Biofach 2025: Tradin Organic on regenerative agriculture vision and implementation
17 Mar 2025 | Tradin Organic
At the recent organic Biofach trade show, Anne Floor van Dalfsen, global sustainability manager at Tradin Organic, told us the company views regenerative agriculture practices as an extension of organic production, aiming to enhance biodiversity and soil health. She also highlighted several practices the company implements with its partners all over the world to strengthen farmers’ resilience to climate change. For example, Tradin Organic trained Ethiopian smallholder farmers in beekeeping to diversify their production and income, which also enhanced the yield of farmers’ avocado crops.
This is Yolanda van Gaal.
I'm here at Bach 2025 with Anna Fleur von Dalse, who is sustainability manager at Taden Organic.
Thank you for joining us today.
Thanks.
And we're here to talk about regenerative agriculture, and my first question is, how would you define regenerative agriculture in your own words and what makes it different from normal organic farming?
Great question, and I think, heavily discussed in the, in, in, yeah, by, by some.
For us, regenerative practices are in essence always organic.
It starts with organic.
A lot of common practices and the principles of organic agriculture, they are regenerative in nature.
They improve the biodiversity.
The land, they improve the biodiversity, the carbon stocks, the health of the soil.
So in that sense, already regenerative might not be as new as some think it is.
We do think it's a great movement to really Push for active goals on, OK, how can we improve biodiversity but also farm diversity, income for farmers, farmer livelihoods, so how can we increase that even more.
So yeah, yeah, it's it's definitely an area we also strive to work in.
And for Chad and organic yourselves as a company, what inspires you to go into regenerative farming in addition to organic?
So, it's.
I'll I'll show you a bit what what we do and how we work, which is our, our key philosophy is building alliances, so working together, whether it's with our customers that use our ingredients and.
Feed the consumer or it's the and that's why I want to show this map.
It shows the variety of and the geographical scope of partnerships that we have in origin.
Every origin faces different challenges.
I would say a very common one experienced across the globe is climate change.
So whether it's droughts in one area, storms in another, a disease or pest that comes up, just depletion of the soil.
We see it everywhere, so the the future of our business, but also of all the delicious products that are made with the ingredients, it's really in resilience, trying to strengthen the resilience both of our business.
Through alliances that way, but also really of a field, and I actually believe regenerative agriculture and my favorite example of it, agroforestry, dynamic agroforestry, it shows, or it's nature's way of proving that alliances actually work.
A dynamic agroforestry system.
It's a really clever model, a design of carefully selected trees, plants, crops, cover crops, other vegetation designed and sort of placed in such a way that they strengthen each other.
So whether it's companion planting, where there's an exchange of nutrients, or whether it's providing shade by one tree for seedlings that are coming up.
Or whether it's their joint capacity to better manage the water and retain it or prevent erosion, so I think we can.
And what we like to do at Trot and Organic is take a lesson from nature and apply that to the way that we do business and the way that we support farmers, building resilient and diverse farms.
Awesome.
And I'm also curious if you can share some impactful practices that Organic uses or your farmers use and how they contribute to soil health and biodiversity.
Absolutely.
So what I really liked, I remember I was visiting our avocado oil project in Ethiopia and one of the great collaborations with farmers was training them to do beekeeping, so giving them the materials, the high, protective gear, etc.
But also training.
On how to keep bees and provide a healthy environment for them to thrive and then take the benefit of their pollination services and it was really exciting to see how there's now expert beekeepers in Ethiopia and they're seeing the impact not only on yield of the avocados, which is the crop of focus, but also of the ecosystem around it, which is these are smallholder farmers.
Often the farm is their backyard or a field next to their backyard.
So seeing the impact of more biodiversity and healthy, lush environments, yeah, that's, it's really encouraging and it shows.
It shows the impact on the ground.
Awesome.
Final question that I wanted to ask you more about the food industry.
If you could change one thing about the food industry to make it more sustainable, what would that be?
Oh wow, big question.
If I could change one thing.
I think we're seeing, we're we're we're starting to see change already.
I think consumers are more than ever conscious that what they eat or put in their bodies that it impacts their health, and I think it would be wonderful if more people have access to affordable, clean products, whether it's to eat, for personal care, so.
Joining forces, building alliances to increase the supply, the offer of organic ingredients for those wonderful products, and then joining forces to tell consumers why it's good for them, that it's worth, you know, their choice from the shelf, yeah, making that happen.
I would, I would love to see, I would love to see that happen.
Awesome, thank you so much.
Thanks.
