The Future Beneath Our Feet
April 2025
Featuring: Antony Yousefian, Partner at TFT Ventures
From art to action: soil, carbon, and the next great transition
On Tuesday 8th April, Earth Set hosted a special evening exploring the vital—yet often overlooked—role of soil in climate, biodiversity, and human health. A good cohort of members met first at Somerset House to explore the thought-provoking Soil exhibition, which offered a sensory, often startling journey through the entangled worlds beneath our feet: from ancient composting techniques to the latest in microbial science.
But the heart of the evening unfolded just across the Strand, where Ohme generously welcomed a larger group into their beautiful offices for drinks, food, and a powerful talk by Antony Yousefian, Partner at TFT Ventures and one of the most thoughtful voices at the intersection of regenerative agriculture and climate investing.
Soil, but not as you know it
Antony began with his own journey—from global finance to agritech startups to two years working on a farm in Kent—reflecting a career shaped by pattern recognition and sharp instincts for where the next structural shift is coming from. He framed soil not just as an ecological asset, but as a systems-level investment thesis: the connective tissue between planetary and human health, carbon and water cycles, nutrition and inequality.
He challenged the audience to look beyond conventional ESG narratives—highlighting the gap between optimistic financial disclosures and the actual biological systems on which we depend. His central claim: we’re investing in the wrong data.
“Nature underpins all of GDP. If nature disappeared, we’d all be dead. Soil is not a niche issue—it’s the infrastructure of life.”
The Investment Opportunity of a Generation
What followed was a compelling case for soil as the next frontier for climate capital:
Healthy soil holds more water and more carbon, reducing flood risk and increasing drought resilience.
Nutrient-dense food, grown in biologically rich soil, is key to reversing chronic disease trends and reducing healthcare costs.
Sensing and data technologies, once expensive or clunky, can now measure soil health, nutritional quality, and microbial activity in real time.
Startups are already reshaping value, with companies like Edacious and Antler Bio showing how regenerative practices translate into improved food quality, health outcomes, and operational efficiency.
One particularly grounded takeaway: for every 1% increase in soil organic matter, an acre of soil can retain an additional 20,000 gallons of water. That has huge implications for agriculture, water security, and climate adaptation—especially in the UK.
“The food system is going to be the largest economic transfer of our lifetime. When you align soil health with health outcomes, you tap into not just agri-tech, but a $10+ trillion health and wellbeing economy.”
From Investors to System Shapers
Antony reframed soil—not as a passive surface, but as a dynamic interface between biology and capital, and a foundation for the next economy. His passion for the subject was infectious, sparking a wave of questions, reflections, and ideas from the Earth Set audience that carried on well into the evening.He spoke about building systems change through targeted investment: not just in farming techniques, but in the entire feedback loop from soil health to human health.
He highlighted emerging companies like Rhizocore Technologies, whose fungi-based soil amendments are improving reforestation outcomes and unlocking new models for carbon capture and ecosystem restoration.
The Q&A that followed was wide-ranging—from the role of AI in regenerative land management, to policy gaps in UK farming, to how investors can distinguish credible practice from “soil-washing.” As ever, the Earth Set crowd brought rigour, curiosity, and openness—and the conversation continued over more drinks and late-seed-packet chat.
With Thanks
Huge thanks to Ohme, and especially their COO Russ Morgan, for hosting us with generosity and style—and to Antony for giving us such a compelling vision of what the future economy might look like when we start, quite literally, from the ground up.
