After interviewing 300+ people for the podcast series Investing in Regenerative Agriculture, we noticed many people are setting up investment funds to rebuild soil (either directly or indirectly) and we asked ourself the question:
Could these funds really transform agriculture?
In the next few paragraphs we will explain why we (farmers, impact investors, consumers, regeneration enthusiasts in general) should pay much more attention to this emerging group of fund managers.
People building soil — beyond their own farm gate — beyond their own money.
Notice the key words here, beyond their land and beyond their own money!
Why (re)building soil?
In our lifetime we will have to regenerate billions of hectares of degraded or abandoned farmland and doing so regenerate people, local communities and whole ecosystems.
If you are new to this space and want to find out more about why this is crucial, you can find a lot of great resources on the websites of Commonland, Regeneration International, Kiss the Ground, Regen Network and NoRegrets.
So let’s state that every farmer and landowner should be rebuilding her or his soil.
Which would be amazing! But sadly many won’t…
Lack of knowledge and resources make this regenerative transition very difficult.
Why look at fund managers??
In this regenerative agriculture and food revolution there is a lot of attention on companies, their suppliers, individual hero farmers, policies, certification schemes. Billions of investment capital will try to enter the regenerative agriculture space in the next 10 years.
Together we can get these fund managers on our radar and make sure this investment money finds an effective and relevant place to get to work, rebuilding soil, people, local communities and ecosystems.
Together we can identify the ones truly committed and able to rebuild soil at scale and keep them accountable, while a fair financial return comes back to the investors.
We made a start, please click to find the full Google Sheet here and add your comments to help us create an up to date overview of which soil building funds are there and who is planning to start such a fund/vehicle!
P.S. We don’t think investment funds building soil are thé solution to all agriculture challenges (far from that), but instead saying that they are an important piece of the puzzle and thus deserve our attention.
Thank you to Ethan Roland Soloviev for designing the Google sheet, all your feedback and helping me to write this article!
*This post is updated in February 2024!* We also added more funds focussed on the broader regenerative food systems (not directly investing in farmland)
——————————————
Feedback, comments, suggestions? Reach me via Twitter @KoenvanSeijen, in the comments below or through Get in Touch on this website.
Join the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P
The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.
Join the Community
Hi Koen,
thanks for making this available, and your unique angle on promoting RegenAg!
Thanks also to Ethan!
I am “jo bloggs”, with an interest in putting my money where my mouth is and get some returns for all.
Are you aware of any resources, other than individual crowd-funded projects?
Many thanks!
Ute
Hi Ute,
Many thanks for your message! I’m a retail investor and very frustrated by the lack of investible (even crowdfunding projects) to put some of my money to work. Only recently I have seen a few crowd investing platforms pop up but mostly like you said individual projects etc. I interviewed Dan Miller: https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2020/06/09/dan-miller/ and they have at https://gosteward.com/ a more fund model besides offering individual projects. Not sure if you are in the US and if you have access to that. Apart from that there isn’t too much yet unfortunately. Especially if you compare it to Renewable Energy where you can easily put a few hundred euros/dollars to work!
Best,
Koen
Hi Koen, Any update to Ute’s question since last year? 😉
Dear Ariane,
Not too much but a bit yes, actually Laura Oldanie reached out recently and shared this interesting write up for retail investors: https://www.richandresilientliving.com/investing-in-the-regenerative-economy/
And yes we should do an update of this list, April 2020 feels like a century ago.
All the best,
Koen