Flourishing Farmer Report 📁📈

Exploring regenerative business models to imagine a better food system.

Mitch Hinrichs
October 25, 2024

Read Time: 3 minutes

The “Flourishing Farmer” report is the product of three MBA students from the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business. They interviewed 30 diverse stakeholders to learn about the current state of regenerative agriculture, aiming to add to the existing wealth of resources. It was announced at this year’s Climate Underground Conference hosted by Al Gore and Alice Waters.

Sponsors: Center for Responsible Business at Berkeley Haas and the Ideagarden Institute

Imagine a Better Food System

There is something wrong with the world’s food system when it is responsible for 26% of greenhouse gas emissions, more than 2 billion people are obese worldwide, and $1.1 trillion is spent annually on health care for chronic disease.

And while most U.S. farmers cannot make ends meet, relying on off-farm income.

There has to be a better way, and the “Flourishing Farmer” report explores five such business models for regenerative agriculture to scale and thrive.

Regenerative Business Models

This report explores five diverse business models — from small, farmer-driven operations to nationwide cooperatives and farmland investors — all united by regenerative agriculture and building a better food system.

There is no silver bullet to transform farming, and this is not presented as a complete strategy for designing a better food system. These case studies are meant to inspire you to see what is possible and how to apply these principles to your work.

Moon Valley Farms

Emma Jagoz has been running Moon Valley Farms for thirteen years. Since then they have grown from 0.5 leased acres to 70 owned and leased acres, growing over forty different types of crops, and continue diversifying their crop offerings.

Emma attended FARMpreneurs in 2020. Since then, she has purchased her own farm and profitably scaled her business fivefold—all with grant funding. She also holds the first organic seat for the Governor's Agricultural Commission in Maryland.

As a profitable farm relying on minimal outside grant funding and no outside investment, Moon Valley Farm feels like an inspirational “David” in a world of “Goliath” large-scale industrialized farming operations.

FEED Cooperative

The USDA defines a food hub as “a business or organization that actively manages the aggregation, distribution, and marketing of source-identified food products primarily from local and regional producers to strengthen their ability to satisfy wholesale, retail, and institutional demand.”

FEED Cooperative works with over 80 small farms (typically 5-10 acre farms) throughout the year, 30 of which are involved with the cooperative’s business strategy. Their main activity is finding outlets for farmers to sell goods. Co-op members benefit from voting on the direction and partaking in profit sharing during profitable years.

Lundberg Family Farms

Lundberg Family Farms is a fourth-generation, 15,000-acre California organic rice farm that has been a longtime organic and regenerative pioneer. In the early 1940s the they started incorporating rice straw into the fields instead of burning it and in the late 1960s they were trailblazers in organic brown rice farming and helped shape standards for the industry.

Now, they are on the journey of defining and scaling “regenerative” California rice.

They eagerly engaged with the Regenerative Organic Alliance to work together on defining the expectations and definition for Regenerative Organic rice and are now committed to certifying all of its crops as Regenerative Organic Certified by 2027.

Organic Valley

Since its inception in 1988, Organic Valley has sought to revolutionize people's thinking about food and support American family farmers.

By nearly any metric, Organic Valley has achieved remarkable success.

36 years in operation
>$1 billion in annual revenue
450,000 acres of organic land
1,600 farmer / owners
100+ organic products — milk, butter, eggs, and cheese

Organic Valley functions as a producer and marketing cooperative. The cooperative’s governance structure includes a board of farmer-owners elected by their peers. At the beginning of each year, their farmer members collaboratively set the milk prices based on current production costs and a fair return.

They have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by 25% compared to conventional US dairy averages— which has kept 540,000 lbs of chemicals off the land since 1988.

Dirt Capital Partners

More than 40% of farmland is expected to change hands over the next 20 years, and investor money is flowing in. Dirt Capital Partners is an impact-first farmland investment company with a 10-year track record of developing creative investment tools for best-in-class farmers and ranchers. They work with regenerative farmers with successful operations, established markets, and the opportunity to expand their businesses through long-term land access.

Every project is guided by a shared goal to eventually fully transition the land to farmer ownership, which creates an additional incentive for the farmer to steward and improve the land over the long term.

So far, the strategy has proven efficient, with 9 out of 10 exited investments being farmer-purchased lots of land. And since their inception in 2014, they have invested $37m across 40 projects and 9,500 acres.

Dirt Capital Partners is now in their 4th fund, which targets $50M and 20 projects.