What Renewable Energy Can Teach Us About Making Nature Investable

The policy architecture that turned wind and solar into an investable asset class—and what it could teach us about ecological infrastructure

In my last post, I argued that we do not need to wait for a new environmental market to begin investing in nature. Grassland restoration can already work within conventional farmland economics: land produces agricultural income, investors participate through a familiar asset class, and ecological improvement can strengthen the underlying asset without depending on the sale of a new credit.

But grasslands are only part of the answer to building a resilient future. Grazing income will not, by itself, finance the restoration of every wetland, floodplain, or riparian corridor we need to address the water challenges we have in the US. Natural infrastructure creates enormous public value, yet we do not have adequate mechanisms to compensate those that restore and maintain that infrastructure. We lack a systematic framework to effectively charge for that value to the communities, utilities, insurers, and businesses that benefit. As a result, the infrastructure has not been maintained and we experience the impact of this deferred maintenance on a regular basis.

We need to create the framework for greater capital to flow into natural infrastructure, and so we need to move beyond: “How do we put a price on nature?” to: How did another climate-positive infrastructure sector move from expensive, fragmented projects driven by sustainability to a repeatable market capable of attracting private capital at scale?

For the answer, we need to examine how renewable energy became investable.

Wind and solar did not scale because policymakers or investors discovered one perfect financial instrument. Nor did private capital simply arrive once the technologies became environmentally desirable. Renewable energy scaled because the United States gradually assembled a market architecture around it: independent power producers (IPPs) gained access to buyers; governments created demand (Renewable Portfolio Standards or RPS); long-term contracts converted that demand into predictable revenue (offtake agreements and Power Purchase Agreements); renewable energy certificates separated environmental attributes from the underlying electricity; tax incentives reduced project costs; and public finance absorbed risks private investors were not yet prepared to take.

Technology improved dramatically along the way. Manufacturing scale and competition lowered costs. But those gains occurred within a policy and financial system that gave developers a reason to build and investors a path to repayment. Those gains were possible because large amounts of capital were already flowing to the industry, creating incentives to improve technology and lower costs.

That distinction matters. If ecological infrastructure remains difficult to fund and finance, it may not be because nature lacks economic value. It is likely because we have not yet built the institutions that turn that value into durable demand and contracted cash flow.

First, the market had to open.

For much of the twentieth century, electric utilities were vertically integrated monopolies. They generated electricity, transmitted it, distributed it, and sold it to customers. An independent company could build a power plant, but it did not necessarily have a practical or legally enforceable route to connect to the system and sell its output.

The Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978—better known as PURPA—began changing that structure. PURPA established a new class of “qualifying facilities,” including certain renewable-energy and cogeneration facilities. It gave those facilities the right to sell energy or capacity to utilities and, subject to applicable rules, required utilities to purchase their output. Qualifying facilities could generally sell at the purchasing utility’s avoided cost—the incremental cost the utility would otherwise incur by generating the power itself or buying it from another source—or at a negotiated rate. PURPA also gave qualifying facilities certain interconnection rights and relief from some traditional utility regulation. (FERC).

PURPA did not create the modern renewable-energy industry by itself. Its implementation varied by state, and the avoided-cost framework has always been contested. But it established a foundational principle: an infrastructure service did not have to be produced by the incumbent utility in order to be purchased by the system.

That mattered because it gave independent developers a legally recognized path into a previously closed market. If a qualifying facility could supply energy at the utility’s avoided cost, the utility generally could not reject the purchase simply because it preferred to generate the electricity itself. The policy protected consumers from paying more than the utility’s alternative cost while creating a market opportunity for non-utility generators.

Think of many renewable energy companies that exist today that develop projects and sell them to utilities or own and operate themselves, selling power into the grid. Companies such as Invenergy and Doral Renewables are Independent Power Producers that operate within the market architecture that grew from the initial enabling effect of PURPA and other policies, discussed further below.

This may be the most important lesson for ecological infrastructure. A farmer, landowner, conservation organization, or restoration developer should not need to become a stormwater utility or flood-control district in order to provide water storage, peak-flow reduction, groundwater recharge, or nutrient removal. A future system could recognize independent ecological-service providers and create a standardized route through which public or regional buyers procure their services. This happens today on a fragmented basis, but a federally authorized program could require utilities, states and municipalities to look at alternative solutions to meet their objectives outside of their own system. Many government entities get hung up on “design-build” terminology and procurement limitations, but enabling legislation could address this in the same way that PURPA enabled procurement of electricity via IPPs.

THE WHY THEN: The federal government was motivated to pass PURPA because of the 1970s energy crisis and the need to strengthen domestic energy security.

THE WHY NOW: The federal government should be motivated to pass new enabling legislation for ecological infrastructure because it is becoming too expensive not to. In the first half of 2026 alone, extreme billion-dollar weather disasters cost $31.9 billion in damages and at least 183 lives.

Next, state-level policy created buyers.

Market access was necessary, but it was not sufficient. A developer can have the legal right to sell something and still have no dependable customer.

States addressed that problem through renewable portfolio standards (RPS) policies. These laws generally require utilities or electricity suppliers to obtain a defined share of their electricity from qualifying renewable resources. Instead of hoping that buyers would voluntarily pay more for cleaner power, states created recurring demand through regulation.

The scale of that demand has been significant. As of 2024, 29 states and the District of Columbia had binding RPS policies, while a growing number of states had adopted broader clean-electricity standards. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that almost half of the growth in U.S. renewable-electricity generation and capacity since 2000 was nominally associated with state RPS requirements, although the share has declined as other drivers have grown. (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

This is what voluntary ecological markets generally lack. Corporations, philanthropies, and public agencies may choose to fund restoration, but voluntary demand is vulnerable to changing budgets, leadership, and priorities. A project developer cannot finance a 30-year wetland restoration project on the assumption that a buyer might continue purchasing credits one year at a time.

Renewable portfolio standards created something far more powerful than environmental interest: an obligated buyer.

An ecological equivalent could require a defined amount of qualifying water storage, flood mitigation, nutrient reduction, habitat, or other landscape services within an appropriate geographic area. Because ecological services are location-dependent, this could not operate as a simple nationwide market. One acre-foot of water storage in the wrong watershed is not interchangeable with one acre-foot upstream of a flood-prone community. Demand would likely need to be organized at the state, basin, or watershed level. That makes it even more important to have state-mandated buying. Ecological infrastructure has to be distributed infrastructure and regionally specific to achieve the necessary outcomes.

The underlying principle still applies: markets scale when public policy turns a widely recognized need into recurring procurement.

THE WHY THEN: States adopted RPS amid electricity-market restructuring, growing environmental concerns, and a desire to improve energy security by diversifying the power supply and reducing exposure to fossil-fuel shortages and price volatility.

THE WHY NOW: States should be motivated to adopt Ecological Portfolio Standards (EPS) to reduce the impact of severe weather and environmental health hazards on its constituents, incentivize reduced reliance on foreign produced inputs like fertilizer, and strengthen domestic food and water supplies.

Certificates made an invisible attribute ownable.

Renewable Portfolio Standards created mandated buyers for renewable energy projects (utilities and electricity suppliers). There was also growing interest from corporations, often major electricity consumers, to switch to renewable energy sources. However, there was often a mismatch between where energy was consumed and where renewable energy projects were being built. Further, electricity from different sources becomes indistinguishable once it enters a shared grid. A customer cannot look at an electron and determine whether it came from a wind turbine, a solar array, a coal plant, or a hydroelectric dam.

Renewable energy certificates solved an accounting problem. A REC represents the non-power attributes associated with one megawatt-hour of renewable electricity generated and delivered to the grid. The certificate can be tracked, transferred, retired, and used to substantiate a renewable-energy claim. (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)

That standardization allowed the environmental attribute to be recognized separately from the physical electricity. RECs became instruments for both compliance markets and voluntary purchasing by corporations.

Ecological infrastructure could also benefit from a standardized certificate that could be purchased in the voluntary market, and as a stop-gap in the compliance market while supply ramps up. It’s not a perfect analog to RECs, of course. A megawatt-hour is a standardized unit. Flood protection and water storage depend on location, timing, soil, antecedent moisture, watershed position, maintenance, and the intensity of a particular event. Ecological Infrastructure Certificates should therefore document a verified service within a defined geography; they should not imply that every unit is nationally interchangeable.

But it could provide a means for corporate buyers to start participating in this market. They already are, to some degree, through the Voluntary Water Benefit Accounting (VWBA) framework. What’s missing is a connection to a larger market framework that connects to regional watershed infrastructure and financing. The certificate would be the accounting layer. The physical project and its long-term service agreement would remain the foundation.

THE WHY THEN: Corporations started buying RECs to meet their sustainability goals in the absence of local renewable energy sources to supply their actual footprint. Utilities started buying RECs to meet their RPS when there was not yet adequate renewable energy projects to supply their actual footprint. The immediate effect was more funding flowing to renewable energy project development, and ultimately, more localized production as project development scaled.

THE WHY NOW: A few corporations are already buying VWBA projects. More corporations should be funding an ecological infrastructure equivalent to RECs because it offsets their supply chain impacts on water, biodiversity, and ecosystem function and reduces risk to their physical assets. Utilities could start buying these credits, but the more likely outcome would be that they would start investing in ecological infrastructure in their watershed proactively, potentially financed, in part, by the corporations tied to their geography.

Long-term contracts made projects financeable.

A mandate creates demand. It does not automatically make an individual project bankable.

Renewable-energy projects typically require substantial capital before they produce anything. Developers must secure land, permits, equipment, interconnection rights, engineering, and construction financing. These projects take multiple years and face complex permitting and engineering challenges, not unlike ecological infrastructure projects. Investors and lenders need confidence that, once built, the project will have a buyer and generate enough revenue to repay them.

Long-term power purchase agreements, or PPAs, became a central answer. Under a PPA, a utility, corporation, or other buyer agrees to purchase electricity—or the economic value associated with it—under defined terms for an extended period. The contract gives the project a predictable revenue stream. That predictable revenue, rather than the mere existence of sunlight or wind, supports project finance.

Left just to the utilities, renewable energy demand might have progressed more slowly. But there was a huge influx of demand from another buyer: corporations looking to offset their carbon footprint.

Utilities had long used PPAs, but their procurement was constrained by regulatory approvals, resource plans, and state requirements. Corporations such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Walmart could create additional demand based on sustainability commitments and electricity-price hedging, as described above. Many used “virtual” PPAs: the corporation did not physically receive the project’s electrons but entered into a long-term financial contract and received the RECs. In just three years, corporations signed PPAs worth 57.4 GW from 2018-2020—unlocking tens of billions of dollars in renewable energy project investment.

Corporations signing PPAs were going beyond RECS—they were not simply making charitable sustainability commitments. Through physical or virtual PPAs, they entered into long-term contracts tied to the output of renewable-energy projects. In a common virtual PPA structure, the independent power producer retained ownership of the project and sold its electricity into the wholesale market, while the corporation and producer settled the difference between the market price and an agreed contract price. The corporation effectively was buying a futures contract on energy pricing.  

The corporation typically received the renewable-energy certificates, while the producer gained the predictable revenue needed to finance construction. The corporation did not need to take physical delivery of the electricity for the contract to create value—but it also did not ordinarily own or resell the power itself.

This is the bridge that ecological infrastructure is largely missing.

Watersheds are not electricity grids. A corporation could sign a “Ecological Infrastructure Purchase Agreement” (EIPA) to finance a watershed restoration project, but in the current landscape, they would be just making a charitable sustainability commitment. This is how VWBA contracts work today—similar to a REC-only purchase.

