The Nomadic European EOV Verifier

Intro: Welcome to ruminations. I'm your host, Bobby Gill. In today's episode, we're getting our hands dirty. We're getting down to the soil surface, and we're digging deep on ecological monitoring. Specifically, we're talking about Savory's ecological outcome verification, or EOV land monitoring protocol, what the EOV process looks like from a farmer's perspective, but also what it looks like for the monitor, the hub verifier, and the global quality assurance team.

We talk about why proper land management requires some form of rapid feedback loop, what it looks and feels like to be in right relationship with a landscape and a lot more and our guest today to lead us on this monitoring journey is Leon Bucher. Leon is a facilitator, a coach, and a trainer who works with farmers to help them ask the right questions so they can solve their challenges with a holistic mindset, a systemic view, and a new narrative.

He is an accredited Holistic Management field professional and EOV hub verifier, and he's also part of the EOV Global Quality Assurance team. After more than a decade of working in process management and design thinking for corporate teams, Leon felt a calling for something more so he shift to focus his career on regeneration and sustainability in living systems.

Leon's perspective is unique, not just because of his wide domains of expertise, but because he's someone who has lived in, worked in and studied the ecosystem function of a wide. Variety of diverse landscapes, which of course we're gonna get into in this conversation. Um, I know you're gonna love it. I always have a blast talking with Leon, and this conversation is no exception.

So with that, let's now dive into my conversation with Leon Bucher. 

Bobby: Hello, Leon, welcome to Ruminations.

Leon: Thanks, Bobby. I'm really happy to be here.

Bobby: Yeah, I, I've noticed that in previous podcast episodes. A question that I usually start with is, where in the world are you? And that's I think my go-to icebreaker because I don't know what else to say before I get into the actual meat of the conversation. But for you, you're fairly nomadic, so I genuinely am curious where are you right now?

Leon: Right now I'm sitting in a small house in the Swedish part of Jämtland, which is the starting part of the official north

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: Sweden. Um, it is technically the middle of Sweden, but it feels very much north. So from here on Northwards, it's very depopulated, bearly. It's on the latitude of Alaska. so we have, at the moment when I look outside the window, it's still a lot of snow and it'll probably be still there for another four weeks. uh, yeah, we've been here since January trying to figure out if after being quite nomadic, if this is a place that is calling us to, to root, while still being able explore and go into other regions, but as basically a home base here that we get to know even better as our bio region.

Bobby: That's interesting because if you did make that decision, you wouldn't be the first savory hub leader from outside of Sweden to rehome themselves in northern Sweden because Durukan Dudu the hub leader of Anatolian Grasslands, the Turkish hub. He's up there. He's further north than you're speaking about right now, is my understanding.

Leon: here.

Bobby: Oh, you're, you're with Dudu right now.

Leon: yes.

Bobby: I thought you were saying you were down like near Jorgen, uh, in his area, but you're further north up with Durukan.

Leon: Yes. So basically we have within an 80 kilometer diameter, we have three different hub leaders or like previous hub leaders or whatever it is. And for me it, there is something in this region. So there is something that where you can really feel, and I don't know what it is, but when I'm with Jorgen at Fjallbete, the landscape there has a, like has a calling to you.

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: it's a really interesting experience and I feel is something that Durukan Dudu also brought here Um, but he also loves the Swedish winters. And for me it was also a lot about the community, the, the feeling the understanding of community here. Plus the landscape and plus this wilderness, but also people living here and also like 80 kilometers in the other direction.

There is a very touristy area.

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: it's a lot of things happening here. yeah, I'm basically, at the moment, I'm a kilometer away from Durukan Dudu.

Bobby: That's incredible. I was, I was out that way in September of last year, uh, we did a, a savory journey where we took a group of people, uh, to visit Fjallbete, and we spent a lot of time with Jorgen and folks from the Nordic, uh, from the Norwegian hub came over. Um, uh, folks from the Turkish hub came up. Uh, really incredible experience, and I understand what you're talking about, where there's something special.

It's like the resonant frequency that's coming out of that location. There's something unique about it, um, with the land, but also the, the people and the community. There's, I don't know, it's, it's hard to put into words, but it is a really special place.

Leon: Yep. it gives, 'cause that's the thing is like, I feel like what I'm experiencing here, I would love to experience in the different places as well, or to enable people to feel the same thing.

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: And for me, it's also being here or trying to root here gives me the energy to do this. Other work like this more nomadic, this more like being around in Europe,

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: farmers in other contexts, having this place here is really recharging to be able to do the work.

Bobby: Because you live a fairly nomadic lifestyle travel. Uh, you and your partner travel all around Europe, uh, teaching Holistic Management, you know, doing EOV ecological monitoring, uh, you know, engaging folks in, in other capacities. Is that something that you've been yearning for, is to be a little more rooted or, or to at least have a home base instead of fully nomadic?

Leon: I think, uh, when we left our last permanent place, which was in January, 2022, so like three years ago, a bit more than three years ago, we left with the intention of finding a place that is calling us or that where we feel we want to be. And that we knew at that point it would be a combination of landscape and people.

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: it's not just a beautiful place, but you don't wanna be with the people. And it's not just a cool, amazing, wonderful friends and people, but around is too urban.

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: or too, structured. And for us, that was connecting this nomadic lifestyle. It gave us the ability to actually roam, to experience different eco-regions to, in d experience different expressions or understanding of community. Um, and to really feel for like, okay, what is something that we enjoy? is a place that we enjoy? And, uh, my wife currently, for example, is interning or being an apprentice. I, I don't really know, we don't really know what the title is, but she's this year, dedicating her year for working with this goat farm here

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: in, um, raising basically a second herd that then will be in the Swedish summer fully grazed. Um, and that is also something that came through these years of nomadic lifestyle, of making these smaller steps into what is that, that we actually wanna do. And last year was I think, one of our most extreme years in traveling across Europe, uh, with the van from Hungary to, um, the south of France, to like almost Spain and then back to Sweden.

And there's was a lot of mileage that we did and a lot of different contexts, a lot of different eco-regions, a lot of different people. I think was first very amazing. But it also showed us most of these people belonged to their place. And for us it was.

Bobby: Hmm.

Leon: This craving got stronger and stronger over the three years of like, where, where is this place where we would love to commit to? And it turned out at the moment to be Sweden.

Bobby: Hmm. Well, for, for folks that are listening or watching, um, we made a video, I think two years ago about Fjallbete and the community, uh, of young regenerative farmers that is kind of burgeoning there in Sweden, uh, in central and northern Sweden. Um, and kind of being led and spearheaded by Jorgen Andersson, who is the, the Savory Hub leader for, um, Holistic Management Sweden up there.

Uh, so I'll link that in the show notes for people that wanna see that video, because I think that gives a good perspective of what it is that you're talking about. And it just, it just adds a little bit of color to, to this whole conversation. Um, but, you know, okay, so you've mentioned that. You've spent, uh, a few years now living a more nomadic lifestyle traveling across Europe.

What did life look like for you prior to that? I know that you led an entirely different career before landing in regenerative agriculture and Holistic Management and EOV. Who was the Leon before the Leon that we have before us today?

Leon: I was thinking about that Leon for a bit, um, over the last weeks because I would've said, I would answer to your question. Oh, Leon was a complete like process nurse. So I focused, or I started my career with focusing on process optimization, workflow optimization, management, uh, within corporates and for teams who wanted to either wanted to improve their processes or they had to, or there was a planned software development and they needed to answer. The software developers, how they want to work in five years from now. And I think that was my professional entrance in, I think it was 18 years ago. Um, about that led me less to become a specialist in a specific field of business economics, which what I originally studied and more in working with teams on what their problems and what their work looks like. And through this work ended up also leading projects in heavy, like heavy maintenance for high speed trains. And, I worked with insurance companies. I worked in, um, more like sales departments, human resource departments. There was a lot of different things, but what the core was. I always worked with a team around the question, okay, what does the process look like?

