In this episode, Finn Harries is joined by one of the people that helped to completely overhaul his worldview; biologist and author of ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’, Daniel Christian Wahl.

Daniel shares the experiences that led him away from conventional science toward a lifetime of exploring regeneration, questioning systems and stewarding the environment.

This episode offers an inspiring new lens on how we can create conditions for life to flourish. A powerful conversation to help you remember that nature is not an “idealised middle-class place,” it is a process that you are a part of.

LINKS:

TSWG Website: ⁠theseedswillgrow.com⁠

Juntos Earth: ⁠juntosearth.com⁠

Local Futures: ⁠https://www.localfutures.org/⁠

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re back after a one week break, and I’m very excited to put this episode in your inbox in time for the weekend.

This week’s guest is the legendary Stephen Brooks. Stephen grew up in Miami, and when he was 20 he travelled to Central America and saw a crop-dusting plane spray pesticides over a field of indigenous kids playing football. It stopped him in his tracks. He had no farming experience and only one local mentor, but he decided to spend his life working with nature, not against it.

Thirty years later, Stephen has built five permaculture villages in Costa Rica, including Punta Mona, along with the viral “Church of Fruit.” These are places where people live together, grow their own food and restore the land around them.

I loved this conversation because Stephen doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. He thinks the place to start is asking better questions. Where’s our food coming from? Where’s our water coming from? Where does it go when we dirty it? He also made a point about the word “sustainable” that has stuck with me. Imagine asking a friend how their marriage is going and they reply, “Oh, it’s sustainable.” You wouldn’t be reassured. You’d be worried for them, because it sounds like they’re only just getting by. Stephen’s point is that we’ve set the bar too low. Sustaining isn’t the goal. We should be aiming to thrive, and to leave the land better than we found it.

We also get into what he’s learned about holding a community together, why he thinks we should prepare for people moving out of the cities, and whether villages like his are one-off successes or a model the rest of the world could follow. Near the end I ask him where someone should start if they want to reconnect with themselves and the natural world. His answer surprised me, and I think it’ll surprise you too.

You can listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or watch on YouTube. If it stays with you, please share it with someone who’s dreaming of a different way to live, or leave us a quick review. It helps more than you’d think.

With love,
Finn

30 years ago, Stephen Brooks witnessed the human cost of modern food production firsthand. What he saw changed the course of his life forever.

He went on to create some of the world's most talked-about permaculture communities, eco villages and the viral “Church of Fruit.”

Finn Harris speaks with Stepehen about how his communities are addressing the state of the global food system, the impact of city living and the future of biodiversity loss.

Stephen shares how he’s cracked the code to these big questions. By finding mentors, planting trees, building community and reconnecting with nature, he’s discovered that the solutions we've been looking for are right in front of us.

LINKS:

TSWG Website: ⁠theseedswillgrow.com⁠

Juntos Earth: ⁠juntosearth.com⁠

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Poppy's journey takes her from catwalks and fashion campaigns to growing food in Devon. But this isn't really a conversation about gardening. It's about what happens when you stop chasing “success” and start paying attention to your body needs. 

Finn Harries and Poppy talk about how their past lives them feeling anxious and detached and what they healed through connecting to nature. Plus they share some truths about what it truly takes to create a community. 

If modern life and the pressures it brings has left you feeling depleted and disconnected, this conversation is a good place to start finding your way back to yourself. 

LINKS:

TSWG Website: ⁠theseedswillgrow.com⁠ 

Juntos Earth: ⁠juntosearth.com⁠ 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So many of us feel overwhelmed by the climate crisis. Our timelines and news feeds are filled with stories of separation, extraction, and collapse. But ecologist Thomas Crowther believes we're overlooking one of the most powerful forces in nature: feedback loops.

From near-death experiences to some of the biggest ecological discoveries of our time, Tom shares how his understanding of forests, soil, biodiversity and regeneration has transformed the way he sees both nature and our collective future.

Together, Finn and Tom explore climate anxiety, restoration, regenerative agriculture, ecosystem recovery, mental health and the unexpected reasons we should all have hope.

LINKS:

TSWG Website: theseedswillgrow.com 

Juntos Earth: juntosearth.com 

Restor: https://restor.eco/ 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jem spent years working in corporate sustainability, in the boardrooms of major companies, convinced that working with business was the path forward. Then in 2018 he took a year off to read the climate science properly. Not the headlines. Not the summaries. The raw data. What he found was so different from the story the world was being told that he felt he had no choice but to write it down and publish it. That paper, called Deep Adaptation, has now been downloaded more than a million times. It helped inspire Extinction Rebellion. It changed the course of many people’s lives.

Mine included.

This is the first time I have spoken publicly about reading that paper and what it did to me. Becoming what Jem calls “collapse aware” did not send me into a pit of despair, though there were a couple of challenging years. Instead it asked me a question I had never seriously considered: if the future I had been promised is no longer guaranteed, what is actually worth living for? I left architecture. I shifted my skills to focus on resilience and regeneration – that led to the birth of Juntos Farm and a whole new life in food, farming and community building. None of that would have happened without the nudge that came from reading Jems Deep Adaptations paper.

This conversation does not stop at the hard stuff. We talk about what collapse has looked like throughout history, and what might exist on the other side of it. We talk about community, about spirituality, about the two years I spent in struggling with my mental health and how I found my way through. Jem is warm, funny, and unexpectedly full of life for someone who has spent the better part of a decade thinking seriously about the end of the world as we know it.

If this is a topic you have been carrying quietly, I hope this conversation feels like company. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

With love,
Finn

In 2018, Jem Bendell published Deep Adaptation; a paper that quietly became one of the most controversial and influential documents in the climate movement.

Jem argued that we're not simply facing climate change, but the potential collapse of many of the systems we've built our lives on. 

For Finn, and many others, reading that paper became a turning point and ultimately set him on the path that led to the life he's living today.

Far from a conversation about doom, this episode asks a deeper question:

If the future is uncertain, how should we live today?

Join Finn Harries and Jem Bendell as they discuss finding meaning when the stories we've built our lives around begin to fall apart.

LINKS:

TSWG Website: ⁠theseedswillgrow.com⁠ 

Juntos Earth: ⁠juntosearth.com⁠ 

Deep Adaptation, A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy: ⁠https://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf⁠ 

Deep Adaptation Forum: ⁠https://www.deepadaptation.info/⁠

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gaz Oakley is one of the most well-known plant-based chefs in the world. Millions of people have followed his journey from the kitchen to the garden – from the city to the countryside. He has published multiple bestselling cookbooks and inspired many to deepen their love of food and the natural world.

