relate to a real ecological outcome that we’re looking for which is regeneration so what you do is you need to ask the insects. You need to ask the microbes. You need to ask the soil food web. You need to actually look above and below ground biodiversity. You have to look at, are you rebuilding soil? So yes, COMET and other model driven systems have their place. But what you and I are look forward to is welcoming the direct scientifically validated measuring of outcome and once we get to that, that scalable and reliable and real time, then corporations in their annual reports could be asked the following question, “How many tons of CO2 have been re-sequestered and converted into the living tissue of [inaudible 01:16:12] in the soil because of the way you’re engaged in sourcing? Or conversely how many tons of soil organic matter are you gasifying and destroying and contaminating the atmosphere with as a result of your agriculture?” Once those data are available, then corporations are going to have to answer those questions. They’re going to have to look in the mirror every single year, and hopefully more regularly, and say, “Have I destroyed the planet, or have I revived and regenerated the planet?” And then we as a society have an opportunity either on a level of policy or on a level of our personal checkbooks to punish and reward those companies based on whether they are destroying the world or reviving the world. And we are close to this, so if people think this is pie in the sky and it’s never going to happen, wrong. Within a few years we will be able to have a score card for corporations looking at their supply chains and seeing whether corporation acts is a net destroyer of the planet. We’re trying to explain that to your children and your community. That your making money by destroying the planet. It doesn’t work. This is how — I believe that this will be an unbelievable catalyzing moment where the protection and revival of the commons becomes inevitable.
Gregory: Yeah, I 100% agree. That’s sort of fundamental to the mission of Regen Network and our exploration of ways to ensure that that happens with the highest degree of integrity in a world that has become a post-truth world. In a world in which simply having experts sign off on something is no longer enough to trust because of various institutional and economic perverse incentives. That we have to create a more rigorous structure. That sense making has become digital and that we have to have a rigorous digital infrastructure to make it so that you can’t game that, because the consequences of gaming that and as you say, as consumers and as nation states and as society as whole starts to demand regenerative outcomes in a globalized society in which you can’t go check the field yourself. There’s a need for a high degree of integrity not just on the scientific rigor but also on the integrity of the dat. That we know what sensor said what at what time and who owned it, who made it and who deployed it. And what model was created by whom and when it was used and how that essentially create the whole breadcrumb trail for someone to make a claim. To me, that’s currently what — you know it’s sort of a boring thing in the midst of the grand heroic transition we’re taking place, but to me it feels so fundamental to bake that kind of integrity in from the beginning because my great fear, the hazard that I see in this transition is that we’ll get five years into this movement that I feel is inevitable, like we’re at the transition and it’s about to go exponential but it will end up being short circuited by perverse incentives and incentives to lie and then instead of become a full societal transformation in which that’s just the status quo in the way business happens, there’ll be like a boom in [busts]. So, everyone will tell the regenerative story, you will actually follow through because there’s not enough integrity around data and accountability where it needs to be. So, we’ll get five years in and then it will just sort of collapse under the weight of misinformation and that’s my great — To me that’s one of the biggest hazards that face us. It feels like we’ve got wind in our backs, the movement will — the means are there and the reasons are there and it’s all very clear, but we have to make sure that it doesn’t turn into a boom and greenwashing driven boom and bust.
Tom: There’s a tremendous danger to that because if people are economically incentivized through their key performance indicators to deliver outcomes people will maybe gain that system. And let me go back to that conversation with the agronomist in India that we had 15 years ago and when I said, “Do you ask the farmers?” I could have told you the full story and now I will, because it’s a little bit harsh, but the full answer from him was, “No, we don’t ask the farmers because the farmers might lie. But the insects never lie.” And the same can be said at every level of the supply chain all the way up to the C-suite. People can be, for whatever reason, subjected to economic pressures, peer group pressure to maybe fudge things, to color things in ways that aren’t accurate, to greenwash. But the insects don’t lie. Tons of soil organic matter, it either is or isn’t there. So, once we get to a point where the measuring is feasible, economical, rapid, real time, and there’s data integrity and it can’t be gamed, then there’s no line. It’s not a matter of opinion. Either you’re enhancing the ecosystem, or you’re not and we are within months or just a few years of getting to that point, as you know, as you’re a leader of and once that happens, the era of greenwashing is done because we just actually look at the data.