Where is it blocking you? Where is not working in the way you want it or your client wants it in a way, and always got to the point that either I question like, why are we doing this anyway? If this, why are we optimizing a process that does not lead to an actually desired goal or an actual need? Or why does a team, a very dedicated team, if it's a workshop team, a project team, whatever it is, come up with something really good, good idea, a good approach, a good energy to actually make it happen. And then someone at middle management level says no, and basically takes all this energy out. And so when I started this questioning, I looked for a different way.

I looked for a different direction, and that led me first to innovation management and how can we actually create feedback loops that will bring us closer to what we think is a need that needs to be addressed

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: that needs to be solved. But it also led me to sustainability topics to the topic of circular economy, to the question of how can we, in this specific case, make Berlin, um, a citizen friendly and sustainable city that is connected through the region while still closing its own like resource streams. And that was in 2018 and 2019 and 2020 that I was working in Berlin with NGOs, uh, with one NGO, specifically called Circle of Berlin, where I learned a lot of things, a lot of approaches, and a lot of how to do this within a big city within all these different stakeholders. And through that I realized at some point it's good, I'm interested in this, but it's leading me somewhere.

But I couldn't pinpoint what it was until I read a book called A Finer Future Hunter l Lovins with the Club of Rome wrote this book about is actually a sustainable future for us still possible. how would that look like? it had all these different sections in the book about how would a finance system look like a global economy, like all these things. And it had one section about agriculture where specifically addressed Holistic Management. And for me, having, having a past as a consultant, knowing that like this sounded like a typical next consultancy thing. Like oh yeah, it's Holistic Management. And we are the consultants who do that.

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: uh, we come in, we solve this, we go out. Um, we branded this in a way, so for me it was like, what is this? Why is it that the agricultural chapter of this book? And I started to research and I think I ordered the book, management textbook, but if I don't have personal relationship someone telling me, you should read this, or someone telling me about a topic, and then I'll get interested and then I read it, I often cannot actually start or finish a book. because no one gave me this book, no one gave me this invitation of like, read this. I was really struggling. So what I did was sign up for the first class that I could find, which was, uh, with the UK Hub three lm, and they had a nine day training in Ireland in like the northwest of Ireland. And I signed up, I that was, this was one of these leap of faith that sometimes you have no idea what you do it and. I was scared to the bone to be surrounded by Irish farmers not being able to either understand their English or to have no idea what's happening. And it turned out to be such a pivot point being there that it was just before covid, it suddenly gave me a real like passion because I realized I love these people.

I love working with this groundedness, which is in farming and literally grounded, but in this connection to land and it's in observation, the land, and it's making a better life for the people who basically support all life a way that we have. And I came back with this is, this is what I wanna do, this is what I want to like focus on. no idea how I get there, this is what I wanna do. And I came back with these, and then covid happened. And I think that was another important point because at that point, suddenly everything switched online. Um, before that, I was still working in a workshop setting with people for days or a project in a real office in a real space, which still excited me because I love working with people and suddenly everything switched online.

So my work was reduced to trying to make it work, via Zoom, MS teams, whatever the product would be. But it also in that moment, mirrored me what is actually the work that I'm doing? Is this something I want to do? And that brought me back again and again to this Holistic Management, which I just had learned in Ireland and trying to figure out how to bring this into my life.

So in 2020, whenever restrictions lifted. We got us, we got ourself a small arable strip of land where we grew vegetables because that was allowed do. Um, we went to the markets. Uh, I went to visit something that was more in Berlin, Brandenburg, which was still potentially like able to do that. as soon as restrictions lifted, I was just basically addressing everyone that I thought had something to do with Holistic Management within Germany. I was just reaching out and be like, can we talk? Can I come for a coffee? Can anything? And that mostly feel like this. The respondents came back then in the beginning of 2021 restrictions were a bit looser. Not really loose, but at least clearer for everyone involved. And that was, um, interesting enough.

I think at that point, I'm not sure if, uh, my now wife back then partner. I'm not sure if we had already described our holistic context, it was around that time that we that. I asked her if she would describe a holistic context with me, and she said, you bring a bottle of red wine, we can, whatever you brought from that training, we can try it out. Um, and that I feel like the decision for 2021 of dedicating this year of not focusing on earning money, but focusing on making these experiences, learning the language of farming, learning the actual needs, being able to help and not just sit down with farmers and drink a coffee and, but actually while fencing, while mucking out the stables, while looking at a grazing chart, while looking at whatever it's going to be, um, then having the conversation. Um, and that meant for me, 2021 and most of 2022 dedicating my time to this without making actual income, um, that could provide for us. And so our holistic context and the decision making helped us to actually address is this okay for the two of us if I do this? And, uh, and my wife gave a go back then she said, like, normally when you're so focused on something, something will come out of this. Um, so do this. And basically last year, we switched roles in a way where last year she took off and basically started to figure out what she wanted to do, and now does this wonderful work with the goats, um, which was also aligned with our decision making. it sounds maybe weird for someone watching this, but we actually do holistic context and do context checks, and it has helped us a lot in making these decisions of exactly these switches of careers, of focal points so, well, Leon back then was a process nerd and loved to work with teams on their challenges, and I think that's what I still do that now.

It's just with this very clear focus and intention of it is about regenerating landscapes the lives involved and with the economics involved.

Bobby: Yeah, that's kind of what I was wondering is squaring your, your previous career path, focusing so much on processes and optimization and efficiency and control, and then squaring that with Holistic Management, which, you know, nature is complex and messy and chaotic and emergent and unpredictable, and so those two could seem like they are in opposition to itself, but it seems like you maybe have a, a common thread between them that is a.

Not looking at the thing itself, but looking at the underlying processes that allow for the outcomes to, to be achieved in whatever system it is that you're managing. How do, how do you see Holistic Management and, you know, your, your previous life, focusing so much on processes and systems? How do they sit with one another? 

Leon: I think me, Holistic Management, I did, I did uh, involve myself a lot with system thinking before how to map systems and How to work within systems. And I also got into like all the different agile frameworks of agile project management that also try to tackle this whole complexity of why we cannot predict what will come out of this project at the end. Although every management level once, once you you in the beginning if you will actually have a solution in the end and you're like, we don't know, that's why we have this process. for me, Holistic Management gave me first kind of this relief, this peace of mind of, alright, all right. It is complexity.

And complexity means to let go of this tight of tightness of control and way more going into the seat of observation, making assumptions, testing these assumptions and observe again and. Holistic Management. I, I just, it's one of the things where I feel it helped me so much because for me there's a, a very much a hands-on field approach to working with this complexity because it shows you the complexity and then it gives you steps not break down the complexity into a simple problem, but into how to actually work within this complexity while it complex and not trying to simplify it. And I think this combination helped me to like, oh, I can finally make sense of what system thinking is and how, how it can be brought to life with letting go of control, framing what we actually wanna do, like framing what we are in, what direction we're heading. Also our personal direction, the landscape direction, like our community, everything around. And then. When we have this frame, when we have defined this hole, when we have understood that letting go of this control of complexity, once we have this really embodied and feel it and know it, not just know it, but know it, then always the next question is, yeah, but how do I work now with my team? Yeah. But how do I now get this done? How do I communicate? Do we need to meet, do we need meetings now anymore? Like what is the, what is now the next step to bring it into practical work that needs to get done a farm? Um, and I think that's where the processes for me comes in, is this setting, this frame, setting the mindset that needs to happen within this frame, um, of the hole that I'm in, the, the bio region, the eco region I'm in. But then. Something like fencing, something like how do we do the chicken tractor? Um, something like how, how often as a team do we meet? Like what is the agenda? Like how, what is um, how do we document things, record things, um, how do we optimize processes within our market garden, our, like paths, our walkways?