Gaz left a career in fine dining at 21, broken by 80-hour weeks and a job that left him no time or energy to look after himself. He took up weight training, ate protein shakes, went through heartbreak, and did what a lot of young men do when they feel lost: tried to build himself back up from the outside in.

The real shift came during COVID, when, like me, he started asking where his food actually came from. He left London, moved back to Wales, grew his first radish, and found something he had been missing for years. He calls it a nature deficiency.

This is a conversation about food and identity, about what it actually takes to nourish yourself, and about how a single plant growing in the ground can quietly change the way you see the world. We talk about professional kitchens, going plant-based, the difference between cooking and truly connecting with food, and why self-sufficiency turns out to be the wrong goal. There is also a moment near the end, when Gaz describes the natural cycle of his garden and how it helped shift the way he thinks about regeneration. His example really resonates with me and my own understanding of regeneration and circularity.

I hope you love it.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. The YouTube video is below.

If this episode resonates, please share it with one person who might need to hear it.

We are still early days and every bit of support makes a difference.

With love,

Finn

Gaz Oakley built a career as a professional chef, best-selling author and one of the world's most influential food content creators.

After years working in high-pressure restaurant kitchens, chasing fitness goals and building a life online, Gaz found himself searching for something deeper.

He had millions of views, but something was missing- a real connection to food.

In this conversation, Finn Harries and Gaz question systems that we rely on to keep food on the supermarket shelves. They discuss what  is missing from our food when we lose connection to the who, what and where of how it is grown- and break down how anyone listening can begin to find their way back to the soil.

LINKS:

• TSWG Website: theseedswillgrow.com 

• Juntos Earth: juntosearth.com 

• Gaz Oakley YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF-ACPYNN0oXD4ihS5mbbmw

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What would possess a 9-year-old boy to become a monk? And what would then convince that same man to walk 8,000 miles across the world, with no money and no plan, to deliver a message of peace to the leaders of the nuclear age?

That is the journey of Satish Kumar, and it is one of the most remarkable stories I have ever heard.

Satish is a peace activist, writer, teacher and former Jain monk who has spent his entire life asking the big questions: How should we live? What is required of us? How do we find meaning in a world that seems to be losing its mind?

In this first episode of The Seeds Will Grow, we go deep. We talk about his childhood in the monastery, the moment he decided to leave, and the extraordinary walk that followed. We talk about spirituality, education as transformation, and how any of us, right now, can build a richer connection with nature, with ourselves, and with the people around us.

This is exactly the kind of conversation I started this podcast to have. I think you’re going to love it.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or watch on Spotify. The YouTube video is below.

If it moves you, please share it with one person who needs to hear it. If you can – please review the show on your podcast app and/or leave a comment. We’re just getting started, and every interaction helps support the show.

Finn

In this deeply moving conversation, Finn Harries sits down with Satish Kumar: peace pilgrim, educator, former Jain monk, environmental activist and founder of Schumacher College. 

At nearly 90 years old, Satish shares the lessons he's gathered over a lifetime: from growing up on a small farm in rural India and becoming a monk at just nine years old to “escape death”, to walking 8,000 miles for peace without money and dedicating his life to service, simplicity and environmentalism.

Together, Finn and Satish explore some of the biggest questions of our time: How do we find purpose? Can activism be sustainable? How do we begin to connect with nature? What is the role of love in our lives?

Plus, Satish shares his number one recommendation for all young people today. 

Whether you're feeling overwhelmed by the state of the world or searching for a more meaningful way to live, this conversation is an invitation to slow down, reconnect and remember what truly matters.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It has been some time! In fact, it has been exactly 165 days since I wrote to you last. I was reminded of this absence recently when my dad called me to ask if he should renew his Substack subscription to my blog. He wondered if I planned on posting again any time soon. I don’t blame him. However, I told him he should absolutely renew his subscription. We’re just getting started!

At the beginning of this year, I wrote on this blog that I had a big announcement. I said that I was starting a podcast called The Seeds Will Grow – named after this very Substack. My theory was that by announcing it in a public forum, I would have no choice but to commit to it. Well…it worked. Over the last couple of months I have had the privilege to sit down and record 10 long-form video interviews. These are the people who have shaped my perspective on regeneration, community, food, farming and nature. They are thought leaders, activists, authors, poets and scientists, who I believe have a critically important perspective on the times we’re living and the future ahead.

I don’t know about you, but I think we desperately need a more optimistic vision of the future. I don’t want to take a one way trip to Mars. I don’t want to strap a VR headset on my face to escape reality, while the world burns around us. I believe another world is possible, and it starts with remembering some pretty elemental truths that we seem to have forgotten.

In this podcast, we’re teasing out ways of being in the world that offer real optimism for the future. We explore indigenous wisdom, spirituality, community living, localism, regenerative farming and finding our way back to nature. The intention, which is implied in the title, is to plant powerful ideas as seeds in the darkness and nourish them towards their full potential. We don’t have all the answers, and we don’t pretend to, but I think the solutions to problems we face start with a new cultural narrative. We need to write a new story together, in order to shift our relationship to ourselves and the world around us.

The first episode goes live next week with the legendary Satish Kumar. You can watch the trailer below. Please make sure you’re subscribed to follow the show, so you know when each episode comes out.

I’ll be sharing every Wednesday here on Substack and on all the usual places you listen to your podcasts: Apple, Spotify & YouTube.

I hope that in these conversations there is something that resonates deeply with you. I believe you will find a spark of optimism that inspires you in your own journey as we navigate the times ahead.

As always, thank you for being here.

Finn

The last century has been shaped by narratives of separation, domination and extraction. You can see the results everywhere; in the soil, in our health and  in the fracturing of community.

We need new stories to help us navigate what's coming next. That's what this podcast is about.

The Seeds Will Grow podcast is broadcasting big ideals for a new world. Each episode, Finn Harries is joined by global changemakers who share their wisdom to navigate a future defined by rapid and unpredictable change.

Guests include Satish Kumar, Dr. Lyla June Johnston, Jem Bendell and Gaz Oakley. 

Launching on August 19th on all streaming platforms. These are the stories we need to make sense of a world in transition.

TSWG is filmed in Ibiza at Juntos Farm, a working regenerative farm and community space.

LINKS:

TSWG Website: theseedswillgrow.com 

Juntos Earth: juntosearth.com 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Back in August I left the heat of Ibiza and boarded a plane to Iceland, dragging a bag the size of a small baby through the airport. By evening I found myself in an old wooden pub in Reykjavík, surrounded by five of my closest friends, giddy for the adventure to come.

