To set the stage for Confluence’s 11th Annual Practitioners Gathering in June, the Climate Solutions Collaborative hosted a two-hour webinar titled Farm to Fork and Back Again: Non-Extractive Approaches to Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food Sovereignty on May 11, 2021 to lay the foundation for discussion on sustainable, equity-minded agriculture and opportunities for investors across risk appetite, returns profile, and asset class.
The webinar focused on regenerative and restorative agriculture, featuring a panel of experts who integrate these concepts into their daily work. We were pleased to host a fascinating, action-oriented conversation with: Kat Taylor, founder of the TomKat Ranch Foundation; Karen Washington, founder of Black Urban Growers; Mark Watson, Managing Director at the Fair Food Fund; Gray Harris, Senior VP of Food Systems at Coastal Enterprises Inc.; and Alyssa Go, Sustainability VP at Renewable Resources Group. The session was moderated by Stacey Faella, Executive Director of the Woodcock Foundation.
In many ways, modern commercial agriculture has progressed at the expense of nutrition, biodiversity, and social equity. The technologies, production methods, and supply chains that have developed to support the expanding populations and protein-heavy appetites of our globalized society are often extractive and short-sighted. Today, commercial agribusiness practices actively deplete finite resources like soil health, crop diversity, and nutrient density. As well, industrial consolidation has disenfranchised the communities which first tilled these fields, even before the land was known as America.
Reverence for the origins and ecological burden of modern food systems is the foundation for regenerative agriculture. Add on top of that, reverence for indigenous practices and original cultivators and you’ll find yourself at the threshold of restorative agriculture.
We kicked off the event by establishing working definitions of regenerative and restorative agriculture:
“Regenerative Agriculture is the science, art, or occupation concerned with providing ample, nutritious food; improving local economies equitably; building soil fertility and restoring biodiversity, water cycling, water quality and using natural processes to achieve climate stability by restoring carbon and other nutrients to the soil.”
“Restorative Agriculture aligns agricultural practices with racial equity, food sovereignty, and restorative justice and acknowledges that Regenerative Agriculture has its roots in long-standing traditional food ways of indigenous people around the world.”
The panel moved through several roundtable questions on what regenerative/restorative agriculture means to them and how it shows up in their work.
Karen Washington spoke about the steep barriers to access and capital which continue to exclude black farmers from profitable agricultural livelihoods. In New York State, only 139 of 57,000 farmers are black and while their white counterparts take home an average of $40,000/year, black farmers run an average deficit of $900/year. Driving investment to black farming operations and returning power back to the communities they serve is the foundational principle behind the Black Farmer Fund.
Kat Taylor described the inherent fragility of industrial agriculture, which created massive produce loss during the pandemic. According to Taylor, we only have 59 more harvests left within the current food system. She shared several key initiatives TomKat Ranch manages to restore soil health and BIPOC agency in sustainable farming.
Alyssa Go introduced the institutional investment lens, as she oversees four funds at Renewable Resources Group dedicated to agriculture, water, and renewable energy with market-rate return expectations. Alyssa touched on the challenges of marrying regenerative agriculture with scalability, especially when working with permanent crops at commercial-grade operations.
Gray Harris has helped catalyze over $100M in direct and outside investment to 25 agribusinesses on the Maine coast. Creating over 1400 jobs in local communities, Coastal Enterprises focuses on the nexus of women, food, and money.
Finally, Mark Watson described the various forms of flexible capital investment he facilitates via the Fair Food Fund, such as pivot capital, catalytic, knowledge, and social capital and the three primary manifestations of these investments at the individual, community, and systems level.
The group discussed entry points for investors with a range of risk tolerance levels and thematic goals. The key takeaway: there is a place for all investors within sustainable agriculture. Our panelists also offered case studies and insights on impact measurement, philanthropic reform, and the policy backdrop at the state and federal levels.
Ultimately, the practices of regenerative and restorative agriculture are simultaneously innovative and traditional. Our speakers, through their field work and capital allocation, endeavor a return to the food ways and ecosystems that were invented and sustained by black, brown, and indigenous people for thousands of years - a concept both familiar and radical at the same time. Today, we face the all-important task of scaling those practices to support a denser population and correcting the systemic inequities that have narrowed avenues to success in the agricultural industry, but the process begins with material investment.
We encourage Confluence members to self-evaluate: What are your thematic investment goals? How are you building an equitable and sustainable food system for all? What is your appetite for risk? Take a look at your portfolio - is it truly inclusive?
The content of the webinar is deepened by two ensuing day-long bio-regional farm tours at the Chester Agricultural Center in Chester, NY and the TomKat Ranch in Pescadero, CA.