Like why is there so much waste in every day's work? Um, although like we, I think we can do this better in a way. And I think on that level, the processes come a lot into play again, of like, we still know we are within this complexity. We still know this is our broad direction. This is the life we desire. This is what we wanna bring as purpose into this place where we are. now we have to organize how we work with each other. And that's the processes and that's really helpful, especially when you always connect back to. We think we're going to be right with this, but the first in intern turn, the new employee, um, me, me jumping in for my wife will show us that we actually have not everything

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: and that is all right.

Bobby: Yeah. You don't have to know everything to be able to manage. Excuse me. There's, I think there's a perspective folks sometimes have that. They have to know the the Latin name of every single species that's growing in their pasture. They need to know exactly how it interacts with X, Y, and Z. You know, there is this desire to know everything, to have the knowledge about it all, but that I think, sometimes misses the forest for the trees where they're focused on memorization rather than looking at the functionality and looking at the underlying currents that everything is flowing with.

Leon: Yeah, I ne exactly hooking into this. I never thought that I would be able to do ecological monitoring because I thought I, needed to study this for years. I needed to know everyone, but everyone out there by the Latin name, I needed to actually know exactly this, the connections and uh, what is a good species, what is a bad species, um, all their functionality and everything. But when I then. Tapped into the ecological monitoring that is taught within the Holistic Management training. I felt like, oh wait, we can all actually observe if there's ecosystem health and how it expresses itself. And I don't know the names. Maybe I will know some at some point, but at first I, what I need to know is that I recognize this is a grass, this is a forb, this is a tree. but not much more is needed at the beginning when you start and actually looking for ecosystem health. And then you will get familiar, one, then you will find the species that you stumble over and you wanna know the name. Um, and then you learn the common name first or the common names for the in your region.

And then you realize you would really like to nerd out. With other people about this, and they are English speakers, Spanish speakers, whatever. And suddenly the common names are not enough anymore.

Bobby: Mm.

Leon: they're like, maybe I can remember a Latin name because I really like dactylis glomerata or something. So, and for me that is basically the reverse way that I thought I had to do it. I have to go to university, I have to study ecology, whatever it is, and then I can do it. And I feel like Holistic Management says, yeah, yeah, we are all practitioners, so go out and practice. Here's some help. here are some things that you can observe. And then you go out and you get better. The more you do it, you get better. In the beginning you could say like, well, I think there's dead grass and, but there is no bare ground. Um, but I can see some insects. And the next time you go out, you can be like, oh, actually there's three different grasses and they're not dead.

They're just dormant. Um, and oh, I can see here some earthworm castings, and that's also a forb that's not a grass. And then the next time you go out, you can actually name them. And it's basically evolving with yourself that you get to know your place better, you get to know your land better, but you don't have to be the expert.

You don't have to be the studied person at the beginning. And being through this now over the last five years and being able to do ecological monitoring with the EOV protocol in Southern France and Hungary, uh, in Germany, my different regions is something if you had asked Leon seven years ago or five, six years ago, he would've said, probably, there's no way I can do this because I have not studied this.

And I, I don't know who would even take me serious around this.

Bobby: Yeah. And if we have the bar set so high to even begin to change, to begin to take that first step towards managing a landscape better or, you know, managing your life and career track better. If we're gonna set the bar so high that someone feels they can't even take that first step, change is never gonna happen.

So I, I really value that perspective that you're bringing forward of you don't need to know everything to, to get involved. And I think you are a, um, a wonderful example of someone who has. Kind of taken the leap of you were talking about, you know, being so afraid to, to take that leap and to jump in, you know, oh, what if I don't know this?

And, oh, all these people that are gonna have more experience than me. And I think you're a wonderful example of, you can be incredibly successful and have a lot of impact in your local region and beyond if you just make the leap and, and you trust in the process and you commit yourself to it. Um, you, you started talking about ecological monitoring a little bit, and you are part of the EOV Global Quality Assurance team.

And so I want to get into to EOV specifically. Um, but first can you just talk a little bit about why ecological monitoring is important in land management? Just broadly speaking, what is the function of ecological monitoring and why would someone want to do that?

Leon: So I feel like there's different levels of like why it is helpful and if it's, I don't know if it's levels or perspectives, depending on, how you see it. So for me, the first one, and I think for me that's also the most important one, is observing and recognizing if what you do, the management, the tools you use, the actions you decide on. Are they bringing actually ecological, ecological health to your land base, to your region, to your specific field? Or is it damaging and damaging? Meaning, is it degrading? Do you get less species to get less water retention, less carbon, whatever it's going to be, what you're monitoring for. because it could be a different protocol, it could be all different indicators you're looking for, but we are looking for e ecological health. And for me, if I work with land managers, for them, it's a lot about, oh, I wanna build a healthy life. Um, and not just. That the ecologic ecological side is healthy, but I also want socially and financially have a good life. And I know that if I create ecological health, this will also support me in mostly my financial health because I'm actually having have a productive field, whatever productive means, in this case, in a different, in a different context.

If you have animals, if you run animals, if you have an orchard or whatever it's going to be. as a land manager, it helps you to look, to be able to sustain a good life in one perspective, via the ecological health of the land that you're monitoring. The other thing is, as a land manager, it actually shows you how far you've come.

Bobby: Hmm.

Leon: So it's one of the things like so many people start too late and they can tell you from their memory, it looked so much worse. And you're like, ah, no one took photos or no one documented it.

Bobby: No one, no one ever takes photos. I don't understand. Hey, everyone who is listening, if you're gonna change your management practices, take photos of everything you can, and remember the locations of where you took that, because, you know, five, 10 years down the line, you're gonna want those photos. I, I hear that all the time from folks.

And as a communications person. I wish people would've taken those photos. 'cause I want to see those before and afters.

Leon: Yeah. Especially, and that's, for me, that's the easiest ecological monitoring you can do. Take photos at the same location every year, every season, whatever it's going to be for you, do

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: Um, because you wanna see the change. You wanna see how far you've come. You wanna have indications for your monitor, uh, for your management.

So you wanna know is the thing that I do actually. Good. Um, does it bring me forward in realizing my purpose in realizing a social and financial healthy life? do I harvest enough sunlight or like the good life, can I actually, stock up, like get more animals on the land or should I rather de-stock or do I create something else in effect?

So it's a lot about your personal, actualization of what you wanna do the land that you are on. other perspective for me, why ecological mono is, is interesting is anytime another stakeholder or another part of society needs to get involved or you want them involved. So on one side it could be, um, that there is a, will be a legislation change and you can show through what you have do, done.

Hey, I'm actually. Building healthy grounds here and building a healthy soil, building a healthy ecosystem. There's actually diversity coming back. There's rare birds, like all these things. It helps you communicate your story towards, um, legislation in a way. And if we have like all these bureaucracy that we have around us, it often hits the people who have done a good job all the time. hits them even harder because they cannot show that they have been doing a really great job all the time. So it's communicating towards, if it's the municipality, if it's um, EU subsidies changing or whatever it's going to be, it's being able to show the good work you have been doing, um, making a case for yourself. And that is connected, this combination part also to maybe you wanna lease more land or maybe the municipality will give away. Some land for Lee soon. Ecological monitoring and therefore documenting what you're doing also is a really good communicator in showing the right person to take care of that piece of land. Because like I have done this with the land, I have done these things. Look at what happened. is the management I'm doing. I'm bringing, actually, I'm not bringing the one species that the botanist loves to see, but I'm actually bringing from eight species before we have now 48, after four years of having holistically plant grazing, for example, on our fields. Like changes that sometimes you don't learn in university, you don't learn within the uni municipality. And you have to see proof to be like, oh, this is actually really, that's actually great. And then staying on the same level and more like on the regional level when you want to get more into. Direct connection with your community if it through direct sales or bringing people to the farm to generate maybe volunteers who help out. Um, ecological monitoring is also a really good engaging tool show the great work that you're doing proving basically the great work that you're doing and people have like take part in this as well. Um, I think this the second like box layer dimension of like communication is a really important thing even though maybe we don't like to go out and communicate and oh, we would rather, rather like to do our own thing, but it can bite us like in the back if like not, um, taking care of like, oh, this is actually, we are doing great work and this is the way we should can show it. And I think that third. Part is then thinking more like on a global scale of like, okay, my region is either at the moment s aside with wool, whatever it is. Or because of global, the global economy, the local market is not stable or good anymore. I cannot sell it to my local market yet because we're still rebuilding that local market in a way. Um, then ecological monitoring can help me to be able to sell it to a global market that is now also asking the question of, yeah, organic is nice, but what's next? And especially when you know that organic same as conventional does not mean we are doing really good things or bad things. Um, there is a need for people to. Or there is real need for like from, from companies, from corporates, from brands, from whoever it is to be like, we really want to get a better grasp on being connected to someone who does good or where we think from the current protocol, the current standards, the current things we see that they're doing good.