Alternatively, corporations could become mandated buyers based on physical footprint of facilities, in which case their acquisition of ecological infrastructure effectively becomes part of their utility bill. That second structure is better, in my opinion. That structure better accounts for the corporate benefit of the infrastructure—lower risk of negative impacts to their physical assets. It also potentially makes the purchase more on par with an asset they can sell. If corporations invest through EIPAs, their physical footprint could have lower insurance or higher land value, which could be “resold” to future tenants.

Sidenote: A “hedge” on water prices doesn’t seem to make sense, as we don’t price water today like we do electricity and it’s not as “movable” as electrons, but there may be other analogs that do.

THE WHY THEN: Corporations signed long-term renewable energy PPAs for two reasons: 1) to obtain RECs, offset their carbon footprint amidst growing concern about climate change and help bring new renewable energy projects online (additionality); and 2) to secure a long-term financial hedge on energy prices (a financial asset rather than sustainability alone).

THE WHY NOW: A few corporations are already making voluntary investments in water stewardship due to a growing recognition that water supplies are valuable and under threat, or to support their social license to operate. We need this to grow beyond voluntary sustainability into a recognized financial investment that generates real ROI through reduced risk to physical assets. Some regional utilities are already doing this through proactive investment in ecological infrastructure. A standardized market framework for EIPAs or equivalent could accelerate the pace of investment.

Public incentives improved project economics.

Renewable-energy markets were also supported by public incentives that reduced the cost of producing a desired public benefit. The federal Production Tax Credit supported qualifying electricity generation on a per-kilowatt-hour basis, while the Investment Tax Credit reduced the upfront tax cost of eligible projects. More recent law has shifted toward technology-neutral clean-electricity credits, but the underlying function remains familiar: public policy improves project economics so private capital can deploy more rapidly. (Internal Revenue Service)

Tax incentives did not replace demand or contracts. A tax credit without a buyer does not produce a viable project. But incentives reduced the amount of revenue a project needed to support its capital cost and helped technologies move down the cost curve.

Public finance played a related role. The Department of Energy’s loan programs have supplied loans and loan guarantees for projects and technologies that faced barriers to conventional commercial financing, helping bridge the gap between demonstration and widespread deployment. (U.S. Department of Energy)

An ecological-infrastructure system could use a similar toolkit: tax credits for restoration construction, grants for public benefits that cannot be captured, loan guarantees for early projects, revolving funds, first-loss capital, and support for measurement and project development. These tools would lower costs and absorb emerging-market risks. But, as with renewable energy, they would work best alongside recurring demand and long-term contracts.

THE WHY THEN: Federal tax incentives helped unlock financing capacity that otherwise would have been slower to deploy debt to new technologies or nascent project developers, slowing down renewable energy project development.

THE WHY NOW: There are sources of catalytic capital that can play a role in financing ecological infrastructure projects if there is a guaranteed buyer, but the returns are often not high enough for institutional investors, or the cost of capital can challenge the economics of long project development cycles. Tax incentives earmarked for these ecological infrastructure projects would accelerate the pace of institutional capital looking for these projects and stimulate project development timelines.  

Scale reinforced itself.

Once these pieces were in place, renewable energy became more than a collection of environmentally motivated projects. It became a recognizable asset class.

Developers could assemble pipelines. Lawyers and lenders could reuse contracts. Engineers and contractors gained experience. Manufacturers invested in supply chains. Investors learned to underwrite resource risk, construction risk, interconnection risk, and offtaker credit. More projects meant more data, greater competition, lower transaction costs, and technological improvement.

The results are visible in federal generation data. Among independent power producers alone, utility-scale solar generation grew from about 13.8 million megawatt-hours in 2014 to 185.3 million in 2024. Wind generation from independent producers rose from roughly 153.8 million to 362.6 million megawatt-hours over the same period. (U.S. Energy Information Administration)

No single policy deserves all the credit. Renewable energy also benefited from public research, global manufacturing, state procurement, federal incentives, corporate purchasing, transmission investment, competitive auctions, and dramatic technological gains. Policy mistakes and uneven implementation were part of the story too. Interconnection queues, transmission constraints, permitting disputes, local opposition, and policy uncertainty continue to limit development.

The relevant lesson is not that renewable policy was simple or perfectly designed. It is that scale emerged from a system of reinforcing institutions.

Ecological infrastructure projects are slow and cumbersome to develop right now. Getting municipal buyers to commit and fully understand their cost benefit analysis is a huge lift, and they often cannot see the benefit until the project is 30% developed. Right now, there is no systematic way to finance that development speculatively, but the need is high for investment. The market is ripe for a framework with levers at the federal, state, regional, municipal, and corporate levels.

WHY THEN: Renewable energy scaled because of systems-level legislation and investment, not just one policy. But aligned forces drove the process forward—bipartisan interest in reducing reliance on foreign energy, improving air quality, and ultimately, reducing electricity costs.

WHY NOW: Resilience to extreme weather, flooding, drought, global supply chain disruptions and demand for clean air and water are bipartisan priorities, or should be. We can’t ask individual taxpayers or municipalities to solve system-level problems with Band-Aids. We need to create the framework for institutional investment and systematic governance for widespread adoption.

Ecological infrastructure has pieces of this system—but not the full architecture.

None of the individual tools proposed here is entirely new. Mitigation banks, water-quality trading, stormwater credits, environmental impact bonds, water funds, revolving loan funds, payments for ecosystem services, and Forest Resilience Bonds already demonstrate parts of the model.

Some of these strategies are genuinely commercial. Wetland mitigation banking, for example, shows that regulation can create demand for verified ecological outcomes and support private project developers. But these markets generally compensate for permitted environmental damage; they do not broadly procure new resilience capacity in advance of disaster.

Other models aggregate beneficiaries or use private capital, but remain bespoke, geographically narrow, grant-supported, or dependent on philanthropic participation. What the United States does not yet have is a widely adopted market architecture that turns watershed resilience into standardized, long-term, infrastructure-grade cash flows.

Renewable energy suggests the components that architecture may require:

1.      A public standard that creates recurring demand for qualifying ecological infrastructure.

2.      Market access for independent providers, including farmers, landowners, and restoration developers.

3.      A regional or watershed-scale buyer with authority to aggregate beneficiaries and recover costs.

4.      Long-term service agreements that pay for verified, maintained capacity.

5.      Certificates or registries that document ownership and prevent double counting.

6.      Tax incentives, grants, guarantees, and low-cost financing that improve early project economics and protect affordability.

7.      Standard contracts, measurement protocols, and performance data that allow projects to be repeated and underwritten.

That is a larger proposition than creating a new environmental credit. It is an infrastructure-market design problem.

We already pay for the absence of resilience.

The predictable criticism is that such a standard would impose a new cost on utilities, municipalities, businesses, or taxpayers. That concern deserves to be taken seriously. Water systems and local governments already face major affordability and maintenance challenges.

But unstable water is not free. Society already pays through flood damage, disaster relief, insurance claims, crop losses, emergency repairs, business interruption, water shortages, rising food prices, and household displacement. Those costs are fragmented and reactive, and they often fall hardest on households and communities least able to absorb them.

The question is not whether we pay. It is whether we continue paying primarily after systems fail, or begin converting a portion of those expected losses into planned investment before disaster occurs.

Avoided loss, however, is not automatically revenue. Even when a wetland is expected to prevent millions of dollars in future damage, investors cannot be repaid unless beneficiaries or public institutions agree to convert part of that value into contractual payments. That is why regional institutions, procurement standards, and long-term agreements matter.

Renewable energy did not become investable because society merely acknowledged that cleaner electricity was valuable. It became investable when policy connected that value to buyers, contracts, standardized claims, and finance.

Ecological infrastructure will require the same kind of institutional work.

Grasslands show what we can finance within the market we already have. The next challenge is to build the market that wetlands, floodplains, and resilient landscapes still need.

In the next post, I will explore what this framework could look like in practice: what if a restored wetland were developed and financed more like a renewable-energy project, with independent developers, long-term service agreements, verified performance, and multiple beneficiaries sharing the cost?

References

·     Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. “PURPA Qualifying Facilities.” https://www.ferc.gov/qf

·     Internal Revenue Service. “Clean Electricity Production Credit.” https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/clean-electricity-production-credit

·     Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. U.S. State Renewables Portfolio & Clean Electricity Standards: 2024 Status Update. https://eta-publications.lbl.gov/publications/us-state-renewables-portfolio-clean-0

·     U.S. Department of Energy. “LPO Year in Review 2024.” https://www.energy.gov/edf/articles/lpo-year-review-2024

·     U.S. Energy Information Administration. Electric Power Annual, Table 3.3.B: Net Generation from Renewable Sources: Independent Power Producers, 2014–2024. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/table.php?t=epa_03_03_b.html

·     U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs).” https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/renewable-energy-certificates-recs

*AI Disclaimer: I used AI to research parts of this post, but the concepts proposed and arguments made are all my own.

Grassland Restoration is Investable.

Biodiversity and agricultural production can co-exist on healthy grasslands.

If we want to restore grasslands in North America at meaningful scale, and we should—for all of the ecosystem benefits grasslands provide—we need to answer a basic question: How do we pay for it?

Money already flows into grassland conservation in several ways today. Governments pay farmers to take land out of crop production through the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Philanthropies fund conservation. Landowners voluntarily spend money restoring habitat. Ranchers invest in fencing and water infrastructure to improve their pastures. A brand-new legislative proposal, the RANCH Act, proposes that the federal government will pay for the conversion of 20 million acres of marginal cropland to perennial grasses to enable greater production of beef cattle.

All of these approaches matter. But most of these programs are not themselves investable.

By investable, I mean something specific: an investor can provide capital today with a reasonable expectation of receiving that capital back, plus a market-rate financial return appropriate for the risk they are taking. That distinction matters because if grassland restoration depends entirely on philanthropy and public funding, there is an inherent ceiling on how far and how fast it can scale.

But the good news is that grassland conservation and restoration is already investable. We just need to put capital to work with that strategy.

Start With an Asset That Is Already Investable

There is one source of return that is easy to overlook: the land itself.

Suppose an investor buys degraded pasture, partners with a strong rancher or farmer to lease the land, and the parties co-invest in fencing and water to enable adaptive grazing. Changing how grazing lands are managed can simultaneously improve production and ecological function.  Over time, the land will likely improve its stocking capacity, build soil organic matter, and eventually be sold as a healthier, more productive ranch.

A very small component of the investment return may come from annual cash yield in rental income. But most of the investment return comes from appreciation in the underlying asset, just like traditional farmland investing.

That is fundamentally different from asking a farmer to voluntarily restore habitat. The land is the asset backing the investment.

While there is absolutely value in ranchers and farmers owning the land they manage, acquiring more land is not always the best use of capital for producers looking to grow. It often makes much more sense for them to rent, especially if they can secure long-term leases. Further, USDA reported in 2026 that 348 million acres of U.S. farmland are rented, worth more than $1.6 trillion, and 79% of those rented acres are owned by non-farming landlords.

The separation of ownership and operation in farmland is already a standard structure. The opportunity is to build alignment between the interests of passive landowners and regenerative farmers and ranchers to prioritize grassland-based systems, rebuild soil health, and provide durable land access for strong land stewards.

At LSP, our mission is to develop investable strategies for restoring nature. Like other environmentally beneficial industries that have successfully scaled (e.g., renewable energy), the deployment of capital has to generate a market rate of return on investment.

Not simply ecosystem ROI. Not emotional ROI. Actual financial ROI.

Why insist on that distinction? Because we believe investability is one of the keys to scale.

Philanthropy and government conservation programs are essential, and they can fund outcomes markets will never adequately value. But there is only so much philanthropic and public capital available.

Investment capital operates on an entirely different scale. If restoring nature can improve the economics of a productive asset, capital markets can become part of the restoration engine rather than something conservationists have to work against.

