Some Mantras from Women Transforming Food and Finance

12/19/2023
By: Jessica Hartzell

I’m new/ish at TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation, just rounding out my first year as Director of Operations and finally getting my arms around what it means to manage a regenerative business. While the ranch starts with principles on the land and ripples out widely from there, the regenerative mindset can sometimes feel a little unwieldy. How does a management-type like me approach an organization like ours, where impact is measured on the scale of both dung beetles and shifts in global food systems? 

I traveled to the Regenerative Food Systems Investment (RFSI) Women Transforming Food and Finance with that question on my mind. After a few days spent with this group of people navigating capital markets and food markets on behalf of the regenerative movement, I came away with a few mantras. 

Listen to the okra.

Donna Isaacs, a farmer and nonprofit leader from Louisiana, told us the story of building and financing DeLa Terre Permaculture Farm in Eros, LA. Donna’s story includes five storm fronts in 2020 alone, including Hurricane Laura which blew through Louisiana at a whopping 150 miles per hour. The storms were destructive and knocked down plants and animals and trees. However, the okra stood right back up. Apparently, okra is resilient as heck – something about long taproots and stems that bend. Climate crises are here, they are part of our seasons, and to face them we will need to be like the okra. 

We have to get the rules of business right. 

Our own Kat Taylor took the stage as a member of the day one keynote panel to talk about the whys and hows of refinancing Farm Service Agency (FSA) loans. She reminded us that finance is the biggest industry in the world. Such a massive industry is powerful enough to drive everything else, including business outcomes that we will never overcome with all of the governmental or charitable resources in the world. For that reason, we have to get the rules of business right so that this massive machine drives us toward regeneration. 

Good enough for now, safe enough to try. 

Annalyn Lavey took us through a workshop on moving from Radical to Practical, which included exercises on teaching one another skills and frameworks. One of Annalyn’s frameworks is good enough for now, safe enough to try, meaning that the bar for innovative approaches is not perfection. I find that managing risk is sometimes an existential challenge, especially when balancing land, animal, and human needs, and this mantra fits my experience so far. 

Where can we be braver? 

Robyn O’Brien closed the event with a personal story and a call to action: be brave to call forward and stay present to the stories in the room. The impacts of going against the prevalent flow of capital boil down to the shockingly personal corners of our lives: family estrangement, disconnection from spouses, loss of family land, health scares, exclusion – the list goes on. Systems change runs through the wringer of our lives; bravery is required to endure it, to share it, and to acknowledge that it is true in ourselves and our colleagues. 

These mantras are just that, phrases that bloom into worldviews if repeated often enough. I carry them, like I carry the regenerative principles, in my toolbelt to apply to my work and our organizational impact, always with regeneration at the forefront.