The movement to finance the transition to regenerative agriculture in the American Midwest took a significant step forward this week. The TransCap Initiative, a collaborative innovation lab, announced the launch of Stage 2 of its systemic investing prototype—an ambitious project to reimagine how capital can be aligned and deployed to support regenerative agriculture and food systems at scale.
Backed by funding from the Walton Family Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation, this second phase will bring together 20 investors, funders, businesses, non-profits and farmer organizations in a bold, six-month collaboration. Their goal: to design a first-of-its-kind “capital orchestrator”—a financial platform that strategically coordinates multiple forms of capital to build a resilient, sustainable, and profitable agricultural sector.
Currently, investment in food and agriculture tends to be fragmented and siloed, with little alignment between stakeholders working toward similar goals. “We’re trying to address the capital architecture gap—what’s missing to scale change strategically across the system,” says Ivana Gazibara, Director of Prototyping at TransCap. “Capital is flowing into regenerative agriculture, but it’s often uncoordinated. The capital orchestrator is a shared platform to move from one-off solutions to coordinated portfolios that reflect the complexity and ambition of the agricultural transition we need.”
This groundbreaking effort will integrate a mix of grants, debt, and equity—what TransCap calls “polycapital”—to enable investment strategies that are mutually reinforcing. The Midwest was chosen as the testing ground not only because of its $152 billion contribution to the U.S. agricultural economy and its significant share of emissions, but also because of its potential to influence global food systems. “Whatever happens in the Midwest echoes throughout the world,” Gazibara told RFSI. “If you can do it in the Midwest, it can serve as a blueprint for other places.”
Participatory Blueprint Building
This next phase of work builds on the foundation laid in Stage 1, which took nearly a year and focused on “mapping the transition” to regenerative agriculture in the Midwest. Unlike traditional system maps that describe the status quo, TransCap’s approach identified the key enablers and blockers to systemic change—highlighting where innovation is most needed and where opportunities for transformation lie.
Through this mapping process, TransCap gained a much deeper understanding of the region’s diverse stakeholders—from farmers and grassroots organizers to investors and funders—and the barriers and levers that influence their ability to transition to regenerative practices.
One of the most important insights that emerged? The need for a capital orchestrator: a platform that doesn’t just move money, but strategically aligns multiple forms of capital—grants, debt, equity, guarantees—into coordinated portfolios designed to shift the whole system. Unlike traditional investment vehicles focused on financial returns or narrow themes, a capital orchestrator is built around a transformational mission, aiming to unlock synergies and scale impact.
But what would such a platform actually look like? That’s the focus of Stage 2: designing the blueprint for a capital orchestrator.
TransCap envisions the orchestrator as a “backbone organization” that mobilizes and coordinates capital flows into the areas most critical for regenerative agriculture in the Midwest. The goal is to move beyond fragmented funding toward a financial architecture capable of unlocking systemic tipping points and accelerating transition at scale.
To guide this next step, TransCap convened a Design Council made up of 20 leading organizations across the agricultural landscape—including Practical Farmers of Iowa, PepsiCo, Fractal Ag, and others. This group brings together grassroots networks, technical experts, nonprofits, investors, and philanthropic funders to engage in a participatory design process—co-creating a vision for how capital can be deployed more strategically and equitably.
Participatory grantmaking is a growing trend, notes Gazibara, but TransCap wanted to go a step further and ask: What would it mean to invest more democratically? More specifically: How do we bring farmers’ voices into the design of investment portfolios? The Design Council is central to exploring what participatory investing can look like in regenerative agriculture—and how it might reshape the future of food and finance.
*The 20 organizations comprising the Design Council are: the Platform for Agriculture and Climate Transformation, Transformational Investing in Food Systems (TIFS), Practical Farmers of Iowa, Minnesota Farmers Union, Walton Family Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, University of Minnesota Forever Green Initiative, Funders for Regenerative Agriculture (FORA), Zero Foodprint, Healing Soils Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund, Food System 6, CREO, Fractal Agriculture, Zell Family Office, McKnight Foundation, Midwest Row Crop Collaborative, Desert Bloom, PepsiCo, and Potlikker Capital.
Learnings So Far
Although the design process is still evolving, several priorities are already emerging for the capital orchestrator, according to Gazibara.
One key priority is for the orchestrator to function as a systemic intelligence platform—a hub that gathers and shares critical information to support stakeholders involved in the region’s agricultural transition. This could include tools such as a systemic capital framework for the Midwest, analyses that identify financing gaps, and actuarial-grade data on the risks and benefits of regenerative practices. By making this kind of intelligence accessible, the orchestrator would empower funders, investors, and practitioners to make more informed, strategic decisions.
Another widely supported priority is the need for a systemic capital matchmaker—a mechanism that can aggregate capital needs from across the ecosystem and facilitate capital flows accordingly. This would help align supply and demand for capital in a more coordinated, efficient way.
There’s also the possibility that the orchestrator could take on the role of allocating its own capital, anchoring specific investments to signal market direction. While this approach has potential benefits—such as guiding capital toward high-impact opportunities—it would also bring trade-offs that are still being explored.
What seems increasingly clear, Gazibara notes, is that TransCap itself will not serve as the capital orchestrator. Instead, its role is to steward the prototype process and guide the collaborative design. Ultimately, the orchestrator will be established as an independent entity, shaped by the collective insights and priorities emerging through this design phase.
What’s Next?
TransCap and the Design Council will continue to work on outlining the details for the capital orchestrator blueprint through regular meetings. In between the meetings, the small TransCap team does mini design sprints to advance the blueprint based on the design council feedback. The goal is to have a final plan and proposed blueprint for the capital orchestrator by this fall.
Equipped with the recommended plans from the Stage 2 blueprint, the next phase (Stage 3) will be implementation – the building of the capital orchestrator. This is set to kick-off in early 2026 and while The Walton Family Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation are funding phase 2, TransCap is in dialogue with others—philanthropic, public, and private—who are interested in supporting implementation.
Morgan Snyder, senior program officer, Walton Family Foundation shares, “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.”
Ultimately, project success will be defined by a multitude of factors. “We’re working with the Council to define shared outcomes,” says Gazibara. “Success will be measured by indicators of overall system health and transformation rather than isolated outcomes. Signals include stronger regional coordination, increased capital flow into regenerative efforts, and improved equity in resource access. Core metrics—such as acres transitioned, increased farmer income, and BIPOC land access—will guide progress toward a more resilient, connected, and just system.”
Perhaps the most transformative outcome of this work is its openness.
“We’re learning out loud with all of this,” says Gazibara. And in doing so, TransCap and its partners are not just accelerating local progress in the Midwest—they’re contributing to a global shift, helping transition efforts everywhere move further, faster.