Author: David Strelneck

Updated April 2024 – See comments section below for new version of the diagram, Economics+Science Framework: Land Nourishment Cycle Economics, and our recently completed 1-page introduction and 47-page interpretive notes and references, Analysis of Farm Practices for Food Quality and Other Market Benefits.

In working with innovative food, farming, and waste reduction initiatives (what we call “nourishment-cycle enterprises”), we see that most of the benefits they capitalize on for financial sustainability have roots in various land and food management practices. This can include food sales, and/or payments for wildlife or biodiversity or water or carbon impacts, and/or local cultural connections that earn community support, and/or increased nutrition, and other benefits (see the chart below).

We also see that they tend to tap two or three of these value propositions to sustain themselves, while most conventional farm and land enterprises rely on sales of fewer homogenous products, like just their food crops.

At Nourishⁿ we have been working hard to map together the economics and the science of this story: What specific land management practices result in nutritional, ecological, cultural, and social benefits that creative communities and individuals and companies can build into long term and sustainable success. Specifically, as part of our initiative on food quality driving support for conservation and regenerative agriculture, we identified 13 economic benefits that derive from a mix of 6 farming practices.

We now seek feedback on this year-long assessment, and the one page chart summarizing it, before producing a more polished version. It is a bit analytical and “messy” at this point, but everything in this draft chart is based on real-life examples and evidence of factors affecting food quality. This assessment may inform theory and other analyses, but the details and links between economics and land management practices are from actual cases; they’re not just theoretical.

From that perspective, what do you think? What is most interesting? What is missing? And most importantly, what types of action ideas does it make you think of in your own place?

Download the draft framework in pdf format here (2 pages): Economics+Science Framework: Land and Nourishment Cycle Economics:

Please submit your feedback and examples below, which we will review confidentially and will post if you wish by using the word “public”, or email to action@nourishn.com

In the future we will distribute more results of this work, including a more polished version of this framework chart, descriptions of the key words presented, and a reference list of resources and entrepreneurs and scientists and others consulted in its development. Most importantly at Nourishⁿ, we are starting to use this with nourishment-enterprisers, policymakers, funders and others to help activate opportunities for direct impact and systems change.

This analysis is supported by our USDA Conservation Innovation Grant: Incentivizing Conservation Adoption

Title: Nourishⁿ Action Associate

Role: Nourishment/regenerative enterprises co-organizer, analyst, project manager. With our central team and international coalition of community and corporate partners at the overlap of environment, farming, food, and health, organize and coordinate action-workshops, ecosystem/biodiversity data-gathering and analysis projects, and other partnership initiatives in various parts of the United States, including New Mexico, Montana, Oregon, Maine, California, and elsewhere. Requirements include clear verbal and written communications and organizing skills between different cultures and professional fields (health, agriculture, environment, science, economics); keen interest in analysis-based-action; knowledge exchange through writing and conference participation with private, public, and philanthropic organizations more broadly. Long term opportunities are global.

Background: The Nourishⁿ mission is to spark and spread approaches that align scientific, economic, and cultural forces to increase vitality both of people and nature. Our leadership team has 30 years experience in environmental and social entrepreneurship, ranging from management of large government programs to small startups. Please review our web site for more information.

Job Qualifications: Experience & curiosity in at least several of these areas:
– Economics and overlap of farming, food, human health, and environment
– Project organizing/entrepreneurship with communities, farmers, businesses
– Active project and budget management
– Cross-cultural work experience and insights, in the U.S. and/or globally
– Keen attention to detail in analysis, writing, and listening
– Periodic travel

Job Location: Maine USA headquarters or hybrid work elsewhere in the USA.

Keywords in our work: #RegenerativeEconomics, #RegenerativeAgriculture, #NutrientValueChains, #SocialEntrepreneurship, #Biodiversity, #ClimateChange

Contact: Briefly introduce your experience organizing and analyzing to Action@NourishN.com

Come work with us!

As economics at the overlap of health + food + farming + natural ecosystems begin to garner more attention (finally!), Nourishⁿ founder David Strelneck is being asked more frequently to present and discuss examples and strategies of Nourishment Economies (or “the circular economy of nutrients”) and financial-ecological-cultural #NutrientValueChains.

Recent examples include the podcasts Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Lookfar Conservation – Sustaining Livelihoods, Uplifting Communities, Safeguarding Health.