And I don't want a checklist good. I wanna have something that gives me more information. And that's also where ecological molecule basically can help me to a marker that is not yet there any anymore in my region or not there yet again, but to survive until this is reestablished in my region, I have a chance to connect globally

Bobby: Mm-hmm. Yeah. The outcomes can essentially allow for marketplace differentiation.

Leon: Yes.

Bobby: Yeah. And that's a, a key piece of where, or of what, EOV ecological outcome verification, what brings a lot of folks to get EOV on their land base. But I, I think, you know, I. Probably from both of our perspectives and the different producers we've talked to, EOV provides a lot more value than just marketplace differentiation.

You know, as, as what you were just going into all the different reasons why having a system of ecological monitoring is helpful for establishing that relationship with place and understanding the progress that you've been making and. Even from a, a living systems, like a, a systems thinking perspective, it is having those quick, rapid feedback loops that allows you to adjust.

Um, because like you were saying, you don't have that control like you do when you're dealing with the railways in your previous career. Now you're dealing with living systems that are emergent and unpredictable. So you don't have that control. You can just nudge and manage. Uh, but if you have those quick, rapid feedback loops, you're gonna make sure that you're staying on course, the course that you want to be on, uh, for, for everything that you're managing towards.

So.

Leon: And I feel that's most of the producers I work with around EOV, it's not about selling their produce to a brand or something, making this market differentiation. It's mostly their feedback is, once a year I have someone else walking with me. The land, we look together at all the fields. Um, this person, in this case, me, like, brings in different perspectives from what I have seen elsewhere as well. Ask different questions and um, we monitor and then we look into what, what the actual practice was. It's always this, I try to like, not like I talked to one of my favorite farmers that was like, don't tell me anything before. Let us monitor and then tell me what you did. let's look at first, what do we observe? before we make assumptions of what was right or wrong. observe that there is more thistles here or more rushes there. Um, or that there's actually, it looks like there's way more grass here and I think there's legumes that we haven't seen before, but I'm not sure. So I'm just observing these things. we observe some toxic plants come showing up here and there, and then talk about like what has happened, like what was the management like, management like over the last year. And then from that we are like, okay. What could the tools have, could the tools have an impact on that? What we see? And if so, what would you like to actually do?

Like what would you actually like to see happening on this specific field or on this or whatever it's going to be? And what would that then mean for your management? What would you like to try out? What would you like to trial? Maybe we do a trial next to each other and monitor both and see what is happening. And I think that is, most of the people I work with are interested in this. They're interested in walking the land, having feedback from outside, having another set of eyes, uh, while they sharpened their own eyes through these dialogues that we're having, through these conversations, to then make better decisions with whatever direction they're going.

If it's direct sales, if it's still making, selling through a bigger market, if it's whatever it's going to be. But it's basically for their management that they're interested in. 

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Bobby: So we've mentioned EOV a few times now, but. So far in this podcast, because this is still fairly new and we're actually recording before the podcast has even launched to the public, so you have no idea. Um, but we haven't explained what EOV is yet. And given your role on the EOV Global Quality Assurance team, I thought it would be a great opportunity to have someone like yourself just give us the rundown.

What is EOV, how does it work? What does it look like in the field? Like let's dive into it

Leon: So EOV is a monitoring protocol, um, put together mainly through the lead of Pablo Borrelli in from Ovis 21 in Argentina, will probably also be on the podcast or has been on the podcast.

Bobby: has. 

Leon: so the question was mostly like, how do we actually monitor ecological health, ecosystem health on our rangelands, like big rangelands, um, and different patchy areas that we have, but they're all over the world in different areas, different e eco-regions.

There's different climate, there's different things. Is there still something how we can come up with a protocol that helps us to monitor for ecosystem health, adapt it to our eco region, that will then create a benefit for the land manager, the land steward themselves, but then also can be used as data for a connection due to a project a brand or like a different market in a way. And EOV as the name says ecological outcome verification. It's first, it's not a certification, so you don't get like the classic organic certified check boxes done. Um, your look for does the outcome actually give us enough indication that the land is moving into a regenerating direction? So we are not looking at practices, we're not looking at tools, we're not looking at, what you exactly did.

We're just looking like how is the land responding? And this is done through two parts, um, that we do is there's the short term monitoring and there's the long term monitoring. And the short term monitoring is directly connected also to the Holistic Management framework and the ecological monitoring that is within there. we look at 15 different indicators are, Leading indicators. So things that happen quickly, things that we can change within a season. Things that can change within a season, if it's litter, if it's bare soil, if it's different functional groups, do we have grasses? Do we have legumes here? Do we have trees and shrubs Here it's looking at how well does, litre decompose, how well does dung decompose?

Do we see any kind of insects, any kind of microorganisms live here that show us that there is an activity within the soil? So leading indicators of the short term monitoring give us a direct management tool of I can observe and I can change things within the EOV protocol. This is what we do yearly. We yearly go out and do at 10 to plus different monitoring size. Do this more like a qualitative according to these 15 indicators. Like what is the land telling us? What do we observe? This then gets combined with in year zero, which we call the baseline. So when we get started, and then every five years, um, gets combined with the long-term monitoring, which is a more quantitative approach. So the long-term monitoring consists of a lot of lagging indicators. So indicators like soil, carbon, water infiltration, um, actual counting of biodiversity, like actual counting of species we see within a transect. Um, like all these things that take normally more time to change or at least more time till we can identify an actual trend. And these are within the long term monitoring that we do year zero, then year five, year 10, and so forth to hopefully match together with what we watch or we observe every year within the short term monitoring. Thus, both of these, of these different monitoring approaches, the more qualitative, the quantitative, show us the same upward trend or a declining in trend or whatever it's going to be. So this combination, short term or long-term monitor makes basically the full EOV protocol. that if you wanna be UOV verified, for example, if you wanna follow this protocol, you would do both of these things have indication in qualitative and quantitative indicators that your land is regenerating or not, depending on what happens.

Bobby: Can you speak a little bit to the importance of eco regions, um, in the EOV protocol, because that's a piece that, um, you know, you had mentioned that, uh, Pablo Borelli is one of the originators of EOV, and so he started a protocol called Grass, um, that he was using down in the Patagonian region of Argentina, um, for monitoring rangeland health out there.

And over time the utility of that became very apparent. And there was something about it though, where we needed to be able to make an apples to apples comparison, um, where you couldn't. Compare the outcomes, you know, what are the indicators looking like in Patagonia that's gonna look entirely different from how they're gonna look in Germany.

And so this concept of eco regions and um, reference areas is something that's really important to the EOV framework. Can you walk us through that a little bit?

Leon: So. What we learn within Holistic Management and other things is that there's a, a sentence that we often use when someone asks us, can I do this here? Or like, how would this look like here? It's always this, it depends, depends on your context, your holistic context, but also the context where you embedded in and the protocol of EOV Exactly does not stop at, okay, this is how we monitor, it incorporates the where are you in the world, what is the context that surrounds you. Um, we break this down in this specific context of, uh, eco-regions to like really being like, okay, there is, wherever we're around the world, there is certain areas, like bigger landscapes that have a certain type of uh, vegetation. Um, like species composition, um, winds, sun exposure, precipitation, like all these things. And so every, every land base, every farm within this e region is somehow exposed to a similar climate, vegetation and so forth. And then you like drive a couple of like a hundred kilometers, 200 kilometers, 300 kilometers further, and then something changes. And then that's something that you can actually observe when you sit on a train or sit in a car something changes and there's a break.