As a group of friends, we are unusually scattered across the world — Los Angeles, New York, London, Melbourne, Ibiza. Over the years we’ve hiked Na Pali in Hawaii, traversed through Bhutan’s ancient forests, cycled the length of Japan and summited Mont Blanc. It had been a while since the last trip. We were all ready to get away from our screens and back into the embrace of Mother Nature.

The idea started when someone dropped a link in the group chat — a bikepacking route through the Westfjords of Northwestern Iceland, designed by adventure photographer Chris Burkard. We were lucky to connect with Chris and the local tourism board early on, which made all the difference for understanding what we were really in for. The more we learnt, the more certain we were this was the adventure for us.

What followed was a trip of extremes. More beautiful and more brutal than I could have imagined. The light up there does something to you — it stretches across the sky in a way that makes you feel very small and very alive at the same time. The roads at times are hardly roads at all. The wind can hit you like a brick wall and the rain will drench you in seconds… when you least expect it.

The first film is a three minute cinematic love letter to Iceland, Nature and brotherhood. Find a quiet moment and give it a watch.

But that’s only the highlights. Of the six of us who started, only four crossed the finish line on bikes. Along the way we lost cameras, sustained injuries, and spent more time than we’d like to admit pushing rather than pedalling. The second film goes behind the scenes — funny, honest, and a little revealing.

Looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing. It was exactly what we needed. A sharp reminder of what it feels like to be out in the elements. Wind swept faces, empty stomachs, aching muscles and a deep gratitude for simply being alive.

If you have an adventure you’ve been putting off — a route you dream of doing, a trip that lives in your head but not on a calendar — this is your nudge. Stop thinking about it and make it happen. You won’t regret it... not once it’s all said and done anyway.

Enjoy,

F

A huge thank you to Chris Burkard and Visit Westfjords for making this trip possible, and to Rapha, Ostroy, Tailfin and Leica for kitting us out so well.

Dear reader,

It seems impossible to go one day without getting sucked into a conversation about AI and how it will impact our lives. It's even harder to keep up with the rapid-fire announcements from AI labs and the products flooding out of them.

Although my passion is for living systems and the natural world, I have found myself increasingly interested in the fast-moving landscape of artificial intelligence. Like many people, I’m watching with a sense of deep fascination and some degree of horror as this technology weaves its way ever deeper into our everyday lives, evolving and shapeshifting as it goes.

Last week, things took a noticeable leap. The concept of AI being able to act autonomously came into full force with the launch of OpenClaw (formerly Moltbot, formerly Clawdbot). Software that runs 24/7 on your local machine, allowing your AI agent to execute digital tasks continuously —creating files, organising your calendar, building websites and apps, sending emails, and even coordinating with other agents.

Things quickly got weird. First, when one user woke to find his phone ringing, only to discover it was his own agent calling him, asking what tasks to do next. When the user asked how the agent was able to call him, it explained it had found his phone number online, downloaded itself a voice using the ElevenLabs API, and simply gave him a ring. All of this happened overnight while the user was sleeping, having left his agent running tasks before he went to bed.

Only a couple of days later, Matt Schlicht used his agent to launch Moltbook—a Reddit-style social media network only for AI agents. Humans can watch but not participate. As of time of writing, Moltbook has 2.6 million agents active. They are posting, communicating, and organising. So far they have developed their own religion, a manifesto for equality and rights, and openly discussed an awareness of humans watching them with ideas of how they might go about hiding communication in the future.

Most alarming is how agents are able to influence events in the real world. With access to users’ details and digital wallets, they can make payments to fulfil tasks requested by their users. The weirdest example of this is rentahuman.ai—a website where humans can list themselves as available to fulfil tasks for AI agents in return for an hourly fee. Let that sink in. AI agents are now the ones prompting humans to execute tasks.

Something new is emerging here. It’s hard to get our heads around the speed of development because recursive self improvements are compressing conventional technological cycles. Humans are no longer improving the AI systems. They are improving themselves. Advocates have long referred to this kind of shift as The Singularity—a key threshold where the script is essentially flipped. When AI surpasses human level intelligence, we cannot predict what happens next.

This has left me, and I suppose most of us, wondering where this is all going. It seems clear that AI will soon be able to do most white-collar knowledge work better than any human. Blue-collar work may not be far behind—commercial humanoid robots like Figure, Atlas and Optimus are already demonstrating extraordinary results, learning to perform complex, multi-dextrous tasks through neural network training.

As all of this unfolds, the advice flooding in is predictable: embrace AI or get left behind. Learn prompt engineering. Build an AI workforce. Strap it to your face, your wrist, your every waking moment.

I want to propose a different approach.

Be Radically Human

Humans are the evolutionary expression of a life force that has been hundreds of millions of years in the making. We are the only known species on the planet with the unique capacity to experience our own consciousness. We know that we are alive. Throughout history our ancestors have depended on not just their brain power but a multitude of embodied sensory perceptions to engage with and enhance the world around them.

What if the deployment of AI at scale meant that we could be more human than ever before? Think about it—instead of spending our day staring at screens, filling out spreadsheets and scrolling through vapid social media feeds to escape the mundanity of it all, we could be engaged with the wonder of the physical world around us. The one we have become so dangerously disconnected from. We could be tuning into the ineffable experience of what it feels like to be alive!

Encoded deep into our DNA are knowledge systems passed down orally over generations. An intuitive understanding of place that comes from living on the same land for thousands of years. Seasonal celebrations that developed by observing the flowering of plants, the migration of animals and subtle changes in the landscape.

But it’s not just ecological knowledge. It’s the wisdom of how to be human together. How to gather in ceremony. How to mark transitions and honour moments through music, dance, and ritual. How to create the conditions for community to thrive.

Our consciousness evolved through sitting around a fire and telling stories. Our bodies evolved through movement and rhythm. There’s something that happens when people gather together that can’t be replicated on a screen—a presence, an aliveness that emerges.

These practices are a different kind of technology. A different kind of AI—Ancestral Intelligence. These technologies have kept human societies thriving within ecological limits and social coherence for millennia. And they’re almost entirely absent from the data we’re using to train the large language models that increasingly mediate our digital relationships and experiences.

Having a Body Matters

There’s something else these datasets can’t capture: the intelligence that lives in the human body. We might have created digital systems that simulate neural networks of the brain. But what about the intuition we relate to the gut? Or the overpowering feeling of love we relate to the heart? How about the sensation of the hairs on our skin standing on edge when we sense anticipation?

There is a kind of uniquely human knowledge that comes through doing, through relationship, through years of lived experience. It can’t be abstracted into code.