The origins of Nourishⁿ work, identified and developed more than ten years ago with a coalition of innovative social entrepreneurs worldwide, lies in patterns of benefits identified when nutritional health of people and land is connected. It is the predictable and positive (and sometimes complicated) financial-, ecological-, and cultural- economics that result from what are often now called “regenerative” practices in farming, ecosystem management, food systems, health care, waste recycling, and more. Nourish^n mission as a social enterprise is to help spark and spread these economics more widely in society.

The Lookfar Podcast: Voices from the Wild

David LeZaks, a Senior Fellow at the Croatan Institute, and David Strelneck, founder of Nourishⁿ , join us on the Lookfar Podcast to discuss the opportunities for farmers and the benefits for the public of regenerative agriculture. LeZaks and Strelneck tell us about the different dimensions of regenerative agriculture, discussing ecological, economic, social, and cultural drivers and ways in which new technology platforms could revolutionize price discovery and market access, including through an initiative they’re working on called New Food Marketplace.

We then dive into the benefits of regenerative agriculture for nature, people, and the economy, and how the United States and Europe can learn from regenerative systems that have been implemented in the Global South. Make sure to listen until the end where David LeZaks takes us to ‘the dark matter of food’.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/regenerative-agriculture-sustaining-livelihoods-uplifting/id1558377047?i=1000555713459

David LeZaks and David Strelneck – Why the USDA gave a $600K grant to figure out how to pay farmers for quality

The BBC has just published an excellent article summarizing relationships between food quality for humans, nutrients in farming, and the health of the land we live on: How modern food can regain its nutrients.

We’d add several observations from our work with social entrepreneurs and community enterprisers, scientists and others around the world on this topic, which we call Nourishment Economies and #NutrientValueChains:

– Modern science is recognizing that plants synthesize some additional nutritional compounds depending on growing conditions (e.g. often in response to stressors like pests or water shortages that don’t usually occur in industrialized farming systems), including some antioxidents and immune system boosters, that traditional nutritional studies of farming practices don’t often consider.

– It is not only soil health but also some other natural ecosystem functions, like natural vs. mechanical pollination of plants, that affects how those additional nutritional compounds can reach our foods.

– The ratio cited in the article between our food’s calorie content and its essential nutrient content probably correlates with chronic diseases like obesity or diabetes as well. This is because many people now eat more-than-enough calories (per the article’s discussion of wheat, for example) in order to get barely-enough of the essential nutrients that used to occur more abundantly in our mainstream food systems.

– Improved economics for farmers should not wait on additional nutritional research, but often do require changes in business models (also a difficult task). While more research can certainly help, leading enterprises around the world illustrate farmers cashing in on other benefits of nutritional practices that also enhance soil and ecosystems, including improved watersheds (for use or sale), substantial carbon sales, increased tourism in their communities, and food system resilience in time of crisis (from disease, weather, conflict or more). For example, see the work of our farmer colleagues at Burren Programme in Ireland, or COMACO in Zambia. This is what we call Nourishment Economics, creating an interdependent package of value in health, agriculture, and ecosystem sustainability.

– Within regions, farming for foods with a nutritional focus also taps important cultural norms as part of the social and economic equation. Traditional flavors and practices become valued and serve as incentives, locally and elsewhere. We again see this at play in the examples above, and with some Native American farmers and in France and beyond. This is not only seen as beneficial in most societies, but can also improve nutrition for millions of people in geographically or culturally isolated areas not reached or backstopped by mainstream food systems.

While we agree that more refined research will be immensely valuable at the intersection of farming practices and food quality, there is no reason for businesses, communities, or policymakers to wait on that research before taking action. Big nutritional, economic, and social opportunities are already made clear by the leading innovators in this field.

Title: Nourishⁿ Associate or Senior Associate

Role: Project manager/analyst/organizer, with our central team and international coalition of partner organizations at the overlap of environment, farming, food, and health. Immediate responsibilities are U.S.-focused, including our new public-private regenerative agriculture/food/health initiative supported by USDA; supporting partnership on entrepreneurship and innovation with local initiatives in Maine, California, Oregon, New Mexico, Arizona and elsewhere, including several Native American communities; knowledge exchange through writing and conference participation with private, public, and philanthropic organizations more broadly. Long term opportunities are global.

Background: The Nourishⁿ mission is to spark and spread approaches that align scientific, economic, and cultural forces to increase vitality both of people and nature. Our leadership team has 30 years experience in environmental and social entrepreneurship, ranging from management of large government programs to small startups. Please review our web site for more information.

