 I'm excited to introduce this session, Financing Strategies for Sustainable, Equitable, and Secure Food Systems. Without further ado, I would like to pass the mic to our moderator of the afternoon, Jennifer Astone. Thank you so much. Thanks so much. Welcome to Financing Strategies for Sustainable, Equity, Equitable, and Secure Food Systems. I first want to acknowledge that we are on the land of the Ramatush Ohlone peoples. And there was a question this morning about compensation. If you're interested, there's a Giving Shumi project that's on the Justice Funders website. And I encourage you to check it out. It's part of our responsibility beyond acknowledgement. I'm very sad that Rex Raymond of the Transformative Initiative in Food Systems is unable to be here today due to illness. So I'm stepping in at the last minute with these incredible panelists to talk about issues that are really, really dear to Rex's heart and to the global lines for the future of food as well. As you may know, we're here to really share and build on the work of inspiring leaders who are tailoring businesses and financial models to meet the needs of nature and communities. Some of the stories of these leaders were captured in a report that was issued last year called Mobilizing Money and Movements that TIPS developed with the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. The report highlights six inspiring examples of companies and initiatives that used financing creatively to build wealth in the communities and enhance natural capital. The report identified five shared characteristics for building sustainable food system enterprises. These entrepreneurs lead to serve, engage with movements, center healthy food, invest in skills development, and adapt through innovation. I was the lead author on that report and will be speaking to one of those initiatives today. And one of the companies highlighted is Organically Grown Company, which is an affiliate of alternative ownership advisors. And Natalie Reitman-White is on the panel today. And we're joined here by Lodlita Nunn, Nunn of Potlaker Capital, and Anthony Chang of Manzanita Capital Collective, who will also share stories of getting fair and inclusive capital into food and farming businesses. So let's start by unpacking key dimensions of innovative investment in business structures. If the goal is fair and inclusive returns, what do you consider fair and inclusive returns, Anthony? You work with many BIPOC entrepreneurs and you work with asset owners to facilitate non-extractive investment. What do you consider to be fair and inclusive returns? Thanks for the question, Jen. And thanks for stepping in for Rex in moderating. I think when I think about this question, fair and inclusive financial returns, the question that comes up is for me is for who? Who are we talking about? Are these our financial returns for investors? And I think that's fundamentally flawed in how we're like maybe even framing the question. In general, I think we need to go from centering investors and well-folders in this work to really centering frontline communities of color if we want to be able to advance the equitable just food systems that we're looking for. And so speaking to the people in this room, I think it's like people with wealth need to stop centering your needs and especially around financial return. I think folks that work with well-folders and foundations and other institutions can stop centering the needs of your clients around their needs or financial returns and really be thinking about what are the communities that you all are trying to work with and support in advancing a more just and equitable food system and what are their needs and how can capital show up in that way? In our work at Man City Capital Collective, we're in relationship with and accountable to tribes and indigenous land stewards, farmers of color and other folks working on food and land justice. And so what does it mean for it to be fair and inclusive for them? And I think we need to pull back to a context of massive accumulation and concentration of wealth in this country that traces its origins to the theft of indigenous land enslavement of black people and exploitation of labor. So in one of our projects that we work on with justice funders, one of our movement partners, Black Farmer Fund, asked, why are wealth holders, in this case foundations, earning a financial return off of wealth accumulated via stolen land and labor? How and why is that just? So for us, the North Star is the redistribution and return of land and money to frontline communities of color from which they were stolen. And in the meantime, as we are trying to do that work, that might not be possible with many of your kind of families and institutions or clients at this point, but moving directionally towards that, like non-extractive finance, zero percent loans where folks with the most resources are the ones taking the risk. I think that's what we should be talking about when we're talking about fair and inclusive financial returns. Thank you, Anthony. Natalie Organically Grown Company is highlighted in the report and it is a lighthouse of wealth creation. You were at Organically Grown Company and now at Alternative Ownership Advisors working on organizational, legal and fiscal structures that enable and empower the stakeholders in a business to generate wealth fairly. Can you give an example of ownership and governance structures that are leading to better outcomes? Thanks for the question. Hi everyone. So for us, it's really about reimagining and redesigning capitalism by looking at the structure