Mad Ag: Seeking to Create a Regenerative Revolution in Agriculture
Mad Agriculture is catalyzing a regenerative revolution. We aid farmers who are transforming their farm plans to promote healthy ecosystems and thriving livelihoods. Mad Ag serves over 75 farmers across eight states, with operations based in Colorado.
We are part of a groundswell of people and organizations, far and wide, diverse and empowered, who are responding to the call to heal our relationship with ourselves, each other and the land. Our work is addressing the root causes of climate change, soil degradation, ecological, and human injustice. We work from head to heart, poetry to science, financing to markets, and soil to shelf to create a beautiful, just and resilient society.
Our name was inspired by the Mad Farmer poems of Wendell Berry, which call us to rework society and agriculture with love, community and lots of radicalism. In Wendell’s words, “I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.” The world that we are striving to create is so vastly different than the world that is, that nearly everything that we do bears certain madness.
Through our Stewardship, Capital and Market services, we are reimagining and restoring our relationship with agriculture. These service areas promote a holistic approach to farm business planning. Farm partners can work with one or all of these domains to bring their visions to life.
Stewardship
The Stewardship Team partners with farmers to realize their highest ideals for their land to create both ecological and financial wealth. We use a holistic management framework to help define success through regenerative land management.
Our agronomists pull from ecology, Regrarians, Carbon Farm Planning and the Living Systems Theory to help producers envision, design, and implement regenerative operations. We create systems plans that honor people and places.
Capital
Mad Ag’s Capital Team created the Perennial Fund. It’s difficult to find a lender who understands organic farming and the financing needed to transition to organic management practices. The Perennial Fund provides farmer-forward financing that removes risk, values soil, and accelerates a farmer’s transition.
We designed this new type of financing so farmers can weather any season and reach their long term business and ecological goals. We commit to our farmers for up to eight years and give flexible payment schedules so farmers pay us when they get paid. We replace traditional capital with operating loans and lines of credit that enable a smooth transition to regenerative organic agriculture. We’re not just a lender, we’re a partner that puts our farmers in control and on the path to debt free farming.
Markets
The Mad Agriculture Markets program connects organic and regenerative farmers to values-aligned buyers to improve farm profitability and leverage the marketplace to drive adoption of regenerative practices. Services include origination and production contracting, ingredient brokerage, and supply chain optimization for brands and growers.
We are here to create a marketplace that honors, rewards and equitably pays for products and services that are good for people and the earth. We believe in a marketplace that pays farmers for stewarding the land, sequestering carbon in the soil, producing clean water, and maintaining biodiversity and soil health. The Markets team brings this vision into reality by establishing mutually beneficial partnerships with brands, processors, and buyers.
Mad Agriculture is always looking for value-aligned farm partners. For more information, visit our website at www.madagriculture.org or email us at connect@madagriculture.org to start a conversation about any of our services. We’d love to hear from you!
Service offerings at this time include the Perennial Fund: Organic Operating Loan; Brokerage Services; Ingredient Origination for Brands, and Land Stewardship Consultation & Farm Planning.