Job Qualifications: Experience & curiosity in at least several of these areas:
– Economics and overlap of farming, food, human health, and environment
– Project organizing/entrepreneurship with communities, farmers, businesses
– Active project and budget management
– Cross-cultural work experience and insights, in the U.S. and/or globally
– Attention to detail in analysis, writing, and listening
– Periodic travel

Job Location: Maine USA headquarters or hybrid work from elsewhere in USA.

Keywords in our work: #RegenerativeEconomics, #RegenerativeAgriculture, #NutrientValueChains, #SocialEntrepreneurship, #Biodiversity, #ClimateChange

Contact: Briefly introduce your experience organizing and analyzing to Action@NourishN.com

Come work with us!

— Public Announcement: 27 January 2022 —

USDA Grant Supports Platform Focused on Food Quality

Most of today’s agricultural markets focus on transacting in food quantity rather than quality. In doing so, they don’t reflect agriculture’s full impact on both human and ecological health. The USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service has just awarded a $690,000 Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) to contribute to the development of a new digital marketplace where food products with distinctive quality attributes are bought and sold. The transparent prices discovered in this marketplace will create new market signals and reward farmers for adopting more regenerative practices.

The new project will be co-led by Croatan Institute and Nourishⁿ, along with partners MarketSquare and the Bionutrient Food Association. This group will provide an additional $837,000 of direct investment and in-kind support, leveraging the USDA investment into over $1.5M for this new market platform.

“CIG partners are using the latest science and research to come up with solutions that work for farmers, ranchers and foresters and help ensure the longevity of American agriculture,” said NRCS Chief Terry Cosby. “Innovation is key to addressing the climate crisis and conserving the natural resources we all depend on.”

This two-year project will develop and test market responses to quality attributes, such as the nutritional value and environmental outcomes of regenerative farming practices, that are tied to farm products like carrots or beef. The aim is to reflect many of the environmental, social, and health related qualities of farmed foods that are often not part of today’s food transactions. MarketSquare will trade these “Product-Attribute Bundles” on its digital platform, Smart Food Chain©. “The key to Smart Food Chain is discovering fair, transparent prices for non-commodity food products,” said Mark Drabenstott, MarketSquare’s Chairman and co-founder. The market value attached to these various food quality attributes will create new rewards for farmers and stimulate innovation, helping move society toward a wider Nourishment Economy that accelerates cycles of biological, cultural, and economic vitality.

Initial launch of the project will facilitate over 1,000 transactions that integrate this new information tied to farm products in the marketplace, including nutritional value, carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and demographic characteristics of the farmers themselves, and others.

The project team envisions that this market price discovery will also make regenerative farming practices not only more profitable but bankable. This new market tool particularly advantages small- and mid-sized farmers, with market pricing boosting income for these growers and reducing their risk, increasing investment in them as well.

“This project converges years of learning about the science and the economics of healthy relationships between land and people,” according to Nourishⁿ founder and President David Strelneck. “We’re extremely excited to roll it out and see how producers and consumers react.”

Authorized by the 2002 Farm Bill, the USDA CIG program helps develop the tools, technologies and strategies to support next-generation conservation efforts on working lands and develop market-based solutions to resource challenges. More information can be found at their website: https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/programs/financial/cig/

Croatan Institute
Croatan Institute is an independent, nonprofit research and action institute whose mission is to build social equity and ecological resilience by leveraging finance to create pathways to a just economy. The Institute’s interdisciplinary team has developed a reputation for delivering rigorous research and actionable insight working on issues at the intersection of finance and social equity and inclusion, climate change solutions, farming and forestry, food systems, institutional accountability, business and human rights, and resilient communities, as well as by developing useful frameworks and data analytics for sustainable and impact investing. More information at: https://croataninstitute.org/

Nourishⁿ
Nourishⁿ supports, analyzes, designs, and promotes initiatives built around the great many social and economic benefits that come from fostering nutritional relationships between land and people. Its network of independent enterprises, the Nourishment Economies Coalition, includes some of the world’s most innovative regenerative farming, biodiversity and environmental stewardship, waste recycling, and economic development initiatives. More information at: https://NourishN.com/

