Masters of Beautiful Achievements Masters of Beautiful Achievements

With Brad Vanstone we dive into the alternative dairy solutions he is creating with Willicroft. His cheese and butter alternatives are very tasty. The butter is made from fermented soya beans and has the look and feel of real butter. He realised during his marketing career that something needs to change if his family farm (Willicroft) back in the UK wants to exist in the next decade. Being a vegetarian meant he had to reinvent his dairy heritage and decided to find alternatives to serve the mass market of dairy, in this case cheese and butter. His early recipe found already clients so he decided to take a leap of faith and turn into a real business. --------------

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The activist Willicroft brand shows it is possible to scale and get onto the retail shelf in regular and biological retail channels. They have outsourced their fermentation technology to ensure scale so they have time to focus on the marketing and branding of Willicroft.

According to Brad we need to move fast away from the industrial farming system and by creating tasty vegan alternatives. Especially the butter is in demand with high-end chefs who value its close resembles to dairy butter. And yet it tastes and behaves slightly different. The key was his discovery that fermentation can produce a Butyric acid (meaning butter) having the properties similar to real butter.

The next challenges are expanding their white bean products and fermenting them also next to the soya beans. For the beans Brad expects in the future they will be able to let them come from regenerative farms with biological certification when they have a solid foundation with their current product line. They need need to make some profit before they move into the next market.

The space for fermented food is growing and Willicroft gradually expanding to meet demand.

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The Masters of Beautiful Achievements podcast series is where Alexander Prinsen explores natural science, innovation, systems thinking and leadership. In daily life he is an systemic innovation consulting at scopematters.com where he helps organizations accelerate to save costs, do good and operate within the planetary boundaries.

Ivanka Milenkovic (Ekofungi) is a organic mushroom farmer in Belgrade Serbia teaching a whole new generation of mushroom farmers from all over the world. She trains mushroom farmers globally and many are also joining her academy in Belgrade. Ivanka was trained as a microbiologist and moved into growing mushrooms by accident. As a PhD student she was mentored by Europe leading mushroom experts from Netherlands and the rest is history.

We explored the world of mushrooms including the farmed and wild ones and the local food cultural difference between rural Serbia and the urbanized Netherlands. Her business is successful because she uses the local food to consumer network and was innovative to find a way to enter the USA market as organic mushroom farmer.

We tend to forget how beneficial mushrooms are for our health and why they should be added as important protein to our food.

Ekofungi - https://www.systemekofungi.com

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Join our ⁠Patreon community⁠ when you are interested in doing small contributions

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In each case thank you for your support! ⁠

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The Masters of Beautiful Achievements is a podcast series from Alexander Prinsen where he explores how natural science, innovation, systems thinking and leadership is shaping the future. In daily life he is an systemic innovation consulting at scopematters.com where he helps organizations accelerate to save costs, do good and operate within the planetary boundaries

Multi-culture fermentation is the next frontier for biotech. Can we create a community of microbes who can do the job? We explore various metabolic pathways to learn more about how syntrophic metabolism works. Can we develop natural catalysts by creating robust systems? And what is the effect of Bacteriophage to these cultures?

Special Guest: Diana Machado de Sousa

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The Microbes Series zooms out and leave the microscope and our traditional human perspective on viruses  behind for a minute. What would happen if we look at microbes as one of the players in a much broader system? How does this change our perspective of Spaceship Earth and the role of the web of life? What lessons can we draw from nature’s logic on how our Spaceship Earth operates? Together with specialists in the field of virology, microbiology and biochemistry we will take a journey into an unknown world of interesting insights. Combining insights and working towards cross disciplinary solutions and the essential questions we might have been overlooking. And who knows we might discover one or two innovative applications along the way.

Brought to you by Masters of Beautiful Achievements
Alexander Prinsen - www.ScopeMatters.com
Marc van Bemmel - www.Orvion.nl

In this episode we will investigate how the unusual characteristics of water like the Exclusion Zone is impacting how microbes are living with water. Water is more than H20 as we will learn today, and as such how will it impact how we look at fermentation, bio-remediation and more. 

Special Guest: Gerald Pollack

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Join our Patreon community to help cover our expenses and to bring you more conversations. Thank you for your support!
https://www.patreon.com/mastersofbeautifulachievements
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Part  of the special Microbes Series. What if we would be able to zoom out?  Leaving the microscope and our traditional human perspective on viruses  behind for a minute. What would happen if we look at viruses as one of  the players in a much broader system? And as such changing our  perspective to that of Spaceship Earth  and the role of a virus in the  web of life? What lessons can we draw from nature’s logic on how  Spaceship Earth operates? Together with specialists in the field of  virology, microbiology and  biochemistry we will take a journey into an  unknown world of interesting insights. Combining insights and working  towards cross disciplinary solutions and the essential questions we  might have been overlooking. And who knows we might discover one or two  innovative applications along the way.

Brought to you by Masters of Beautiful Achievements
Alexander Prinsen - www.ScopeMatters.com
Marc van Bemmel - www.Orvion.nl

In this episode we will investigate our #gut #microbial #system about how and why it is effecting they #health system. We are curious to learn what kind of insights will this provide  for our understanding of microbial systems? How do these microbial #metabolic pathways in the oxygen free environments work? And what interesting applications can we extract from it.

Special Guest: Koen Venema

Part of the special Microbes Series. What if we would be able to zoom out? Leaving the microscope and our traditional human perspective on viruses behind for a minute. What would happen if we look at viruses as one of the players in a much broader system? And as such changing our perspective to that of Spaceship Earth  and the role of a virus in the web of life? What lessons can we draw from nature’s logic on how Spaceship Earth operates? Together with specialists in the field of virology, microbiology and  biochemistry we will take a journey into an unknown world of interesting insights. Combining insights and working towards cross disciplinary solutions and the essential questions we might have been overlooking. And who knows we might discover one or two innovative applications along the way.

Brought to you by Masters of Beautiful Achievements
Alexander Prinsen - www.ScopeMatters.com
Marc van Bemmel - www.Orvion.nl

In this episode we will investigate the role of anammox bacteria and their role in the nitrogen cycle and methane cycle. Are they key to solve the nitrogen issues? En in addition what can we learn how #anaerobe bacteria could be applied for health and our environmental challenges. 

Special Guest: Mike Jetten

Part of the special Microbes Series. What if we would be able to zoom out? Leaving the microscope and our traditional human perspective on viruses behind for a minute. What would happen if we look at viruses as one of the players in a much broader system? And as such changing our perspective to that of Spaceship Earth  and the role of a virus in the web of life? What lessons can we draw from nature’s logic on how Spaceship Earth operates? Together with specialists in the field of virology, microbiology and  biochemistry we will take a journey into an unknown world of interesting insights. Combining insights and working towards cross disciplinary solutions and the essential questions we might have been overlooking. And who knows we might discover one or two innovative applications along the way.

Brought to you by Masters of Beautiful Achievements
Alexander Prinsen - www.ScopeMatters.com
Marc van Bemmel - www.Orvion.nl