Growing the Regenerative Agriculture Movement with Dan Miller, Founder & CEO of Steward
The Most Important Thing
Check out Steward to learn more about regenerative agriculture and invest directly in the farmers changing the global food system.
About Dan Miller
Steward’s story begins with its founder and CEO, Dan Miller. Ask Dan what inspired him to create Steward, and he’ll tell you about early mornings spent crabbing with his dad on the Chesapeake Bay.
This was the experience that rooted him to the land, but it was a meeting with a well-known chef in Dan’s hometown, Washington D.C, that would plant the idea of Steward in his mind. He talked about the difficulties facing the independent farmers that supplied his restaurant. The more specialised the farms were, the harder it was to get a loan.
Dan felt that instead of forcing farmers to fit within a box, it should be the other way around. So he committed himself to creating a system that empowers farmers to steward their land sustainably, with consumers—the people with the most to gain from sustainable farming—investing in their success.
Since graduating from the Wharton School with a B.S. and M.B.A in 2010, Dan has seen firsthand the potential of an investment crowdfunding model. From 2010 to 2015, he was Co-Founder, President and a Director of Fundrise, the first and largest US real estate crowdfunding platform, which has raised more than $500 million to date. It’s this experience, combined with a passion for agriculture and ecology, that led Dan to Steward.
About Steward
Sustainable farmers are stewards of the land—taking responsibility for the soil, nourishing our communities and proving that there is a better way to do agriculture. But the going is tough for the little guys: human-scale farms need access to capital if they’re going to survive and grow—capital that’s often hard to come by.
Steward is the world’s first CrowdFarming platform, helping sustainable farms to flourish by letting regular people invest in them directly, and prosper alongside them. So whether you're an investor looking to build your wealth without compromising your values, or a farmer looking for the back-up you need to take that next step, with Steward everybody wins.
Episode Overview:
I’ve spent the last year working with Dan Miller, the founder of Steward, in a business development role to help onboard new investors and partners to help achieve Steward’s mission of financing thousands of farmers practicing regenerative agriculture. Dan’s knowledge and experience in building innovative financial models for financing emerging opportunities is unparalleled. We discussed a range of subjects from the definition of regenerative agriculture, to the challenges that small farmers face, to the problems with our current agriculture system, food deserts and more. We also touched on a subject that has frustrated me for the last year – the issues with the current frameworks for impact investing.
If you care about the future of our food system, this one’s for you.
My Favorite Quotes:
“If you want to address economic opportunity, malnutrition, and access to food, you have to change how people are farming and then how they are actually preparing and selling the product.”
“I always saw finance as a way to open up access to new groups of people.”
“The current agriculture system talks about calories and feeding the world; but that’s not their focus, that’s not what they’re there to do, what they do is create food products and sell them to customers, and that’s their primary business.”
“There’s not going to be one simple solution to the problem with agriculture.
“There’s millions of people who want to farm and are already farming, how about giving them more resources?”
“We’ve been chasing the perfect automated agriculture in which you don’t have to worry about weather or labor – and that we have the worst food that we’ve ever had in our culture in terms of health and wellness.”
“Teaching people how to do things themselves is often not as good a business as selling a product.”
“In rural areas that are food deserts, every acre is planted, but all of that is getting shipped out and often not even edible product – a lot going to feed or biofuels. This shows what the priority is.”
“A majority of farmers in the US don’t eat food from their own farms.”
“Generally, where we are in the American and global economy is that resources are available to the top 5% of individuals and organizations, while the broad base doesn’t have access to capital for funding.”
“Crowdfunding is about amplifying existing networks.”
“As long as there is sun, as long as there is soil, they can grow the food and provide it to individuals.”
“They had someone on Twitter who followed them who invested $10,000 dollars 5 minutes after they launched their campaign. How else would they have found that person?”
“The strength of the narrative and their character is what enables them to get access to credit at a lower rate.”
“Steward’s farmers are always in it for a varied number of reasons: it might be to provide access to healthy food, to fight climate change, or other.”
“The process of making money actually leads to positive outcomes.”
“The intermediation is part of the core problem… that’s also the problem on the consumer side with multiple parties touching the product before it reaches the consumer.”
“The people who are doing the most impact investing just don’t necessarily classify it as impact investing.”
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 – Dan defines regenerative agriculture
05:00 – Dan’s journey from finance to agriculture
10:00 – Why technology won’t save the food problem in America
15:00 – The decreasing number of farmers and the rise of food deserts
20:00 – Tale of two dairy farmers
23:00 – The importance of crowdfunding
28:00 – Steward farmers and their customer/investor relationship
33:00 – What has surprised us the most about Steward
40:00 – How do you measure the impact of platforms like Steward?
46:00 – Sensemaking, measurement, and impact investing
50:00 – The challenges with ESG investing
Episode Links:
Dan’s Info
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture Podcast
Steward Info
Other Resources & References
RODALE Institute: Regenerative Agriculture
The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
Increase in small farmers (Census)
WWOOF (sustainable agriculture internship)
Jeremy Grantham on Regenerative Ag
Project Drawdown: Regenerative Annual Cropping
Marc’s Info:
Marc Weinstein, host of the Look Up! Podcast is a public speaker for corporations, universities, and conferences. Click here to view past talks and to book Marc
Look Up! Patreon Community
Look Up! Website
Marc's Instagram
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