Building Community Through Regenerative Rubber - Bangkok 2024

[Music] and we represent a company called terog Genesis uh which is a uh a design and development firm that focuses on regenerative agriculture and the larger Supply systems that they're nested within um we've been around for the last 15 years uh we work around the world but we have a particular focus on working with small holder indigenous and peasant farmers in Global South and and particularly um relating to Agro forestry crops so things like rubber and um cacao coffee palm oil cotton and so on um and we have been developing a program here in Thailand for the last four five years and um the documentary that we're going to show today is showing some of the the leaders of that work um who are part of a movement here in t called b um and Michael chy you to provide a little bit more context on [Music] that okay um I wanted to say it is uh translates brly as forest cardening and Community self-reliance so it's basically uh creating a forest likee system in permaculture we often talk about food Forest but in fact there are so many other values besides food and it's not just about biodiversity but it's about building the knowledge and relationship with K because every single plan has value actually almost everything has multiple values so Fuki who is one of our core team and she is also we are both practitioners of this system as well as in the project and this is from hookies uh Garden what do you have here today this one for for our for this is p here this is very famous in sou of Thailand yes and also lamb so you can taste and this are medicine like a local medicine this all of this we can make by our uh for our garden can can we make a medicine and this medicine this form leaf k Leaf 53 speci of for this medicine that's uh for me we uh I work with a people uh in the area that's why we uh F to make this medicine because this medicine have a lot uh species uh that can be uh made the people know and love uh the species of a tree because some people they think about that's we they don't want to hand that we looking for sub medicine to help them to know and love train yeah as she brings out this is uh we have because all these things like this these are resins from different hardwood trees those are uh part of the system and then 53 different species of green leaves that we use to make that medicine that was also for us all of us here that was our key like day-to-day Co protection medicine so all these resources helped in in that regard and you never know exactly what you'll need um I can say um when the co experience in Thailand uh we kind of had an outbreak um with Delta because we otherwise it wasn't that strong but when Delta came it overpowered the medical system and the head of Public Health for our Province called my wife my wife is a leader in this as well good friends with not way but uh and said hey what do we do and uh thankfully within our whole network we had hog graphic and other things and uh actually had a lot of very effective herbs to help prevent uh the effects of of Co and that was so these kind of things in the biodiversity and then also with Co it was wonderful um with food we can see these larger systems I think with Michelle presented very clearly about we need more res Ians and uh when when we have these outbreaks these systems break down and even the normal Supply system wasn't but I had eggs I had rice I had lots of vegetables and not just enough for ourselves but to provide for others who actually provide resilience there so I think this is a I think we can go film probably thank you um so the North Face has been one of the primary buyers of the rubber coming out of this um production system as well as Timberland um and uh bands um that are all members of the the same um the same group uh is called VF and they really wanted to highlight the story of these these farmer the leaders of of this this farming movement um and yeah so is it last year that the the fil crew came down um and the the documentary has been doing rounds of the different film festivals and he's already picked up a couple of prizes um so being quite well received what I love about it is that it really censers the farmers and their experience and why it's so important to them to be practicing one accade um that is uh you know just a wonderful um you know a wonderful tradition from from from here in Thailand [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the [Music] for for [Music] [Applause] [Music] fore e [Music] for just one for your on [Music] for for [Music] see [Music] for foree [Applause] [Music] n foree for [Music] for e fore fore Fore [Music] for e foree e for speee [Laughter] [Music] don't for [Applause] [Music] for for spee for [Music] foree [Music] [Laughter] one okay [Music] [Applause] for [Music] for for [Music] for for [Applause] thank you um so yeah i' love to take any questions um I just wanted to to highlight a couple of things so CH tip who's such an amazing leader and has been such an inspiration to so many of the farmers within within her community and Beyond she made this point around in the future she sees that all of the you know all of the rubber in tamut which is her community will will be produced in Agro forestry systems so uh CH tip was the signatory on behalf of the wakade farmers which is a confederation of of farming cooperatives and associations um on anou that was signed with the government of patalon which is the province um and so we signed that agreement Terra jenesis was also a signatory and some of our other partners who are participating in this multi-stakeholder initiative essentially to transition all of the rubber lands of pong um to regenerative rubber to wakade so that would be around 160,000 hectares of rubber um but we are looking at things from a b Regional perspective in the sense that Patong is one of three provinces within the sanla lake Basin um and if we were to transition all of the rubber lands within within suncloud Basin that would be around half a million hectares which is around 1% of the world's rubber production which I think is a pretty worthy goal and keep us busy for quite some time um um and of course there's a lot of sort of Dynamics in here of how we would actually be able to reach that kind of scale um and really what we've discovered and one of the reasons why we're here and engaging in this community is that there is missing infrastructure that will enable us to move towards that larger scale and technologies that will you know enable different ways of working different ways of relating than is the status quo in global commodity markets um so thank you for watching and yeah love to hear any questions in terms of yields of rubber uh well um what's amazing with these systems is there's basically no negative with rubber uh the only thing is some people but I I think for