Events
In-Person
Building an Intersectional Philanthropic Approach: Climate Change, Agriculture, and Healthy Rural Communities
June 25, 2024 @ 8:00 am – June 26, 2024 @ 5:00 pm CDT
Join Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders (SAFSF), Climate and Energy Funders Group (CEFG), Funders for Regenerative Agriculture (FORA), and Health and Environmental Funders Network (HEFN) for a dynamic two-day funder convening, June 25-26, in Minneapolis, MN.
Meet in person with peer climate, agriculture, and environmental funders and learn about the significant opportunities to support a sustainable and just future through climate-smart agriculture. We’ll explore the connections, opportunities, and gaps between reducing emissions from working agricultural lands, advancing carbon sequestration strategies through regenerative agriculture, and supporting healthy rural communities. Through thoughtfully curated site visits, we’ll also meet with leaders driving regenerative agriculture solutions and mobilizing communities in and around the Twin Cities.
Participation is limited to 80 attendees.
This gathering is organized with support from McKnight Foundation.
The Climate-Agriculture Connection in Rural Communities
Emissions reductions in the transportation or energy sectors alone will not stave off the worst impacts of the climate crisis. Agriculture is responsible for 11% of annual greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., not including emissions from fertilizer, animal farming, and pesticide production. Nearly half of these total emissions come from the Midwest where rural and indigenous communities bear an unequal portion of the impacts. The longer industrial and extractive agriculture production methods dominate, the higher these emissions will climb.
This is a key moment for agriculture, climate, and environmental funders. As the country seeks to address climate change, and shift to a clean energy economy and sustainable agriculture practices, rural places will be where the solar and wind farms are sited, the minerals for batteries are mined and the batteries themselves produced, and where agricultural practices evolve to reduce methane gases. Indeed, rural places are implicated in many dimensions of the 21st-century economy, from data processing to fabrication plants to cryptocurrency mining and online retail distribution. How these economies evolve, who benefits, and how well communities manage them—are clear and present policy issues that are receiving little attention, leaving rural places historically under-resourced and without critical support and offering few guardrails to prevent a modern version of the extractive arrangements prevalent throughout history.
To build both critical political power in these regions and robust rural engagement in transition strategies, it will be imperative that philanthropy work across the silos between climate, agriculture, and healthy rural economies to center the voices and strategies of rural communities and ensure equitable and just rural economic development and transition.