Two Ways to Invest in Grassland Restoration

There are at least two viable versions of this strategy.

Buy Cropland and Convert It Back to Grass

Farmland investors love Midwestern row crop investments. But this land management strategy often carries a high environmental cost (e.g., pesticides, insecticides, synthetic fertilizer, annual tillage, and groundwater pumping and irrigation) and the farmers themselves aren’t necessarily yielding much profit to show for their efforts. But there is another strategy that can build the resilience of the land and the economic wellbeing of the operating farmers.

Farmland currently used for commodity row crops can be converted to perennial pasture. The grass produces forage, eventually with no inputs. A livestock operator turns that forage into a saleable product: grass-fed meat. The investor does not necessarily need to become the livestock producer—the land can be leased to a regenerative farmer or rancher who already has the expertise and desire to manage animals. As evidenced by the need for the RANCH Act, there are many ranchers looking for more grass for livestock production.

The investor can own the land and fund the transition or leverage incentives like the proposed RANCH Act to cover perennial vegetation establishment. The right farmer or rancher can operate the grassland during the transition and pay rent.

That creates a model where the ecological restoration is embedded inside a productive real asset. This is probably the part where skeptics ask “how does livestock production on pasture equate to conservation benefits?”

When appropriately managed, grazing can maintain productive agricultural use while improving grassland ecosystem functions—including vegetation diversity, water infiltration and soil carbon—relative to degraded or continuously grazed pasture. Diverse perennial grasslands can also provide a broader suite of ecosystem services than intensively managed agricultural systems. Not to mention, a perennial vegetation system can eliminate the need for toxic pesticides and insecticides, as well as reduce excess nutrient runoff into waterways. Perennial systems also store carbon and support greater soil biodiversity rather than disrupting that cycle through annual tillage.  

The scale of the opportunity: Hundreds of millions of acres of the historic North American prairie landscape are now used for crop production. Across the Midwest and Great Plains, roughly 200 million acres are planted in major row crops, much of it on landscapes that were once tallgrass, mixed-grass or shortgrass prairie. With a change in management on just 5% of this acreage, we can produce food and provide significantly greater conservation outcomes on 10 million acres of new grassland.

Living Light Farms in Ford County, IL is an example of a perennial grass-based farm restored from annual row crops.

Buy Existing Pasture and Improve the Quality and Diversity

There is also an opportunity that requires no land conversion at all: improving the management of pasture that already exists. Suppose a rancher wants to move from set stock, continuous grazing toward rotational or adaptive grazing. That might require additional fencing, new water infrastructure or virtual fencing technology.

Those investments cost money, but they may also increase forage production, extend grazing periods, improve drought resilience and/or increase stocking capacity.

If spending $100,000 on infrastructure in Year 1 reliably produces $20,000 of additional annual operating income, suddenly we have something that looks much more like an investment.

The farmer can finance the infrastructure with debt and repay it from increased operating income. There are already cost-share and philanthropic programs helping farmers purchase fencing, water infrastructure and virtual fencing technology. But there’s no fundamental reason every financing structure must be a grant. A landowner should be similarly interested in improving stocking capacity because it translates to higher cash rent and/or greater appreciation of the land. That creates alignment between the landowner and the operator that supports grassland restoration as a natural byproduct of better ranch management.

If the economics can be demonstrated consistently, pasture-improvement financing could become an investable restoration strategy and one that can be stacked within a lease.

There isn’t yet a platform where ranchers could take an equity investment to make these improvements, but Fractal Ag’s model offers a potential pathway, adapted for grasslands instead of row crops. However the ranch improvements are financed, the landowner benefits from the increase in value in its real estate investment.

The investment thesis is then that better grassland management can improve forage productivity, drought resilience, stocking capacity, ecosystem health and ultimately the productive and underlying value of the ranch.

The potential scale: 654 million acres of land primarily used for grassland pasture or rangeland for livestock grazing in the US, with over half considered degraded.

Roam Ranch in Fredricksburg, TX restored degraded pasture using rotational grazing practices and significantly increased bird species diversity as measured by the National Audubon Society.

Government Funding Can Strengthen the Investment

Government conservation programs are not investments themselves. But they can provide catalytic capital that improves the economics of the private investment.

The proposed bipartisan Rebuilding America’s National Cow Herd (RANCH) Act, for example, would create a voluntary USDA program to convert up to 20 million acres of marginal cropland back to perennial grasses and other forage for livestock grazing.

Participating landowners would enter 10- to 15-year contracts and receive annual payments reportedly equal to 75% of the county’s average dryland cash rental rate, along with cost-share assistance to establish perennial vegetation.

Unlike the Conservation Reserve Program, however, the restored acres would be intended for active grazing, allowing the land to generate agricultural income while also providing grassland habitat, reducing erosion and nutrient loss, and improving soil and water resources.

The proposal is particularly interesting because it uses public conservation funding not simply to retire farmland from production, but to help transition marginal cropland into a different, potentially self-sustaining agricultural system.

If passed, the RANCH Act should make the conversion investment look even better for a farmer, landowner or outside investor. The government payment itself does not generate a financial ROI for taxpayers. But it can reduce the amount of private capital required to convert cropland to grass. That helps improve the IRR on the investment for the landowner and the operating partner by reducing upfront costs.

Public conservation funding does not have to compete with private investment. It can help make the private investment work.

Future Investments Can Utilize Stacking

The universe of investable structures for grassland investment may continue to expand as ecosystem-service markets for water, biodiversity or resilience grow.

In addition to stacking land appreciation, cash rent, and improved stocking capacity, new or improved cash flows for biodiversity, water or even carbon could generate higher cash yield.

Not every property will have every revenue stream. And critically, some programs cannot legally or credibly be stacked if they are paying for the same environmental outcome.

But this framework changes how we think about nature restoration.

The restoration itself doesn’t need to generate a standalone market rate return. It becomes an intentional component of the economic strategy to improve and derisk asset management so that the total investment generates an attractive risk-adjusted return.

Carbon

Restored grasslands can potentially increase soil carbon, generating carbon credits or insetting value within agricultural supply chains. There are multiple existing grassland carbon platforms that can be stacked as strategic upside with the proposed land investment with minimal upfront risk. Carbon is not currently generating enough income to power the entire investment alone. But as a secondary revenue stream, carbon income can be material. Particularly in the Midwest and historic Tallgrass Prairie, known for its dark black organic soils, full of carbon. The carbon sequestration potential is significant.

Biodiversity and Habitat Credits

Emerging biodiversity markets could eventually allow companies to pay directly—and voluntarily—for measurable improvements in habitat.

Today, however, voluntary biodiversity-credit markets remain early and relatively illiquid. This is strategic future upside rather than something that can be underwritten today.

A framework like this is conceptually attractive for grasslands because restoration can produce highly visible biodiversity outcomes—birds, pollinators, native plants and other wildlife.

Water

Grasslands also provide water-related ecosystem services. Perennial vegetation can reduce erosion and nutrient runoff, improve infiltration and protect watersheds. Wetlands are often interspersed within grasslands, and can retain higher functionality in a rotational grazed system than a monoculture row crop system. In the right geography, downstream beneficiaries—municipalities, utilities, water districts or corporations—could potentially pay landowners for those services. Buyers in the volumetric water benefit accounting market could participate in water replenishment through these projects today if geographies align.

Early-stage flood resilience bonds or resilience offtake agreements could support these investment models but are only in conceptual or pilot stages.

Nutrient trading and watershed-payment programs already provide versions of this model. The question is whether they can become sufficiently standardized with sufficient buyer demand to support investment at scale.

Hunting and Recreation

Restored grasslands can support hunting leases, ecotourism and other recreational income. On some properties these revenues may be meaningful. On others they will be marginal. But they support this important concept: grassland doesn’t need to have a single revenue stream.

Native Seed and Other Grassland Products

Restored landscapes can potentially produce native seed, hay and other products alongside livestock. These are unlikely to support restoration everywhere, but in the right markets they can add another layer of revenue.

Energy and Infrastructure

Grasslands can also coexist with other land uses. Wind-energy leases are an obvious example. In some situations, solar, transmission or other infrastructure can potentially be designed around grazing and native vegetation.

Agrivoltaics is showing how new grassland establishment can provide ecosystem services and grazing income alongside solar energy, although there are some ecosystem functions that won’t fully be established on most solar sites due to operational limitations.

But this creates an interesting possibility: infrastructure revenue effectively subsidizes the restoration and long-term stewardship of the surrounding landscape.

Insurance and the Value of Resilience

There is another potential financial return from better land management that is particularly interesting: lower insurance costs. Traditional crop insurance largely prices risk based on a farm’s historical yields. That means a farmer who invests in practices that make soil more resilient—cover crops, diverse rotations, reduced tillage and other soil-health practices—may not immediately receive financial credit for reducing the underlying risk of crop failure.

A new pilot in Michigan is attempting to change that. The Resilient Agriculture Landscape Insurance Company (RALIC) is developing an insurance model that incorporates soil-health and management data into the assessment of agricultural risk.

The premise is simple but potentially powerful: if healthier soils make farms more resilient to drought, heavy rainfall and other weather extremes, farmers managing for that resilience should eventually be cheaper to insure. If ecological restoration demonstrably reduces the volatility or downside risk of an agricultural asset, then the economic value of restoration doesn’t have to show up entirely as additional revenue.

It could show up as lower insurance premiums, fewer catastrophic losses, more stable operating income or eventually a lower cost of capital. For grasslands, imagine demonstrating that a ranch with healthier soils, greater plant diversity and better water infiltration maintains forage longer during drought than a degraded neighboring ranch.

That creates another potential pathway:

ecological improvement → greater resilience → lower financial risk → financial return

This market is still extremely early. But conceptually, it may be one of the most important mechanisms to watch because it doesn’t require creating a new environmental commodity or finding a voluntary buyer for an ecosystem service.

It will require proving that healthier land is less risky land.

Grassland Restoration as an Asset-Management Strategy

None of this means that every acre of grassland is suddenly a great investment. The economics still have to work, and the asset still has to be managed.

Land has to be purchased at the right price. Grazing revenue has to support the purchase. Conservation goals have to be integrated into the grazing plan to ensure conservation objectives are met. The right farmer or rancher needs to be identified and engaged as a long-term leaseholder. And any future ecosystem-service revenue should be treated cautiously until those markets mature. But the important point is that we don’t have to invent an entirely new asset class before private capital can participate in grassland restoration.

Farmland and ranchland are already assets. Conservation grazing can become part of how those assets are managed. As more capital is deployed into grassland restoration as an asset-management strategy, conservation can scale beyond philanthropy. And that could dramatically change how much capital flows into American grassland restoration in the very near future.

Cows can be used during the transition to perennial vegetation by grazing them through fields of cover crops to build soil organic matter and improve conditions for native plants to reestablish, as shown here at Cow Creek Organics in Illinois.