of the business enterprise itself and the structure of the corporation and really looking at who makes the decisions and where does the money go. So we wanna use the engine of entrepreneurship to generate products and services that further a sustainable food system, but we really need to look at who's making the decisions and holding the steering wheel in those companies and who's benefiting. So we've been working with businesses in the food system to use a new legal form for ownership in the United States called a perpetual purpose trust where the common equity, the controlling shares are actually held by a purpose, not a person. So no one individual can sell off the underlying enterprise, the vehicle for entrepreneurship that's changing the food system through its products and services is not for sale. And then what we've been doing is we've been structuring the participation of all the different stakeholders. So investors are one stakeholder that is bringing something to the table, but so our employees who are putting their labor every day so are the suppliers that are bringing their product and selling it through the enterprise so are the customers and the community advocacy organization that create the landscape in which the business is successful. So we really look at sharing the governance amongst those groups and know one of those groups can take over the steering wheel and move it away from that purpose. And we also structure formally in the financial flows of the company people benefiting from the money that the enterprise makes through a cash flow waterfall. So just a quick example of that we just recently transitioned local Ocean Seafood on the Oregon coast to this model. They're a home delivery program for seafood selling at a restaurant locally in the community and doing markets. They're distributing millions of pounds of seafood but their purpose is around creating a sustainable fishery economy. Nobody in their stakeholder group can take them off that purpose. They have to stay committed to introducing people to local sustainable foods. But the employees and the fishermen share in the governance towards that purpose and share in their awards. Thanks Natalie. I'm gonna now give an example from the report the Cooperativa Ejusei to talk a little bit about what does blended finance mean? We hear this term a lot and one of the things that really struck me in doing the research for the report was that it's much different than I had originally expected. So briefly, Ejusei Cooperativa is rooted in movement organizing of local Mayan communities in the states of the Yucatan, Campeche and Quintana Roo. One of the issues the local communities raised 20 years ago was creating strong local income streams to stem out migration. And what they did is they introduced honey production techniques and organized the communities into cooperatives to seek initially fair trade certification and later organic. And honey production for income fit alongside their subsistence milpa production which is an indigenous highly productive biodiverse production system of intercropped corn, beans and squash. The cooperative however was the lynchpin of all this organizing. It was focused on the values of democracy, inclusivity and respect for the environment. So by using both fair trade and organic certification the cooperatives able to provide their producer members with a higher price. They also built a honey processing plant over 10 years, which further increased their revenue. So what were some of the financing mechanisms? Well one of the pieces is fair trade importers in Europe who are advancing up to 60% of invoices up front which helps farmers with production costs as well as education, healthcare and other household needs. Grants have also been key to building their infrastructure from the global environment facility created their regional honey collection centers and Kellogg Foundation has continued to support ongoing cooperative education and organizing processes that have been central to their success. Social enterprise finance loans from shared interest UK and root capital at below market rates as well as a loan from the National Development Bank in Mexico have been critical to their success. And as this was born from a movement it is continually revitalized by movement as the introduction of GMO crops in the Yucatan has been successfully fought off by a band of Mayan groups that got together to fight the introduction of pesticides and GMO crops which would have undermined their organic certification. So now let me, and this is all indigenous communities that have come together to form this very strong and growing cooperative. Let me now, Lilita turn to you and ask you to bring it together for us. You are combining many elements at Potlicker Capital. What are you doing to pursue fair and inclusive returns? Yeah, thanks, Jen. Hello, everyone. At Potlicker Capital, we are using an integrated capital approach to support BIPOC farmers, black indigenous people of color. And we do this in a multifaceted way by not only bringing what we call reparative capital so it's social capital, technical assistance and also financial capital that is non-extractive. We provide low or no interest rate loans to BIPOC farmers. We also are connecting them with distribution. We are also ensuring that the terms of those loans are flexible, non-extractive. It could be interest only for a period of time before it converts. And in an example of that, we supported a biracial farmer right outside of Chicago who purchased 30 acres of land. This was an ag tourism business. We were also able to partner