The Funding Field
The Funding Field from Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders (SAFSF) offers insightful conversations with diverse capital partners working to fund and build a resilient, just, and democratic future of food and agriculture. Each episode features candid conversations with leaders in philanthropy, impact investment, and social change who are mobilizing capital, shifting power, and changing systems from the ground up. From on-the-ground insights by frontline communities to trendlines in impact capital and funding food and agriculture, The Funding Field is an essential resource for those seeking greater impact in supporting transformative food systems change.
Episode 2: First Nations Development Institute
On this episode of The Funding Field, SAFSF Executive Director Clare Fox sat down with Mike Roberts, President and CEO of First Nations Development Institute (FNDI) and former SAFSF steering committee and board member, and A-dae Romero-Briones, Vice President, Policy & Research, California Tribal Fund, Native Agriculture and Food Systems Investments at FNDI. Together they look at philanthropy’s persistent underfunding of Native-led organizations and tribal communities, how First Nations is working to reverse that trend, and why Indigenous-led food systems work so often gets lost in translation when it meets philanthropy’s usual ways of measuring impact. The conversation is candid and full of practical takeaways for funders and frontline communities alike, so grab a notepad.
Episode 1: Shorlette Ammons, Farm Aid
We sat down with Shorlette Ammons, Co-Executive Director and Program Director of Farm Aid, to learn about her journey growing up in rural North Carolina to now leading the nation’s largest musician-led fundraiser to support family farms. Shorlette Ammons brings a rare combination of lived experience and visionary leadership to her work at the intersection of food, music, and movement. Raised in Beautancus, North Carolina, as the granddaughter of hog farmers and the child of farmworkers, Shorlette traces a direct line from those tobacco fields and pickle plant packing lines to her understanding of how systems are designed to pit marginalized communities against one another — and how to build something different.
In conversation with SAFSF’s Clare Fox, Shorlette reflects on Farm Aid’s evolution from iconic telethon concert to year-round advocacy and grantmaking organization, shares a grounded perspective on what philanthropy often misses in its approach to rural and BIPOC communities, and shares invaluable insights for how to get the most out of our time together at the SAFSF Forum in the South.
Are you a funder deploying grants, loans, and/or investments in sustainable agriculture and food systems? SAFSF is the leading and largest organization of diverse capital partners investing in food and agriculture with a community of over 120 member organizations.