References

1. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency. “Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).” USDA. Describes CRP annual rental payments, cost-share assistance, 10–15 year contract terms, and environmental objectives including erosion reduction, water quality improvement, and wildlife habitat.
   https://www.fsa.usda.gov/resources/conservation/conservation-reserve-program

2. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency. “Grassland CRP.” USDA. Describes the Grassland Conservation Reserve Program, including rental payments and the ability to maintain grazing, forage production, and seed harvest while protecting grassland from conversion.
   https://www.fsa.usda.gov/resources/conservation/crp-grasslands

3. Rounds, Mike, and Amy Klobuchar. Rebuilding America’s National Cow Herd (RANCH) Act of 2026, S. 5277, 119th Congress. Introduced August 2026. Proposed legislation establishing a USDA program to transition eligible cropland to perennial forage and grazing land through long-term contracts, rental payments, and establishment assistance.
   https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/BILLS-119s5277is

4. Apfelbaum, Steven I., Ry Thompson, Fugui Wang, Samantha Mosier, Richard Teague, and Peter Byck. “Vegetation, Water Infiltration, and Soil Carbon Response to Adaptive Multi-Paddock and Conventional Grazing in Southeastern USA Ranches.” Journal of Environmental Management 308 (2022): 114576.
   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.114576

5. Fraser, Mariecia D., Hannah E. Vallin, and Benjamin P. Roberts. “Animal Board Invited Review: Grassland-Based Livestock Farming and Biodiversity.” Animal 16, no. 12 (2022): 100671. Review of the relationships among livestock grazing, grassland heterogeneity, biodiversity, ecosystem services, and agricultural productivity.
   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.animal.2022.100671

6. Mosier, Samantha, Steven Apfelbaum, Peter Byck, Francisco Calderon, Richard Teague, Ry Thompson, and M. Francesca Cotrufo. “Adaptive Multi-Paddock Grazing Enhances Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Stocks and Stabilization Through Mineral Association in Southeastern U.S. Grazing Lands.” Journal of Environmental Management 288 (2021): 112409.
   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112409

7. National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF). NCREIF Farmland Index. The index tracks investment performance of institutionally owned U.S. farmland. At year-end 2025, the index represented approximately $16.2 billion in market value across 1,035 agricultural properties.
   https://www.ncreif.org/data-products/farmland/

8. PGIM Real Estate. 2026 Agriculture and Timber Market Update. 2026. Reports that the NCREIF Farmland Index ended 2025 with $16.2 billion in market value across 1,035 properties and provides additional information on institutional farmland investment performance.
   https://www.pgim.com/content/dam/pgim/us/en/pgim-real-estate/active/documents/reports/PGIM-2026-Agriculture-and-Timber-Market-Update.pdf

9. Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. “MDARD Invests in Next Generation Crop Insurance Pilot for Michigan Farmers.” July 21, 2026. Describes Michigan’s NextGen Crop Insurance pilot, which is testing insurance pricing intended to recognize regenerative practices and improved soil health in agricultural risk assessment.
   https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MIDARD/bulletins/4214890

Can Golf Help Fund Habitat Restoration?

How golf's vast footprint could become part of America's restoration infrastructure

A fat tire bike trail winds throughout the Sand Valley property, taking guests through pine forests, oak savannas and massive sand dunes.

I never thought I would be someone touting the environmental benefits of a golf course.

Golf courses typically have legitimate environmental costs. Maintaining large expanses of manicured turf requires water, fertilizer, pesticides, fuel, and constant mowing. Even the golf industry's own environmental research acknowledges that these inputs create potential environmental risks. In 2020, U.S. golf facilities applied approximately 1.68 million acre-feet of water - about 550 billion gallons - although that represented a 29 percent reduction from 2005. Nearly 1.04 million acres of golf-course land were still being irrigated.

But after spending 24 hours at Sand Valley in Nekoosa, Wisconsin, my perspective has been broadened to see a different possibility.

As we explore new ways to invest in nature and fund ecological restoration, we can’t think only about protecting pristine wilderness. We also need to ask how nature can be woven back into the landscapes we already use - for agriculture, housing, recreation, and business.

People are never going to stop golfing, nor should they. But that’s a powerful reality that can be harnessed for the benefit of nature. With more mindfully designed courses—golfers can keep their hobby and be a part of restoring nature, too. And it’s not just Sand Valley. Other courses around the world are starting to consider care for the environment a critical strategy for the future of golf.

“‘We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.’”

— Aldo Leopold

The Scale of the Opportunity

Golf courses occupy far more land than most people realize. In 2021, U.S. golf facilities covered an estimated 2.13 million acres, including approximately 1.32 million acres of maintained turfgrass. A typical 18-hole facility encompassed 146 acres, 95 of which were maintained turf. Only about 23 acres were categorized as natural, native, or unmowed areas. For comparison, 146 acres is equivalent to about 110 football fields.

Almost all golf courses have trees and grass—but the species planted, and what has to be done to maintain those—make all the difference.

No one is suggesting that every fairway or putting green be converted into prairie. Golf still requires turf. But even modest changes to the portions of courses that are outside normal play could add up across thousands of facilities.

What if more of those acres were planted with regionally appropriate grasses, wildflowers, shrubs, and trees? What if courses replaced ornamental landscaping and little-used irrigated rough with native habitat? What if ponds, streams, woodlands, and grasslands were managed not merely as visual backdrops, but as connected ecological systems? Native plants are adapted to local climates and soils and generally require less water, fertilizer, and pesticide use once established. They also provide food and habitat for birds, butterflies, bees, and other wildlife.

Across a national network of more than two million acres, those changes could create valuable patches and corridors of habitat - especially in agricultural, suburban, and urban landscapes where natural areas have become fragmented. Research suggests that golf courses can support biodiversity and ecosystem services, although their ecological value depends heavily on how they are managed and how they connect to the surrounding landscape.

There is a business case, too. According to the USGA, successfully replacing unnecessary irrigated turf with functional, naturalized landscapes can reduce water use, mowing, and applications of fertilizer, insecticide, and fungicide. That can lower ongoing maintenance requirements, although the organization cautions that poorly planned conversions may create new labor and weed-control costs.

In other words, this is not simply about making golf courses look more natural. It is about redesigning them to consume fewer resources, provide more habitat, and potentially cost less to operate.

A view along the Ridge Trail.

From Plantation to Savanna

Before Sand Valley became a golf destination, much of the property was a pine plantation. The forest surely provided some habitat, but it lacked the diversity of the ecosystem it had replaced. It had been designed primarily to produce one thing: timber for the paper mill industry.

Today, the property is restoring thousands of acres of sand barrens, black oak savannas and sand prairies, and working in partnership with a local ecology group, Jensen Ecology, to achieve these goals. Check out Jensen Ecology’s website for even more beautiful photos of the native plants and habitat restorations at Sand Valley.

Some of the land is, of course, occupied by golf courses and homes. But nature has been deliberately woven throughout the property. Native plants - including milkweed (key species for Monarch butterflies) - dot the landscape. The courses use drought tolerant fescue turf that require significantly less water than conventional golf-course turf, along with fewer chemical inputs.

The restoration was designed with ecological expertise, including assessments of native plant communities and ongoing work to reestablish them. The property includes at least 7,000 acres of conservation area which will be restored over time to provide habitat for rare and endangered species like the Kirtland’s Warbler and Karner Blue Butterfly. Some of these special species are even making their way into the iconic logos for the courses: the Kirtland Warbler is the logo for the newest course, the Commons.

Sand Valley is not a perfect model, and no commercial development is without tradeoffs. Sand Valley itself had to obtain multiple incidental take reviews for the state-endangered slender glass lizard for the construction of facilities, roads, and homes. The DNR found that the course’s impact was allowable because the project would not imperil populations or habitat statewide, and onsite restoration of suitable habitat was included in the plan. But there is an undeniable tension with that reality—the project is financing substantial habitat restoration while also having a true ecological impact from the commercial development aspects.

Kirtland’s Warbler is a state endangered species that breeds in the patchy jack pine habitat in Adams County, WI. The bird migrates each year from the Bahamas to breed in the Central Sands region of Wisconsin and a few other limited places in the northern Midwest. Photo source: Wikipedia.

Just as farmland is rarely considered prime wildlife habitat, most people would not imagine a golf course providing meaningful ecological value. Too often, courses have been built by draining wetlands or replacing diverse habitats with monocultures.

Sand Valley demonstrates another possibility: we can restore habitat while minimizing impacts from development and creating places for recreation. Just as importantly, golf provides an economic engine for restoration work that might otherwise depend entirely on grants or just never happen. The relevant question, then, isn't whether golf is equivalent to a nature preserve. It is whether a commercially productive landscape can deliver substantially more ecological value than conventional development—and whether the revenue it generates can help sustain restoration at a scale that otherwise might be difficult to finance.

Sand Valley shows another version of ecotourism is possible through golf, local farm-to-table food, and natural cabins built to blend into the landscape.

Golf Is the Entry Point to Nature on this Landscape

In addition to bringing nature back into the landscape, Sand Valley brings people into nature - people who might never otherwise have known this unique habitat even existed in Wisconsin.

We can care only for what we know, and we can know only what we experience - whether in person, through a book, or on a screen. Every year, thousands of golfers travel from around the world to the Central Sands of Wisconsin to play at Sand Valley. In doing so, they experience the region's landscape and become, perhaps without intending to, invested in its future.

By meeting the average golfer where they are - on a tee box - Sand Valley gives them a reason to value the Wisconsin wilderness. Not to mention, they might eat at Aldo’s Farm & Table and might ask “Who is Aldo?”

Aldo Leopold, the restaurant’s namesake, was a scientist and conservationist that lived in the Central Sands region of Wisconsin. He is often known as the father of the “land ethic” theory, which suggests that the health and success of environments depend on the community of plants, animals, and habitats and how they interact as parts of a whole—not individuals. He and his family worked to restore habitat long the Wisconsin River and this experience inspired him to write A Sand County Almanac.

A view of the course along the bike trail.

Will that experience translate into a donation, a family trip back to the region, or a vote for a politician who will protect public lands and natural resources? Who can say? The effect will be different for everyone.

But Sand Valley is making the tent bigger. It can create new stakeholders for nature - people who might never otherwise have considered joining the conservation conversation. Not everyone will notice the nature at Sand Valley, but some will. Some may pay closer attention when a data center or mine is proposed nearby if it threatens a place they care about. Some will return with their families to hike, bike, kayak, or go ice fishing. Some may pick up a copy of Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac and begin thinking differently about conservation in their own communities.

The ripple effects can extend far beyond the property line.

“‘A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.’”

— Aldo Leopold

More than just Golf

Golf is not the only way to experience the natural habitats at Sand Valley. The hiking, birding, and biking trails are open to the public. As an infrequent golfer, I am often out of my element on a golf course. Spending time on the biking and hiking trails that wind throughout the property and the golf course was a nice alternative. We also jumped in one of the manmade lakes on the property for a quick swim after a hike.

A view of Glacial Lake just before we jumped in for a quick swim after a long hike.

The resort employs local residents throughout the year and brings guests to nearby hotels, rentals, restaurants, and other businesses throughout the summer. All of these little features matter in a big way. If restoration is going to endure, it must become part of a functioning local economy - not something imposed on a community from the outside. The locals have to become invested in the success of the project too.

This article is not intended to be a habitat assessment or an in-depth conservation finance case study, although both of those would be interesting. I don’t know all of the backstory or plans for the long-term stewardship for the property. Nonetheless, this project challenged my expectations of what golf can do for habitat restoration and offers an example of what becomes possible when ecological restoration is treated not as an obligation at the margins, but as part of the value a business creates. Not every golf resort or golf course can support 7,000+ acres of ecosystem restoration, but every golf course has the potential to provide more habitat for native species and reduce water use. In many cases, doing so may save money in operational management. And in some circumstances, golf can fuel new investments in the landscape-scale restoration of nature.

Imagine what change is possible when we think more creatively, design more intentionally, and consider nature a stakeholder.

Enjoying a 4-mile bike ride through the sand dunes at Sand Valley.

Sources

• Weyandt, J. (2018, October 22). On a mutually beneficial course. Badger Institute. https://www.badgerinstitute.org/diggings/on-a-mutually-beneficial-course/

• GCSAA: Water Use and Management Practices on U.S. Golf Courses

• GCSAA: Land-Use and Energy Practices on U.S. Golf Facilities

• University of Minnesota Extension: Native Plants Support Wildlife and Sustainability

• Landscape Ecology: Can a Golf Course Support Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services?

