What the is role of animals in the food system of the future?
Welcome to Investing in Regenerative Agriculture. Where I interview key players in the field of regenerative agriculture, people who are scaling up the sector by bringing in new money or scaling up the practises on the ground.
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This time I interviewed Ruud Zanders of Kipster (https://www.kipster.farm), diving deep into the question: What is the role of animals in the food system of the future (if any)?
Imke de Boer, professor at Wageningen University
https://www.wur.nl/en/Persons/Imke-prof.dr.ir.-IJM-Imke-de-Boer.htm
Takeaways:
- Pigs and chickens can do something amazing turning food waste (which humans can’t or don’t want to eat) into protein and manure
- If the livestock industry would only use residual waste for chickens and pigs and marginal lands for cows, goats and sheep there would be 20grams of animal protein per person per day available around the world
- We have to eat less animal based proteins
- Why take 10kg of grain which could feed 10 people, feed it to chickens and feed 2-4 people with it?
- First sell then produce (in this case through a 5 year agreement with the Lidl)
- Why feed organic grains (which could feed humans) to an animal?
- Scale is key to have an impact
- Catching all the fine dust from stable
- Manure is dried and sent to farms
- Rooster are not killed immediately (like the industry standard) but grown to become chicken hamburgers (also bough by the Lidl)
- Climate neutral egg using solar energy
- The eggs are sold for prices between organic and free range
- Consumers are ready to pay for food but you have to explain why you are different
- Ruud has doubts about the insect businesses coming up, why creating a new animal industry (insects) to feed another animal industry (chickens?) why not eat the insects directly?
The first Kipster was financed by a private investor (after securing the Lidl off take agreement of 5 years), the new Kipsters are financed by bank loans.
Advice from Ruud
Look at ecological efficiencies, why are we doing this on this piece of land? Why are you using animals for xyz?
If Ruud could wave a magic wand he would stop using animals in our food system.
Kipster farm website
https://www.kipster.farm/
Guardian article
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/05/carbon-neutral-eggs-dutch-farmer-organic-free-range-welfare-environmnt
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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.
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