MISSION & VISION
Our mission is to accelerate the shift to a just and regenerative food system by ensuring farmers and ranchers have the financial security they need to adopt practices that nourish people and the planet.
Our vision is a vibrant and resilient food system that restores ecosystems, produces nutrient-rich food, supports rural economies, and uplifts everyone across the supply chain—where healthy soil and healthy balance sheets go hand in hand.
WHAT IS THE SIXTH FOOD SYSTEM?
Human history can be traced through five major food systems - each defined by how we grow, share, and consume food. The fifth and current system is industrial and extractive, built for efficiency and yield at the expense of soil, ecosystems, and local communities.
The next food system that will define this epoch of human history — Food System 6 — will restore ecosystems instead of depleting them, produce wholesome, nutrient-rich foods that promote human health, and ensure that every link in the chain —from farm to market — is supported by fair, resilient, and non-extractive flows of capital.
HISTORY OF FS6
FS6 began over a decade ago with a simple but powerful conviction: our food system must — and can — be transformed. Through our pioneering accelerator program, we supported visionary entrepreneurs tackling some of the toughest challenges in food and agriculture.
After accelerating 52 businesses and non-profits through seven cohorts, one insight became clear: capital was the single biggest barrier to scaling regenerative agriculture.
Time and again, we saw promising businesses stalled by a financial system built for conventional, extractive agriculture. If we truly wanted to change the food system, we couldn’t just support innovators one by one — we had to reengineer the system that determines who can access capital and who gets left out.
Strategic Plan: 2026-2028
Executive Summary
Healthy soil starts with healthy balance sheets
Farmers can’t farm for the future if they can’t survive the present.
Producers face mounting financial distress as high interest rates, rising input costs, and climate shocks converge — echoing the 1980s farm crisis, when hundreds of thousands of farms were lost. The agricultural finance system remains optimized for large-scale, commodity-based operations backed by a multi-billion dollar federal safety net, while regenerative farmers — often smaller, more diversified, BIPOC, and women-led producers — are largely excluded from comparable protections. Unless we rebalance the system, regenerative agriculture will remain out of reach for all but the most resourced. Food System 6 is on a mission accelerate the shift to a just & regenerative food system by ensuring producers have the financial security they need to adopt practices that nourish our planet.