with another financial provider in order to make this less de-risk the deal for the entities involved. We were able to provide her with not only grant capital to help with her operations, but also provided her with a loan at 2.75%, non-extractive. It is important that we work alongside the BIPOC farming community, understanding what their needs are and being able to come in and provide them with resources and solutions that help them not only thrive, survive, but also scale and grow. This is, again, reparative in nature. And when I say reparative in nature, we wanna acknowledge as has been done the historical implications that black and brown farmers have faced for centuries. We are on stolen land that has been worked by a culture, a population of people that to this day are still disinvested in and are systemically harmed. And so we wanna bring in this reparative capital so that it is uplifting this sector and also bringing in solutions that help them grow. Thank you. I'm just gonna point out to everyone, we don't have a mic, so if you wanna ask a question, if you can tap it into the mobile device, that would be fantastic. And I'm gonna do some follow-up questions now, but I will also look for audience questions. Anthony, I'm gonna turn to you and we're gonna talk about what strategies do you see to achieve fair inclusive returns. Let's look at the investor side. What should they be thinking about? I think we at Manzanita Capital Collective really want to encourage investors to look at who they're surrounded by and really listen to frontline communities of color that are doing the work. And maybe some investors that we know are not in relationship already, so they can perhaps like ask people in their community who are connected, who have those deep and trusted relationships and really ask folks what they need. If we're really going to go after impacts, if we're really gonna build a fair, equitable, just food system, then I think that black and brown farmers, indigenous land stewards and others, they're already doing the work on the land, they might be disinvested in, they might not have all the resources that they want and lead, whether that be capital, land, et cetera. But I'm sure they know what they need and if they're given the opportunity to share and have their voice in terms of what kind of capital, on what terms, whether it be a mix of grants and loans at a 0% interest rate over 10, 15, 20 years, whatever it might be, leading with what do you need and starting from that place and not starting from a place of what do I need as an investor. Okay. Lolita, you also raised money for Potlaker Capital. How do you approach investors about the kind of capital that you need and how it aligns with outcomes? Yeah, it's very important, I want to say to align yourself, if you're with the mission aligned organizations. Potlaker Capital, we are a social justice, racial justice organization that is here to repair past harms and bring capital to these communities. And we ourselves need non-extractive loans in the sense that it is low interest rates or recoverable grants or grant dollars in order to redeploy these to support the farming communities. So now I'd like to turn to entrepreneurs. How would you counsel and talk to entrepreneurs about seeking strategies for seeking investment, Natalie? I'll just echo what Anthony was saying in terms of not going out to the marketplace and saying what role investors take and then contorting your behavior to meet what investors need, but instead making the case for what you need and where capital fits into helping you grow what you need and what a reasonable return is on balance with the other stakeholders that you are serving in your ecosystem. And really it's really for investors about being in right relationship in terms of thinking about the fact that they're bringing something to the table, but others are bringing something to the table and ultimately the equity is in the purpose that this business is benefiting and that we can share in the returns for it, but nobody has the right to take over and kind of own as their private property the value that's being created, that value actually exists for and by itself and that needs to continue and your investment is for a period of time that needs to be rewarded alongside others who are also putting their resources and their livelihoods in to make that happen. They also need a return. So really thinking about what is that right relationship and thinking about it more as a circle versus thinking about investors being kind of at the top of the food chain and driving the vehicle. Instead, this is a vehicle that we're all participating in and we need to be in right relationship with each other and work out through open dialogue what is an appropriate return for the different stakeholders. And sometimes that's an odd thing to do because most investors are used to participating where I'm not gonna tell you what I'm getting and you're not gonna tell me what you're getting and we're gonna hide behind and each try to get the most that we can versus actually thinking about it in a relational way and saying, how do you get what's gonna be reasonable for you to be sustained? How do I get that? What does this look like? And ultimately, how do we sustain the purpose? Cause that's what we're here for. So I wanna add one other thing that I learned from the report is that many of these transformative food system leaders and initiatives are not actually, they're not taking commercial capital number one and some of them are self-financed 100% which is really fascinating. A good example from the cooperativa, as