Gregory: Yeah. Agreed. And those are the exact conditions. That’s the soil that the — that’s the new game as you started out — when I asked the question about what the best way to engage corporate leaders, you said, “Well, you know, if you know the rules of the game and the starting point, you know what the end point will be. Whoever wins it, the outcome is the same.” The current game, the outcome is degradation of the commons that business relies on through this sort of strange ongoing prisoners dilemma scenario. And to change that and escape that dynamic, we actually have to change the game. And it is a reinvention of the fabric of our economy to include, to bake in ecological value at sort of every level of accountability and decision making. So, it’s a transformation of the game and I do believe as you’re articulating that that — you transform the rules of the game in that way and we achieve what we need to and all of the attributes of the game are set. The rules are right. The outcome will be as inevitable as the current outcomes are inevitable.
Tom: And Gregory, isn’t it thrilling? Because here we are, you and I from our conversations in the rainforest [lo] those many years ago to today. We know that we’re on the eve, that we’re on the lip of that game changing moment and whether it’s the flux towers that royal Dutch shell is working on or the sensors that companies around the world are working on or the satellite technology, it’s happening and for all of you who are listening, just kind of step back and take a breath and survey the scene today, because the world is about to be a more wonderful place. We are pregnant beautifully, happily, wonderfully pregnant with regenerative change and it’s about to happen. And I wake up hopeful every single morning because I know that the ability to produce food like nature produces food, it will win. It will be how we ultimately feed the planet, because there is no alternative and it’s actually a really exciting moment. I wake up not in despair, not despondent, not overwhelmed by the crushing calamity of climate chaos but I wake up hopeful knowing that with this challenge we’re about to launch the new rules for a new game.
Gregory: Yeah. Agreed. And I think that that is such a story of inspiration and it flies in the face many people’s perception of hopelessness and it’s incumbent on those of us who have been working in community on this particular angle to tell these stories. So I’m really grateful for you Tom for coming and bringing your inspiring and articulate voice to tell that story. To tell the story of the opportunity for engaging the existing power structures and the existing economy to be a core leader in transforming. So what’s really beautiful to me is that, I think, that if we change the game in the way that we’ve just described, the competitive dynamics shift so much that they become complementary to the health of the farmers and they change the arithmetic of reciprocity and the way that value and accumulates and flows through the system just as fundamentally as — because you know incorporating this new set or regenerative measurements and quantification, it just changes what profit means fundamentally. So, the game transforms. I’m grateful to be working on this grand project with you. I’m grateful for you coming on the podcast to share that with listeners and that feels like a really beautiful place to pause the conversation until we pick it back up again. I know you’ve got some other things to work on today.
Tom: It’s a joy, Gregory, and as we say on our farm, “[Forta vida a delante].” Let’s make this happen
Gregory: Beautiful. Do you have any resources or links or anything you’d like to just share with guests who might be interested in learning more about your work or engaging in opportunity that you see?
Tom: Yeah, there are three. My organization is the Carbon Underground and we have a website www.thecarbonunderground.org which outlines our work around the world and is a clearing house of information on our point of view on the regenerative opportunity. I write a blog which my farm in Costa Rica, my farm and lodge which is https://fincalunanuevalodge.com/ and we would love for people to visit us to sign up for our newsletter and for my blog. So, if you go to that website, you can see my personal musings and rants and prayers and hopes articulated. And then finally, the work of the soil carbon initiative which is the combined efforts of the Carbon Underground and Green America and Mega food and dynown, WhiteWave and Ben and Jerry’s Unilever. Our work is at the https://www.soilcarboninitiative.org/ and we would invite people to check out the work that we’re doing to create a standard for gauging the success of regeneration that is based on outcomes and not on practices. So, thank you for asking and I hope people come and take advantage of the resources that we’re making available.
Gregory: Beautiful. Thank you so much Tom, and big love to you and the family there and stay healthy and stay safe and I look forward to connecting with you again soon.
Tom: Give our love to Amy and to your kids and you stay healthy and love to everyone. Take care my friend.
Gregory: Be well.
Tom: Take care. Bye, bye.
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