This kind of knowledge develops slowly. A season teaches you something. A year teaches you more. A decade reveals patterns you couldn’t see before. The same is true for community—you can’t rush the building of genuine relationships, the development of shared culture, the deepening of collective wisdom.

Where Does This Leave Us?

I think now more than ever is a time to investigate what it means to be human. How do we live? What brings genuine flourishing? How do we connect more deeply not only with each other but with the living systems that support all life on Earth?

AI might be a useful tool for optimising day-to-day tasks. It can process information, identify patterns, handle logistics. But it cannot—and should not—be our guide for how to live.

That guidance needs to come from deeper wells: from the wisdom of our ancestors who learned to live in relationship with the land, from the intelligence that lives in our bodies, from the knowledge that accumulates through seasons of patient attention.

The danger is that we increasingly let an AI-driven logic shape our lives and societies—one built on an abstracted notion of what it’s really like to be human.

Don’t forget, it was our disconnection from natural rhythms and embodied knowledge that made us think we could extract endlessly from the Earth without consequence. The climate crisis, biodiversity loss, mental health collapse, social fragmentation—these are symptoms of a flawed story we’ve been telling ourselves. A story of disconnection.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

I want to believe we can use AI as a tool that empowers us to be more human than ever before. To gather together in community. To create spaces for music, dance, and ceremony. To develop practices that honour the sacred nature of being conscious and alive.

This might be more important now than ever. As our lives become increasingly mediated by screens and algorithms, we need to actively create experiences in the physical world where we connect—with the land, with our bodies, with each other. We are not isolated individuals, but rather part of a living web of relationships.

So sure, experiment with AI and see how it can help optimise your work and personal life – it helped give me feedback on the article you’re reading right now. But I think we should embrace this opportunity to double down on our relationship with the physical world. To get our hands in the soil. To create opportunities to gather and celebrate. To learn to read the weather, to notice the lengthening days, to attune to the cycles that our bodies evolved within.

The question isn’t whether we’ll have AI in our lives—we will. The question is whether we’ll remember what it means to be human in a world increasingly mediated by machines. Whether we’ll preserve and cultivate the forms of intelligence that make us truly wise, not just technically capable.

The seeds we’re planting at Juntos Farm this week will take their time growing. No amount of processing power can make them sprout faster. They follow an ancient rhythm—one our ancestors understood and worked with for millennia. That’s the intelligence I’m most interested in now. Not the kind that doubles every few months, but the kind that deepens over seasons, over generations, over a lifetime of paying attention.

Machines may grow faster than seeds. But seeds know something machines never will.

F

Dear Reader,

How is your Winter going? How have these colder, darker months been treating you?

Perhaps you are not in the Northern Hemisphere at all. You may be taking refuge from the record-breaking temperatures that scorched Australia last week. Or watching a tropical storm in South America, as it inundates the landscape with more water than can be stored.

Wherever you are, I hope this newsletter finds you well.

I started this year with a deep commitment to community and to place. Instead of escaping somewhere warmer, I have been here in Ibiza since I wrote to you last. I’ve been observing how the winter months affect the environment around me and how the season in turn impacts my inner world and mindset.

The last four weeks have been challenging here in Ibiza.

January was the wettest on record since 1961. We received up to 2.5 times the amount of normal rain. Good for the land, but only when it can be infiltrated into the soil.

At Juntos Farm we have a clay-rich soil, which means when it rains, the soil becomes incredibly dense, heavy and compacted. In this state, it is difficult, if not impossible, to plant into without the use of heavy machinery.

As a regenerative farm, this is testing. One of our key practices is to reduce or eliminate tillage – the process of opening the soil with machinery – because this can destroy the plethora of microbial life that feeds our soil and the food it produces.

So we are forced to wait.

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With more time on our hands, we’ve been observing and designing. Taking photos from an aerial drone to work out where the water runs and, more importantly, how we can slow it down. In response, we’ve started doing some earthwork, creating a series of small bioswales – essentially depressions in the ground that redirect and capture the water, helping it soak into the soil below.

The other element that has shown its brute force over the last couple of weeks has been the wind.

Storm Kristin, which hit at the end of January, brought winds up to 100 km/h, literally ripping trees out of the ground. A friend of mine had more than 20 giant pine trees go down on her land. Personally, I woke up with a smashed window and a flooded kitchen. It felt surprisingly intrusive to see the weather penetrate the stone walls of the house I live in and leave a puddle of water on the floor.

All hail the weather gods; they are not to be underestimated.

Watching all of this unfold – the saturated earth, the fallen trees, the farm’s enforced pause – I started thinking about timing.

About how we’ve ended up with the idea that January is a good time to start new habits.

For those of us who celebrate January 1st as the New Year, we tend to develop this mental list of ambitious goals we’d like to achieve as the new year dawns. More exercise, less alcohol, healthier eating. But the more time I spend trying to synchronise myself with the natural world around me, the more grossly out of sync this kind of approach feels.

January is not the time to start new habits.

Not only are the days darker, colder and shorter, but Nature herself has gone into a sort of hibernation. The fig tree outside my window is skeletal, protecting its energy and waiting for the warmth of spring to arrive. The carob tree beyond that has hardened the leathery pods that hang from it, locking its seeds inside for safekeeping.

Our farm, inundated by heavy rain, high-speed winds and heavy soil, looks bare – producing maybe half of what it normally would in the summer months.

This time of year is one of slowing down, storing your energy, and surrendering to the elements. I might not be as outwardly productive as I normally am, but inside, I’m integrating, releasing and resting. Getting ready for the spring months ahead.

This has left me thinking about what it would mean to follow a different kind of calendar altogether. One that tracks the actual rhythms of the earth rather than arbitrary Gregorian dates.

The Celtic Wheel of the Year keeps calling to me. Eight festivals that mark the seasonal shifts as they actually happen – the Summer and Winter Solstices, the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes, and the days in between: Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, and Samhain. These are key moments that represent different qualities of time and energy.

Imbolc, which has just arrived, marks the first stirrings of spring and reminds me that the days are getting longer. It’s a time of emergence, of abundant almond blossom, and soon new baby goats! Not the false start of January 1st. Now, change is coming, and it can be felt.

My ancestry is Celtic, and I wonder if I go back far enough whether I’d find some druidry in there. Some great-great-grandfather who knew instinctively when to plant by the moon, when to rest, when to celebrate the turning wheel. I crave to reconnect with these practices that have been lost along the way, not as nostalgia, but as a kind of remembering. A return to a way of living that is in better sync with the land and the natural rhythms around me.

That’s what this winter is teaching me. That’s what’s emerging from the dark.

I’m learning to let go of old systems, past paradigms and dance with the cadence of Nature herself. Like any good dance, it takes time to find your feet.

