Episode 075 | September 25, 2023 | 38:34
Guest: Sebastian Nielsen (Slow, CEO)
Published: September 25, 2023
Duration: 38:34
Description
Frederik van Deurs sits down with Sebastian Nielsen, CEO of Slow — a coffee producer changing the game with sustainable and regenerative practices. Slow grows beans in forests, creating a haven for wildlife and nurturing soil health. Sebastian also covers the pitfalls of conventional coffee production: deforestation and chemical inputs.
Full transcript
About this transcript
This transcript was automatically generated and may contain inaccuracies, typos, or mistranslations. Episodes recorded before 2024 were transcribed by an on-site model and may have a higher error rate. The content reflects the original conversation to the best of our ability. For the authoritative version, please listen to the audio episode.
Hello and welcome — recording live from the People’s Climate Meeting in Middelfart. Sebastian from Slow is back, freshly verified by the Science-Based Targets initiative.
Sebastian: Slow is a coffee producer, not a roaster. 160 employees — 15 in Europe, the rest on the ground in Vietnam and Laos. Coffee normally changes hands 15-20 times from field to cup — transparency disappears and the farmer cannot make a living. We fully integrate the value chain, capturing middleman value and redistributing it to: livelihoods, biodiversity, soil and carbon.
How: we grow coffee in forests. Most coffee is monoculture with chemicals, fertilizers, irrigation, and removing forest. Six commodities cause 80% of tropical deforestation; coffee is one. A 2023 Copenhagen University PhD study referenced Brazilian coffee — 300+ chemicals used to optimize yield. People get sick. Many chemicals are not allowed in the EU but are used to grow crops imported into the EU.
Slow approach: regenerate monoculture, plant forest in multiple strata layers, 20 different tree species per hectare. We’re not inventing anything — that’s how coffee was originally grown.
Benefits: carbon capture; biodiversity habitat for wildlife, insects, birds; soil regeneration; water-holding capacity; fresh water. Strata: coffee at <2m, then layers up to 5m, 8m, 12m+. Shade-grown coffee with one tree species is good for carbon but is biodiversity-poor — equivalent to a lawn. You need variety.
Intercropping: avocado, banana, macadamia, jackfruit. Good for biodiversity AND diversifies income for the family.
Farmer reality: Vietnam smallholder I met — 2 hectares, lost 1/3 to a landslide two years back. 90% of her income is coffee — that’s four months of salary gone overnight. Equivalent to most of our office-worker listeners losing 4 months of yearly salary forever. We help her terrace the 0.6 hectares and replant — coffee back in five years.
Two tracks: (a) smallholders own their land — we help them implement fruit trees, beehives, organic conversion, and we buy the coffee if they adopt the Slow methods. (b) Our own farms (e.g. converted monoculture with Maersk).
Slow is called Slow for a reason — the transition is not quick. We need to create a decent living before we can engage on biodiversity and carbon. Once social is covered, we can ride biodiversity and carbon. Advance payments before harvest bring stability. We cannot optimize for yield — coffee output goes down, other crops fill the gap, family prosperity rises, and we win on carbon and biodiversity.
Carbon: conventional coffee emits ~3 kg CO2 per kg. Slow’s SBTi-validated baseline is ~6 kg CO2 captured per kg sold. Delta = 9 kg per kg coffee — equivalent to ~300 balloons of CO2 per kilo bag. SBTi validated, scope 1, 2, 3 plus FLAG (forest and agriculture). Net negative baseline — plan to net zero.
For the healthcare professional at the coffee machine — call us. Talk to your suppliers. EU CSRD reporting means biodiversity, workers in the value chain, wastewater, pollution all need to be reported. Procurement conversation will shift to be aligned with Paris. Time of carrot is gone — the stick is coming via regulation.
Biodiversity measurement: 22,000 endangered tree species globally; we incorporate local endangered species (never invasive). Soil organic matter, water holding, nutrition, pH measured. Bioacoustics — recordings on a farm with AI species identification, calibrated against control bird studies done in spring. SBTi biodiversity component is not yet ready — land and freshwater are, biodiversity and ocean are waiting.
Data: 100+ data points per smallholder vs the conventional 2 (kilos and price). Automating via AI and satellite is necessary for scale.
Pharma analogy: if you are a pharma company reliant on agricultural input (sugar for fermentation), give procurement a mandate to build transparency and engage suppliers. 50% of GDP relies on natural resources (WEF). Use tools like the WWF Biodiversity Risk Filter — type in supplier address, get pressure level. Co-develop alignment with planetary boundaries. Insist on line-of-sight to seed level. We’ll pay for primary data over middleman data.
Contracts: 5-7 years. You cannot fast-track nature. Warren Buffett: “you cannot make a baby by getting nine women pregnant in one month.”
Comparable price range is essential — we need scale, we’re not an NGO. Maersk partnership — long-term contract on a converted monoculture, reporting on it, coffee station as a broadcaster of biodiversity, talent attraction and retention.
Slow is open source — happy to share manuals and problem-solve. We don’t have time to do it all alone.
Thanks Sebastian.