Land Core believes soil is our common ground. This informs our pragmatic, non-partisan approach to soil health policy, elevating the voices of farmers, and building broad coalitions of support to put soil health at the center of a resilient food and agriculture system.

Much like a think tank, we listen deeply and distill issues to develop actionable solutions, and serve as on-the-ground advocates and educators.

By selecting our moments carefully, Land Core has been able to have an outsized impact on the national soil health conversation. From the annual Appropriations cycle to the every five-year Farm Bill, we work closely with Congress and USDA to develop and implement sound policies that help our producers stay profitable, productive and resilient. 

We also advise coalitions and other organizations on how to engage effectively in federal soil health policy.

Policy Wins

FY20 Appropriations 

Built a broad coalition and passed report language in the House & Senate to establish national protocols for soil health verification at USDA-NRCS. Learn more →

Soil Health Demo Trials

Helped pass the Soil Heath Demonstration Trials in the 2018 Farm Bill and secured $50M in funding for the program. Learn more →

Building a Predictive Model of Risk

Land Core is proud to share our project to build an actuarially-sound, predictive model of the risk-mitigating benefits of soil health practices, designed as a tool to inform lenders and insurers.

Although there is a general understanding that healthy soils can mitigate risk in agriculture (by increasing resilience to flooding and drought, etc.), institutions that price risk, such as banks and insurers, do not yet have a clear and effective way to incorporate these benefits into their risk pricing today.

We have convened a remarkable, cross-sector working group, to build a model that can generate a risk score for individual farms or ranches, such that actuarially-appropriate pricing can be developed. With that information, farmers and ranchers with a plan to implement soil health practices can receive meaningful economic benefits, such as discounted insurance premiums or lower rate loans.

The Land Core Risk Model will be:

• A pragmatic decision-making tool to inform agricultural finance and insurance

• Actuarially sound

• Able to assign a risk score based on an individual producer’s soil health management plan

• Piloted at regional-scale in the U.S. midwest in 2023-2024

In the News

AgFunder News: Should ag lenders and crop insurers offer ‘good soil discounts’ to farmers? Land Core develops ‘actuarially sound model’ to make it possible

August 4, 2023

“Insurers offer discounts for avoiding smoking and good driving because these practices are proven to mitigate risk and save them money. So should insurers and agricultural lenders offer farmers that look after their soil a ‘good soil discount’?

While it’s generally understood that cover cropping, reduced tillage, and crop rotations benefit soil, these practices are by no means ubiquitous, not least because there are high upfront costs, the benefits don’t come overnight, and there are no immediate financial incentives, says soil health nonprofit Land Core.

Insurers and lenders, meanwhile, do not currently offer discounts for farmers engaging in such practices because their specific impacts at the field level, especially on crop yields, have not been quantified, it says. Until now.”

We are thrilled to announce that the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) is awarding a Seeding Solutions grant to Land Core for the development and expansion of the Land Core Risk Model. Private foundations are providing matching funds for a total project investment of nearly $1.5 million.

Land Core has partnered with Compeer Financial, in which the third-largest cooperative in the Farm Credit System, with ~$30 billion under management, will support our model's MVP development process. Compeer is providing expertise on loan pricing, underwriting, appraisal, crop insurance, legal requirements, etc., and is advising in the development and testing of meaningful incentives for producers.

Land Core will pilot its Model MVP, along with the new incentives, in partnership with Compeer in late 2023 & 2024.

Through this work, Compeer has become the first major agricultural financial services provider to approach risk assessment through the lens of sustainability and soil health.

Land Core is pleased to announce that our partners at UC Berkeley (under the leadership of PI Dr. Timothy Bowles) were awarded a USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture AFRI Foundational and Applied Science Program grant of $800,000 for academic research directly related to Land Core’s risk model!

The grant, titled “A better bet for the farm: Building a predictive model to quantify how diversified cropping systems affect production and economic risks across a million fields in the Midwest” brings our risk model project investment total to about $2.2M (when including the full award from the Foundation for Food & Agriculture research + matching partners).

Join Us

We’re seeking partners representing lending, investment and insurance to help inform model development. Partners also have the opportunity to develop and pilot incentives for producers.

Outcomes-Integrated Land Lease Program

Land Core is creating the first scalable, outcomes-verified land lease platform, to bring together landowners, producers and funding partners, to radically advance soil health adoption in America.

This early-stage initiative welcomes partners and funders to pilot the lease and build out the web platform.

Land Core is honored to participate in The Terraton Challenge and be selected by Indigo Ag as the top-ranking finalist in their “Reward” track.