Reframing Soil Wealth: How Relationships Shape Regenerative Finance and Agriculture
An unusual collaboration between financial institutions, academia, government, non profits and the farming sector has generated an exciting exploration on how to connect regenerative agriculture with much needed financing.
“In the Soil Wealth report, we looked at an aggregate of 67 of those mechanisms, instruments, and approaches that could be used to move more appropriate kinds of capital into the growing regenerative agricultural sector”, said David LeZaks, a senior fellow at Croatan Institute, a Durham North Carolina nonprofit whose mission is to harness the power of investment for social good and ecological resilience.
As LeZaks explained in an interview with the Presencing Institute team, soil wealth is “not just about the soil’s physical attributes, but its relationship with the people who manage it.” This perspective aligns closely with Theory U, which views systems change as beginning with shifts in awareness, intention, and the quality of relationships within a system.
Efforts to advance regenerative agriculture increasingly point to a deeper insight: lasting change depends not only on practices or technologies, but on relationships. At the intersection of agriculture and finance, the concept of soil wealth reframes value as something relational—emerging from how land is cared for and how people, capital, and ecosystems interact over time.
From a Theory U perspective, these connections help cultivate the social field needed for transformation—where new relationships, shared understanding, and coordinated action can emerge.
The Presencing Institute contributes to this field by convening farmers, investors, researchers, and system leaders in spaces designed for listening, shared inquiry, and collective learning. Through research dialogues and ecosystem-level conversations, PI supports actors from different sectors to see the system more clearly and explore how financial flows can align with regenerative stewardship.
Read the full interview to go deeper into the Soil Wealth perspective. Contact us at PI to learn more about our work at the intersection of regenerative agriculture, finance, and systems change.