The regenerative agriculture and food investing space is relatively nascent. Most funds in the space have not yet hit the 7 year mark, let alone 10 years. While capital flowing to the space has increased significantly in the past 5 years, it’s still a minuscule fraction of the overall capital flowing to agriculture, farmland, agtech, and food. And many investors are still sitting on the sidelines waiting for others to figure out how investment in this space works and what “results” will look like. However, there has been a small but active and growing ecosystem of investors, funders, and system builders doing this work across the globe for 5, 10, and in some cases even 15 years. These individuals and organizations are in the trenches, making initial investments, building regenerative agriculture strategies and funds, working to solve for the obstacles that keep farmers from transitioning, supply chains from adapting, and investors from adjusting their strategies. These are the people and organizations that comprise the RFSI ecosystem.
As we look forward to the 2025 RFSI Europe event in only 3 weeks, we are reminded that the programming we have planned for this year’s gathering has everything to do with the past and the paths that these pioneers of regenerative agriculture and food systems investment have paved to date. Applying lessons from both RFSI’s nearly decade-long work in the regenerative agriculture investing space, as well as those from our global community’s work, the 2025 RFSI Europe program is a culmination of the the needs and aspirations that this space has expressed. So what exactly does this space need in 2025 to continue to rise to its potential?
The 2024 RFSI Europe program offered some key insights from last year’s program that continue to inform our work and the 2025 program, which will take place 26-27 February in Brussels. Here’s a look back at the calls to action that last year’s program left us with:
Key themes included:
- The need for farmer-centered investment approaches that account for both on-farm and systemic support
- Technological innovation designed to work with and enhance nature, rather than work against or extract from
- Collaboration across diverse stakeholder groups from across the systems – including diverse types of capital
- Finance innovation, the kind that reinvents how capital has traditionally been invested in agriculture and food, in order to avoid similar outcomes
Watch our 2024 speakers share about some of these here.
In 3 weeks, RFSI Europe’s robust community of diverse investors and funders, farmers, and system builders will dig into these objectives and many more as we seek to strategically advance investments in regenerative agriculture and food systems.