Myint and Leibowitz’s efforts to give restaurants and their patrons a way to directly fund healthy soils is just one answer to a problem that many public and private initiatives are now grappling with: how to fund the shift from extractive to regenerative agriculture?

To pay for climate change solutions and lower the risk of transitioning to more sustainable practices, farmers will have to rely on financial incentives. In California, the money for those incentives is coming from the taxes the state imposes on polluters for the emissions they release; a coalition of groups has advocated for a portion of those funds to go to farmers who practice carbon farming. Over the next year, $12.5 million will go to support those efforts.

The Lab, an initiative of over 60 public and private investors and institutions, accelerates much-needed investment solutions to support developing countries to meet their climate change and sustainable development goals. Created in 2014, the Lab has now launched 41 instruments that have collectively mobilized nearly $2 billion for action on climate change and sustainable development.

Last month, Iroquois Valley Farmland began offering shares in the firm's 12-year-old real estate investment trust to investors with as little as $10,000, via a direct public offering. Previously, only wealthy individuals, foundations and family offices – so-called accredited investors – were eligible to invest.

States that embrace innovative new ways to finance on-farm conservation can deliver multiple benefits to farmers, state residents, taxpayers and the environment, according to a new report released at the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) Annual Meeting by NASDA and Environmental Defense Fund.

The public and private sectors can incentivize sustainable land use and forest conservation. While still only one part of the solution, there are encouraging signs of new efforts to finance sustainable agribusiness.

The initiative includes a facility to offer green bonds to help finance low-interest credit lines to Brazilian farmers.

“Investors speak the language of risk,” says Delta Institute’s David LeZaks, a lead author of the report. “When you start to manage systems for increasing soil health and having bigger stocks of carbon in the soil, those systems are inherently less risky and more resilient to extreme weather and climate change.”

As we know, farming is a business of extremely lean margins, which means it can be difficult for farmers and ranchers to come up with the funds necessary to transition [to regenerative agriculture]. As a result, innovative new offerings are popping up, creating a business model to provide ranchers and farmers with additional incentives to switch.