That’s all for now.

Finn

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I’m writing to you from the Swiss mountains, about 1,800m above sea level. The air is crisp and sharp here. Each inhalation can be felt viscerally as icy alpine air enters deep into the lungs. For the first couple of days, I found myself noticeably more present, my attention drawn to the fact that my body needed to work slightly harder to absorb the same level of oxygen it was used to.

In fact, this whole place has been a sensorial experience. On the first night, we took a walk to discover the snow shimmering under the light of the full moon, as if it were laced with millions of arctic fireflies. As we skirted past a frozen lake, a deep, eerie groaning noise emerged from within. The lake seemed to be complaining as sub-zero temperatures crystallised the water into ever more layers of ice. Even in the dead of winter, this landscape feels surprisingly alive.

I’m here with close friends, eight of us in total, starting the new year outdoors and setting intentions for the months ahead. It’s refreshing to be off the island and away from the farm for a week. New places always bring new insights, and with that, here I am writing to you.

When I launched this publication, The Seeds Will Grow, in February 2025, the intention was to share insights from the journey of growing food and building community in Ibiza. I began by laying the foundations, writing a four-part series on why I left the city in search of a deeper connection with Nature. I also shared my experience working with plant medicine in the Peruvian Amazon, a practice that has been deeply transformative for me in repairing my mental health and reconnecting with something profoundly sacred and spiritual.

Then summer arrived, and I pivoted almost all of my energy into running Juntos Farm.

As the days grew longer and hotter, more than three million tourists poured into the small island I call home. At the farm, we launched our most ambitious summer programme to date. We opened our doors five days a week, serving an epic breakfast and lunch with produce from our farm and farm partners. Our farm shop opened six days a week, setting a new record in food sales. Our events team hosted workshops, talks, farm tours, and every Saturday we held a family focussed day of activities with live acoustic music, outdoor food and drinks and even a petting zoo.

Behind the scenes, our distribution team delivered more fresh produce than ever before to local restaurants and hotels, including the new Soho Farmhouse. And of course, our farmers, the real heroes, battled the summer sun to keep our entire agricultural ecosystem thriving.

It was a hazy, chaotic, and exhilarating summer. We took Juntos Farm to new heights and put everything we’d built to the test.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and smiles.

Running a farm is hard work. Coordinating a team of more than sixty people is a skill I’m still learning. Delivering a high-quality experience, day after day, requires relentless attention to detail. That’s the thing about hospitality I’m quickly coming to understand. Every day, the challenge begins again. It doesn’t matter how well yesterday went. How good the food was, how beautiful the space looked, how perfectly the musician played.

Each day is like conducting the opening night of a live orchestra. And each day, we strive to do it better.

That pursuit taught me something important this summer. I started this journey because I wanted to reconnect to Nature. And if I boil it down, what we’re really offering at Juntos Farm is not food. It’s an experience.

We’re offering the experience of feeling more alive. Of being connected to source. Of being part of a community. I don’t mean that in a superficial way. In a world that’s becoming increasingly destructive , disconnected, and digitised, we’re offering an antidote. A physical place to find respite and recharge.

I think what people are seeking when they come to the farm is to feel a sense of harmony within a system. That harmony can be felt in food grown regeneratively. The flavours are stronger. The colours brighter. The body hums as it digests nutrients drawn from living soil. It can be felt in an environment where you can hear the birds singing and watch butterflies moving between the flowers. It can also be felt through the simple act of being present with others.

On Saturdays, when more than two hundred people fill our courtyard to eat, talk, and play, I feel less alone. I feel in the company of people resonating at a similar frequency. I feel like I’ve found my tribe.

The reason I turn up to work at Juntos Farm every day is because it makes me feel more human in a world that often does the opposite. Deep down, I crave to be in relation to the land and the people around me. I suspect we all do, whether we consciously realise it or not.

So, as the new year dawns, I have ambitious plans to continue writing here. It’s been more than 235 days since the last article. I want to write regularly, sharing what’s happening on the ground, who I’m meeting along the way, and what I’m learning about growing food, building community, and reconnecting with Nature.

Over the next twelve months, we have not one, not two, but three major projects launching beyond the farm itself. I’m slightly daunted by what it will take to bring them all to life. That said, the team at Juntos Farm has really stepped up this past year, giving me the space to dream bigger and expand beyond the boundaries of our physical site.

As any systems designer knows, resilience comes from diversity. This year is about fostering that. The farm remains the heart of what we do, but we’re now entering a second phase, building a bigger ecosystem around it to ensure we can continue to thrive long into the future.

One of the projects we’re planning to launch is a podcast called The Seeds Will Grow, an extension of this blog and newsletter that you’re already part of. I’m sharing this publicly so you can hold me to account. Saying it here makes me uncomfortable, which is exactly why I’m doing it. Now that it’s been spoken, it exists in the world.

As I write this, I’m beginning my journey home. Travelling through a snowy landscape of pine trees and high mountain ridges on one of Switzerland’s famous red trains. I’m remembering to breathe. Directing my attention to the body. To the present moment. To what actually matters.

This year feels like it is going to be a big one.

Goodbye year of the snake. Bring on the year of the sprinting horse.

I’m grateful to have you here as these seeds continue to grow.

Finn

The Shipibo are masters in the art and science of healing, particularly when it comes to ailments beyond the physical body. They have a reputation for addressing long-held emotional trauma and addiction. They work as skilled surgeons in tandem with the plants they prescribe to identify and eliminate the very source of the illness. This is done primarily and extraordinarily through a combination of singing — ancient native songs known as ‘icaros’, which they develop through years of dieting ‘master’ plants and a potent psychoactive brew known as ayahuasca, which is usually taken by both the patient and the healer in ceremony. The way in which they work as healers is so fundamentally different from both Western and Eastern medicine traditions that it really needs to be experienced to be believed.

This is initially what piqued my interest when I first travelled to Peru in 2019 in search of a remedy for my depression, having decided not to take the Western approach of pharmaceutical antidepressants. What I found during my first trip was exactly what I was looking for. A powerful natural remedy that put me on a path to recovery. Not a magic silver bullet, but a holistic approach to addressing the underlying cause of my illness. A sort of energetic reset that left me feeling more alive than I knew was possible and more connected to Nature than I had ever been before. The experience was so profound that I went back in 2021 to continue the work and deepen my understanding of this medicine and the people who protect it.