you say, is the fact that they built their, refining their honey processing plant in Merida over 10 years and you may ask, well, does it really take 10 years to build a processing facility? No, it doesn't. However, they were unwilling to take on external capital which could undermine their ownership of the cooperative. So their cooperative members said, you know what, we're gonna self-finance this and it looks like it's gonna take us 10 years to build this and we don't wanna take a revenue or income cut while it's being purchased because it's important for our families to have that income so we can continue to pay school fees and take care of health and medical care. They did that, they completed the building over a 10-year period from 2010 to 2019 and they are in firm control of their resources and they're growing and building out their cooperative as we speak. So I'm gonna now turn- Jen, do you mind if I add a couple of examples? Yeah, go right ahead. Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to add a couple of examples to kind of, I think, illustrate some of what we're talking about. There's two projects that we've worked on at Manzanita Capital Collective that came to mind. One is an $11.5 million purchase on organic farmland property outside of Watsonville, California where we worked in partnership with their capital partners and kitchen table advisors and the People's Land Fund. We purchased a property in order to transfer it to a group of Latino immigrant organic farmers. What they needed in terms of kind of following what I was saying before around listening to farmers and what they needed is that a bunch of these farmers have super successful small organic farm businesses, they're thriving, they have $100,000 in sales. What they don't have is family and friends money. What they don't have is hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars to be able to put on down payment and they don't have access to the size parcels that they need. So we banded together with them to be able to purchase this $11.5 million property and had $2 million of grants, $6.5 million of mostly 0% interest loan money and $3.5 million of equity that can provide some of the capital, some of the family and friends money to be able to acquire the property and eventually to be able to transfer it over to them. So there's like this mix of, Lily, do you're saying this mix of grant capital, debt capital? No, no interest loan capital, some equity to be able to make the deal work and that's what could for these farmers that do produce commercially, selling at farmers markets wholesale, et cetera, they could afford to service that debt. They didn't have the down payment, they needed the grants and other things to help make that happen, but they could service like $9.5 million of debt and equity. Conversely, we're working in another project with a group of tribal members that are trying to start an indigenous medicine farm that's mostly for cultural medicines that will stay in the community. There'll be a very, very tiny slice of that that will be sold commercially. And so for them, the flip of what we're looking at is 80% grants, 20% no interest loan for them to be able to acquire the land to be able to accomplish what they needed. And it started with asking the question, like what are you trying to do? What do you need? What is the capital that will facilitate that happening and being able to work with them to find the capital partners that will do it? And each of the farmers that we work with, each of the projects that we work with will look different, but starting with asking the question, we can get to some pretty creative answers around what the capital stack or capital break can look like. Yeah, I'll just chime in on that. Let's go right ahead. And you bring up something very important, Anthony, is that when you are working in this space, you have to be a relationship with the folks that you're working with. We are in relationship with the BIPOC farmers. It is not transactional. It is not one-off. We plan to be there for years because just giving someone a loan is not going to help them grow, sustain. It's a journey. And you really have to ask those tough questions and be in relationship with them so that the growth of their work is also reflected on your organization. You're making an impact at the individual level, which is the farmer. You're impacting the community because that farmer is going directly to the community that they live and serve in. And you're helping to shift systems and empower the farmer themselves, which is one of the most critical parts. And so as you go and you're doing this work, you just really need to make sure that you're bringing in that community voice, that farmer, that individual voice, and listening to them and working alongside them to create those solutions, whether that is on the board level, advisories, inviting that voice into making the decisions, help providing those solutions is instrumental and imperatively important. And I was on a call with you recently about a equipment trust that the farmers suggested. You want to just give an example of that. Yeah, it's in the south. So Potlicker Capital is a national fund and we have geographical specific areas that we're focused in. And in the Mississippi Delta area, working with small farmers, they cannot afford to buy large pieces of equipment. And so one of the things that we're doing with others is creating an equipment trust where this will be shared equipment that could be utilized through with these 10 to 20 farmers. And so again, non-extractive and also listening to the