There is something feels different, something looks different. And that's often exactly at this point of a next eco region starting that has a bit or bigger difference towards precipitation, high low temperatures, um, climate overall vegetation expression, whatever it is. So that means. We can compare each other, but we also can't really compare each other. And that's what the, the scorecard, the eco-regions and the scorecard within the EOV protocol try to actually grab or like bring into life of this protocol is we define eco-regions. That's mostly based on, um, actual like stratification done by universities that we basically tap onto. So for example, in Europe we use, um, the stratification done by the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, to get this as our foundation of like, okay, we have these different five or six eco regions that I normally monitor and they behave slightly different. And then within each of these eco regions, first we describe like. What is it like to be in this e region? What is it like to be in with climate? Um, the, when is the actual rains coming? Like how much rain is it? But also when are the rains actually coming? Um, what is the geology of the place, like all the things, what are, what is the brittleness like?

Are we in a non brittle or a very brittle, like how is the humidity? Like how's the, the humidity around the soil surface? And then we get into this next layer of, okay, and what is actually like a good expression? Like what is the potential of this place? we take our 15 indicators, and when we're calibrating for an eco region, we look at each of these indicators and they're like, okay, what is, does this fit? Or do we need to calibrate it towards our eco region? in the case, for example, of a more brittle area, if it's in South America, north America, or in Australia, um. You could often expect to see, for example, some, a bit of bare soil.

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: of bare soil is still like really good. For example, eco-regions, 0% bare soil is really good. As soon as I see a 1%, someone was really hard working against this land in a way. So from the indicator, basically we calibrate the indicator fitting to the region. Not trying to make it look nice, but actually being realistic. What is the potential of this place and what does it look like to have a healthy, thriving grassland, for example, here? calibrate some indicators like for example, the bare ground, um, expectations, but we also then look at what are species within different functional groups of the grasses, the Forbes, legumes, the trees and shrubs that we expect to see here. If this was a regular healthy grassland, for example. Some species disappear very quickly, uh, with the slightest errors.

These are more like desirable rare species, but then there are some species that should be here with a good management, it should be here. And these are obviously very different depending on where in the world we are. So we also calibrate these key indicator species as something we want to see. And not because we are managing four species, but we know that if this species is present, a lot of other species will be present too.

A lot of other ecosystem processes will be healthy too because this key indicator species gives us even more information

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: how good something is done.

Bobby: You're mentioning, uh, the correlation, uh, between, okay, this indicator isn't the outcome that I'm specifically managing for, you know, this species isn't necessarily what I'm managing for, but rather it is representative of the overarching ecosystem function. It is, it is correlative with the ecosystem function that I'm trying to improve on the whole.

How do the 15 different indicators that are evaluated in EOV, how do those correlate with the four ecosystem processes?

Leon: So a couple of these indicators have a very specific like relationship, something like live canopy abundance, so the meaning of like how much green photosynthesizing leaf mass is actually, there is a very direct, direct con connection to the energy flow within the four ecosystem processes, energy flow, water cycle, mineral cycle, and the community dynamics. And all of the indicators either has a direct, has a connection to one of these ecosystem processes or to multiple of these ecosystem processes. And because we're in complexity, we know that it's not a one-on-one relationship, it's all of it is connected. So I know that if I have a good life canopy abundance, so a lot of broad dense, high green swart standing in my field, encourages a lot the energy flow. But I know this will also help the mineral cycle. This will also help the water cycle because I don't have background, like we are coming back to this. Everything is connected, but it helps us, these indicators help us to look. A bit more focused on the different, um, ecosystem processes, um, to then assess are we actually moving forward with our ecosystem health So it's basically 15 indicators showing us how the four ecosystem processes are doing, us how overall the ecosystem health is doing, without simplifying it, but making us able basically to, to assess what we're seeing.

Bobby: Mm-hmm. And, and some of those indicators are more obvious with how they correlate to ecosystem function. For example, dung decomposition is clearly, um, looking at the mineral cycle, you know, how well is carbon being cycled, um, you know, from dung down into soil. That's a, a pretty obvious one. Um, but then there's ones like bare ground that I think are representative of a lot of different ecosystem functions.

And so it's telling you a lot more than just one piece of the puzzle. Um. I guess I'm wondering, because you look at so much EOV data and you do so much of this field work yourself, are there any indicators that are your favorite that you specifically like looking for that you're like, oh yeah, I can't wait to check out, you know, such and such on, on this property.

Leon: I feel like the, the interest thing with the, the dung decomposition is, um, and I think that might connect to one of my favorite in indicators, which is microorganisms, because I cannot, I cannot pass a dung pie without topping it over, without like getting my boot into it and seeing if. If there's life underneath, like if there's, if it already all got carved out by animals, like by dung beetles, by other insects. Um, I love the microorganism as well because it's, it's always the one indicator when training people that get everyone involved because suddenly everyone gets down to the ground and looks

Bobby: Mm.

Leon: looks like for any kind of sign of animals, like micro, like if you find ants, if you find a spider web, if you find everything, people get really excited when it comes to that indicator and they get involved and that's might be why I do like it a lot because it is engaging in a way and it is something that you can also feel when you're walking into a field.

You feel the buzzing, you hear things. It's more than just one sense. It's not just observing, but you actually hear

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: You have to be still to like, see are they coming back? I have, I shoot them away. But are they coming back?

Bobby: Yeah.

Leon: what is happening? And sometimes you're like, oh, I don't see spiders. I don't see butterflies.

I rate this as minus five. And then you turn around and suddenly it basically surprises you.

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: so it's also the one indicator that the rating might change the longer you stay in a place because that life comes back

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: sometimes.

Bobby: I've heard from, uh, some other EOV master verifiers that what they will do is when they are. Approaching their transects when they're going into the field to do, uh, some monitoring. They will try to be very slow and gentle. You know, they're not just gonna drive the quad straight into the pasture and like come to a screeching stop and then get out and, and get going.

It's how can I enter this pasture delicately and pay attention to the sounds and see when the sounds stop? Because that's also, I think, the reverse of what you were saying. You're saying the longer you're there, the sounds come back. They're looking for do the sounds, stop when I enter. Um, and so I think that's an interesting perspective of just not just training your eyes, because that, I think, is the obvious piece with ecological monitoring, is training your eyes to, uh, assess forage in different species and look for certain, you know, evidence of wind erosion or the reels or pedestaling on, uh, on a plant or what, whatever it may be.

But, but training your ears as well. Um. And now I'm thinking through the five senses and wondering, do you use any of the other five senses in

Leon: Yeah,

Bobby: V? 

Leon: all

Bobby: you out there tasting soil, I guess is the question?

Leon: I do sometimes actually. Yeah. Or I'm eating some clover or something else. No, uh, it's, it's very interesting what it does to you, and I feel like we're actually, like when we, when we connect to all five senses, something else gets also activated. in some of the trainings we do, uh, we do a challenge of everyone walks calmly by themselves into the field and makes a mark what they think will be the overall like value of this ecological health index.

Like the, the number that comes out of it. Once you do all the 15 indicators, you get a number that tells you, is it regenerating, degenerating, stable, something like this. there is a challenge or like a task exercise that you go into a field and just by feeling, hearing, seeing, um, smelling. A wonderful, like a good, like pasture smells incredibly good.