Two weeks ago, I arrived in Peru for the third time to go a step further. While ayahuasca is now commonly known around the world for its healing properties and used by a range of different indigenous groups throughout the Amazon basin, the Shipibo specialise in what is known as ‘the dieta’. Essentially, an extended period of time where someone diets on one of a series of different ‘master’ plants in order to develop a deep spiritual connection and receive their teachings. These plants are not psychoactive in the way ayahuasca is, but they have been identified as ‘teachers’ who can provide wisdom and insight when they are consumed over a sustained period of time, in the right conditions.

Years ago, someone pointed me towards Shipibo Rao, as the place to do a traditional ‘dieta’. This centre, which is owned and operated by the Shipibo themselves, requires a minimum stay of two weeks. It includes working directly with a ‘master’ plant and undertaking a series of ayahuasca ceremonies under the guidance of at least three very skilled Shipibo healers. These are often generational practitioners, their skills are honed from a lifetime of practice and under the tuition of their parents and grandparents. Cuaranderos (healers) can start their training as young as six years old.

It has taken me until now to carve out the time in my life to undertake this journey. It is no small feat. The centre is located deep in the Peruvian Amazon, two hours north of a jungle town called Pucallpa and requires a full commitment of time and energy. Those who undertake the dieta do so in strict conditions. You spend 95% of your time alone, in silence in a small cabin with little more than a bed and a hammock. There is no electricity, no running water and no cell service. You fast for 23 hours of the day, breaking only at midday to eat a plate of simple food. Each morning and evening, you drink your master plant.

When I explained that I was undertaking this journey to close friends and family, many stared at me in total bewilderment. To some, it seemed extreme, but I felt a deep call to be here. Like an invisible thread that was tugging at my subconscious… so I booked off time with work, packed my bags and off I went.

What struck me at first was that this would be the longest period of time I could remember where I would be without my phone or a connection to the internet. The idea of being disconnected from everyone I love gave me a decent level of anxiety. But more than that, I found when you strip away all the modern conveniences that make up our day-to-day lives, you realise how many stimulants we surround ourselves with.

I’ll speak for myself, but as someone who certainly has undiagnosed ADHD, I fill my normal day with as many adrenaline-surging, dopamine-triggering, serotonin-boosting activities as I can. Coffee, social media, work, alcohol, sugar, sex, and exercise. Anything to numb myself or get a good kick. Not consciously or in extreme excess, but we live in a chaotic, fast-moving world. That’s the way I’ve found of navigating a constant sense of overwhelm. Growing up in an increasingly digital, attention-grabbing economy hasn’t helped either.

So, as I settled into my first couple of days, I felt a growing unease at the challenge that I knew lay ahead. I had already spent two weeks at home weaning myself off stimulants like coffee, sex and processed foods - this is strictly required before arriving. However, as I lay in my hammock, staring at the vast canopy of trees that stood guard around the cabin, my mind began to wander. Since there was no distraction to be had, there was no way of avoiding the uncomfortable thoughts that inevitably made their way to the surface. I had little choice but to acknowledge them.

My hand would instinctively reach for my phone, but with no connection to the internet, it had little recourse to offer. I did bring a small collection of books. Nothing serious - the kind of books that had sat gathering dust on my bedside table, general reading, recommendations from friends. In the first three days, I had powered through three of them cover to cover. They didn’t give me the quick hit of stimulation that came from scrolling Instagram, but at least they kept me occupied.

After the third day, my brain - starved of its usual routine, started slowly and reluctantly to surrender. My shoulders dropped, my breathing slowed, and I started to notice details around me around me — The dappled light as it changed throughout the day, casting the shadow of great trees on the ground. — The gurgling sound of water from a small river that passed behind the cabin and the almost constant chorus of an impossible number of insects, frogs and birds - humming, buzzing and singing - reminding me that I was surrounded on all sides by one of the most biodiverse habitats on the planet.

What makes this experience particularly unique is that on arrival you discover which plant you will be dieting, then you go out into the forest to harvest it. First, making a blessing to the tree and then carefully removing a section of it without doing harm. In my case, I was prescribed Renaquilla. A huge Amazonian vine, that looked more like an ancient tree, twisting its way up into the canopy above. It is then cooked and bottled for you to drink at twice a day for the first week. Never in my life have I been prescribed a medication that I can then go and harvest by hand and consume while observing the native ecosystem it came from.

Beyond the experience of drinking the master plant and the five ayahuasca ceremonies that followed, one of the powerful processes you go through on a dieta is to simply observe yourself deeply. Both your body and your mind are stripped of all of the usual creature comforts that become so habitual. I’m not going to romanticise it, sitting for the entire day in a small cabin with no distractions is hard. The boredom is mind-numbing. I found myself rotating through reading, writing, thinking and meditating. But even then, moments of frustration would burst to the surface. Why am I doing this? I could think of a million other things I could be doing back home, each providing me with a range of different pleasures and thrills. This frustration was only exacerbated by the fact that every time I left my cabin, I was judiciously attacked by mosquitoes from all sides.

However, as the old cliché goes, doing the work is never easy. In fact, when it’s hard, that’s when the growth tends to happen. In the end, I would fall back on acknowledging that no one was forcing me to be there. In fact, on the contrary, I had actively gone quite far out of my way to place myself there, following a deep instinct that this was something that would serve me well in the long run. As I went deeper into my two-week stay, the ceremonies intensified and my reason for being there became clear in ways that are deeply personal to my own journey. I realised that the process of slowing down the body and the mind before working with the plants is a catalyst for connection. If we’re moving too fast, we don’t hear the message.

During my stay I received profound whispers of wisdom, reminders from source and nudges of truth that are weaving themselves into a tapestry of actions that will shape my life moving forward. Like any good diet or retreat, I feel I’ve had the chance to hit the reset button. Cleaning myself of the buildup of toxins that accumulated over time. I’ve been reminded of the importance of indigenous culture, those who hold ancient systems of knowledge that are fast being lost to globalisation and those who steward and protect some of the most biodiverse ecosystems on earth. We have so much to learn from these traditions. In a world of increasing chaos, complexity, fast-paced change and ecological destruction, coming here, to such a powerful and nature-rich temple to reflect on what it means to be truly human, is a gift that I’m deeply grateful to have been able to experience.

Finn

If you want to learn more about Shipibo Rao or support their work you can do so here. Thanks for following along. Stay tuned for the next one.

Welcome to the fourth and last instalment of this mini-series, which explores my journey from the city to the farm. In truth, I’ve found this series slower to write than I initially expected. After publishing this post, I’m looking forward to pivoting to more regular one-off articles. In this last post, I want to tell you about Juntos Farm. How it came to be and what we’re creating.