voice of the farmer and addressing their needs. And someone locally will kind of be the manager of it, but we're coming in and working alongside to provide the solutions that's needed. Fantastic. Do you want to add anything Natalie to this? Well, most of the folks that we're working with are more at the succession end of the spectrum. So social entrepreneurs who have built their businesses and usually bootstrap their businesses because they haven't wanted to take outside investment because they didn't want to give up control. But they need a succession strategy and they're trying to figure out how to make sure the values of which they've operated their businesses and really acted as a steward of their business in terms of not being extractive themselves and growing the business over time is sustained. So we're often working with recapitalization into a purpose trust structure where the business will stay permanently independent with the purpose locked into its DNA so that no one can change it. And they're usually in a period of needing to get some capital out as well as needing, for the first time, often entertaining the notion that they could actually bring on capital to expand their impact. In a way that wouldn't be extractive and could actually add value and allow them to grow their impact, which many of them have been, they wanted that, but they've been wary of entering into conversations that might cause them to change, get off purpose and change direction. So we're really helping folks and it's a combination like you're saying of often debt and equity financing as well as owner self-financing. Fantastic. So we're gonna go a little bit off of the approach that most of these plenary panels and actually turn it amongst yourselves. I'm gonna give you five minutes to turn to one or two or three people at your table to talk about the strategies. If you're obviously interested in food and finance and agriculture and to share what you're learning, what strategies you're using and we're gonna popcorn out some of these ideas. I know there's a lot of really brilliant investors and entrepreneurs in this room and I want you to get a chance to get to know each other and then we'll come back for some closing comments and you're also welcome to put questions in but I'm gonna give you five minutes starting now. Don't be shy. I know there's really capital providers and entrepreneurs, go right ahead. Thanks, Phil. Yeah. Others? Oh, come on. I don't believe it. I think a lot of these tribes wanna give you some chance to pick a year for a little bit across in the states that are venture that are doing these corporate initiatives that are looking for these investors. What are the strategies that I believe that investors think there's funding there and not all of us, most of us, 80% of us don't get to see them. So that's a big myth that we have to battle automatically. You guys got casinos, it's not for that. Casinos are for equity and to be able to give the economy a boost for our tribal members to work. So that's a myth that we gotta be right away. But the strategy I have is I just got back to Wisconsin for Bill Nattis and I have a cooperative with the White Point initiative going on right now and out of the 7,000 tribal members, there's six out there, shipping corn and getting it ready. The problem is we're having the investors, they don't know what the investors want. They don't even know what the investors need some training for these people. If we had somebody to go to help us, find out how to ask for investment, not to what we need to put on the ground for us. And the biggest challenge amongst all these tribes is that's not how we did it traditionally. So fighting that, but if we want to continue from a wellness in our communities, we gotta make that initial step. But the buy-in for the community is the biggest thing. So we can show a successful tribal individual abundance. That's the strategy that I know I need to bring to these other tribes. So that's what you like. I appreciate that very much and come and talk to me afterwards. I have some people to connect you with. Anyone else? Yes, please do. Thank you. Yes. One more comment. Can you keep it to a minute? Thank you. Thank you, thank you. I love it. We're highlighting place-based strategies, the importance of grants and technical assistance as a runway for people to start to get into entrepreneurship, the need for big capital that's aligned with movements and communities. Those are all great strategies. I'm gonna turn to the panelists for some final comments as we wrap up. Let's see, yeah. Anthony, I wanna turn to you and I know we can't have these conversations without talking about power dynamics and the need to renegotiate relationships between entrepreneurs and asset owners and allocators. What is your advice about how to navigate these conversations and really to start them and initiate them in a sustainable way so people don't walk away from the table? How do we do that? How do we think about that? Yeah, I appreciate the question, Jen. And I think it connects to all of the comments that came in from the audience around and connected some of the things that we've been talking around, listening, asking the questions and listening to frontline communities of color, asking what they need and remembering that it's not just about shifting capital where it goes but it's also about shifting power. And just listening to some of the folks that spoke here is like they are doing the work on the ground. They know what's needed. It's just, it's under invested in and folks just need the resources. And Bill, I appreciate what