ForumforAg Food Systems Podcast Summary

In this latest episode, Mark Titterington is joined by Benedikt Bösel, CEO and founder of Gut & Bösel and winner of the 2025 Soil and Land Management Award. They discuss how his vision for regenerative agriculture has evolved, the inherent challenges, and the tangible but context-specific results observed on his farm. The conversation also delves into the crucial policy implications and the necessity of a systemic shift in how agriculture is perceived.

Here is a summary of the conversation.

How has your vision for regenerative agriculture evolved over the last couple of years, both on the ground and in the broader policy debate?

On the ground, not much has fundamentally changed, but our ideas have proven effective. We’ve built our own Think Foundation in 2021, now with a team of 15 focusing on the science and education aspects of our work. We’ve expanded to nine different agroforestry systems, incorporated 300 cows into our crop rotation, and practice minimum tillage, arable regenerative organic farming. We’ve also established a tree nursery, and we try to use all the methods that we can to overcome the deeply sandy soil and low precipitation that we have here.

On a grander scale, soil and agriculture have gained much more attention from the public, science, and political agendas. Unfortunately, two main issues still persist. Firstly, the overarching opinion is still that it’s “sustainability versus production”, whereas I believe it’s “production because of sustainability”. Secondly, the philosophy of agriculture, across different interest groups, often prioritizes protecting the status quo rather than courageously looking to the future and addressing upcoming challenges.

Why is it so difficult to get across the message that sustainability actually drives productivity, when it seems like such an obvious link?

There are several interconnected factors. The existing system, from the farm to the supermarket, has been defined and built over 50 to 70 years. It isn’t still fitting to our needs, but there’s a great market dynamic and powerful interest groups invested in protecting this established setup.

Also, we often underestimate what we’re asking of farmers. It’s not just an agricultural adjustment; it’s a deeply societal, cultural, and personal shift. We need to find ways of transformation, education, and help that address the human part of this shift. We are attempting to transform perhaps the most difficult system, as it’s not just agriculture but it draws into education, science, land access, and land ownership.

What specific approaches on your land are showing the most tangible results in terms of soil health, resilience, and overall sustainability, both economic and environmental?

Given our extreme environment of incredibly sandy soil and fluctuating weather, particularly drought, we seek extreme methods. The one that we see the strongest reaction from is agroforestry. Thin tree lines dispersed across fields show ecological benefits within two to three years, significantly improving water uptake, water storage, and habitat biodiversity. As far as the economics of it is concerned, this is the one that is most difficult. With our focus on diverse fruit and nut trees, it will take another five to ten years to see profits, but we deeply believe they will yield.

The second one is integration of animals: Incorporating our own cows into the crop rotation not only helps us move towards closing the nutrient cycle, but also has an incredible effect on microbiology.

Next is plant health and composting: We focus heavily on maximizing plant health so that plants can build their own resilience, which in turn significantly benefits the soil microbiome. Economically, this is harder to assess due to the variability of living systems, making causality difficult to measure.

These findings are highly context-specific. What works for us might not work for a neighbour. I think the question to ask is “what are the goals on your farm, and which methods do you believe best address those goals in your specific context?”

You’re engaging with policymakers on directing future support for agriculture, particularly in a regenerative context. What do you want them to understand and do to enable that context-specific long-term investment in regenerative agriculture?

Policymakers need to understand that we need a shift in our philosophy of what agriculture is. Currently, it’s still viewed as primary production aiming for maximum output at the cheapest price. This model has led to farmers trapped in dependencies (market prices, inputs, subsidies) and often in debt. It has also created outrageously high externalized costs – things like soil health degradation and biodiversity loss – which are an unpayable price for current and future generations.

We need to rethink this system to avoid such external costs. If we look at agriculture as potentially the biggest and best tool to overcome some of the biggest problems of our time – not just food, but climate adaptation, biodiversity, rural development, health, education – then we understand its true potential. This understanding should drive more attention and capital towards agriculture.

That leads towards systemic thinking – across different government departments and private sectors. Do you see any reasons for optimism that this systemic thinking is beginning to emerge?

As farmers, we must be optimists. While it’s incredibly challenging and it’s hard to believe we’ll act fast enough, I am convinced we will. Firstly, the outcomes and consequences of the “wrong system” will become increasingly apparent and dangerous, much closer to home. This, hopefully, will accelerate impact across all actors: political, corporate, and especially societal.

Secondly, I believe we will reach a certain threshold where a large enough group will decide we need to act, creating an impulse throughout society to get it right in the very last moment. It might be too late, but we will still be able to learn and grow from it. As I often say, the 21st century is going to be difficult, but the 22nd is going to be beautiful.

A tangible step we can take is to look at the true cost of accounting and at the same time analyzing and monetizing the true values that farmers already bring into the field every day through regenerative practices. If we can monitor, monetize, and connect these to different production systems, we can use the existing economic system to incentivize production more aligned with ecological contexts and societal needs.