• USGA Green Section: The Secrets of a Successful Turf Reduction Program

Bringing Nature Back to the Farm

August 12, 2026

Nature and agriculture are not enemies. In fact, agriculture works best in partnership with nature.

At first glance, restoring nature and producing food can seem like competing goals. Agriculture changes landscapes. It replaces diverse ecosystems with fields, fences, roads, and infrastructure. Conservation, meanwhile, is often imagined as something that happens somewhere else—in a state park, a national wildlife refuge, or another protected area.

But that framing misses the scale of the opportunity.

According to the USDA’s most recent comprehensive land-use inventory, cropland occupies 17% of the United States, while grassland pasture and rangeland account for another 29%. By comparison, “special uses”—a category that includes parks and wildlife areas—cover 14%. Whatever boundaries we draw around the word agriculture, working lands make up an enormous share of the American landscape.

Picture the country as a quilt. Parks, refuges, wetlands, and other relatively wild places make up tiny patches on the quilt (less than 1/5 of the patches). Farms and ranches fill much of the space around and between them—almost half of the quilt. If nature has no place on those working lands, the tiny patches of “wild spaces” have no connection to each other.

That connectivity matters.

Cows on grass play a similar role to wild herds of bison that evolved with North American grasslands.

Wildlife needs room to move

Healthy wildlife populations need habitat, movement corridors, and genetic diversity. Historically, animals could move across much larger, more connected landscapes in response to drought, flooding, seasonal food supplies, and breeding needs.

Bison offer a dramatic example. An estimated 30–60 million once roamed the Great Plains, within a broader historic range stretching from Mexico to southern New England. That freedom of movement helped large herds adapt to changing conditions. Birds, turtles, frogs, small mammals, and pollinators also depended—and still depend—on connected habitat.

Today, many of those pathways are interrupted by fences, pavement, development, and simplified crop systems. Protected areas remain essential, but isolated islands of habitat cannot do all the work. If we want biodiversity to thrive at scale, farms and ranches must be part of the solution.

Farmers are already rebuilding natural processes

The good news is that this is not a theoretical idea. Farmers and ranchers are already integrating natural processes into food production.

The result does not always look like a historic prairie filled with wild bison—and it does not have to. A farmer may use cattle or sheep to replicate some of the effects of grazing herds. Chickens may move through pasture in a managed rotation and provide organic fertilizer and pest control in place of established wild bird populations. A crop farmer may reduce pesticide use, plant cover crops, establish prairie strips, or add habitat for pollinators and beneficial insects.

These are agricultural tools used with ecological intent. They can produce food and income while also creating space for the species we do not harvest: grassland birds, butterflies, bees, frogs, and small mammals.

USDA conservation standards recognize this overlap. Permanent vegetative cover can reduce erosion and nutrient loss, improve soil organic matter and soil structure, and provide habitat for wildlife and pollinators.

This is what makes regenerative agriculture so compelling. It can improve the millions of acres already in production rather than treating conservation as something confined to land outside the farm gate. The Audubon Conservation Ranching program highlights how ranchers and farmers can do both—raise animals and improve habitats for wild critters, particularly focused on grassland birds.

Pastured laying hens forage and graze under solar panels in northwest Indiana.

The special promise of perennial systems

We can take that idea further by increasing the amount of farmland in perennial vegetation.

Annual plants complete their life cycle in one growing season and generally must be replanted each year. Perennials live for multiple years or regenerate naturally. Their long-lived root systems keep living cover in the landscape for more of the year, add organic material to the soil, support soil organisms, and help stabilize soil structure.

Perennial agriculture is not synonymous with taking land out of production. Perennial systems can support grazing cattle and sheep, pasture-raised poultry and pigs, honey production, fruit and nut trees, and other crops. They can also be integrated into annual fields as prairie strips, buffers, or strategically placed blocks on less-productive acres.

The goal is not to eliminate row crops. We need grains, corn, soybeans, and other annual crops that support food systems and supply chains. The opportunity is to restore balance: to identify places where perennial production can generate competitive value while also rebuilding habitat and ecological function.

Imagine what it could mean if a meaningful share of Midwestern farmland shifted into profitable perennial systems—not everywhere and not all at once, but at a scale large enough to reconnect habitat and reshape watersheds. Could that shift reestablish the connectivity for nature and humans to thrive?

Water reveals the full value of perennial agriculture

Across the United States, communities face three recurring water problems: too much water, too little water, and polluted water.

Agriculture is not the source of every water-quality or water supply problem. But nutrients applied to farms can become pollutants when crops do not use them. Excess nitrogen and phosphorus can wash into surface water or leach into groundwater, contributing to algal blooms, oxygen-depleted “dead zones,” and harm to aquatic life. And many of the modifications to agricultural landscapes (e.g., drain tiles) were intended to remove water off agricultural fields as fast as possible and ship it downstream. This leads to a water imbalance—landscapes that used to have significant water holding capacity in the form of wetlands, swamps, and rich organic soil now have significantly less water storage capacity. Fast forward to conditions today where water cannot infiltrate farm fields fast enough during heavy rainstorms, leading to flooding, or other places that are receiving no water at all and have seen massive drops in the underground water table.

Perennial vegetation can help in several ways. Year-round cover reduces the periods when bare soil is vulnerable to erosion. Deep and persistent roots build soil structure and help water enter the ground. Prairie strips and vegetated buffers can slow runoff and capture sediment and nutrients before they reach streams.

This is not a claim that one downstream field can magically purify everything flowing off an upstream farm. The effectiveness of a buffer depends on its placement, width, soils, slope, water flow, and management. Subsurface tile drainage can also bypass surface vegetation, which is why practices such as saturated buffers, controlled drainage, and wetland restoration may be needed alongside perennial cover.

Still, the underlying principle is important: water moving through a landscape with more roots, living cover, and strategically placed vegetation has more opportunities to slow down, soak in, and shed pollutants.

That can mean cleaner streams and ponds, better habitat for fish, frogs, turtles, and aquatic macroinvertebrates, and greater resilience during both heavy rain and dry periods. On the land, the same perennial cover can offer nesting habitat for birds and food and refuge for pollinators. It also can provide high quality forage for grazing animals, nutrient dense food in high demand by consumers, and income for farmers.

One landscape intervention can create many forms of value at once.

A scalable investment in nature

This is the vision behind Land Steward Partners: invest in farmland that can be restored to perennial production, then partner with farmers and ranchers who can manage it profitably, in pursuit of coexistence with nature.

The financial return comes from food and farm products—grass-fed livestock, diverse crops, honey, fruit, nuts, and other perennial enterprises. The return that is harder to monetize comes through the infrastructure value that land provides: cleaner water, improved water storage, reduced runoff, healthier soil, connected habitat, and greater resilience for rural communities.

To make that vision real, we also need to change how farmland is valued. A perennial farm should not be treated as less productive simply because it does not maximize annual row-crop acreage. Its value also lies in the durable income it can generate and the risks and costs it may reduce over time.

Nature restoration does not have to stop where agriculture begins. With the right farmers, management systems, and investment models, agriculture can become one of the most powerful tools we have for restoring nature at scale.

The farm is not the gap between the wild places. It can be what connects them.

References

1. USDA Economic Research Service. Major Uses of Land in the United States, 2017. Published September 11, 2024.
   Supports the U.S. land-use figures: 17% cropland, 29% grassland pasture and rangeland, and 14% special uses—including parks and wildlife areas.

2. National Park Service. “Bison / Buffalo.” Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
   Supports the estimate that 30–60 million bison once roamed the Great Plains and describes their broader historical range.

3. USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. Conservation Practice Standard: Conservation Cover (Code 327). May 2024.
   Supports claims about permanent vegetation reducing erosion and nutrient losses, improving soil organic matter and structure, storing carbon, and providing wildlife and pollinator habitat.

4. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Sources and Solutions: Agriculture.” Updated February 26, 2026.
   Supports claims about agricultural nitrogen and phosphorus losses, nutrient pollution, perennial cover, field buffers, tile drainage, and conservation drainage practices.

5. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Nutrient Pollution.” Updated June 18, 2026.
   Provides additional background on algal blooms, aquatic harm, and other effects of excess nitrogen and phosphorus.

6. U.S. Geological Survey. Variability of Discharge, Nutrients, and Escherichia coli from Tile Drains in a Small Agricultural Stream. July 20, 2026.
   Provides recent evidence that tile drainage can carry substantial nitrogen and phosphorus loads into receiving streams.

The Value-Add Opportunity Hiding in Farmland

Professional real estate assets look for something with “good bones” that is underperforming for some reason. The asset typically requires upfront investment and capital improvements that don’t make sense for the previous owner. Without strategic investment, the asset is at risk of worsening cash flows and long-term value degradation.

There’s an opportunity in looking at conventional farmland in a similar way to how investors look at commercial or residential investment properties. The macro conditions for agriculture in 2026 highlight how vulnerable conventional farmland is to disruption—a global shortage of fertilizer is rendering millions of acres of land unproductive or subject to much more expensive inputs—and lower profits. Droughts across the Great Plains are projected to leave farmers with total crop losses. There are insurance subsidies to mitigate these risks, of course. But the asset itself is not a premium asset operating at peak performance. It is a sometimes productive asset with degraded biological infrastructure and low resilience to external factors—heavily dependent on a subsidy to cash flow. Buying it and transitioning it to regenerative management requires a similar investment thesis to acquiring an underperforming commercial property, industrial facility, or operating business and investing capital to improve its economics.

Let’s explore an analogous investment that gets made every day in the US: A 1970s apartment building is up for sale. The building generates rent, but has several underlying risks:

• Deferred maintenance exists

• Energy systems are inefficient

• Occupancy is below market

• Operating expenses are too high

• Newer construction nearby commands higher rents

The smart investor doesn't see these as problems—they see them as sources of value creation. They underwrite: i) Purchase price; ii) Renovation capex; iii) Temporary reduction in cash flow, and iv) Stabilized value after improvements.

The value creation comes from improving the asset. Regenerative farmland works similarly. The farm may produce crops today, but it often has:

• Depleted soil organic matter

• Poor water infiltration

• High fertilizer dependence

• Low biological activity

• Yield volatility

• Weak drought resilience

These are effectively forms of deferred maintenance. The prior owner extracted production but did not fully reinvest in the biological infrastructure of the land.

Transition Costs Are Agricultural Capex

Most farmland buyers view the first three years of regenerative transition as a cost. We should see this transition period as a capital improvement program—not operating expense. Just as an apartment owner might replace roofs, HVAC systems, and plumbing, a regenerative landowner invests in cover crops, compost, grazing infrastructure, fencing, water systems, tree plantings, soil-building practices, and management expertise. These investments improve the productive capacity of the asset. In accounting language, we’re rebuilding the productive base of the property.

Soil Organic Matter as Infrastructure

One of the strongest versions of the analogy is to compare soil health to infrastructure.

In real estate:

• Roofs

• Roads

• Utilities

• Foundations

In farmland:

• Soil carbon

• Water-holding capacity

• Aggregation

• Microbial activity

• Nutrient cycling

These are productive assets. When they are degraded, the farm requires expensive external inputs to compensate. When they are restored, the farm becomes inherently more productive and resilient. The market often prices farmland based on current earnings rather than biological condition.

That creates an opportunity.Many investors value farmland using current rents or current yields.But imagine valuing an apartment building solely on today's rent roll without considering that occupancy could rise from 70% to 95%.You would miss a major source of value.

Or consider that to maintain even the baseline 70%, you have to pay expensive energy bills each year. What if you could increase your occupancy % while also reducing the expensive energy bills?