You really wanna bite into something and sometimes you bite into something and it's incredible how close to the overall EHI, the Ecological Health Index that comes out of it, how close you are. You wouldn't be able to pinpoint in these 15 indicators, oh, it's because I saw this and because of this. But the overall feeling you get after doing this for a couple of times, and when you take in the time to actually use the approach, use the, in, in with observing with all your five senses, you get a very close call to what, uh, with what, if you use the scorecard, what the number is, scorecard tells you like, oh, because you subconsciously observe this, this, and this and this. that's why, basically, but there is something that, yeah, you can definitely, you, you know, you know, when you're entering a healthy grassland,

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: there is something that, um, I, I didn't, I can't remember the source, but this in the source, there was one thing where they evaluated it, that if we humans enter a healthy forest, our heartbeat slows down. And the, the connection was to a healthy forest. So there is something what we maybe cannot explain, but we maybe cannot really like describe. if we stay in this, in this moment and don't think about like, oh, what do I have to do next? Oh, what do I tell the farmer? If this rate's bad? Like if you actually stay in this moment, you get a really good connection to, is this healthy?

Is this thriving? Is this good or not? And the EOV scorecard helps you then to pinpoint down like what is the thing that is good here and what is the thing that maybe needs improvement, and what maybe stays the same because the context or the weak link of the farmer are currently somewhere else.

But we know something is out of balance here.

Bobby: This is all reminding me the, the advice that I hear folks give to, to producers at times, which is, don't drive through your pastures. Walk through your pastures. Uh, because even if you're not out there conducting ecological monitoring, when you're moving at a slower, more deliberate pace and your senses are activated because of that slowness and you're not, you know, isolated within a vehicle with the sound of an engine and, and all of that, you're gonna notice a lot more about the landscape when you're on foot than you are if you, if you're just moving quickly on some sort of motorized vehicle.

Leon: I'm, I'm such a better monitor if I'm out there alone. Um, I have this, I have the experience last year in Hungary in one of my favorite places, at Remeny Farm. And when I walked alone on these hills, I am just noticing so much more. It's just like, it's really a significant difference. And then it's always balancing what is more important this moment.

Is it more important to have the conversation with the producer, the rancher, the farmer, the land steward, um, and talk about things? Or is it actually taking time with the land first and then having these conversations? And that's always a balance that we need to do, and it's always, walk silently together into a field. And I try to notice things before we start talking about things before I get asked questions. yeah, there is something about walking by yourself without headphones, without phone your ears directly, just walking into it. And that is like connecting to the beginning. Like connecting to like taking photos is one of the simplest monitorings you can do because you will get feedback.

Bobby: So say, say I'm a farmer and I've heard about EOV, and I'm saying, okay, that you've convinced me, this sounds interesting. I'd like to engage someone to, to get EOV on my farm or ranch. Uh, what does that process look like for getting set up? Can you run us through what a producer should expect, uh, throughout this process?

Leon: So first thing is often the most difficult thing is like finding out, uh, who to reach, like who to connect to.

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: So there's multiple ways. Either you can write directly to the Savory Institute and ask, Hey, I want, I read on your, uh, website, there's something about EOVI wanna get involved. Um, and then you will get connected to your local hub. Um, and the local hub will then pick it up from there to have all this conversations around like, okay, what are you looking for? Like, uh, what is your need? Like, why do you think EOV is the best thing for you? 'cause for me, that's always something. Sometimes people hear something and they think it's the right thing for them. Maybe it's not. But you basically would engage in a conversation with your hub, with the closest hub you have, around like, oh, I would like to, um, get EOV on my farm. Okay, here are some fees, or Here's how we communicate or work together. And then once you have settled, all the more, the more like bureaucracy like more the getting in touch and like how we do this. It's a lot about. Okay, can you provide me, for example, I'm your hub verifier. I would like to set up your baseline. I would like to work with you, Bobby, as the farmer. I would ask you to send me information about your fields. Like do you have any kind of digital, like outlines, um, of your fields, like everything belongs to, do we have any information?

Like how is it going on these fields? Like, uh, what's the past management like, what are you currently doing on it? Um, have you noticed any significant changes between, then we both basically together start creating a first like, map of the land. Um, which helps me then then my task to think about like what could be a good monitoring plan for your land base.

So from what I know, what I see at the moment, uh, where could be good monitoring points that represent the whole land base of yours

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: the change that we wanna monitor that's happening.

Bobby: You're essentially trying to assess before arriving and doing the actual monitoring and setting things up, you're trying to get a sense of how homogenous is this land base or how heterogeneous is this land base, because that will then dictate how many monitoring points need to be set up to be to gather representative data of what's happening throughout all the different pastures, right?

Leon: Yes,

Bobby: Yes, correct.

Leon: And, um, especially to really be able to grab the difference of your landscape, the difference of your land base that you're having. So like, not everything in the same similar homogenous, um, permanent grasslands, being like, oh, there's also like a different strata that is more like south facing slope.

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: or we have cropping land that we also want to monitor. Or we have a wetland that we wanna monitor as well. So trying to get an idea of what is the overall look of your land base and trying to do as much before we arrive in understanding and, exactly making a rough monitoring plan I think it would be great to put a monitoring point and then once you set a date and set the time aside, um, because I would love you to come, especially during the initial short term monitoring, which is 10 sites and can be more depending how big your land base is to come with me first to show me the actual access to the land. also while we're doing it, um, you can share with me more that I need to know maybe about the land. and I can show you why I'm doing what I'm doing. So you can also learn in this moment more about EOV and what we are actually doing together this land. And then we would monitor on the first day, monitor these different 10 sites, them, make creating this EHI, this ecological health index for each of these sites. the next step would pro for me be again, looking at the data, being like, okay, this is representative for the whole land base. Now, where would be good long-term sites? we look at the different strata, like there's different expressions of, um, of land saying like, typical flood glass land or wetland or very slope, south Hill or cropping land, where could be a good location for these long-term sites. And these long-term sites, again, are these like every five years become and with a bit more, uh, effort and time, monitor for like way more quantitative indicators. And these long-term sites then should be. Hopefully on land that you own or that you're at least sure that this will be there for a longer time, that you will be managing this land for a longer time. And this represents again, now, let's say we have five monitoring points in the permanent grassland strata. I'm looking at the five monitoring points and what the value is, and I'm thinking, okay, maybe at this site is a great long-term site. should represent that whole strata, this whole type of expression of land. And then either we start on the same day or the next day, we set up this one, two, multiple of these long-term sites. that is a bit bigger. That's normally where I don't ask my producers to be there all the time. They, they are in the beginning and then they lose interest because it is tedious work

Bobby: Yeah.

Leon: to monitor on 200 points every species you touch. But the overall, like, what are we doing there and what is happening is always interesting. So in the beginning and the end, normally my producers are there as well. we do this more very detailed work of these quantitative lagging indicators. then once this is done, and this is normally let's say like two days of work of overall on land base that we are engaged with each other, um, I would collect the data, would put them into report, um, put them in the, the global database so that they're safe because that's our, basically our data container. Um, to keep the EOV data in a safe place, um, create a report. And then I would either, I'm in your area and then I prefer to talking to you personally, uh, like in person on the site or if we're like, uh, for the distance, I normally set up, um, a call, especially after, in new year one, a year zero, sorry. In that baseline year, we set up a call and I'll send you the report a bit ahead of time.

You can look through it, but then we go through this report, like page by page to tell you like, okay, what is what we do? What do you see here on these pages? What does these numbers mean? And then we go into like, you interested in actually now making also decisions of what to adapt in your management? are these numbers for you Okay. At the moment and you just continue.

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: So it's basically the mix often helping you to get on board, understanding. What the numbers in the report mean, plus the opportunity or the option of having sort of a coaching call of like, let's interpret these numbers and let's make, let's get actions out of these to maybe up a project, test plot here, a different change of management. And then you would do again, your year of managing the land. then basically a year later, same season, um, can be a bit like plus minus a couple of weeks, but trying to fit exactly in the same season. Hopefully the same month.

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: Um, we would come back, I would come back and we do basically the next monitoring only on these short term sites. And then we have actually the first time data that shows us is there a trend? Is there a change? Because in basically in the baseline year, in the year zero, people often ask me, is this bad or good? It's like, I don't know because I haven't been here last year or the years before. I'm just seeing one moment in time. I have no idea what the history of the land is, what the previous management was like, what your management was like. Maybe you have improved the land already. Amazingly, it still looks value wise, negative,

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: maybe you have improved. Really great. So year one, when we come back and do the short-term monitoring again, that's basically the moment where we can see does your monitor, does your management make a change the land?

