Cash flows and rivers flow

The Washington Farmland Trust, which crafted the Conservation Note, provided this image. 

Good Crops, Good Credit: How a Northwest Land Trust Sustains Farmland With Capital

Katie Michels
How does a farmer with no desire to keep growing crops become a catalyst for financial value and land preservation? The Washington Farmland Trust worked with a farmer at the end of his career to craft a financial package that would keep his land from developers, sustain ecosystem services, and...
So this panther walks into a bank...

(Courtesy Mark Conlin/Alamy, via the NRDC website.)

Species and Habitat Conservation Banking

Amanda Zhang, Katie Allen
*It should be noted that with the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, many conservation banks along with other conservation projects are facing uncertain futures because the pandemic has put a stress on current and future funding. For many years, conservationists, landowners, and developers have met at crossroads when handling cases of endangered...

Aligning Conservation and Community Development for Increased Impact in Sentinel Landscapes—and Beyond

Kendra Briechle
What makes efforts to preserve land harmonize with efforts to promote commerce? In this article, we review several examples. Entrepreneurs learn to bolster terrain for hikers (who drink beer), historically sensitive consumers, and fellow merchants. These examples show how creative approaches to promoting conservation and community-based development can yield ongoing...

Beyond Easements: Broader Approaches for Greater Conservation Outcomes

Michele Haynes
Easements unlock value for landowners and preserve land for everyone else. With challenges to our ecosystem and economy coming faster and from more directions, conservation leaders need tools that apply more quickly or in quirkier situations. This toolkit looks over a range of techniques that extend conservation to situations where...
Markets for a range of grains can grow widely and quickly

Businesses big and small can drive growth for regenerative growth across a range of crops. 

Show Me the Money: Making a Downstream Market for Diverse Regenerative Crops

Claire Huntley Lafave, Cortney Ahern Renton, Katie Sierks
In the words of the great agricultural philosopher Liza Minnelli, “Money makes the world go round.” Most stakeholders RAI interviewed across agricultural supply chains, especially farmers, want to grow crops and raise livestock in a sustainable way. Yet this desire to minimize environmental harm is not feasible if it creates...
Cover Crops for All Day with RAI

Farmers' informal networks can drive progress for finance, food and the farming business. The RAI visited pioneers in Iowa in 2018. 

Farmers on the Frontlines of the Regenerative Agriculture Transition

Cortney Ahern Renton, Claire Huntley Lafave, Katie Sierks
Achieving the transition from conventional to regenerative agriculture will require a major shift in the strategy and behavior of many of America’s two million farmers. For a farmer, farming for healthy soils, ecosystems, communities and climate conflicts at many points with conventional agriculture practice. Wider success comes only from the...
Regenerative agriculture begins here

How deeply can regenerative farming affect the way societies value farming- and farmers build value? (Photo courtesy of Lukas via Pexels.) 

The State of Regenerative Agriculture: Growing With Room to Grow More

Cortney Ahern Renton, Claire Huntley Lafave, Kathryn Sierks
This article, by The Regenerative Agriculture Initiative (RAI) team at the Yale Center for Business and the Environment (CBEY), is the first in a series on key opportunities to accelerate regenerative agriculture in the United States. At today’s rate of soil degradation, some scientists predict the world’s topsoil could be...