Posts in Risk and Resilience
Risk Mitigation Benefits of Soil Health Practices: Recent Revenue Risk Findings from the Heart of the Corn Belt
Risk Mitigation Benefits of Soil Health Practices: Recent Revenue Risk Findings from the Heart of the Corn Belt

In agriculture, financial survival depends not simply on harvest size, but on revenue: what a field produces, multiplied by what the market will actually pay for it. These two forces do not move independently, and in most Midwest counties, when local harvests are poor and supply tightens, prices tend to rise, offering farmers a partial natural cushion. Even so, commodity price swings contribute roughly three to four times more uncertainty to farm revenue than yield variability does, meaning that market risk, not weather, is the dominant threat to a farm's bottom line. 

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Announcements, Risk and ResilienceLand Core Staff2026
Sign the Letter of Support for the SOIL HEALTH Practices Act
Sign the Letter of Support for the SOIL HEALTH Practices Act

Complete this Google Form to sign on to the Letter of Support for the SOIL HEALTH Practices Act.

The letter advocates for USDA to oversee research on the risk reduction associated with cover cropping, reduced tillage, diversified rotations, managed grazing, and other soil health practices over a 3-5 year timeline. If the research indicates reduced risk, USDA would be required to recommend appropriate discounts or incentives for producers.

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Risk and Resilience, Announcements, Policy MemosLand Core Staff2026
Land Core Submits Comments to USDA and FCIC on Expanding Access to Risk Protection (EARP) Rule
Land Core Submits Comments to USDA and FCIC on Expanding Access to Risk Protection (EARP) Rule

We commend FCIC for expanding eligibility through the EARP Rule and encourage continued efforts to make crop insurance resources accessible to all producers. We appreciate the opportunity to provide these recommendations and stand ready to support FCIC in strengthening risk management tools that serve farmers nationwide. Land Core believes that federal crop insurance is a cornerstone of a modern agricultural economy and the farm safety net. By shifting incentive structures, farmers can build resilience, taxpayer costs can be reduced, and we can realign financial incentives with land management practices that protect both farm profitability and our nation's food and national security. 

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Policy Memos, Risk and ResilienceLand Core Staff2026
Risk Mitigation Benefits of Soil Health Practices: Recent Findings from Five Midwest States (Blog Post - Fall/Winter 2025)
Risk Mitigation Benefits of Soil Health Practices: Recent Findings from Five Midwest States (Blog Post - Fall/Winter 2025)

Land Core is pleased to share findings from a recently released paper by Dr. Gina Pizzo, which directly informs our ongoing risk modeling work, and was written as part of our FFAR and USDA AFRI-funded project examining how soil health practices reduce risk. 

The research summarized below advances Land Core’s ongoing work to quantify how known soil health practices build resilience in agricultural systems.

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Education, Risk and ResilienceLand Core Staff2025
Magnolia Reporter: Can no-till farming mean lower interest rates for producers?
Magnolia Reporter: Can no-till farming mean lower interest rates for producers?

Researchers with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture are conducting research examining soil health practices and their impacts on crop risk insurance premiums and other financial factors often faced by farmers. Lawson Connor, an agriculture economist for the Division of Agriculture, is the primary investigator for Arkansas’ involvement in the research. He is joined by researchers from U.C. Berkley and Rice University.

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Announcements, Risk and ResilienceLand Core Staff2023
FFAR: The “Good Soil Discount” — A Game Changer for U.S. Agriculture
FFAR: The “Good Soil Discount” — A Game Changer for U.S. Agriculture

Ever since the federal government created the Soil Conservation Service following the Dust Bowl, the correlation between soil health and agricultural resilience has been generally well understood. However, almost a century later, we’re still struggling to accurately quantify how specific soil health practices reduce production risks. As a result, these practices remain largely unaccounted for in risk pricing models across finance, investment and insurance, and farmers are not compensated through financial discounts for adopting them.

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Risk and Resilience, EducationLand Core Staff2023
Land Core Awarded FFAR Grant to Quantify Farm Risk Mitigation Through Improved Soil Health
Land Core Awarded FFAR Grant to Quantify Farm Risk Mitigation Through Improved Soil Health

We are thrilled to announce that the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) is awarding a $715,611 Seeding Solutions grant to Land Core to create an unprecedented market-based, actuarially-sound model that can determine the risk-mitigation benefits and related cost savings associated with specific soil health practices. Family foundations are providing matching funds for a total $1,449,611 investment. The model is helping to create the economic rationale for agricultural lenders and insurers to offer financial incentives, such as better terms or lower loan rates and insurance prices to producers adopting good soil health practices.

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Announcements, Risk and ResilienceLand Core Staff2023
Land Core participates in Soil & Climate Alliance "Creating Regenerative Opportunity for Ag Lenders” Finance Roundtable
Land Core participates in Soil & Climate Alliance "Creating Regenerative Opportunity for Ag Lenders” Finance Roundtable

On September 13, 2022, our Executive Director, Aria McLauchlan, and our Director of Strategy, Harley Cross, participated in a roundtable on "Creating Regenerative Opportunity for Ag Lenders" as part of Green America’s Soil & Climate Alliance (SCA) Virtual “Financing Regenerative Transitions” Roundtable Series. Watch the recording now!

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Events, Education, Risk and ResilienceLand Core Staff2022
Beyond Ag Tech Food Fixes: To Transform the Food System Successfully, We’ll Need to Dig Deeper
Beyond Ag Tech Food Fixes: To Transform the Food System Successfully, We’ll Need to Dig Deeper

There’s been a lot of talk and movement recently on technology-based food systems innovations: cultivated meat (grown in labs from cells), plant-based protein alternatives, and more. While we believe in all-of-the-above solutions, we need to be clear-eyed about the collateral impacts of these new business ventures, and keep in focus the fundamental opportunity to build a truly resilient, diversified, independent, farmer-led system that fundamentally restores ecosystems, communities, farmer profits, soils, and security. This piece calls for new technologies to support, not supplant, farmers in leading the way.

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Education, Risk and ResilienceLand Core Staff2022
Compeer Joins Land Core Initiative To Decrease Financial Risk of Adopting Soil Health Practices
Compeer Joins Land Core Initiative To Decrease Financial Risk of Adopting Soil Health Practices

Compeer Financial and Land Core have announced a new partnership in which the member-owned Farm Credit cooperative will support the soil health non-profit’s cross-sector initiative to build a predictive model of the risk-mitigating benefits of soil health practices… “The Land Core Risk Model will give financial service providers the missing tools they need to quantify the risk reduction benefits of soil health practices,” said Harley Cross, Co-Founder and Director of Strategy at Land Core.

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Announcements, Risk and ResilienceLand Core Staff2021