booki and whatever some people say maybe you've got more snakes and they're scared of snakes but uh rubber um and this was the the elders including cha tip is is she's my age but she grew up she still was uh able to start learning from the forest and uh in the South before if we go back 70 years all of this all the rubber was grown in in uh these Forest systems or jungle rubber systems so the yields are are generally considered Superior we don't have the best data but all the data shows that all the farmer experiences that the particular difference that cha tip mentioned in the film is the quality of the Rubber and that's measured in the dry rubber content which is actually what you get paid but we also would like to do more of these studies but we did a little initial study sampler in the molecular weight of the rubber and that's basically the bounce the bounce in the stretch in rubber and there was a a really impressive differential uh with uh like from farms that have been in Wate systems for 10 years it was way above uh lower things so I don't know at some point we maybe even have like premium rubber from these systems because of that but then the other yields are I mean for some things uh some Farmers make significantly more income from the non-rubber versus the rubber if they're particularly their smaller scale and they're harvesting like there's she harvested this vegetable this really delicious edible Leaf called numon then you can get a lot from that some people have fruits uh so this obviously takes some time to develop but uh and then beekeeping and stingless bees have important yields but for the whole system we don't view it entirely just in the income you see like I think she brought that up and we've talked about that it's also this I mean it's basically it's having the best food you can possibly have is the food you grow behind your house that you know where it comes from and the diversity so there's a lot that is is consumed that is shared as well in in the [Applause] value any other questions what of the main [Music] so the main push Backs from from the community and how do we deal with it I think poie would you be willing to to respond to that question [Music] uh okay so the two main if we're talking why people won't shift from monoculture to Agra forestry rubber which is really a superior system main thing is people don't know the different trees and things with that and then there's a perception of like wanting to be neat and like it has to be like English garden looking and so when it looks like a Jungle Sometimes this is viewed negatively a question for you you deal with finding the people to buy the rubber yeah can you tell us a bit about that and how you connected and who's interested who Genera resources yeah um so the the question for those didn't hear was about you know the developing the market for for the rubber um so pretty early on we realized that the place to focus was high margin products that would be able to absorb the cost of a of a a premium product essentially um and so but we also wanted to focus on a market that had growth potential so rather than focusing on something like condoms which are great and necessary um very small amount of rubber goes into latex so we knew that we wouldn't be able to grow um much Beyond you know pretty small scale so we started with Footwear um and yeah the The North Face and several of the other brands that are part of the VF um group of Brands were they had already established some pretty ambitious targets for wanting to transition their key uh natural ingredients towards regenerative sourcing um and so unfortunately there was a major market downturn and so they became much more price sensitive um so that became a bit of a stumbling block uh and brought into Focus for us the how price sensitive most of the like the commodity Market is um for any commodity really uh and that the volatility in those markets is is is really problematic for long-term planning footware they have 18-month uh sort of uh cycles of design and Manufacturing um so one of the strategies that we're taking relating to PR price sensitiv is by um I in the session that happened earlier on the deepin session I was talking about ethos which is the outcome verification um protocol that we've we've developed that essentially enables Farmers to track the Regeneration that is underway in their in their system and then that data becomes an addition additional stream of Revenue it is their data to to share if they want to or to license to those that want to use it for some purpose um and um our approach is to separate the transactions so that we try and keep the the cost of the goods at a a level that is that is um comfortable on both the the the seller and the buyer end of the equation um and then the data is a separate transaction because the way that things work in the more sort of um sort of standard uh sort of certification space is that the cost of that value is integrated into the product at the farm gate so then you've got all these intermediaries who need to have you know maintain their margin and so there's compounding ballooning of cost as it moves through the value chain so we ultimately the the the market that we need to reach is the tire industry because they use 80% of the world's rubber but to to really get to the tire industry you know even 1% is a huge goal um you know that's 500,000 tons a year um we would need to you know really crack the code on on price uh and um and long-term relationships where we can find a price that everybody is happy with and then the you know the additional value is made up for by data payments as well as bringing a variety of other um products to Market whatever it is that the farmers want to sell whether that's locally nationally internationally or what have you so with all of those streams of Revenue would be doing much better than they would be just selling the rubber at the whatever the commodity price might be but it's it's been hard you know it's been a real challenge to to aggregate the demand so that we can support more Farmers to transition because the W iade farmers are a very small minority of you know the the the you the rubber you know the rubber producers so still working on it but there there's very little Supply um in general there was very little supply of regenerative agriculture Goods um but uh we will see if you know now that it appears that the you know the economy is recovering whether we're going to see a significant uptick in sales but I think it's sort of redundancy is the way to go is like we need as much demand as possible because the supply is there those Farmers just need support to transition thanks for the question any other questions okay well thank you all for coming and um yeah feel free to come and find one of us if you'd like to discuss more or you have any other questions [Music]