The TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation in California is working to scale regenerative land management to improve climate stability while promoting the health of humans, animals, and the planet.
The Foundation’s home base is an 1,800-acre grass-fed cattle ranch in the San Francisco Bay Area, known as TomKat Ranch. The site serves as a “learning laboratory about regenerative practice to de-risk and broadcast it,” Founder Kat Taylor tells Food Tank. Their goal is to provide an evidence base demonstrating that regenerative models are environmentally beneficial and economically viable. This work is complemented by efforts to advance good policy and build strong markets.
“Every farm and ranch is a business first,” Taylor explains. “If we don’t sustain them that way, they become imperiled personally, the practice doesn’t scale, and they are subject to competition from the incumbent system.”
As multiple crises, from wealth consolidation to climate change, come to a head, building regenerative models is a way to create an alternative future that is grounded in resilience. Taylor believes that the time is right to drive these efforts forward, stating, “We have this incredible moment in history to redesign civilization, to protect our values, to still harness the power of capitalism and create an economy that serves civilization, not vice versa.”
But the Foundation realizes they can’t do this alone. “Almost everything we do, we try to do in coalition,” Taylor says. “We are crowdsourcing design solutions at a time that it’s important to rethink and redesign, and we don’t have all the answers.”
This also means working alongside people they may not always agree with. “We are trying to listen deeply, empathize completely, and work with people where they are,” Taylor tells Food Tank. All people, she believes, want the same thing: thriving economies, a healthy planet, land that can be passed on to future generations.
Listen to the full conversation with Kat Taylor on “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” to hear more about the ways that the TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation is helping to mitigate risk for food producers, Taylor’s work to advance school meals for all, and how we return to healthy, safe, and vibrant food and farming systems.
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Photo courtesy of William Milliot, TomKat Ranch