Similarly, farmland markets often do not fully capitalize improvements such as:

• Increased soil carbon

• Improved water retention

• Lower input requirements

• Greater drought resilience

• Ecosystem service revenue

• Premium market access

As a result:

The market frequently prices regenerative upside poorly, creating an opportunity for investors willing to fund the transition. Conventional farmland is often treated as a stabilized asset, but many acres are better understood as biologically undercapitalized properties whose productive infrastructure has been depleted over decades of extractive management.

The three-year regenerative transition should be viewed less as a temporary drag on returns and more as a capital improvement program that rebuilds the biological infrastructure of the land.

Growing Food & Clean Energy Side-by-Side

The last six months I’ve been working closely with Doral Renewables and several farmers in northwest Indiana to integrate farming and renewable energy production. It’s an exciting mash-up of my passions: renewables, land stewardship, and regenerative food production. 

Happy sheep mowing grass under panels.

This last Friday, we co-hosted a perennial crops and agrivoltaics workshop with Doral Renewables, the Rodale Institute, and the Savanna Institute. 35 participants attended, including farmers, landowners, solar project devopers, solar grazers, and aspiring farmers from all over the region. My friend Will Glazik of Cow Creek Organics joined us to present on behalf of Rodale Institute about how organic and regenerative practices can be integrated into any farm, as well as within and outside the perimeter of solar projects. A local family-run mint distilling operation also presented about their mint production- Wappel Grain and Herb. We aren’t producing mint on solar projects, yet, but due to it’s relatively low growing stature, it could be a compatible crop for under the panels. Equipment would need to be customized and made smaller to ensure it is economically viable. A pilot is in the works for next year.

Larry Wappel, Sr. of Wappel Grain and Herb shows us a square foot of mint, cut from his field. When it’s harvest time, the mint hay will be run through a steam distillation process to create mint oil, which will be used for toothpaste, gum, and various other end products. Mint is a perennial crop, so it can produce for 5+ years before needing to be replanted.

Our landscapes are always changing. Lately, data centers, renewable energy, and desertification are challenging rural communities in new ways. Agrivoltaics is one of those innovations that helps rural communities navigate changing land use in a positive way. It highlights the “hidden” benefits of solar projects: the opportunity to diversify crop production, keep families on the farm producing food we eat, and rebuilding soil health through perennial vegetation. 

Laying hens range on pasture next to custom-built mobile chicken roosts with laying boxes. The chicken roosts will be moved everyday to ensure that they spread their nitrogen-rich fertilizer on all of the grass within the array, with a period of rest to follow.

In most cases, typical row crops like corn, soy, or wheat are no longer viable with utility-scale solar panels due to their height—challenging solar project developers and farmers to think differently from past generations about what can be grown or produced in the new constraints—often on thousands of acres. With the price of land being so expensive and disconnected from the value of the crops that can be produced on it, it also offers an opportunity to give new and beginning farmers land access on a scale they would otherwise struggle to access.

It gives us the opportunity to ask: what could we grow if we had thousands of acres of grass to work with? And how can we produce food if our primary obligation was to avoid topsoil loss or erosion? Suddenly, the incentives that have existed for so long have changed. And with that change comes opportunity. As one of our farmers has said: “The sky’s the limit.”

Rabbits hang out in a chicken tractor, protected from predators. The “rabbit tractor” will move everyday as well to give them fresh grass. Rabbits are particularly good at rebuilding patches of bare ground because their manure is packed with essential nutrients—nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K)—that are crucial for restoring plant life.

There are complex challenges with growing a new crop after decades of growing the same thing. Farmers need to consider equipment, labor, processing, markets and risks that may be completely new to them or regionally limited. However, these projects also provide unique opportunities. For one, solar developers plant and establish new perennial vegetation under panels as part of their permit obligations. They also install a sturdy exterior fence. This makes solar projects well-suited for grass-fed livestock with much lower startup costs for farmers than if farmers were converting a corn and soy field from scratch. The new constraints also create new economic opportunity, like the need for someone to build custom-built, smaller equipment. A new small business in the community custom-fabricated the chicken roosts, rabbit tractors, and mineral/water feeders that can be easily moved by the farm crew each day.

Custom-built water, mineral, and creep feeders were designed by a local farmer and custom-fabricated by a new small business in the community. This system allows the guardian dogs to get their dog food and water, while separate systems provide mineral to the adult sheep and creep feed to the lambs. The mobile nature of this system is critical for solar projects and rotational grazing because all of this equipment must be moved every few days to keep up with the flock.

At Mammoth North Solar, a local farmer (and landowner in the project) has been managing sheep as part of a larger vegetation management strategy. This is an innovative complementary strategy to the traditional methods of managing vegetation through mechanical mowing and herbicide for weed suppression. It’s not completely replacing either of those tools, yet. We’re constantly learning and adapting to improve the vegetation, build the soil organic matter, reduce chemical use and create opportunities for more biodiversity. But it’s a step in the right direction. It also enables opportunities for community engagement, farmer participation in the projects, and more income for rural communities.  It’s a credit to every partner in this stakeholder chain that an agrivoltaics project of this scale in underway. 

Billy Bope, a local farmer and landowner, is leading the way with agrivoltaics at Mammoth North with a variety of grass-fed livestock enterprises on solar arrays. I’ve been learning so much from him and his family this past six months.

We are still working on this first pilot and time will tell how the vegetation does, how soil health and carbon changes, and how the farm animals adapt. Like most regenerative agriculture efforts, it will be a multi-year process, learning and tweaking along the way.

Two mobile, custom-built chicken roosts with laying boxes at Mammoth North.

Land use is a complicated issue, often driven by an economic analysis of what a spreadsheet says is the highest and best use. It’s also incredibly personal and emotional, and often at the root of the opposition to solar projects. Even if people support renewable energy, they may not want it “in my backyard.” Farmers fear losing the ability to farm if they give up their land for energy. I can completely understand that fear of losing the land that you care so much about.

Humans have a deep personal connection to the land. Across any community in the US, urban or suburban or rural, people aspire to own their own home, their own small piece of land—to plant roots, to build their lives, to leave a footprint. Farmers have this same drive—to own their own land, to shape its output and its appearance. The passion for land stewardship and connection to the land should bring us together, not drive us apart.

We have an opportunity to change how millions of acres are used—not just for renewable energy, but also for food production, for community building and education. We have an opportunity to bring kids and families back to farms, producing food, breaking bread with their neighbors, building new fun and exciting businesses. Bringing new opportunity back to rural communities that are rooted in farming. It really makes so much sense that agrivoltaics is the way of the future, not just a niche PR strategy.

It’s clear to me that we can produce renewable energy and grow nutrient-dense food on the same acres, while improving the environment and water around it. The question will be: How do we build the rest of the supply chain to support it? We need local processing, new relationships with wholesalers, and access to regional consumer markets. So much of that infrastructure will be built IN rural communities, not outside of them, in order for the system to thrive. And that is economic opportunity that rural communities desperately need.

How do we scale this agrivoltaics model profitably and in a way that also restores the local ecosystem and powers the grid? We are on a journey to find out.

Healthy Soil Is Infrastructure.

A handful of soil contains billions of microorganisms.

We don’t usually categorize “soil” as infrastructure. I don’t think most civil engineers would ever call “soil” infrastructure. But I think this is a missed opportunity.

The definition of infrastructure from Oxford Languages is “the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.”And what does soil do for us? Without soil, how would we grow food? It is essential to the operation (and fundamentally, the survival) of a society. It is also inherently “physical”. It is also structural in nature—as one example, more or less soil requires changing cut/fill calculations. With no topsoil, no vegetation (or poor vegetation) growth will occur. We need physical soil for our society to survive. For those reasons alone, I think soil should be considered infrastructure.

But soil also does so much more. It infiltrates rainfall, preventing it from running downstream. It stores water, holding it in reserve for a drier time in the future. It provides a home for the bottom of the biological food chain of the planet. Healthy soil provides resilience—to flood, to drought, to high input costs, to pests.

Dirt without Soil Organic Matter (SOM) cannot store water efficiently. Loss of SOM is part of the spread of desertification.

There’s a big difference between “dirt” and “soil”. Most people don’t realize that or even pay attention to this issue. But soil is one of the most prevalent substances in our lives that we never think about. Soil is “the upper layer of earth in which plants grow, a black or dark brown material typically consisting of a mixture of organic remains, clay, and rock particles.” A teaspoon of healthy soil contains billions of organisms. This is an ecosystem so complex and yet so microscopic that we didn’t even realize it until recently, despite the fact that it exists under our feet.

How do billions of organisms translate into infrastructure? Well, the more organisms you have in soil, the healthier the soil. And the higher the soil organic matter (SOM), the more water the soil can store. SOM is the component of soil composed of plant, animal, and microbial remains in various stages of decomposition, typically making up 1–5% of most soils. It includes fresh residue, active decomposing matter, and stable humus, which improve soil structure, nutrient retention, water-holding capacity, and overall fertility. Every 1% increase in SOM allows the soil to hold up to 16,500-25,000 gallons of plant available water per acre. SOM acts like a sponge, holding up to 10 times its weight in water, enhancing soil aggregation, and improving absorbency for better moisture retention, especially in sandy soils. 

Over the last century, we have severely degraded levels of SOM across the country and around the world. North American agricultural soils now average roughly 1.5% organic matter, a significant decline from the 6–8% found in healthy native soils. Some parts of the US had even higher levels of SOM before industrial agriculture and tillage, and wetlands contained over 50% soil organic matter.

Why does this matter? Well for one thing, there are billions of dollars of funding and grants poured into infrastructure every year in the US, not to mention globally. We consider highways, railroads, bridges, power plants, and the electric grid all to be infrastructure. We also consider drainage canals, dams, reservoirs, levees and detention ponds to be infrastructure—they hold water, store water, protect homes from water, and sometimes treat water. Unfortunately, this infrastructure is in bad shape and in need of massive spending to bring it up to adequate conditions. Estimates project that flood control alone, namely upgrading urban drainage, levees, green infrastructure, and coastal protections could add hundreds of billions to over $1 trillion. How are we going to pay for all of this?

Levees are a band-aid that increasingly prove to be inadequate to withstand Mother Nature.

If we consider soil to be infrastructure, we could evaluate its effectiveness in the alternatives analysis. Does it make more economic sense to build more reservoirs and levees or to rebuild the capacity of large landscapes to infiltrate and store water? We may still need some of those major projects, but I would wager we would need fewer and require less capital if we also rebuilt SOM.

In our analysis, let's consider that healthier soil plays a key role in addressing many of the water-related problems stated above. It's not the only solution needed, but it is a key part of the puzzle.

How much would it cost to rebuild SOM across the US and how much additional water storage could that provide? It would be exorbitantly expensive to do this as a stand-alone project. However, if we consider that more SOM also translates to better productivity for farmers and more forage for ranchers, more nutrient dense food, and greater landscape resilience—we can begin to see how this "cost" to invest in water storage, water infiltration, and water treatment can actually be structured as an investment.

We do need to consider how cash flows can be structured to make this strategy investable at scale. But if we consider the application of other models for infrastructure investment that already exist, it’s not that hard to see how we could deploy that capital efficiently to achieve these outcomes with a similar ROI. 

Healthy soil and prairie deliver many more benefits than people realize—and as a result, they are not valued as assets or infrastructure. There is an opportunity in changing that.

Good Things Are Worth Waiting (and Working) For

If I want to convert conventional row crop ground to native prairie as simple as planting the perennial species and bringing in the animals? As regenerative producers have found, it’s not an overnight process.

Yesterday I visited a regenerative farm in Illinois that is strategically making the transition from row crops to perennial pasture and grass-fed livestock because the farmer finds it to be at least 2-3 times more profitable than row crops. Nearly every section of ground is covered with some kind of vegetation, whether it’s cover crop, stubble from last year’s crop, or perennial grasses.