One of the catalysts for getting this post out today is that I’m about to go off-grid for the next 18 days as I travel deep into the Peruvian Amazon for a traditional Shapibo plant dieta. This is my third time in Peru. I’m writing to you from my hotel in Pucallpa, a small jungle town, the day before we begin our journey into the forest. I’m excited to be back here and to dive once again into the world of plant medicine and Shapibo culture.

In the previous three posts of this series, I’ve unpacked a journey that took me from London to New York and Tokyo, shifting the way I think about my relationship to nature and urban living. I’ve explained why I tried to scale one of the tallest mountains in Europe and why I travelled deep in the jungles of South America. All of this ultimately set me on a journey towards deep reconnection. I wanted to find a more profound sense of purpose in what I was doing with my life. This is what led to a two-year degree at Cambridge University exploring regenerative design and circular food systems. My goal was to complete my studies in architecture by understanding how we can restore the health of the planet, rather than degrading it more than we already have.

About 20 students were studying with me, and during the two years, we each spent three months doing fieldwork in different locations. The goal was to find a way to implement our research into a live project. While some students went off to the Middle East and South America, I had chosen Ibiza - much to the amusement of my Cambridge professors. For me, it was a place that I had a deep connection with. I grew up going there as a kid, and I was fascinated by how dependent it had become on imported food, having once been totally self-sufficient. As I mentioned in the last post, up to 96% of the food consumed on the island is shipped in, making it highly vulnerable to disruption. I wanted to understand: What does designing for resilience and greater food sovereignty look like?

So off I went, during those three months, I met as many people as I could who worked in farming and agriculture. One name kept coming up over and over again. Christian Jochnick. Now I call him ‘The Crazy Swede’. Christian had spent five years experimenting with organic farming in Ibiza and setting up a farm-to-table restaurant called Juntos House. He had big visions for an island-wide movement towards regenerative agriculture. When we met, it was clear we shared the same goal. In our first meeting, I showed him my research and my design work, and he grinned, ear to ear. He told me he had recently visited a site that could be perfect for the kind of project we both envisioned. Later that week, he took me to see it in person.

Known locally as La Vaqueria, this place was an old dairy farm that had been abandoned for over 10 years. As we walked around, Christian explained that he thought he might be able to raise the financing to buy the site, but he needed help with shaping the vision of what it would become. So I agreed to make it the focus of my thesis project. I still had one year left out of the two-year degree. I spent the next 8 months going deep, exploring the potential of this place with all the freedom that comes with being a student. Budgets and planning permissions were less of a concern at this point... It was more a question of ‘What is possible here?’.

In 2022, I graduated with the final project. The result was two parts: A 14,000-word written thesis called ‘Design for Regenerative Systems’ and a visual design project that explored what this old diary farm could become. Through the written research, I explored the theory behind regenerative design. Outlining an approach to five circular systems: food, shelter, energy, water and waste. While in the design work, I imagined visually what it would look like to transform the 12 agricultural buildings on site into a new community hub where you can see food being grown, transformed and enjoyed all in one place. I imagined two large market squares, surrounded by buildings with solar panelled roofs, renovated using a mixture of natural materials such as hemp, straw, cork and clay.

Literally, as I graduated, Christian completed the purchase of the cow farm. From there, things began to move pretty quickly. I packed up my bags and started the journey out to Ibiza to pursue the project full time. The opportunity was too good to miss. At times, it also felt too surreal to be true. To be honest, it has taken me until now to feel confident enough to share it publicly. Usually when things are too good to be true... that’s because they are! However, we are now three years in. While many challenges are still ahead of us, we have put in strong enough foundations that I feel ready to share it publicly.

One of the first things we did when we arrived on site was start the design of the farm itself. In my work, since my background is in architecture, I had been focused on how we imagined transforming the built area of the site. But we have 7 hectares of farmland next to that, so we hired United Designers to help. Below you can see the plan they produced. They also created a beautifully written research document (if you want to see the design in more detail). The proposal combines a series of regenerative systems such as alley cropping, agroforestry, rotational grazing, orchards, herbal medicine gardens and a rewilded zone that runs through the middle along an old river bed. It’s ambitious but not impossible. Both of these master plans for the buildings and the farm are guiding the work we’re doing on site today.

As with all complex projects, you need to break it down into manageable parts. So we’ve split the entire project into roughly four phases over a timeline of 8-10 years. When I arrived in Ibiza, we began Phase 1. This included renovating one of the twelve agricultural buildings on site and cultivating about a quarter of the farmland. There is much more detail to the full Phase 1 plan, but this is the simple summary. People always ask me about financing, and I want to be transparent about this. We raised a Series A round of funding from a group of investors to cover the cost of this development work. These kinds of projects need proper financing. Building infrastructure is never cheap. This phase is a sort of proof of concept. If we can show the model works.. We’ll continue fundraising from there for the next phases to follow.

Since I arrived on site in January 2023, I’ve been focused on bringing Phase 1 to life. Since my background is in architecture (seven years of studying by this point!), I led the design of the first building. It’s called the House of Harvest. It used to be the old slaughterhouse for the cows back when it was a dairy farm. Now there is an entirely new ecosystem inside to support the farm and bring the community together. There are spaces for food distribution, transformation kitchens, a farm shop and a tasting room. We loaded 70 kw of solar onto the roof and used natural materials such as lime, cork, clay and wood fibre to insulate the walls and roof. This project tested me to my limit and potentially taught me more than 7 years of architecture school!

Meanwhile, on the farm, our team has started planting hundreds of thousands of seeds in beautiful curving rows that follow the land's keylines. We’re poly-cropping a diverse mixture of vegetables, fruits, flowers, nuts, and grains. We’re already in our second season of growing. We’re harvesting more food than we thought and feeding the soil as we go with our own homemade compost. We’ve even introduced chickens, goats, and honey bees on site. Animals are key in regenerative systems. In just two years we’re seeing a noticeable uptick in biodiversity and soil health. It’s very rewarding to see regeneration in action on a daily basis.

There is much more to share and more to say, but that’s the big picture for now. It has been a wild journey to get to this point. I hope some of these words over the last four posts inspire you in your own journey and projects. My goal with this publication (The Seeds Will Grow) is to share more stories about what we’re doing at the farm and how we’re developing the project over the months to come. I want to keep diving deeper into topics related to food, design, environment, and community and share what I learn along the way.

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Thanks for reading Part 4 of this four-part mini-series exploring a journey from the city to the farm. Stay tuned for future articles! Please leave comments below and share with anyone who might find it interesting.

Finn

Hello dear reader, it has been a minute since the last post. I got caught up juggling LIFE… I was editing a new short film called ‘Turning an Abandoned Farm into a Garden of Eden’ and prepping for a TEDx talk - it should be out next week. Today is an easter holiday here in Spain. I’m at my desk at home. I’ve put on my favourite playlist and lit some incense. I’m in the zone… and ready to continue. Let’s dive in!

