Small Farms Are Struggling — Now There’s a Crowdfunding Platform for That
Through Steward, individual investors can put as little as $100 into small, sustainable farms that otherwise have trouble gaining access to government and bank loans
By Jessica Klein
On Tuesday, October 1, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue made a grave statement about the lifespan of the country’s small dairy farms. “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out,” Perdue said after attending the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin. This extends to all types of small farming enterprises in the U.S., from fruit and vegetable to grain and livestock, which struggle to make ends meet.
“Almost all of the funding from agriculture comes through government policy [and] direct lending, either through the government or bank programs, and those programs aren’t flexible enough for the smaller, sustainable farms,” says Dan Miller, founder and CEO of Steward, a new online crowdfunding platform where individual investors can put money into modest, regenerative farms — and eventually get a return on their investment.
So far, Steward has invested more than $2.2 million across 16 different farms, mostly in the U.S. (though one is a vineyard…
