Regenerative Skills

As important as it is to manage the land well to create healthy and abundant produce, it's just as important to sell that produce to a market that values its quality. Many large scale markets buy volume at the lowest price with no regards for differences in how the goods were raised nor their quality.

These markets can also fluctuate wildly for reasons outside a grower's control. For reasons like these many farmers look for ways to sell to buyers who value these other factors and are willing to invest in more loyal and consistent relationships.

Join us in this panel as we speak to farmers who have cultivated different ways of selling their products that compensate them for all of the work they do above and beyond market standards.

We'll look at the benefits as well as the challenges of breaking away from commodity markets and wholesale buyers in hopes that you'll consider a sales strategy that better fits your way of farming

Wherever you’re listening to this right now you’re probably feeling the changes this summer in a big way. It’s not only us here in the Mediterranean region of Europe who are experiencing record heat waves, droughts, and wildfires. I’ve been watching news reports from all over the world and the other day my Mom in Spokane Washington even told me that fires had nearly reached their home.
I have no desire to go into the doom and gloom of climate reality, but we also can’t ignore two very important things. The first being that massive action needs to be taken to restore the damaged ecosystems of the world, and two, governments and industries just aren’t going to act fast enough. It falls to all of us to inform ourselves and get to work.
This episode today is meant to help you do just that.
Today I spoke with Lorenzo Costa who has been on the show a couple times already, but now that I’m in Italy and have been observing the effects of this severe summer weather, I knew I had to get in touch with him again and get his perspective as someone who travels the country working with growers of all types to restore the hydrological function and cycling of their land to build resilience in their operations. While it’s worth going back to his previous episodes where he talks about his own vegetable operation in the Chianti region of Tuscany, as well as the water projects he was doing a few years ago, in this episode we get an update on the patterns and learnings from all the new projects he’s seen and worked on recently. 

Now that we’ve covered a lot about the concepts and theory behind watercycles and how they interact and are affected by landscape management, as well as how my colleague Nick Steiner and I assess and read a landscape ahead of a project, we’re going to be focusing increasingly on practical restoration options and case studies from innovative farmers and restoration workers from around Europe.
So let’s jump right into this exploration of the current challenges and potential in Italy from Lorenzo

Following up from the last episode in which I explained some of the broader concepts of water cycles and their relationship with land, vegetation, and management practices, we're going to go down to ground level to explore what it means to read the landscape for water restoration potential. 
More than a conceptual exercise however, this discussion is one I recorded with my colleague and water restoration practitioner Nick Steiner. Together we went out to assess the water retention potential on a farm of clients of ours in southern Portugal. For those who don't know, this area has been on a long trajectory of degradation and drying out. The whole region is in severe need of a change in how they manage water as the status quo of the last decades has desertified the area. 
Though we'll be speaking about the unique conditions and context of this farm and bioregion, the steps and considerations from our assessment process are widely applicable to any landscape or climactic region. My hope here is that you'll be able to go into any landscape and begin to observe how water move through and is received by the space your in. 
This is the first step in being able to design for water management on any farm. You can share what you observe and learn from your own land in the Climate Farmer's community where we have a dedicated channel where we talk about water management with our group of more than 800 farmers around Europe.

As we’ve explored in recent episodes of the Regenerative Skills Podcast, there’s an unfortunate disconnect between academic institutions, independent research, and real farms. We all know there are endless opportunities for new learnings and scientific studies that could benefit farmers, especially in traditional and regenerative enterprises which have often been overlooked.

Yet frequently we see universities and other institutions struggling to accommodate the realities and needs of these types of farms, and similarly, these profiles of farms struggling to adapt to the needs of the institutions. In this panel episode we’ll talk to farmers and researchers who’ve overcome some of these hurdles in unique ways to advance the learnings that stand to benefit all involved.

Together we’ll explore the challenges and opportunities for collaboration as well as the stories that offer insights and inspiration for future cooperation. In this panel episode we’ll talk to farmers and researchers who’ve overcome some of these hurdles in unique ways to advance the learnings that stand to benefit all involved. Together we’ll explore the challenges and opportunities for collaboration as well as the stories that offer insights and inspiration for future cooperation.

Today we're going to pause our deep-dive episodes to launch a new series supporting a regenerative agriculture master’s program being developed with European universities, starting with regenerative water management . Interviewed by Marina Bartoletti, Oliver Goshey explains macro vs. small water cycles, emphasizing how vegetation drives local cooling, evapotranspiration, and rain formation via biological nuclei like bacteria and fungal spores, and how devegetation can disrupt precipitation patterns and intensify drought, wildfire, and flood extremes. The episode links Iberian Peninsula heatwaves, shifting rainfall, and desertification to land management, and outlines farm-level responses: boosting soil organic matter and infiltration, reducing runoff and erosion, using shade and windbreaks, improving water quality, and considering nitrogen fertilizer impacts on plant drought stress. It introduces Climate Farmers’ free Water Management Guidebook and previews upcoming case studies and a watershed-scale restoration blueprint.