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Recently, Koen van Seijen started a podcast series on transition finance in regenerative agriculture. It triggered my thinking, does anyone know of any good examples of transition finance aiding farmers in their journey towards regenerative forms of agriculture?
In the introduction he says: “many farmers are ready to speed up their regenerative transition (…)this is where transition finance is key. A local bank loan often isn’t feasible due to the short duration, lack of flexibility and the farmers’ lack of collateral. Furthermore, there is a lack of how much equity a farmer is willing or able to give way.”
Nice tip about this podcast! Don’t know anything about finance but isn’t the Grondfonds Wij.land is working on an example of this? https://wij.land/portfolio-items/grondfonds/
Yes, definitely a nice expression of how finance can help aid this land use transition. Perhaps also the pilot funds that Wij.land and AlVelAl work with are a good practical example of transition finance. These are relatively small amounts which help farmers in testing and trialing alternative methods on their own farm. Think big, start small, act fast kind of approach :)
This organization SOIL (Slow Opportunities for Investing Locally) is attempting to create a program that gives 0% loans to local farmers. The current phase of their model is through raising funds from community members, and they are hoping it will eventually become self-sustaining as farmers repay the loans. https://slowmoney.org/local-groups/soil
Interesting Lizzy, is comparable to https://kiva.global/ you think?
https://www.propagateventures.com/ Propagate Ventures is a reasonably well established player. They provide financing as well as knowledge to landowners looking to implement agroforestry practice.
Nice @Casper! I saw there work in a webinar of Koen van Seijen once and was blown away. Would be nice to have them on the platform as one of the organisations. Do you know a person working there?
One very interesting source that requires patience but can help scale important projects is teh GCF…I’ve had success raising large amounts for private public partnership in Morocco.
You don’t need the public sector involved though. it does work. timeline is 3-6 months for approval process.