Agriculture and influence investing might appear to be unlikely bedfellows, however investing in sustainable agriculture is crucial for addressing most of the world’s social and environmental challenges. In 2021, nonprofit investing agency Acumen employed Christopher Wayne, previously of GrowNYC, as affiliate director to construct a brand new world influence technique for impact-focused agriculture.
I not too long ago linked with Wayne to be taught extra about his expertise at Acumen to date. He spoke of how he made an instantaneous reference to colleagues at Acumen, how his sector-specific experience outweighed his lack of a finance background and what expertise are crucial to finishing up his day-to-day function.
Shannon Houde: Are you able to inform us what led you to make the transfer from GrowNYC to Acumen?
Christopher Wayne: Being anyplace for 12 years is a very long time. I might been in 4 totally different positions and ended up in a director’s function. That was about as excessive as I might go. I’d spent seven years working laborious and growing a core set of programming and rising that in a manner that I used to be actually happy with. However I used to be completely prepared for a change, to broaden my influence and leverage the information that I’d gained for a much bigger platform. However after being 12 years in a single group, I had barely misplaced the flexibility to explain my expertise and promote myself. So, it was crucial for me to acknowledge that I had expertise that have been invaluable out there.
Houde: And now you’ve been there over a yr, what are you doing everyday at Acumen?
Wayne: I spent the primary yr right here constructing an agricultural technique for the group. Acumen has been investing in agriculture for 18 years however was on the lookout for a brand new, world technique that constructed off that basis. So I spent a very long time digging again by way of our investments, pulling out insights, talking to an enormous vary of various inner and exterior stakeholders and studying lots of whitepapers and analysis to compile all of it right into a spreadsheet. I then used that to pitch totally different methods out to the C-suite and regional groups, and Acumen was cool sufficient to present me time to overlook the mark a pair occasions after which ultimately actually land on a technique that is now on the coronary heart of this new initiative we’ve known as Trellis.
Financial improvement in agriculture has 3 occasions the influence on lifting folks out of poverty in comparison with different sector investments.
Trellis is a $30 million funding initiative throughout 4 rising markets that can spend money on early-stage social entrepreneurs which are fixing issues and poverty on the heart of agriculture and local weather change. So, during the last six months I’ve shifted from a strategic workflow to a fundraising and implementation workflow.
Houde: I’m curious as to how precisely you outline this idea of agricultural investing versus influence investing? Is there a distinction?
Wayne: On the whole, we’re simply speaking a couple of sector-specific lens on investing. On this case, agriculture. There’s lots of other ways you’ll be able to spend money on agriculture. You should buy land, commerce in commodities or spend money on expertise that providers the trade. However at Acumen, we’re particularly targeted on influence investing that solves issues of poverty, which is an thought pioneered by our founder Jacqueline Novogratz again in 2001. It’s the thought of fusing the pliability and persistence of conventional help with the rigor and framework of conventional monetary markets. The way in which she determined to go about that was by way of taking in philanthropic {dollars} after which reinvesting them in early-stage social entrepreneurs that have been fixing issues of poverty, growing actually progressive options to resolve a number of the thorniest issues on this planet.
So, given that there is 500 million smallholder farmers around the globe and so they present as a lot as 35 p.c of the meals that we eat on this planet and immediately influence the each day livelihoods of two.5 billion folks, it was pure that agriculture would change into a key pillar and focus space for our investing. It additionally seems that financial improvement in agriculture has thrice the influence on lifting folks out of poverty in comparison with different sector investments. So, all the celebrities aligned and it grew to become a very clear place the place we wanted to commit capital.
Impression investing in agriculture is about placing the influence first. In keeping with our monetary return, we be sure that we’re having a measurable influence return. In our case, and with this new initiative, it is about constructing local weather resilience, revenue enhancements and livelihood enhancements for smallholder farmers.
Houde: Are there different organizations like Acumen engaged on this on the similar scale?
Wayne: More and more so. Twenty years in the past, there have been most likely seven to 10 whole influence buyers. The [Global Impact Investing Network] this yr counts effectively over 3,300 influence funding organizations managing greater than $1.1 trillion. So, the size of development inside this house is fairly super, and the capital beneath administration is rising considerably. We’re seeing unbelievable commitments from companies, improvement finance establishments, foundations and philanthropists who need to increase this work. The IKEA Basis, for instance, is among the latest, largest gamers in influence investing around the globe, and we’ve developed some unbelievable partnerships with them. It’s thrilling to see that there’s a complete vary of various stakeholders enabling this bigger ecosystem.
Houde: Inform us a bit bit about what you like about your job. You clearly have lots of information and fervour.
