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...
Forest in Royalston, MA

Royalston, MA / Tyler Frost / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Conservation’s Role in Philanthropic Giving Is Changing

Maki Tazawa
Several recent reports, as well as observations from experts in the field, demonstrate a changing landscape of philanthropic conservation giving. Now, foundations more often incorporate broader social and environmental issues into conservation work. They also frequently approach conservation through the lens of climate change.
Lily in Upstate New York

Using Financial Models Sets up Land Trusts for Success

Shea Flanagan
Financial modeling is an emerging application for land trusts. It could make a great difference in their ability to forecast and plan for various future financial scenarios. At this year’s Land Trust Alliance Rally conference during the “Your Future: Financial Modeling for Long-Term Stability” workshop, the Dutchess Land Conservancy of...