Bobby: So you can't really determine a trend based on one data point from from year zero from that baseline, but you can compare that baseline, EHI, that score that you get from year zero. You can compare that to the reference area in the eco region. Right. To give a sense of at least you're not looking at a trend, but you're at least looking at their relative state in comparison to what is the best known ecological expression within that eco region.

Would that be right?

Leon: Yeah, so you can basically compare what's the potential of your eco region, where are you? We don't know where this land started 10 years ago or five years ago,

Bobby: Sure.

Leon: but um, I can definitely tell you like, oh yeah, this is not the best yet. that's, maybe that's the most, like some, some sites people are like, this is really good.

Where, where I'm like, is pretty good, the potential is still so much

Bobby: Yeah.

Leon: which is good because we don't want to, I never want any of my producers to be like, I reached the potential, I'm done.

Bobby: Yeah.

Leon: it's more like the potential also moves with the more we know, with, the more we experience, the more we bring back health, the more we realize so much more is possible. much more does not mean homogenous green, high productive pastures, but it actually means the ecosystem health, like in diff these different indicators

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: indicators of what the potential of the eco region is. So yes, baseline year is always fascinating because we have all these conversations.

We have all these conversations about past management, current management, what this could have as an effect on the ecosystem process. Um, looking at the potential, like how far are you from the potential of what we think is possible at this moment in time in this eco region. So you get a lot of information out of the baseline, um, but we don't know yet if you had a good or a bad management so far. And bad management does not mean to blame anyone, but being like, just in the expression of the ecosystem, was it helping the ecosystem to thrive or was it hindering the ecosystem to thrive? Maybe that's a better word

Bobby: Yeah.

Leon: um, good and bad.

Bobby: I mean, on your EOV report, you are gonna get either a green check or a red x. That is a, the front page of it, but that's more in indicating your state of regeneration, uh, based on your EHI. Um, when you walk a producer through their EOV report, what are those conversations like? Like are people receptive, uh, to the data that's being presented?

How, how do folks normally respond? Um, when you're walking them through that EOV report,

Leon: So the ones that want to be walked through, they are normally really eager to learn. I. And, um, they're really eager to understand did I see something that I felt was good? they often ask me, do you like what you, they ask me like, do you like what you see? Or did you find something

Bobby: they're looking for validation.

Leon: they're looking, looking for, uh, consulting basically in a

Bobby: okay.

Leon: um, like this way of like, oh, did you find something and did you, like, what would you do?

In a way? Um, what I'm trying to figure out, are they happy with what they see? what is, what is the thing that like jumps to their, like eyes to their mind when they see these things? When we just go through these observations that I made, uh, or that we made together depending on how long you were with me during this, um, this monitoring. what I'm trying to figure out is like, how happy are you? How is this maybe connected to some another topic? Um, and trying to grasp what would be exciting for you to change or to keep the same, or to do more of it. And for me, there's producers really enjoy love. One of the ecosystem processes be like water. I just, I just want to look at the water cycle, knowing that if they improve the water cycle, they probably improve everything else as well.

Bobby: Yeah.

Leon: And some are like, oh, I really hate this field, how it looks like at the moment, I wanna improve this specific field. Um, or they look at an indicator and I'm trying to figure out what is, what is the thing that excites you, um, or like bothering you or not like, ah, nagging on you and how can we make this into, uh, this into action of like, okay, what would you like to do different or more of it or whatever it's going to be. So it is, it is, I think in the beginning, a bit of annoying if you're not used to it. That not an agro consultant who tells you, oh, I've seen this values, this is bad. You just need to use a bit more of this fertilizer

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: in time, and please do exactly this grazing regime for this thing.

And I think here, we should do this. So it's more this, no, we have a conversation of, I observed something, you know your land better and you also have, you know, why you did things and now let's, how can we move forward

Bobby: Are you saying that nature can't be reduced down to a series of if then scenarios?

Leon: Some people try, but, but, uh, well, I guess, um, the success rate is not that great and.

Bobby: All right. Um, let's move into the quality assurance piece, uh, just to give some folks to give folks some perspective on what the quality assurance looks like within EOV, because it's not just the monitor goes out and, you know, uh. Monitors the different indicators and hands it off to the verifier who, who puts the report together and walks, uh, walks that through the walks, ugh, pardon me, walks through the report with the producer.

Um, there's also this layer of quality assurance for data integrity. And so you're one of five folks on the EOV global QA team who is monitoring the totality of EOV data that's coming in. And, um, you can probably, you probably have more accurate numbers on how many land bases are in the system globally and how many hectares are being monitored globally.

But if you know, those, feel free to, um, to tell us. But

Leon: Too many.

Bobby: too, no, never. Not enough. Not enough.

Leon: not enough. Not enough. Too many to remember.

Bobby: Too many on your to do list is, I think what you're referring to, uh, not the impact that's being had. So why is quality assurance important and what does quality assurance look like within EOV?

Leon: I remember one thing that my, I'm not, I think it was maybe he might have been my first boss back in 2007 something, and he was really, really into quality gates. That was the processes days, project management days, and, and he said, if you put shit in, you can only get shit out if you put bad quality in quality can never rise after that. You can only keep it on this level of the bad quality. And it can go down or it stays on this. I feel what we are trying, and that's all the three that you said, like the monitor in the field. The hub verifier, who then looks at the data first because they're best connected to their eco region and knowing their lands and what the expression is.

Like, they basically look at very qualitative on like, does this make sense? Does this fit? Do I have questions back to the monitor? Uh, not asking for uh, like them to defend themselves, but more like, Hey, did you hear something from the land manager? Did you observe something else? So there's already two quality gates happening with the monitor, putting in the data, the hub verifier, putting in the data.

And while that also like, uh, pushing that then to the global quality assurance team. And we basically, of seeing. So many different land bases. And I always have to, before I open a land base to verify it from the global quality assurance team side, I always have to zoom back like, okay, where in the world I am, um, what eco region is this?

What is the potential in that side? Like, how does that look like? And after a while you get a, a hang on. and a base. And then basically we look at the third as the third quality gate in a way. Is all the data there? if the data is not all there, is there an explanation why? Because again, in complexity we know things happen.

A photo gets forgotten. uh, a whiteboard is not correctly marked. Uh, a dog is in the photo, like whatever it is, like seen all, or like I

Bobby: It's more, it's more species. We wanna see more dogs and pastures.

Leon: There's a lot of dogs and pastures. Um, I. Uh, or I did couldn't identify other species. I have placeholder of a species, like all these things happen and they're okay.

It's basically just needs to give us context. Why? Like, is this, like I got at one monitoring, we got completely rained out, we had no chance to continue the monitoring. and these things just happen. So what we are trying to figure out is like, does the data make sense all this? If something's missing, is there an explanation?

Is there reason why? Not to justify yourself, but just to know if we come back to this data in two years, in a year, two years and three years from now, I don't want them questioning what I see. I wanna be like, oh yeah, that was the year where we included the warm season grass, the warm season grasses back into our scorecard because we found them finally in Germany, creeping back over the Alps basically.

