Human health is in crisis. Around the world, rates of chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disorders, and certain cancers are soaring. In the United States, chronic diseases are the leading causes of death and disability and the leading driver of the nation’s $4.4 trillion in annual healthcare costs, according to the Center of Disease Control & Prevention. Despite medical advances, our health outcomes continue to decline – and the root causes go far deeper than the hospital or pharmacy.
One of the most overlooked drivers of this crisis lies in how we grow our food. Industrial agriculture has prioritized yield and efficiency at the expense of nutrition and resilience. The result: highly processed, calorie-dense but nutrient-deficient food systems that deplete our soils, weaken our immune systems, and foster chronic inflammation – the underlying condition in many diseases.
The Link Between Soil and Human Health
Healthy soil teems with life – microbes, fungi, and minerals that support robust plant growth and, ultimately, nutrient-dense food. But decades of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and monoculture farming have stripped the land of this vitality. When the soil is sick, our food is less nutritious. Studies show a significant decline in the mineral and vitamin content of fruits and vegetables over the last 50 years.
This nutrient depletion matters. Diets lacking in essential micronutrients contribute to poor metabolic health, immune dysfunction, and chronic inflammation – key factors in the rise of chronic disease. Moreover, chemical residues from industrial farming may disrupt hormones and gut health, further exacerbating health challenges.
Regenerative Agriculture as a Health Intervention
Regenerative agriculture offers a promising solution. By focusing on soil health, biodiversity, and ecological balance, regenerative practices – such as cover cropping, composting, rotational grazing, and reduced tillage – can restore nutrient cycles and increase the nutritional value of our food.
But this is more than a farming method – it’s a healthcare strategy. By rebuilding the foundation of our food system to address the root cause of so many health challenges, regenerative agriculture can help prevent them before they start. It’s an upstream intervention with downstream impacts: better soil leads to better food, which leads to better health – and the potential for significant systemic cost-saving.
Where Investment Can Make a Difference
Of course, the path to rebuilding the foundation of the food system is not that simple – it will take significant shifts in agriculture, food processes, and consumer behavior. Capital can be a key lever in accelerating these shifts across many different areas of agriculture and food. Some investments can be more directly related to human health outcomes and others are less obvious, nuanced by the complexity of agricultural system, but all can contribute. Because of the diverse range of interventions, there’s also a role for diverse investors and funders – including philanthropic, debt, and even venture – seeking a variety of financial and impact returns.
Potential investment areas include:
- Transition finance: Supporting farmers with flexible, patient capital as the shift from conventional to regenerative practices can reduce the use of synthetic chemical and increase soil biology and health, leading to healthier, less toxic food.
- Example investment: Mad Capital and its Perennial Funds (I and II) focus on supporting farmers with patient debt capital and other resources during the process of transition from conventional to organic and regenerative.
- Supply chain investment: Building infrastructure for regenerative grains, legumes, and livestock can help scale access to healthier, nutrient-dense ingredients. Without this dedicated infrastructure, regenerative producers must weigh their alternatives – including not scaling production or selling product into conventional supply chains where the prices may be lower and the quality and nutritional benefits to consumers may be diluted.
- Example investment: Green Acres Milling is a Midwest, farmer-owned company focused on oat milling. The company raised a $2.4 million loan through crowdfunding platform Steward earlier this month and is in the process of financing a new $55 million facility to improve the oat supply chain by processing locally grown, non-glyphosate oats, offering traceability and direct access to a premium oat market for participating farmers.
- Soil health technology: Funding tools to measure and monitor soil carbon, biodiversity, and nutrient density, can help provide the scientific foundation for understanding the connection between how we farm and the quality of the food we eat. This increased awareness – and data to back it up – can help build trust in food and drive markets for healthy, regenerative food.
- Example investment: Edacious is a food lab and nutritional software platform that measures nutrient density and safety. Their goal is to make the food systems more transparent with more accessible data – leading to healthier people and planet. The start-up raised an $8.1 million seed funding round earlier this year.
- Food-as-medicine: Backing companies, non-profits, and healthcare systems integrating regenerative foods into dietary interventions and preventative care, can play a critical role in actually getting healthy food into the hands of people – and often those who need it most.
- Example investment: FreshRx, which aims to address nutritional inequity through programs that provide education and access to healthy produce. The 501(c)(3) accepts donations and philanthropic capital.
- Consumer education and brands: Investing in consumer-facing brands that prioritize regenerative sourcing and educate consumers about the link between soil and health, can accelerate the shift to healthier food and human at several points throughout the system, as many regenerative food brands are not just building food companies for consumers but building entire supply chains from the farmer to the consumer.
- Example investment: GoodSAM Foods is a regenerative CPG company that make healthy chocolate, nuts, coffee and fruit sourced from regenerative farmers in Latin America accessible to consumers. The company raised a $9 million series A round earlier this year.
Who’s Investing at the Intersection of Agriculture and Health?
Several funds, family offices, foundations and investment vehicles are recognizing the intrinsic link between soil health, human health, and long-term economic value. Here are a few examples of funds and family offices who maintain human health as a core priority in their agriculture and food investment strategies:
The First Thirty: UK-based venture company The First Thirty has recently launched a new AgriHealth investment strategy that focuses on transforming agriculture into healthcare by investing in technologies that contribute to the shift towards quality and health-focused systems. Read more about TFT’s strategy here and join us for RFSI’s webinar on July 30.
The Nest: Belgium-based family office, The Nest, invests to build “a more resilient food system through supporting natural solutions and innovative technologies that change the way we produce food.” With both an investment arm and a foundation arm, The Nest is able to allocate different types of capital (venture, equity and philanthropic) to a variety of different sub-themes, ranging from agricultural technology, food companies, and school nutrition programs. Learn more about their approach and vision here.
Manna Tree Partners: With a mission to “invest in companies that empower consumers to live better, longer lives through improved health and wellness,” Manna Tree Partners makes equity investments into growth-stage companies – including healthy food companies, while seeking to deliver strong financial returns.
Rockefeller Foundation: With a much broader vision of being a global leader in using philanthropy to promote the well-being of humanity, in the past 5 years The Rockefeller Foundation has allocated an increased and significant amount of capital and attention to the intersection of agriculture and health. Notably, the Foundation has committed over $100 million to Food is Medicine programs since 2019, funding research, pilot programs, and policy initiatives to integrate nutrition-based healthcare solutions into the U.S. health system.
Regeneration as Business, Ecological AND Human Health Imperative
The chronic disease epidemic impacting the US and many countries around the globe isn’t just a healthcare problem – it’s an agricultural one, rooted in the way we grow, process, and consume our food. But within that problem lies a powerful opportunity. By recognizing investments in regenerative agriculture as not only an ecological imperative – but a critical public health opportunity – potential outcomes can be re-envisioned. Investments can catalyze the regeneration of human health, while driving significant healthcare cost savings and strengthening the potential for financial and impact returns on investments.
Want to learn more about investing at the intersection of agriculture and human health? Join us July 30 for a special RFSI webinar digging into this topic! Learn more and register here!
Interested in the companies who are innovating at the nexus of agriculture and human health? Join us at the RFSI Forum in Minneapolis on Oct. 7-8 where we will dig into this topic and much more, as well as hear from 4 pitchers working on solutions in the space.
Are you an early-stage start-up innovating on solutions in this space? Check out our RFSI Forum pitch session and consider applying today!
Sarah Day Levesque is Managing Director at RFSI & Editor of RFSI News. She can be reached here.