Wayne: I work with actually cool, good and dedicated folks. Even in my early interviews with the group, I linked with the folks I used to be speaking to. There was a measure of idealism tempered by actual world expertise. And Jacqueline, who’s our CEO, is kind of a prolific author and far of her “Manifesto for a Ethical Revolution” seeps down into the group and its hiring practices. It’s created a bunch of individuals from whom, anyplace I flip, I am getting an attention-grabbing thought or a push in the best course, or some type of collaborative assist and assist. I might say that is a giant a part of it.
Houde: With the size you now work at, it feels such as you’ve stepped away from the grassroots aspect a bit bit. Or is that also one thing you get to do?
Wayne: I all the time believed within the UPS mannequin, the place all people within the firm, all the best way as much as the CEO, needed to drive in a truck as soon as a month. It’s particularly essential in agriculture and improvement work the place we have to keep hyperclose to the realities of the work on the bottom. Acumen follows that mind-set and has supported me to journey to our regional places of work, the place nearly all of our funding work takes place, and spend time with investees and our regional groups, to make sure that what we’re (doing) is grounded in regional context.
Acumen additionally developed a buyer survey device known as Lean Information, now operated by a derivative known as 60 decibels, which is a telephone and textual content message-based surveying service that enables us to, inside a couple of weeks, get responses from 250 or 300 small farmers to a set of questions that can drive our technique or our investing work. That’s an extremely highly effective device with which to remain tremendous near the viewers that we’re desiring to serve right here.
Houde: What are a number of the traits that you simply’re seeing in sustainable agriculture at present? Or maybe you’d body it otherwise?
Wayne: Effectively, while you say sustainable agriculture, it means one thing totally different to totally different folks. There’s positively been a pattern in direction of regenerative agriculture not too long ago. When you take natural practices, that are third-party licensed, there’s a strongly supported and understood set of manufacturing practices there. Regenerative intends to construct on that by including in a wider vary of agroecological outcomes, together with social parts and the human relationship with the earth, in addition to particular climate-related outcomes, comparable to carbon sequestration.
However there’s nonetheless no consensus on a regenerative agriculture definition, and individuals are taking it in several instructions. There’s a bunch that believes unbelievable improvements in tech will scale it, and there is one other faction that claims that is an historic, Indigenous type of agriculture that wants a kind of persistence and intentionality that capitalism doesn’t afford. I sit in the course of these two concepts. I feel that tech is an extremely highly effective enabler, however that the precise practices are steeped in 10,000 years of Indigenous practices. Indigenous communities should be resourced to paved the way. It is a actually outdated trade we’re speaking about, and credit score is because of these populations which have been doing this work for a very very long time. However how will we leverage tech to advertise the ideas of regenerative agriculture to smallholders around the globe? That’s the important thing for me.
The influence investing house as an entire is recognizing that sector-level experience is crucial for the way we develop our influence investing methods.
There’s now an enormous give attention to meals techniques, which is nice however, once more, means so many various issues to so many various folks. More and more, we’re seeing this concept of “let’s eat native” and home meals safety changing into increasingly more essential, particularly when you could have crises just like the struggle in Ukraine limiting fertilizer accessibility and dramatically lowering the flexibility for growing international locations to entry primary commodities, like grain. That all the time turns the arrow again towards, what are particular person international locations doing to shore up our personal meals safety and native meals techniques?
So, there’s rather a lot on the market and you may’t assist however speak about different proteins and AI and precision agriculture too. That’s the place lots of the cash proper now’s flowing.
Houde: You do not come from a finance background. So how did you get into influence investing? What expertise do you employ to promote or pitch your self?
Wayne: The pathway to influence investing is commonly by way of worldwide improvement, enterprise, finance or entrepreneurship. There’s lots of people who got here to it as they left finance as they have been unhappy and wished to make use of their expertise for good. What I’ve seen extra not too long ago is lots of hiring occurring round particular sector-level experience. The influence investing house as an entire is recognizing that that experience is crucial for the way we develop our influence investing methods, and that our understanding of, in my case, the useful unit of a farm, was crucial to the best way that we tried to spend money on them.
I feel I discovered a house at Acumen as they mentioned we’d like somebody who understands entrepreneurship, investing and improvement broadly, however who actually can deliver this sector degree experience to our earlier agricultural investing and form a technique round that. They have been very intentional about hiring somebody who had agricultural expertise, and I feel that is as a result of I used to be capable of say that the long-term information I’ve in-built agriculture shall be a big return to this group over the subsequent 10 years.
Houde: Lastly, what are the talents which are invaluable so that you can do your job effectively?
Wayne: I am working with inner and exterior stakeholders on a regular basis. It’s a collaborative strategy throughout, simply, 30 totally different stakeholders internally. I have to handle views and insights internally, after which an entire vary of exterior stakeholders who’ve engaged with our agriculture work and assist us perceive our level of differentiation. So, my skill to collaborate throughout inner and exterior groups — deliver folks in, encourage them, excite them or push again the place essential — is crucial.