In the course of a 30-minute tour around the farm, we saw a pheasant, a coyote, tons of birds, and four species of livestock (sheep, cattle, pigs, and layer hens). In contrast, I drove past hundreds of empty fields on my way there. Bare ground, eroding topsoil, and almost no animals—farmed or wild.

One of Living Light’s mobile chicken coops last summer.

I recently finished Gabe Brown’s book Dirt to Soil, the story of one family’s transition to regenerative agriculture, although Gabe tells the story of many other farms going through similar transitions around the world, demonstrating that regenerative agriculture can work in almost any environment. One interesting lesson that resonated with me from Gabe’s book—after decades of conventional corn-soy-corn rotations and synthetic fertilizer and pesticide application, he found it to be challenging to just plant perennial native grasses once and expect the biology to thrive. He tried that once and found the perennial stand was low quality. He realized—the soil ecosystem has been degraded for years and years. To “wake it up” and bring that life back, he needed at least a few years of investment to kickstart the change. This meant planting a diverse mix of cover crop species one year and a mix of perennials and annuals the next year, and so on.

Catching up on my soil health reading on a recent family trip.

It may take 3 years to get a good stand of perennial grasses and forbs established. But during that period of rebuilding soil health, you can graze animals through that cover crop stand. This adds natural fertility and disturbance that plants need to grow stronger roots. And it creates happy, fat animals for meat production.

The Illinois farmer shared a similar story yesterday. He also tried to go straight from conventional crops to perennial pasture in one year but met with limited success. He mused with a smile that he had read Gabe Brown’s book one year too late.

Now, a few years later, multiple pastures are on their second or third year of annual cover crops, which he grazes and then replants with something new during the growing season to continue to build soil health. Instead of adding more synthetic fertilizer, he adds more plants. Over time, he starts integrating perennials, and by year 3, if he sees enough perennials return, he can lighten up on the annual seeding effort. When you start hearing the same thing over and over from different practical experts, it starts to stand out in your brain.

Prairie in transition at Living Light Farm

The journey to restoring nature at scale will start where we grow our food. Millions of acres with the potential to be reawakened, starting at the bottom of the food chain—the soil. But it’s not as simple as taking it out of conventional production—we have to continue to work with the biology and ecology to give nature a running headstart. We have to remove synthetic inputs and add life.

It takes time to see results, so we need aligned capital. We need animal impact—for natural fertility and for periodic disturbance. We need producers that are invested in understanding their land, rebuilding the ecology, and creating profitable, diverse, enduring farm enterprises. And of course, we need the consumers—including city dwellers like me, who care where their food comes from, how it was produced, and whether it made the environment better or worse during the course of production. When we put these conditions together, we can truly make magic happen—the return of bird song. The return of dark aggregated topsoil that holds water. The return of farm profitability. And market rate returns for investors.  

If you are interested in supporting regeneratively grown meat in the central Illinois region, check out Living Light Farms.

Cows on pasture at Living Light Farm

Embracing the Big Vision

How many times have we let fear get in the way of chasing a dream? Fear that we will fail, fear that we will be judged, fear that we will look stupid. So many fears to stop us from doing what we deeply desire to do.

I have often said this to my kids—"Don’t be afraid of trying and failing. If you failed, it means that you tried to do something hard. That is worth being proud of. And if you try enough times, you will eventually succeed.”

If only it were so easy to take the same advice! For me personally, it would be much more comfortable to fail in secret.

My vision with Land Steward Partners is a big one. It’s hard to share it before I’ve demonstrated that it works. But, without sharing the vision, it will be that much harder to achieve it. So here I am, admitting the big thing I’m working on. I keep telling myself: time will tell how long it takes, but not whether it will happen.  That part is up to me.

In Illinois alone, there are 27 million acres of farmland, and 90% of that is dedicated to growing corn and soybeans. That means 67.5% of the land in Illinois is currently growing two plant species.

Compare that to the diversity of Illinois’s native prairies, which previously covered around 60% of the state—21-22 million acres—which would have been covered with 300-500 species of plants. No wonder grassland bird populations are plummeting across the US, and especially in Illinois. There is less than 0.01%-1% of the Illinois tallgrass prairie ecosystem remaining. The study cited points to a hot spot of acceleration of decline in the Midwest, and that “any metric of agricultural intensity was always the best predictor of acceleration of the decline.”

Having worked in the environmental and conservation sector for my entire career, I have worked on countless projects balancing natural resource concerns and budgets—how can we achieve the most environmental benefit for the lowest possible cost? Because most of the calculus comes down to cost—who is going to pay for this? We have a lot of theories about who “should” pay for it, but in reality, most of those entities or people won’t, actually, pay for it. It’s just not the system that currently exists. So we are left to search for other solutions.

I think part of the problem lies at the root of this thinking, that conservation or the environment is something that has to be “paid for”, as in, we need someone to foot the bill because there is not value in restoring nature in and of itself. And in some cases, this is absolutely true—cleanup of toxic waste comes to mind—the responsible parties should pay for that.

Fortunately, with the right conditions, nature pays for itself.

Large grazers were a key part of healthy prairie ecosystems: literally millions of herbivores that ate grass and forbs, trampled plants, fertilized the soil with their waste, and shaped the landscape with their hooves and wallowing and migration patterns. Our land in Illinois had the carrying capacity for billions of pounds of animal biomass. There were many smaller grazers too, and birds, amphibians, reptiles, pollinators, and large predators. These ecosystems were incredibly complex, and it’s not simple to restore them.

But, we can give nature a headstart by changing what kind of food we produce on this land, and the food can pay for the nature. Conveniently, humans love to eat these large grazers (also known as bison, and their more modernly common bovine cousin- beef cattle). Right now, this land is mostly used to produce corn and soybeans, which ride a global commodities and subsidy-fueled rollercoaster. Per the USDA Economic Research Service’s 2026 forecast, median net farm income for the average “small” farm was -$1,498. You read that right: negative ~$1500. For reference, this includes farms with gross receipts of $350,000 or less. All that effort and hard work, only to lose money.

The current system is not working for farmers or the environment. Transitioning some of this acreage to native prairie and rotationally grazed, grass-fed bison (or even beef cattle) is a win-win. We can produce better revenue streams from farming, without subsidies, on the same land, while also allowing biodiversity to thrive again. Not to mention, after decades of conventional tillage, bison are a fantastic tool to rebuild soil health and fertility, decompact soils, and kickstart a regeneration process that supports soil water retention in our increasingly drought-prone climate. These characteristics will only help increase value of the land over time. Not to mention, bison makes for a tasty burger. As my friend and our advisor Matt Skoglund says “Eat bison. Save birds.”

Rewilding and Food Production—We Need Both.

In the last few years, my imagination has been captured by stories of rewilding around the world. There is the story of the Oostvaardensplassen in the Netherlands, a huge rewilding project (over 13,000 acres) in one of the world’s most densely populated countries. This strategy was originally deployed for flood relief, but through the reintroduction of large native herbivores, the reserve has seen the return of native and rare bird species and other wildlife.

There is also Isabella Tree’s beautiful book Wilding which describes the 3500-acre historic Knepp Estate, originally a hunting park for English royalty and most recently, an operational dairy farm that was intentionally returned to nature over the last 20 years.

A Must Read for any aspiring nature-minded farmer, or regenerative agriculture-minded consumer

In their efforts to give nature space to regenerate, they have seen a return of native bird species, including the imperiled turtle dove, regrowth of oak trees that require an open canopy to thrive, and clear signs that biodiversity can return even where it had been completely suppressed. One of the biggest reasons for the turtle dove’s decline—removal of 100,000 miles of hedge rows across England in the name of maximizing food production since 1950. These thorny hedge rows provided safe nesting habitat and their primary food source during the nesting season. It wasn’t removal of a single pristine “wild” habitat—it was the removal of hundreds of thousands of micro habitats across Britain’s farms.

Everyone in the US seems to know the story of returning wolves to Yellowstone National Park and how that single species reintroduction dramatically reshaped forests and rivers for the better (the beavers’ return also played a significant, although less well known, role). These stories highlight how resilient nature is—how quickly it can return if we give it the space and even better, a gentle push.

These are just a few of the many examples of “rewilding” taking hold across the world, and they give me hope that we haven’t yet tipped past the point of no return ecologically.

At the same time, we need to consider the effect of “leakage”, which refers to the concept that we might “rewild” or restore certain regions, particularly in abandoned or degraded farmland, only to shift the destruction of nature elsewhere in the world to replace the production of food or other goods. As an example, we remove cows from landscapes in the US so that waterways and forests can recover, but then import beef that was fed soy grown in deforested regions of the Amazon.

Leakage is incredibly hard to trace and establish causality, but it is an unavoidable reality of the global supply chain. This inevitable connection between nature and food/fiber production is one we ignore at our own peril. As populations become increasingly city-centric, leaving rural areas less populated and typically producing less food, it makes sense that farmland will be abandoned on the fringes and nature can reestablish. But we can’t just trust that it is on balance a good thing—we need to also think about where our food comes from and make sure that we are building resilient food supply chains in areas that are already disturbed—and shifting that production to systems that co-exist with nature.

If we rewild the northern hemisphere because we import much of our food from elsewhere, but plunder tropical regions and the southern hemisphere to grow that food, we lose the fight on climate change, on global biodiversity loss, and on social progress for many regions. We are all responsible for not just what we grow and produce in our own country, but what we consume. We cannot rewild our backyard in the name of sustainability and then source products from other parts of the world that are destroying biodiversity.

While we obviously cannot know what is happening in every country or dictate global sourcing, we can focus on building self-sustaining ecosystems and resilient food supply chains in our own “backyard”. At Land Steward Partners, we aren’t trying to eliminate food production in the name of conservation. We are working with land stewards who produce better food while also restoring nature. The fact that this is not only possible, but more economically profitable is incredibly exciting. Bison are the epitome of this thesis—we can restore overgrazed and degraded landscapes through regenerative rotational grazing, while producing one of the healthiest protein sources on the planet. We can produce nutrient dense food and provide habitats for migrating waterfowl. We can provide livelihoods for rural ranchers and store carbon in soils.

Bison at Roam Ranch in Fredricksburg, TX (an Audubon Certified Bird-Friendly Ranch)

Making Fast Friends in the Regenerative Farming Community

Finding Common Ground from the City to the Farm

Seeking Out Farmers to Understand Farming

Seems obvious that if you want to understand farming, you would go talk to a farmer. But as someone who lives in downtown Chicago, grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis, and rarely crossed paths with farmers in my day-to-day life, finding this opportunity in 2018 for me was more elusive than you might imagine.

As uncomfortable as it can be to go to an event where I know no one, I often have to go anyway in the career I have chosen. Luckily, I have found that when I am willing to be vulnerable and venture outside of my comfort zone, I almost always meet people that end up sparking creativity and incredible partnerships. On a cold Chicago day in March 2018, I met my friend Will for the first time at the Good Food Expo. It was a Friday and I had taken the day off work to attend the event, since it had little relevance to my actual job at the time and I thought my boss might laugh if I asked to go on company time/dime. My day job was working for a renewable energy developer, supporting the environmental permitting for utility scale wind and solar projects in the Great Plains and Western US. I spent most of my days reviewing biological reports about birds, big game, and wetlands that existed in the potential or operational wind and solar projects and meeting with state and federal wilding permitting agencies. My company used this information to determine setbacks and other strategies to minimize impacts to those natural resources from the construction and operation of an energy project. What did this have to do with the Good Food Expo? Well, nothing, if you asked my employer. But for me, I saw the connection—almost all of these energy projects were built on farms and ranches.

