The NatureBacked Podcast – A conversation on the future of agriculture

The NatureBacked Podcast – A conversation on the future of agriculture

I recently joined Tarmo Virki’s Naturebacked podcast to share some of the story behind The Land Group and where we see regenerative agriculture heading.

Below, I reproduce a few reflections that came out of our interesting conversation.

From turnaround to regeneration

In 2016, Joaquín Labella and I planted the seeds of The Land Group when we started helping European investors recover value from distressed renewable energy, real estate, and farmland assets in South America. As we began to specialise in agriculture, we encountered significant soil depletion and erosion at many of the farms we took over, often resulting from years of continuous, extractive cropping without proper soil management.

In 2019, we introduced practical measures to restore soil health, including integrating livestock into our farming systems. Over time, these efforts evolved into a scalable regenerative model, which we now apply across our operations in Uruguay and Paraguay.

We did not anticipate the momentum that regenerative agriculture would gain in recent years. We like to say that we stumbled upon the concept through necessity rather than ideology. With the help of our advisor Pablo Etcheverry at Pensagro, we refined our regenerative model into a sophisticated, replicable system that we now aim to expand globally.

A viable, repeatable, scalable regenerative model

We currently manage 40,000 hectares in Uruguay and Paraguay and plan to expand our operations to Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, and Spain. There are limits to what can be achieved with impact capital alone so we focus on economically viable, scalable practices to be able to attract institutional investors.

Our approach is centred on Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) grazing, also known as mob grazing, rotational grazing, or holistic management. This method allows us to restore soil health, improve water retention, and enhance biodiversity while increasing yields and long-term land value at scale.

Why Portugal?

Both Joaquín and I are based in Portugal. We have managed farmland 20 hours away on the other side of the Atlantic for nearly a decade. It makes sense for us to look for opportunities closer to home.

We have found that Portugal’s grassland conditions are not too dissimilar to those we work with in Uruguay, where we developed and refined our regenerative grazing model. Over the past year, we have met several Portuguese farmers who have been applying their versions of AMP grazing with impressive results. This has encouraged us to adapt our model for the drier summers and distinct subsidy structures characterising European agriculture.

We plan to start meeting investors in the second half of the year to explore these opportunities further.

No Trade-Off Between Impact and Return

One misconception about sustainable investing is that one must sacrifice financial return for environmental or social benefit. In our case, we focus on opportunities where this trade-off does not exist. When well implemented, regenerative practices deliver both strong financial outcomes and tangible environmental improvements.

People and capital remain the bottlenecks

Scaling requires both skilled people and sufficient capital.

We have addressed talent by hiring and training young agronomists, rotating them across our regenerative farms to ensure they gain hands-on experience before stepping into farm management roles.

On the capital side, we are in discussions with investors interested in regenerative agriculture, either through bespoke separately managed accounts or dedicated funds. Seeing this level of interest in a relatively new asset class is encouraging. Five years ago, regenerative agriculture was largely unknown outside niche circles. Today, most investors we meet are familiar with the concept and keen to explore it further, even if only a few have allocated capital.

On carbon markets

Even though our regenerative grazing system sequesters atmospheric carbon in the soils, we have not yet participated in carbon markets. The sector still faces many of the same challenges I saw when I worked in it nearly 20 years ago: inconsistent standards, fragmented methodologies, and high transaction costs. We continue to monitor developments in this area, but we don’t rely on carbon revenues for our investment case.

The broader picture

I often draw parallels between where regenerative agriculture is today and where renewable energy was two decades ago. Fragmented, early-stage, conviction-driven. But momentum is building. I don’t think regenerative will fully replace conventional agriculture, but I believe it will become an important part of the global food system, and we want to help build that transition, one farm at a time.

By Francisco Roque de Pinho, Co-founder of The Land Group

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