you said about starting with a billion dollars. You start with the billion so you can do the next two billions, you can do the next 10 and then 100, right? And I think it was easy perhaps to lose part of the thread that you said, but it's really about foundations, wealth holders, investment advisors letting go of this decision making and really handing it over to democratic governance by tribes, by indigenous folks, by communities of color so that they are the closest to the solution. They know where to channel the funds. Okay, and another final point, Natalie, around. So one of the things I think some people don't envision is that they're actually capital holders that see the return on investment as being multiple, not just financial, but also in terms of social, environmental, et cetera. And I know you attracted quite a bit of capital in order to convert OGC. So talk to me about these investors and who they are and why they were interested in a different return. Yeah, well, we did over 20 million dollars to refinance the ownership of organically grown and put it into a purpose trust. So now it's owned by the purpose and we did it through a combination of debt and equity financing. And with regard to the debt, we did it with RSF Social Finance and it was very much an open process around with the equity investors about where everyone was going to sit and what the company could really afford and we really centered the company first and really made sure that whatever we were signing up for wouldn't take away wealth or returns from our employees and our farmers, et cetera, that it wouldn't cause us to have to behave in a way where we weren't able to provide good wages and good returns. So we had an open discussion there and then in terms of how they get rewarded, I mean, we basically show over time that the pie is this big and we have a dedicated cash flow waterfall so it's not elective. Well, maybe if I feel like it, I can give some money back to the workers and to the farmers and to the community advocacy organizations. It's actually built in as a mandatory part of where the money flows. And as part of that money flow with regard to the farmers and community ally organizations and people who sell the fruits and vegetables, Anthony was actually part of our process of designing the people who would be impacted with those decisions, how they would have access to asking for what they need. And it's not perfect, we're learning as we go but we're trying to figure out how the people who most need the funds can tell us what they need the funds for and be a part of deciding who gets the funds. So that's part of how we're dividing up the pie in terms of the money that is generated from the enterprise. Also, we completely did away with annual shareholder meetings and we have something called an annual stakeholder gathering which invites everyone to the table and we've, from a governance standpoint, whether you invest a million dollars or invest 50,000, which is our minimum investment, everybody has one vote for our trust protector committee as well as workers, farmers, et cetera. So it's a shared governance structure and an opportunity to be in relationship with each other and actually have dialogue on a regular basis. Thank you. We are at the last two minutes and I wanna give Lolita a chance but I just want the other speakers, I'll give you 10 seconds to give your advice or your call to action. We wanna leave investors and entrepreneurs with a call to action but Lolita I wanna give you a final word here on your advice for entrepreneurs and others. Yeah, absolutely. I would just have to add that everything that the panelists have said is spot on and coming into this work at Potlicker working with BIPOC farmers, we're not farmers, we are governed by farmers. So we invite the farmers are part of our board, they're on our advisory committee, they are part of our investment committee and tapping into that voice is important. So as you are out there and you are working in different communities with different cultures, it is important to invite those community voices into help shape and inform the solutions that you are seeking to make an impact in this community, in your country, in the world. So call to action, Anthony. Shifting power, you don't have to do it alone. Common future who's in the room like has a participatory investing thing. Justice funders has a just transition investment community. If you're interested in shifting power, you don't have to do it alone, you can find the community of people that are trying to do it as well. Natalie. Take a deep look at the structures and really redesigning the structures of investment and governance to create different outcomes. Alita, take a look at the people around you. Is it representing your community? And you know, Potlicker, we are two years into this work, this great work and we are actively raising funds from both accredited and non-accredited investors. And if you wanna learn more about the work we're doing, please stop me. And I would just say that it's really important to account for the co-benefits of the circular solidarity economies. It's benefiting folks in so many ways and investors are very attracted to non-financial returns. That's what I'm finding. And the other thing is open your eyes. These enterprises exist around the globe. They're initiatives that are doing incredibly important work without us investors. And we need to find a way to be part of transitioning our food systems for the long-term strategy and well-being and health of our communities and our planet. Thank you so much everyone for being here today.