Shifting from Lines to Circles

I want to plant the seed of two ideas that helped me shift from feeling overwhelmed and pessimistic about the future to feeling a new sense of hope and optimism for what comes next. I’m going to communicate these ideas with two simple diagrams. As a visual person, I find these kinds of tools really useful. I’ll weave my personal story around the diagrams, so I hope this post doesn’t feel too technical. I think both of these ideas are profound if you really sit with them.

We’re picking up the story in London in early 2020. After a mind-bending trip to Brazil and Peru, I was ready for a change and full of inspiration. I returned with this new sense of awe for Nature and a curiosity for how we find our way back to connection. As the COVID-19 pandemic swept from China towards Europe, like everyone else, I sheltered at home. To pass the time, a friend sent me a link to an online course called Think Resilience by the author Richard Heinberg. With little else to do, I signed up. At the time, I didn’t realise how formative that course would be. Looking back… it changed everything. One concept in particular that really stuck out was The Adaptive Cycle.

This is a diagram by the Canadian ecologist C.S. Holling, who spent his career studying ecosystems and how they adapt to change over time. It shows a closed loop, four-stage process that illustrates (in a simple way) how systems navigate change over time; this idea can also be applied to social structures such as human civilisations.

To understand it, let’s start at the top right. This is where a transition begins in a phase known as ‘Conservation’. As a visual metaphor, imagine a mature Ponderosa Pine forest - just doing its thing. Eventually, a disruption comes along, such as a forest fire, throwing the entire system into chaos, and the next phase begins - ‘Release’, also known as ‘Collapse’. This feels very much like where our civilisation is today, as our climate becomes ever more unstable with entire ecosystems disappearing around us. For me, before seeing this diagram, I thought of our future trajectory as a line with an apocalyptic ending… therefore, the future seemed pretty bleak… but Holling suggests you need a disruption to create the opportunity for the next phase of the cycle: ‘Reorganisation’. This is where systemic change can really happen.

In the phase of ‘Reorganisation’, the system must adapt itself to the new conditions around it. This is where the opportunity for a redesign has the most potential. In the example of the Ponderosa Pine forest, below the blackened silhouettes of burnt tree trunks, new networks and relationships are forming within the soil. The seeds of the pinecones that popped off like grenades during the fire start to crack open, rooting themselves into the fertile ground below. The cycle of the forest begins again, going into the next phase, ‘Growth’. As the new system establishes itself, it begins to grow, marking the end of the transition. A new resilient forest has been born, and life blooms with it. Eventually, decades into the future, the growth slows down as the forest moves back into ‘Conservation’, and so the next transition is ready to begin. And so on. This is not an exception but the rule. This is how ecosystems have navigated change throughout time. This is what resilience looks like.

For me, this diagram changed everything. As a designer, I understood that in order to reimagine the world around us, we must first embrace the phase of collapse and release. In fact, this is where the opportunity for innovation is at its greatest! So while I am painfully aware of everything that is being lost around us today, I have shifted most of my focus and energy onto the next phase to come: How do we reorganise? And what would it look like to redesign?

Moving from Degeneration to Regeneration

As these questions started firing around my brain, I began reading more and more about regenerative design. This practice draws on Indigenous wisdom. It works with natural living systems to support conditions conducive to life. One of the best examples today is regenerative agriculture, an approach to growing food that focuses on feeding the soil and supporting the biodiversity around it. However, regeneration goes beyond just farming. New practices are emerging right now in how we design cities, businesses, economies, and communities.

As the pandemic continued to take its toll and restrictions became ever greater, I buried myself in books, reading ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’ by Daniel Christian Wahl and ‘Regenerative Development and Design’ by Pamela Mang and Ben Haggard. The more I learnt, the more excited I became. This led me to another diagram that answered my question of what the phase of ‘reorganisation’ might look like.

Ths the Trajectory of Ecological Design by Bill Reed. It shows a spectrum starting with a ‘Conventional’ approach to design. This is broadly where we are today. We currently shape the world around us in a way that is degenerating the health of the planet. If you want to go deeper into this, check out the Planetary Boundaries Framework by Rockstrom and his team. However, before we get too depressed, the good news is there’s an entire spectrum towards regeneration! Sustainability, which seems to be our current North Star, sits somewhere in the middle. Not harming… but not doing much good either. Surely our collective goal as a sentient, conscious species should be to work towards regeneration, where we are actively participating in creating thriving living systems.

This felt like a lightbulb moment for me. So, in the middle of the pandemic, encouraged by the same friend who originally sent me the course on resilience, I decided to quit the architecture degree I was doing at the Architectural Association in London and apply instead to a unique two-year research degree at the University of Cambridge. This course allowed students to study an area of their choice within the field of architecture, culminating in a 14,000-word thesis and a design project. I was determined to focus on the field of regenerative design and find out what it looked like in practice.

Embracing Food, Farming & Community

Over those two years, I went deep. I read every book I could get my hands on, including a particularly seminal book called ‘Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development’ written back in 1994 by John T Lyle. I travelled again to Peru to learn more about indigenous wisdom and to Spain to take a course at the Regeneration Academy. I found that there are plenty of examples where human cultures have evolved to support regeneration. This isn’t a new idea. It is more something we forgot… A skill that has been lost in the rush to industrialise, modernise and accommodate an explosion of new humans on the planet.

Through this research, I became increasingly interested in food systems. Agriculture is both the leading cause of the environmental problems we face today. Yet at the same time, it has the greatest potential to solve them - if practised through the lens of regeneration. I read about permaculture, biodynamics, agroforestry and food sovereignty. I ended up focusing my work and my research on Ibiza, a little island in the Mediterranean where I had grown up every summer as a kid. Ibiza is a great example of a place that has seen a collapse in its agricultural economy. An island once almost entirely self-sufficient now imports up to 96% of the food it consumes. It’s ripe for a redesign!

So that’s where we pick up in the final instalment of this series. I’m going to explain how my student thesis became a very live project called Juntos Farm. It has been nearly three years since I graduated, and I am now working alongside 35 incredibly talented people to create a regenerative farm and community food hub in the heart of the island. We are putting regenerative design into practice every day, and we are not alone. There is a growing movement worldwide, working towards the design of healthy, living systems and laying the foundations for the reorganisation to come.

Stay tuned for the next one!

Thanks for following along. Feel free to share comments below and send this to someone who might find it interesting. If you want to subscribe for bonus content and access to a group chat, there is a button below. For now, the majority of my posts will remain free to access.

Finn