As I reviewed report after report on these rural farms, I couldn’t help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of wildlife in these places.[1] I also came to appreciate that farms and ranches make up most of the land use in the US (~880M-1B acres or ~30-40% of land in the US). This conflicted with preexisting narratives in my head—1. that “real” wildlife lives only in “wild places” and 2. farms were dead zones devoid of wildlife habitat. I had read articles and books describing modern farms as a major source of carbon emissions, degraded water quality, topsoil erosion, and loss of habitat. How did this equate with what I was seeing in these reports? I needed to square these two realities in my head, which led to more reading—about the history of farming in the US, regenerative agriculture, and ultimately, seeking out opportunities to talk to farmers in real life…at the Good Food Expo.

I couldn’t remember the exact setting, but Will remembered we met at the end of day happy hour. He grabbed a beer and I sat down at his table like a creep to ask annoying questions of a stranger! When he asked what brought me to this event, I shyly admitted that I was interested in regenerative agriculture—knowing I was way out of my depth. If anyone there wanted to call me out for attending a conference about something I knew very little about, they would have been totally reasonable to do so. But lucky for me, that’s not really the vibe of the regenerative agriculture community. Instead, Will was thrilled to hear that I was interested and believed in regenerative agriculture. He was eager to tell me about his farm, his recent investment in an organic spirits distillery, and his practical experience managing a regenerative organic farm. It was the beginning of a friendship that’s going on ten years, fueled by our shared curiosity about how to bring more of this positive land stewardship to reality.

A Leader in Regenerative Organic Farming at Scale

Will is a farmer from Paxton, Illinois, a small town in Ford County—about 110 miles from downtown Chicago. Will’s family owns 480 acres, all of which is organic and utilizes the classic regenerative cropping practices (i.e., diverse crop rotation, cover cropping, integration of animals to build soil fertility, and no-till) and then some.

The farm wasn’t always certified organic—the official conversion happened in the early 2000s, under the management of Will’s parents (more here about Will’s parents). But the farm had always stayed close to the regenerative practices that used to be standard farming practice, before the “green revolution”. His grandfather and uncle utilized mostly organic practices to grow corn, oats, and hay, but began to supplement with the use of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers when these chemical additives were introduced in the 50s. Luckily for Will’s family farm, however, these foundational practices were never abandoned, and when the National Organic Program finalized organic regulations in 2000, Will’s family saw an opportunity which aligned with their personal dislike for using chemicals on their farm. Will’s parents bought an 80-acre field to connect two separate parcels of family land that had been separated by a conventional farm and co-founded the Midwest Organic Famers Co-op. The Glaziks saw an opportunity to build on what they were already doing and access a value-added organic market.

Will’s personal story is particularly compelling not only because he is the second generation of a profitable regenerative organic farm, but also because he has continued to diversify his farm through value added products and is actively sharing his learnings so that others can benefit from his experience.

Will and his brother farm 800 acres together, 480 acres of which he rents from his parents, and the rest is rented from other landowners. His favorite crop to grow is corn—as he describes it, the most beautiful crop there is. But a regenerative farm requires a diverse crop rotation, which means he also grows soybeans, wheat, oats and rye.

Photo: Corn ready for harvest on Will’s farm.

Will partners with a neighbor to lease some of his land to grow row crops, and as part of their partnership, his neighbor runs his cows through Will’s farm to graze on crop residue and cover crops. Will’s dad also rotates his herd through some of the fields, providing natural fertility and building soil organic matter the old-fashioned way (and practically free for Will). This reduces or eliminates the need for artificial inputs like chemical fertilizer. Will’s wife is a veterinarian, which is an amazing skillset to have around a farm with livestock!

Photo: Cows play their role fertilizing the land on Cow Creek Organics and providing meat for the family.

On top of these traditional crops, Will worked with NRCS to plant a mix of perennial trees and shrubs in his organic buffer. Every organic farmer needs a 25-foot edge-of-field buffer to account for drift spray from conventional neighbors. In this buffer, Will must follow organic practices, but he cannot sell these crops as “organic” in case they have residual chemicals from his neighbors’ farming operation. Many farmers just plant corn or beans in this acreage and sell it for the commodity market price—if it grows under these suboptimal conditions, maybe even losing money. But for Will, this presented another opportunity for diversification. He planted a variety of species in his buffer (hybrid poplars, white oaks, willows, hickory, and aronia berries). The perennial tree buffer helps slow down water as it drains from Will’s fields, provides habitat for wildlife, and filters any excess nutrients that might run off the fields. Financially, as a worst-case scenario, Will has created a wind break, a new high value crop (aronia berries), and a timber harvest in the future. Best case scenario, he has all that and he can use the white oaks for an “estate label” for his other business, Silver Tree Beer & Spirits.

Building in a Captive Buyer & Higher Margin Products

In 2017, Will co-founded the distillery with his siblings in Paxton, which sells whiskey, vodka, and gin made from organic regenerative grains grown by his brother Dallas and him. His other brother Clayton manages the taproom, and his sister Abby manages events and marketing.

Photo: Barrels of Silver Tree product in the Distillery in Paxton, IL.

By creating the distillery, the family has developed a built-in end user for its grain, with additional revenue to be made from selling the spirits and beer. I was fortunate to attend a dinner hosted at Silver Tree and the Land Connection in October, and to spend the day trying my hand at bottling whiskey. For my Chicago friends, you can pick up some Silver Tree at Binny’s. Sorry in advance if you get a bottle with a lopsided label…

Photo: Bottling whiskey at Silver Tree.

It’s Not Scalable, but it’s Highly Replicable

On top of farming and the distillery, Will is a regional markets consultant for the Rodale Institute, an agricultural research and education nonprofit that furthers the growth of organic regenerative agriculture across the US. One of Will’s responsibilities in this role is hosting and facilitating events to educate farmers on new perennial cropping strategies, like those he has employed on his own farm.

Photo: Will leading a farm visit at Cow Creek Organics.

After the conference in March 2018, I visited Will’s farm that fall and brought along some other friends that owned a family farm in the Driftless and were interested in organic farming. Will later helped them transition 230 acres to organic in partnership with local farmers. This is just one example of Will sharing his expertise with others to enable more organic regenerative farming.

Photo: a bin of the 2018 Bloody Butcher corn harvest during our farm visit.

Will gets his best ideas while he’s driving his tractor. He is constantly looking for new ways to build more diversity and resilience into his operation. But he is not looking to “scale”, in terms of acres farmed or even the distillery. He does not want to become the largest distributor of organic regenerative whiskey and vodka, or to add another 2000 acres to his farming. He does have an interest in teaching other farmers, however, so that his methods can be replicated. To borrow a saying from Will Harris of White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia, “it’s not scalable like industrial farming, but it’s highly replicable.” As we think about all that is wrong with our current system, the relentless focus on scale and growth for growth’s sake is part of the problem. Scale and growth inevitably require capital, which requires investors, which requires meeting investor expectation, which can result in perverse incentives to take actions for short-term benefit but less resiliency long-term. The focus on scale takes us away from regional foodsheds in a relentless pursuit of growth. There is a point at which the operation becomes too big for one person to manage alone, requiring employees and ultimately would require Will to spend his days differently. That isn’t for everyone. Will has been strategic in growing his business in a way that still lets him do the work he loves—growing corn.

If this can work, why isn’t there more of it?

I like to call Will every time I have an investment idea about farming or environmental restoration in partnership with farmers. He is usually adept at nicely pointing out the holes in my strategy, or how I should think differently about the idea to consider a nuance that only an actual farmer would understand. He understands my obsession –if regenerative farming is so much better for soil health and biodiversity, and we know how to do it—why aren’t we doing more of it? What are the barriers to scaling this approach and how do we solve for them? The truth is that there are many barriers, and they are complex.

Lately we have been discussing what Will would do with $5M. If like-minded investment capital was available, how would Will put it to use? He has many ideas, ranging from alternative uses for distilling byproducts and buying a local organic mill to close a gap in the regional grain supply chain. In Will’s opinion, it’s the regional distribution and infrastructure that is lacking, particularly for organic farmers. The supply side is not the problem—we are more than capable of growing plenty of food and even growing it without chemicals. It’s getting it to the market in a way that still results in sufficient margin for the farmer. When organic farms are sparsely distributed across rural landscapes, it’s harder to aggregate inputs and offtake (for example, getting regional grain processing for organic grain is expensive and the mills are few and far between).

The Possibility of Scaling Regenerative Organic Farming

Part of why I love learning about farmers who are growing food in harmony with nature—instead of working against it, is learning about their “why”. Will’s “why” does not disappoint. He likes finding ways to add and build to the family business, but doing it in a way that does not require “killing stuff”, like insects and plants. He enjoys growing food that people eat. He knows where most of his crops end up and takes immense pride in that. He is also driven by the fact that his farm does not negatively impact anyone downstream—from chemical, fertilizers, or anything else. It’s “clean production.” For me, it’s all of the other parts of Will’s strategy too—the fact that Will’s farm has higher insect diversity, greater bird species abundance and diversity, small check dams that slow down water and create seasonal habitat, and stream protection from overgrazing. Will’s farm shows that it is possible to grow food, be profitable, and steward the environment. We can help direct investment to enable more farms to follow this model.

In comparing our memories about our initial meeting, Will and I realized that the only time either one of us has attended the Good Food Expo was in 2018. A chance encounter that resulted in a partnership for 230 new acres of organic farmland in Illinois and ten years of friendship and brainstorming investment ideas that can further the growth of regenerative agriculture and better land stewardship. A little inspiration to continue to push ourselves outside of our comfort zones to further the outcomes we believe in deeply.

Photo: Nat (friend of the farm!), Will, and me at the 2025 Land Connection Dinner in Paxton, IL at Silver Tree Beer & Spirits.

[1] BRB while I google “sage grouse” and “raptor nest survey”. IYKYK…Side note: please watch at least one YouTube video of an eagle taking down big game. Wildlife is crazy. This is the kind of stuff I got up to in the early days of my environmental permitting job.

Relishing the Quiet Work of January

There’s something to love about January. We’re all coming down from a few weeks (or months) of extra busyness. We’ve been making magic for others and probably merrymaking ourselves. Maybe indulging a bit more than normal, sleeping in, and leaning into lazy movie days here and there. Instead of building project models and scheduling Teams calls, I’ve been building multi-course meals and scheduling back-to-back plans for the whole family. In my house, the kids are out of school, so any expectation of traditional productivity has gone way down the last few weeks. As much as we spend all year trying not to admit it, we need this break from routine—if only for a little while. Our brains need to unplug from the cortisol drip and we need to do nothing productive for a minute. In some way, these weeks are what we work all year for—time with family and friends, travel and late nights—a little break for fun.

But in January, we all step back into our routines—often begrudgingly. Our hearts think we want the break to go on indefinitely, but our minds actually crave routine and structure. In January, we get that back and for at least a while, it feels so good. At the same time, it’s still winter. It’s still bitterly cold in Chicago for a few more months. It’s a chance for routine and slowness at the same time. Compared to November and December which is routine and packed schedules, I am relishing this new normal. It’s time to quietly build, put in the hard work, and focus on personal wellness and health too. Just like plants and animals go into a dormant period where they are hibernating and conserving energy in the winter, we can go into a period of deep work and focus for a few months, cutting back on the extra activities that drain our energy.

We’re at the very beginning of this LSP journey, and yet the work we are doing has been underway for many years. We are building on the foundation laid by so many visionaries and farmers and committed creative individuals that are convinced that there is a better way to grow food and care for our environment. I am filled with excitement and joy that this is the work I get to do. I’m looking forward to all of the conversations, spreadsheets, projects, and partners we will encounter and develop in 2026. Let’s get to work.