Farmers Can’t Farm for the Future If They Can’t Survive the Present
Guest article by Lauren Manning of Food System 6
Across the United States, farmers and ranchers are feeling the squeeze. High interest rates, volatile markets, extreme weather, and rising input costs are converging into a perfect storm of financial distress. The warning signs are uncomfortably familiar to those leading up to the 1980s farm crisis, when hundreds of thousands of farmers lost their land, rural communities emptied, and farmer suicide rates spiked.
The numbers validate this fear. USDA projects that the typical farm family will lose $328 on farming in 2025. Fewer than 1 in 20 farms are expected to turn a profit, while nearly 9 out of 10 will depend on off-farm jobs just to make ends meet. Farm debt is at historic highs, with real estate debt surpassing $375 billion, marking an 87% increase since 2009. Bankruptcies are rising fast: Chapter 12 filings nearly doubled in early 2025, climbing from 45 filings to 88 in the first quarter alone.
This time, the stakes are even higher. If we allow another wave of farm foreclosures, we won’t just lose livelihoods, we’ll lose the very people who can lead us toward a more resilient, regenerative future, as well as access to the land we’ll need to do it. Layered on top of this is the escalating climate crisis, which is amplifying droughts, floods, and volatile growing conditions making farm viability more precarious than ever.
The good news is that we have a chance to intervene now by developing financial programs designed to keep producers on their land and moving toward regeneration.
The Gap in the Safety Net
Conventional producers are backed by billions of dollars in legislatively guaranteed risk protection. Without comparable safeguards, regenerative farmers will always be at a competitive disadvantage, no matter their actual performance.
In agriculture, how you farm determines how you’re financed. Conventional, commodity-focused operations enjoy a taxpayer-backed safety net worth tens of billions of dollars each year, from direct payments and disaster relief to crop insurance and loan guarantees. In 2025 alone, direct farm program payments are forecasted to reach $40.5 billion, up from $10.1 billion in 2024. Add crop insurance payouts and loan guarantees, and it’s clear why many producers stick to crops that keep them eligible.
Regenerative producers, who are often smaller, more diversified, and outside commodity markets, find these programs ill-suited or inaccessible. For historically underserved producers, the barriers are even higher with ongoing discrimination making the support they would gain, too often, not worth the fight.
We cannot ask producers to shoulder the risks of transitioning to regenerative practices when so many are already struggling to stay solvent. For a farmer facing cash flow shortfalls or mounting debt, the idea of adopting new practices—with learning curves, possible yield dips, and little to no safety net—is financially unthinkable.
Until we build a safety net that gives regenerative agriculture real risk support and assurance farmers and ranchers won’t face financial hardship alone, we’re not offering them a viable opportunity, we’re asking them to gamble their livelihoods. We must create a safety net that not only mitigates risk for regenerative farmers and ranchers, but also for banks, lenders, and investors, unlocking more capital to accelerate the transition to regenerative agriculture. With this safety net in place we will be inviting farmers into a financial opportunity worth pursuing, rather than asking them to bet the farm on regeneration.
The First Building Block of a Regenerative Safety Net
At Food System 6 (FS6), our mission is to accelerate the shift to a just, regenerative food system by ensuring farmers and ranchers have the financial support they need to adopt practices that nourish people and the planet.
Access to credit is one of the most critical tools in a producer’s toolbox. Working capital allows a farmer to purchase seed and inputs before harvest, repair equipment, or ride out a bad season without losing the farm. It also fuels expansion, diversification, technical assistance, testing new markets, and other pieces of the transition puzzle that don’t come free.
Yet many conventional ag banks and lenders view regenerative producers as riskier borrowers. Without crop insurance, subsidies, or decades of yield and price data, these farmers can appear less bankable on paper, even when their operations are resilient and well-run.
The good news is that a growing number of innovative, mission-driven lenders are stepping into this gap. They bring flexible underwriting models, a willingness to understand unique farm businesses, and a hands-on approach that goes beyond simply crunching numbers. They are proving that lending to regenerative producers is not only possible, but profitable and prudent.
But these lenders face a structural disadvantage. Unlike conventional banks, they are shut out of USDA’s Farm Service Agency loan guarantees, which are restricted to regulated banking entities. That means innovative lenders, typically structured as private loan vehicles, and the borrowers they serve, are competing against conventional ag lenders who benefit from federally backed guarantees that de-risk their portfolios.
This is where FS6 steps in. Our flagship program, Guarantees for Regenerative Agriculture (GRA), is designed to address this inequity by providing guarantees on loans where regenerative producers need support most: operating and production capital loans. These loans are shorter-term, with repayment data that can be tracked and analyzed in real time.
By generating strong loan portfolio performance data, GRA is building the data-backed case that lending to regenerative producers is not mercurial. Rather, it’s a sound financial decision and a way for lenders to diversify their portfolios. GRA is also capturing lessons from innovative lenders’ underwriting methods and sector-specific loan structures to build a new playbook for mainstream agricultural finance.
Over time, this proof of concept can pave the way for broader change. If USDA opens its guarantee programs to innovative lenders, these institutions could reach more borrowers, spread risk more evenly, and finally level the financial playing field for regenerative farmers. But just as urgently, guarantees can help keep farmers out of foreclosure today, offering a lifeline that keeps producers on their land when financial stress threatens to push them off.
GRA is just the first building block of a reimagined safety net. Alongside expert partners, FS6 will pilot and scale additional safeguards that help farmers through transition, shield them from short-term losses, and ensure regenerative agriculture can thrive with the same scale and stability as conventional farming.
The Cost of Inaction
The shift to regenerative agriculture is gaining momentum, but it will remain outpaced by an industrial system fortified by billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded risk protections unless we reimagine risk support tools as part of building a new regenerative capital supply chain.
Building that safety net won’t be simple. It means reshaping a system that is designed to serve large-scale commodity agriculture. It will take an entrepreneurial, startup mindset—piloting new programs, testing what works and what doesn’t, securing producer buy-in, and bringing the right partners together to carry these protections into the public realm. Bold partnerships and funder leadership will be essential to move this vision from concept to system-wide change.
The call to action is clear: as part of increasing access to capital for regenerative producers throughout the supply chain, we must advance a regenerative safety net that provides producers with risk protection for the inevitable economic speedbumps of growing and producing food while rewarding outcomes like soil health, biodiversity, and rural resilience instead of just yield.
Because the farmers and ranchers we are asking to regenerate the land shouldn’t have to risk losing it in the process.
