Terra Regenerative Capital is working to support farmers and ranchers in the transition from conventional methods to regenerative practices that are better for the planet. Through funding and professional support, they aim to make the agricultural sector a sink, rather than a source, of atmospheric carbon.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, agriculture accounts for an estimated 10 to 12 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally. Terra Regenerative Capital Founders Tara Smith Swibel and Calla Rose Ostrander believe this can change. “We’re not interested in more of the same system,” Swibel tells Food Tank. “We want the whole system to convert to regenerative, and for that to be the baseline for how we do agriculture.”
Terra Regenerative Capital finds farmers and businesses that want to implement regenerative agriculture practices, such as crop rotation and permaculture, that build healthy soils and ecosystems rather than breaking them down. And according to a report by Boston Consulting Group, regenerative farming can increase profitability for farmers after a transitional period.
“Securing financing for the transition to regenerative practices is often difficult, and this financial strain can deter farmers from adopting sustainable methods,” writes Laimonas Noreika, CEO and founder of European climate technology firm HeavyFinance. Terra Regenerative Capital uses venture capital funds to bridge this gap between current practices and the future of regenerative farming.
“We start with where [farmers] are,” Ostrander tells Food Tank. “We get their baselines: soil sample baselines, input usage baselines, and we get a checklist of what they cannot use going forward.” Examples of conventional practices to move away from include using glyphosate to destroy crops after harvest, or leaving soil without vegetation for part of the year.
The firm then works with farmers and food businesses to implement and monitor changes. Instead of using traditional metrics of capital growth, Terra Regenerative Capital tracks soil health, biodiversity, and how the changes are benefiting the socioeconomic ecosystem. These metrics help determine whether farmers are meeting the standards that allow them to make transformative changes in the food system.
Tracking these figures helps Terra Regenerative Capital to ensure their funds are creating real change. “I came to this really concerned about carbon sequestration, when I understood the potential of soil to be that carbon sink that we need,” Swibel says. “As long as we can prove that we’re improving that carbon sequestration, then this makes sense.”
Cairnspring Mills, an organization supported by Terra Regenerative Capital in Washington’s Skagit Valley, aids this transition by offering farmers rates above market value if they commit to implementing sustainable practices. Cairnspring Mills is particularly interested in working closely with tribal leaders from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation to scale up production in mutually beneficial ways.
“I think that’s exciting because it’s shifting these really large-scale conventional wheat growers out of a chem-fallow glyphosate system and into something where we can begin to restore riparian areas around salmon habitat that the tribe is also concerned about,” explains Ostrander. “So we start to bridge between conventional agriculture and traditional biodiversity and soil health.”
Tree Range Farms, another organization backed by Terra Regenerative Capital, focuses on creating more natural forested habitats for chickens on poultry farms. In forested pastures, chickens can freely forage on plants, sprouted grain, and bugs and don’t rely on antibiotics, according to the organization. The financial and professional infrastructure provided by Terra Regenerative Capital helps Tree Range Farms scale their work, allowing them to provide training to local farmers. This partnership ensures farmers will have a buyer for their chickens.
“That means of aggregation by Tree Range is everything because that singular chicken farmer cannot reach the marketplace without Tree Range,” Swibel tells Food Tank. “It’s exciting—a different strategy for scaling within the Midwest, but a highly regenerative system that is really thought out from the very beginning.”
Terra Regenerative Capital’s funding is being distributed at a time when the Trump-Vance administration is committing to reduction in or elimination of federal funding for climate-smart policies. Farmers recently expressed concern over the recent pause in Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Some of Terra Regenerative Capital’s partners rely on federal grants, and Swibel and Ostrander admit there is some uncertainty regarding the future of funding sources. Still, they believe Terra Regenerative Capital is right on track to time the wave of investments in regenerative agriculture. According to Swibel, “I just don’t think there’s been a better time to invest.”
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