And that's what all the values dropped by minus 10. For example. So these things I wanna know as global quality assurance team, so that in the complexity that we are in, have the best of understanding why are there or not there, and the data or why things can be seen or not be seen in the data. And then we do is first is actually just the checking. Is everything there? Um, if it's not there, does it make sense? And then we look from our like BirdEye view also, okay, this fit to the overall monitoring in the specific eco region or within this hub? do they always score this with minus 10 when they see the expression of the life gonna be abundance, for example, like that high or whatever it's going to be. So like trying to get also connecting these different land bases is different. Monitorings. And does it make sense? Do we see patterns that make sense? Um, and then often we come to a lot of questions or like things that we obviously cannot all answer or see from the photos. And that's where in all directions, like the monitor with the hub verifier, but also the hub verify with us. Um, it's always this back and forth of like, I have these questions. Can you just give me some context around these? Can you explain to me why the EHI score declined? But you still recommend this land base for regeneration being verified, regenerating. And in these points we'll try to gather data. We try to see patterns then make sure the decision that we make in this moment of verifying a land base for regenerating or not regenerating is from what we know the best decision. Possible knowing that we probably don't know everything, knowing that we probably make a mistake with this 'cause we are in complexity, so we assume we are wrong. at least from what we see and what we connect as information and what we've heard from the professionals on the ground, this fits and trying to create this consistency now, like trying to be consistent in what we as a global quality assurance, and verify that this makes overall sense. 

Bobby: You were. Mentioning looking for patterns in the data, uh, that is, uh, in front of you as a QA team member. And just like when you are out in the field and you are needing to train your eye for pattern recognition for looking at the different indicators that are trying to tell you something about ecosystem function.

I'm wondering if your eye is getting trained on EOV data as well, like the more EOV data you look at. Are there patterns you're seeing or are there things that you are seeing more clearly now that you have, you know, a year or however long of reviewing this data under your belt? You know, how, how has that changed for you over time?

Leon: Yeah, I think in this moment I'm really sorry to every Hub Verifier that I bugged with so many observations and questions last year because I actually had to train my eye, on, on one hand on different eco-regions that I have not been to. Like some that are very brittle. but also sometimes in things that have been decided on a hub level that other hubs do differently.

'cause that's the other thing that we're trying to do is like EOV being a global protocol. Please interpret these indicators similar. Not the same, same, but as similar as possible. Wherever you are in the world. The expression can look different. A plus 10 in Australia could be a minus five in Germany when I come to live

canopy abundance for example. we're still looking at the same thing. We're still interpreting, interpreting the indicator the same way. And I think that is being in this role now is also training, was training in a lot of asking questions, a lot of. Making sure like, oh, I'm not, you don't need to justify.

I'm really just learning because of things that I'm seeing and I'm not sure if they make sense. And figuring out once something really doesn't make sense and it gets better. Like now being a year in, you can go through photos and you get this like, this was wrong. You have this feeling of like, I think this is too high scored. And then you look into the indicator and you're like, yeah, this is, this doesn't compare to the other things I've seen. And I'm often wondering if this is too detailed, if I'm pinpointing out. on short term site number six, I think there was the, somehow the scoring in bare soil is of

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: like that. But it is something that you start to recognize. It's not something that you have to mention all the time, like if it's just like one, one little piece with an everything, but it's something you see. Like also when you. you just have the values next to each other when you do the same eco region for a while and some one land base gets the note of like, oh, because of the very dry year, the values are lower. And then you look at and you're like, no, no, no. I saw on the same eco region, other land bases, they were doing fine. Um, so you start to recognize things in the same way, like we talked about before. And then walking into field, it's a bit more difficult because it's still the digital realm and it's not all the senses are developed here is way more of the visual sense involved. but you can, you get quicker recognizing things or just having the feeling, everything's fine. 

Bobby: I wanna be respective of your time 'cause I know you have another call you gotta jump to here shortly, but I. There is something that I saw you say, um, and I'm not recalling where I saw it, but you said that regeneration is relationships and I just wanna put that out there and, and see how you respond to that. 

Leon: It makes me smile as you can see. Um, it's for me, everything, everything on this planet earth, on this universal relationship. we are on the molecule level, when we're out there in the fields, when we look into the soil, we're looking above the soil. When we look at the interactions between grasses and grazers, um, when we look at as humans, it is just something we cannot, we cannot regenerate a landscape. Without our relationship that we are committed to a place that we love, this place, that we really wanna do this together. Um, we cannot do good regenerative work, whatever that means within a corporate or a team. If we are not looking at our relationships, if we're not caring for our relationships. Um, I, wanna know more about the soil. If I, I wanna know more about their relationships and how it also affects my gut biome in a way. Um, I think regeneration is, relationships is, for me, something that gives me a very positive way forward, um, because it starts with us and something that we can do again, as before, it's not about understanding every single. A relationship that I can map between in the soil food web, but just knowing that we are in relationship, knowing that there is life happening in a relationship means that every action I do, every comment I make, every step I take, like literally putting my foot on the ground, I am in relation. And, uh, I can form this every day.

I have with every action, with everything I put out there with every way I say hello to you or not hello to you, I start forming this web of relationships around me, which gives us a lot of power in a way, although we always think we're very small, although we always think like, oh, it's, everything is too big to change, but it's actually not.

It's like just build relationships from a place of authenticity and care and. we will make, you will make it your place. You will make a crazy big change that you don't even know what everything will change because you will complexity, not know everything that will change. Um, but yeah, regeneration is a relationship.

Brings it back to very immediate, like, this is something I can do.

Bobby: Do you find that EOV or just ecological monitoring in general, I guess to be, uh, you know, protocol agnostic that spending that time with the land allows for a better relationship with the land.

Leon: I, I am absolutely in love with all the lands, the land bases. I'm monitoring all the landscapes I'm being, and I'm, I'm crying that I can't go to Southern France this year. Then another monitor has to do it because. If you, when you start caring and caring can start with observing, with noticing. You, you really want to know you wanna go there again, you want to go there again.

You wanna be like, oh my gosh, this land is so beautiful. Or like all the farmer walking the land with me is smiling more. There is so much love in a way happening in this moment and in this and through this care, like so many other things that before seemed impossible will be possible. I jokingly say that I have a, I have a relationship with Everland that I walked onto and I think it's just half, half joked. 'cause I feel like it's always returning to these landscapes that I've got to know through ecological monitoring is feel like I'm coming home to someone I know. And someone that I care about. And I really want the people that walk with me over this land to have their own version of that excitement. Um, the ones who care, you can see it in the land.

The land responds in a different way.

Bobby: Hmm. Beautifully said, and I think that is probably where we will leave things today. Uh, I have a lot more that I wanted to get in, uh, with our questions today. So perhaps we'll do a round two at some point. Uh, we'll see how folks respond to this and see if they want one. So let us know in the comments if you wanna hear more from Leon.

Um, as I let you go here, do you have any, uh, parting words of wisdom that you wanna leave with our audience or anything else that you think people just need to hear right now?

Leon: Mm mm. Something I read recently in times of confusion, in times of big changes and feeling powerful and feeling like, oh, I can't do this. Or feeling like so insecure in what you do. One thing that someone said was, remember that you are here. You are here in this moment, in this place of land, in this room that you're sitting in, in this life that you're currently in. Start where you are. Like first be remember you are here, then start from there with something that is just slightly out of reach. You don't have to make big changes all the time, but something that is a little stretch that can be healing the relationship to father, your father-in-law, um, to someone else that can be. to get off the tractor and actually walk the land, whatever it is. as you are here and start where you are,

Bobby: Wonderful. Well, Leon Bucher, thank you so much for joining us today. Um, where,

Leon: you.

Bobby: where can folks find you online if they would like to keep up to date with everything you've got going on in the world?

Leon: so there's my personal website, which is leonbucher.com, um, which you probably might link

Bobby: It'll be in the show notes

Leon: show notes

Bobby: it?

Leon: Um, but we also do land regeneration as more like the Holistic Management focused and community building focused project. Um, and I do love to share my ways of thinking about the world on Instagram as

Bobby: Mm-hmm.

Leon: so if you want to get to know more like what my brain sometimes comes up with, because I have to remember it, Instagram is probably

Bobby: Yeah.

Leon: way to go there and find Yeah.

Bobby: Yeah, we'll link your Instagram, uh, in the show notes as well. I believe your handle is Leon's Regenerative Journeys, so you can find Leon everywhere online. Find him in the show notes. Leon, once again, thank you so much my friend.

Leon: Thank you very much my friend.

Bobby: Take care.

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