Financial innovation for regenerative agriculture: we announce the Design Council

Twenty leading investors, funders and farming organizations join forces to design innovative financial infrastructure for regenerative agriculture in the American Midwest. A new “capital orchestrator” aims to strategically align capital flows to accelerate regenerative agricultural production in key U.S. region

A new chapter is underway in the effort to finance the transition to regenerative agriculture in the American Midwest. Today, the TransCap Initiative, with financial support from the Walton Family Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation, announces the launch of Stage 2 of its systemic investing prototype: a bold, six-month collaboration to design a first-of-its-kind capital orchestrator—an innovative financial platform to align and deploy multiple capital types to build a sustainable and profitable future for the agricultural industry.

Joining them is a newly formed Design Council, comprising 20 leading organizations across the agricultural sector in the region. This group spans grassroots farming networks, technical assistance providers, non-profits, asset managers, investors and philanthropic funders—bringing together deep expertise and lived experience to shape how capital can be deployed more strategically and equitably. 

The 20 organizations are: 

  • CREO
  • Desert Bloom
  • Environmental Defense Fund
  • Food System 6
  • Fractal Agriculture
  • Funders for Regenerative Agriculture
  • Healing Soils Foundation
  • McKnight Foundation
  • Midwest Row Crop Collaborative
  • Minnesota Farmers Union
  • PepsiCo
  • Potlikker Capital
  • Practical Farmers of Iowa
  • Platform for Agriculture and Climate Transformation
  • The Rockefeller Foundation
  • Transformational Investing in Food Systems
  • University of Minnesota Forever Green Initiative
  • The Walton Family Foundation
  • Zell Family Office
  • Zero Foodprint
  • And led by the TransCap Initiative

“Capital is flowing into regenerative agriculture, but it's often fragmented and uncoordinated,” said Ivana Gazibara, the TransCap Initiative’s Director of Prototyping. “The capital orchestrator is a shared platform to move from one-off solutions to coordinated investment portfolios that reflect the complexity and ambition of the agricultural transition we need.”

“Agriculture and business both need to be sustainable to be successful in the long run,” said Morgan Snyder, Senior Program Officer, Walton Family Foundation. “We’re proud to support this effort to design a financial architecture that’s shaped by the people who know the land, the communities, and the challenges firsthand.”

“Regenerative agriculture isn’t just good for the soil—it’s good business,” said Anne Schwagerl, Vice President at Minnesota Farmers Union. “Done right, it can build a thriving, resilient, and profitable agricultural economy that benefits farmers, rural communities, and the environment. This collaboration is about ensuring money flows to make that vision a reality.”

The capital orchestrator will function as a ‘backbone organization’, mobilizing and coordinating different types of capital into the strategic areas most important for regenerative agriculture in the Midwest. The goal is to move beyond piecemeal funding toward a coordinated financial architecture capable of unlocking systemic tipping points and scaling transformation.

While capital orchestrators are emerging in other sectors—like ReFED in food waste or the Groundbreak Coalition for racial justice—this is the first initiative of its kind focused on regenerative agriculture in the Midwest. 

Over the next six months, the Design Council will explore critical questions: What types of capital should flow through the orchestrator? How should it be structured and governed? How can it reflect the needs of farmers and frontline actors while attracting aligned investors?

This effort builds on foundational research from Stage 1 of the prototype, which mapped systemic bottlenecks and identified leverage points in the region’s agricultural transition.

For a deeper look at why we're co-designing a capital orchestrator for regenerative agriculture in the American Midwest read the full story by Ivana Gazibara, project lead.

➡️Read the article 

Media contact:
Madeleine Lewis, Head of Communications, TransCap Initiative, ml@transformation.capital , +44(0) 7966 042535

Do you want to collaborate with us?

There is an urgent need to rethink the way we deploy financial capital for transformative impact in human and natural systems. The field of systemic investing has garnered significant momentum, and now is the time to scale deep and scale out. So we invite challenge owners, systems thinkers, innovation practitioners, investment professionals, ecosystem shapers, and creative voices to join us in figuring out how to redeploy financial capital in service of a prosperous and sustainable future for all.

How is systemic investing relevant to

Foundations

...because the pots of capital operating under a philanthropic logic are orders of magnitude smaller than those operating under an investment logic, so systemic investing is a way for foundations to leverage their capital in the systems they care about.

Corporations

...because their supply chains are becoming increasingly fragile and societal expectations of business are growing. This requires companies to deploy all the tools in their finance toolbox (incl. direct investments, advanced purchase agreements, and supply-chain financing) and partner more strategically with governments, foundations, and NGOs.

Impact Investors

...because single technologies, start-ups, or social enterprises—no matter how ingenious their solutions and how brilliant their teams—are unlikely to change systems by themselves. So what matters is that these single-point solutions are synergistically nested within a broader systems change effort.

Institutional Investors

...because mainstream ESG investing doesn’t benefit places and communities at the pace, scale, and quality required, so institutional investors must channel more capital into real-economy assets in a strategic and collaborative manner.

MDBs and DFIs

...because sustainable development in a VUCA world requires portfolio approaches to systems innovation, and those need to be funded with a different investment paradigm than those dominant in development finance institutions today. And because the public sector cannot finance sustainability transitions alone, so systemic investing is a way to crowd-in private-sector capital in a smart way.

Engage with us

Which option best describes your interest in systemic investing?

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About

Who We Are

The TransCap Initiative is a think-and-do-tank operating at the nexus of real-economy systems change, sustainability, and finance. We operate as a multi-stakeholder alliance coordinated by a backbone team and comprised of wealth owners, innovation leaders, system thinkers, research institutes, and financial intermediaries. Our community is open to anyone committed to our cause and values.

Why We Exist

We exist to improve the way sustainable finance is purposed, designed, and managed so that money can become a transformative force in building a low-carbon, climate-resilient, just, and inclusive society. We believe that the key to accomplishing this vision is to inspire and enable investors to leverage the insights and tools of systems thinking and complex systems science for addressing the most pressing societal challenges of the 21st century.

What We Do

Our mission is to build the field of systemic investing. This means developing, testing, and scaling an investment logic at the intersection of systems thinking and finance. We do that by convening a multi-stakeholder alliance to develop a knowledge and innovation base, test novel concepts and approaches, and build a community of practice.

Our core ideas borrow from the disciplines of systems thinking and complex systems science, challenge-led innovation, human-centred design, new economic frameworks, and financial innovation. Our experiments are contextualised in those place-based systems that matter most for human prosperity—such as cities, landscapes, and coastal zones—as well as in value chains and other real-economy systems. We hope that our work produces knowledge and insights, methods and tools, and a self-organising community of inspired and enabled change makers.

The places and value chains we intend to transform act as centres of gravity for our work. In each of these systems, we will work with challenge owners, communities, innovators, investors, and other stakeholders to design, structure, and finance strategic investment portfolios nested within a broader systems intervention approach.