Thomas Rippel on Using a Blockchain to Help Farmland Stewardship Organisations Grow
Podcast via https://soundcloud.com/investinginregenerativeagriculture/interview-thomas-rippel?
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture #33: Thomas Rippel, using a blockchain to help Farmland Stewardship Organisations grow
Description
"Thomas raised over € 1M with a German CSA to buy the land under their farm. Now Thomas is looking at blockchains to help more Farmland Stewardship Organisations do the same.
Observations from the podcast:
- A lot of speculative cash has moved into agri land - We have seen a real decoupling of productive value and the farmland price - Buying land is out of the question for most farmers - Farmland is mostly bought by financial institutions - Financial Institutions only look at the highest lease (which is usually the least sustainable farmer as he or she is not paying for all the externalities they produce. Because they mine the soil. - 80% of the classmates of Thomas at the biodynamic (4,5 year study) couldn’t find land afterwards - Regenerative farmers, who are good stewards of the land, can’t make those cashflows (especially at the beginning) to pay back the loans. This is one of the big drivers of industrial agriculture.
Advice for impact investors wanting to get into Regenerative Agriculture: - Look at your local Farmland Stewardship Organisation and get involved - Look into your local CSA farms, they usually rely on bank loans you could refinance them, which would be cheaper for them and you get a return (compared to 0% on the bank)!"
On Community supported agriculture [1]
- Thomas helped Luzernenhof a German CSA farm raise over 1M. - They set up their own crowdinvesting platform - Organised events made a cool video
Conditions:
- Shares in the cooperative which owns the land - Buy land and charge very low lease rates to the farmers - The shares give no dividends. - Really unattractive terms
Luzernenhof who has also bought land for 10 others farmers, has noticed that landowners are willing to sell for a fairer price, if they know the land is going to be used sustainably! This is a very interesting point! If regenerative farmers get a lower price for land, if this is true in other areas and countries this could be huge.
Terrafina Foundation
Blockchain based, value backed (agricultural land) stable crypto currency Raising capital to help FSOs grow White paper can be found here: www.tinyurl.com/y8tyzzdx
Farmland Stewardship Organisations
- terredeliens.org/
- www.bioboden.de
- kulturland.de/
Find the ones in Europe here: www.accesstoland.eu/
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