MarketSquare
MarketSquare is a Colorado company founded to give farmers better markets and consumers better nutrition through its Smart Food Chain. This includes a digital exchange for food products with distinct attributes, including nutrient density and how the food was grown. Prices for these products are discovered through real-time bid/ask among farmers and many food buyers, including grocers, hospitals, schools and households. Smart Food Chain also authenticates food products from farm to buyer using blockchain technology. More information at: http://www.marketsquare.life

Bionutrient Food Association
The Bionutrient Food Association (BFA) is the globe’s leading organization focused on nutrient density. With a mission of “increasing quality in the food supply” the BFA has established preliminary definitions of nutrient variation in over 20 crops and shown direct connections between those nutrient variations, soil health and management practices. As well, the BFA works with growers to understand “Principles of Biological Systems” through its courses, workshops, local chapters, and annual Soil and Nutrition conference. More information at: https://bionutrient.org/

This year’s United Nations #InternationalYouthDay (August 12^th, 2021) focuses on youth leadership for transforming food systems.

Nourishⁿ celebrates six initiatives achieving remarkable impact on food systems through youth leadership. Each of these integrate socio-economic challenges or food/cooking competitions into more traditional school garden, meal, or classroom programs. By connecting the youth food experience across socio-economic topics, such as financial sustainability and connection to environment (biodiversity/climate/water) and nutritional impact on a student’s own academic and sports performance, these initiatives are sparking a sense of opportunity and agency that youths carry back into their homes and communities actively, transformationally.

• The Uganda Rural Development and Training Programme (URDT)
  
• The Vegetable Academy in Germany and Austria
  
• STAR School in Arizona USA
  
• Native American Community Academy (NACA) in New Mexico USA
  
• Gardens for Health in Rwanda
  
• Nourishing Schools in India

We’d encourage the U.N. and others to aggressively support this pattern and these food system innovators.

These members of our Nourishment Economies Coalition have pioneered social and business enterprises which stimulate the wealth of animal, plant, and microbial biodiversity in the world.

We understand biodiversity as a metabolism for health in people and land. Micro- and macro-biodiversity are engines that convert minerals and chemicals and sights and sounds into the fabric of life, and these enterprisers build on those forces in powerful ways.

Many of them entered the recent Ashoka Act for Biodiversity challenge, and links to their entries and ideas are provided below.

Sustainable Harvest International, Central America: Pioneering technical, financial, and community support tools needed by small farmers during the risky time needed to transition from historically dependent/destructive land management practices back to ecological and economically healthy ones.

Kennebec Estuary Land Trust, United States: Moving the American “community land trust” system of conservation properties and community relationships into the future by fostering a nimble public-plus-private force to monitor and take action on local ecological risks as they emerge.

Burren Programme, Ireland and the European Union: Combining simple financial incentives, locally-based technical assistance, and cultural tradition (“pocket, head, and heart”) to restore historical wildflower and plant diversity (and thus tourism) in livestock farming communities.

BeeOdiversity, Belgium, Europe, and the United States: Using high-end laboratory science and bees as data collectors for public and private partnerships that identify and tackle specific biological and chemical risks to biodiversity in a region.

Convenant Pathways, Navajo Nation in the United States: “Healing the soil, healing the soul” by combining Native and forgotten traditional farming and spiritual practices with modern regenerative methods and enterprises in local communities, for biological, health, economic, and cultural benefit.

Njeremoto Biodiversity Institute, Zimbabwe: Increasing food and nutritional security in ways that also increase biodiversity, through community rehabilitation of degraded rangelands.

Radicle Wellness through Home Health Gardens, United States: A methodical plant-by-plant approach for households that creates home gardens which empower individuals and communities to lead their own everyday health, and which diversify home yards and biodiversity in the process.

Canopy Bridge, Ecuador and global: An online international marketplace for buyers and sellers of ecologically grown products.

URDT, Uganda: An acclaimed girls school system that fosters community enterprisers who understand, envision, and build on local resources including healthy soil, wildlife, and nutrient cycles between people and ecology.

COMACO, Zambia: Recognized globally for combining elephant and forest conservation, local farming and food security, and atmospheric carbon sequestration into a fascinating enterprise model that now partners closely with over 180,000 local farmers.

Conservation Through Public Health, Uganda: Stewarding natural forests and wildlife by creating community partnerships to scientifically monitor relationships between health of people, gorillas, and livestock.

The Nomad Dairy, Ethiopia: Engabling indigenous communities to earn revenue for managing wide landscapes and protect ecology and biodiversity in traditional ways by selling traditional, nutritional camel milk to consumers in cities.