The Business of Soil Health

S2:E12 – Pricing Resilience: How Soil Health Could Reshape Farmland Value with Delta Institute

Soil health drives resilience, input costs, and long-term productivity - yet none of that shows up when farmland is appraised. Lucas Chamberlain and Gillian Chesnut of the Delta Institute are trying to change that. Their team is working directly with farmland appraisers, lenders, and soil scientists to test a radically rooted idea: what if soil health were valued like any other asset? Through pilot projects across Illinois and Michigan, Delta Institute has developed a Soil Health Index and incorporated real soil measurements into formal appraisals. The goal isn’t a new credit market - it’s to reshape the core plumbing of farm finance: land values, underwriting, and operating loans. In this episode we dig into: * How farmland appraisals actually work - and why soil health has been invisible * The Soil Health Index they’ve built with the Soil Health Institute * What happened when 15 real farms received “soil-informed” appraisals * Why comparable sales data is the biggest barrier * The role of lenders, insurers, and remote sensing * Risks and unintended consequences for land access * The vision for loan products that reward lower-risk, conservation-minded operators If soil health truly improves cash flow and resilience, Lucas and Gillian argue it should lower borrowing costs and raise equity, without relying on subsidies.

S2:E11 – Pay-for-Practice Misses the Point: the Behavioral Economics of Soil Health

Reid Hensen, co-founder and managing partner at Celium Group, is a rancher, agricultural economist, and a data systems architect for some of the leading public and philanthropic soil health programs. His view is soil health adoption is a human systems problem, rather than an economic or technology problem. In his view “regenerative ag” is wise resource management with long-time horizons supported by trusted advisors and community problem solving. We touch on multiple financial levers of soil health, including on-farm profitability, management practice change (with some great livestock management examples), stacked enterprises, and risk management. We kept trying to bring him back to a narrow view of economics, and he kept pulling us out to consider the human factors like technical assistance and advisory support, and the importance of viewing technology as an amplifier of a system rather than a solution in and of itself. In addition, he offers a deeply informed critique of capital deployment across private, philanthropic and public avenues. Reid is empathetic, insightful, and wise, and he doesn’t sugar coat his opinions. Hope you enjoy the episode.

S2:E10 – Finance Serving Farmers: How Food System 6 is Rewiring Capital for Regeneration with Lauren Manning

Can we truly expect farmers to risk everything in order to regenerate the land? Lauren Manning, Executive Director of Food System 6, joins us to explore what it takes to build a financial system that serves farmers, rather than the other way around. Drawing on her background as a rancher, lawyer, and investor, Lauren shares how her own experience being denied a farm loan shaped her mission to rewire agricultural finance for equity, resilience, and regeneration. At Food System 6 (FS6), Lauren and her team are tackling some of the toughest structural barriers in U.S. agriculture, from the limitations of FSA loan guarantees to the farm foreclosure crisis. Their work spans from EQIP Bridge Loans, helping producers fund conservation practices without maxing credit cards, to loan guarantees for regenerative agriculture, designed to de-risk unconventional borrowers and unlock patient, values-aligned capital. We talk about: * The meaning behind “Food System Six” and what comes after industrial agriculture * Why non-bank lenders are key to financing the next generation of producers * How the EQIP Bridge Loan program helps farmers access public funding sources without drowning in debt  * The emerging farm foreclosure crisis, and what can be done about it * Why “financial empowerment” and “dignity in finance” are essential to system change 🎧 Listen now for a candid, data-rich look at the intersection of policy, capital, and regeneration, with one of the leading thinkers reshaping how money moves through the food system.

S2:E8 – A Million Acres and 35 Million Pounds of Seed: The Story of Green Cover and the Economics of Cover Crops, with Keith Berns

Early regenerative pioneer Keith Berns, co-founder of Green Cover, recounts how multi-species cover crops transformed from niche experiment to a million-acre business.  Green Cover is a cover-crop innovator and one of the country’s leading cover crop seed suppliers. In this conversation, we talk with Keith about: * Science and Practice: He discusses the limits of single-variable academic research in inherently complex, multi-species systems, the specific cases where single-species cover crops still make sense, and strategies in areas of limited moisture where cultivation may be more challenging. * Economic and Policy Factors: Keith breaks down the direct economic benefits of cover crops (including livestock integration, fertility gains, weed suppression, and improved water infiltration) that compound into long-term resilience as soil organic matter builds. He also explains how federal crop-insurance rules, particularly “Annual Production History,” continue to restrict both producer adoption and seed production. * Signals of Demand: Keith talks about the indicators he’s watching to gauge future adoption, why incentive programs alone aren’t enough to drive meaningful growth, and how he’s managing the challenges of scaling in a maturing market. * Data and Decision-Making: He highlights the largest data gap he sees in the industry—where empirical evidence still lags behind what farmers observe in the field—and shares what growers are managing day-to-day: economic pressures, agronomic trade-offs, and practical constraints like planting windows. We hope you enjoy this grounded, data-aware conversation about the pivotal yet still-evolving role cover crops play in regenerative agriculture and soil health.

S2:E9 – From Funds to Capital Orchestration with Ivana Gazibara from the TransCap Initiative

What is systemic investing, and how does capital orchestration move real dollars to real acres?  Ivana Gazibara, Director of Prototyping at the Transformational Capital Initiative (TransCap), joins Sami and Patrick to unpack their Midwest blueprint for scaling regenerative agriculture.  We cover TransCap’s transition map (and some of the barriers it surfaced), why another fund isn’t enough, and how a neutral platform can align philanthropy, catalytic, and commercial capital around shovel-ready deals.  We also touch on metrics of success and why capital deployed is less important than acres impacted. 🔗 Resources mentioned in the episode TransCap Initiative (Transformation Capital Initiative) - https://transformation.capital/ Systemic Finance for Regenerative Agriculture (Transcap article introducing the capital orchestrator concept) https://medium.com/transformation-capital/systemic-finance-for-regenerative-agriculture-b8f74845be1c Transcap’s System Map of Regenerative Agriculture in the Midwest - https://transcap.kumu.io/financing-the-regenerative-agriculture-transition-in-the-midwest New Capitalism Project Lab – funder collaborative supporting TransCap’s work - https://newcapitalismproject.org/ ReFED – an analog capital orchestrator - https://refed.org/ GroundBreak Coalition (McKnight Foundation) – another analog capital orchestrator - https://groundbreakcoalition.org/