Events
2025 SAFSF Forum Replay
- This event has passed.
Why Regenerative Producers Still Can’t Get Credit and How Integrated Capital Can Close the Gap
November 19, 2025 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm PST
Despite evidence to the contrary, regenerative farmers, ranchers, and producers more broadly are often labeled as “too risky” by conventional lenders—not because of their actual performance, but because they fall outside the structures that define creditworthiness in industrial agriculture. This webinar, first presented at the 2025 SAFSF Forum, will reframe the conversation around risk: What is real risk in ag lending, and what’s just a byproduct of broken systems?
Speakers will examine how conventional lenders’ failure to offer patient, flexible capital options for regenerative producers is hindering the regeneration of a resilient and sustainable food system. Rather, the emergence of innovative, mission-driven lenders and investors who are reviving relationship and opportunity-based models is making it possible to put soil health on the balance sheet.
Speakers will also explore the emergence of loan guarantees—one of the most effective tools for unlocking credit where traditional underwriting falls short. Lenders have fewer ways to assess risk because regenerative producers often operate without subsidies, crop insurance, or conventional benchmarks, lenders have fewer ways to assess risk. Guarantees help close that gap, giving lenders a backstop and making it possible to finance operations that are sound but structurally excluded.
This webinar is open to all funders. Join us for a conversation about risk, reward, and what it will take to truly finance regeneration.
Speakers
Linda Jo Doctor, Program Officer, W.K. Kellogg Foundation (moderator)
Linda Jo Doctor is a program officer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan. In this role, she helps develop programming priorities, reviews and recommends proposals for funding, manages and monitors a portfolio of active grants, and designs and implements national programming. She co- leads the Foundation’s efforts to promote equitable, sustainable and nourishing food systems. Previously, Ms. Doctor was deputy director for a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation National Program Office housed at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. She also directed the Division of Prevention at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, where she provided leadership for statewide health promotion and prevention programs, interagency initiatives, and national efforts. Ms. Doctor received her Master of Public Health degree from Boston University School of Public Health She recently completed her studies and received a Masters of Philanthropic Studies from the Lily Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University. She has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Cincinnati, College of Community Services. She currently serves on the board of directors of ALEPH: The Alliance for Jewish Renewal.
Zach Ducheneaux, 5th C LLC, Founder
Zach Ducheneaux was a third generation rancher, and Executive Director of the Intertribal Agriculture Council prior to accepting a role as the Farm Service Agency Administrator in 2021. Since January of 2025 he’s been bringing an investment approach to production agriculture to revitalize rural economies and preserve family farms and ranches. His company, 5th C LLC will match investors with agriculture producers in a manner that shares profits, shares risk, and shares opportunity more equitably with the producer.
Lauren Manning, Executive Director, Food System 6
Lauren Manning, Esq., LL.M., is Executive Director of Food System 6, a nonprofit working to accelerate the transition to a just and restorative food system by expanding access to capital. Before FS6, Lauren was a venture capital investor with agrifood-tech focused AgFunder while also raising grass-fed beef, lamb, and goat meat as part of a farmer collective in NW Arkansas for 10 years. She began her career as a civil litigator handling a broad range of cases including toxic torts and pharmaceuticals.
