20 April 2023

Case Study: Potlikker Capital

Written by Tanya Massy

Location: USA

Investment type: Philanthropic, debt, equity, collateral funding & non-extractive finance

A community-governed integrated capital fund created to support BIPOC farmers in America, who are farming regeneratively and working to increase equitable access to healthy food for their communities.

Potlikker Capital is working to address the deep historical injustices across the food and farming system in several ways:

Providing 'reparative capital' with an integrated approach to support farmers to stabilise and grow existing businesses.
Working on the demand side by developing agreements with Consumer Packaged Goods companies to invest in the supply chain of businesses Potlikker is working with
Partnering with Jubilee Justice who provides technical assistance, community practice-building and support for BIPOC farmers.
Developing cooperative ownership opportunities for BIPOC communities across the food value chain.

An example of their integrated approach is the Jubilee Justice Black Farmers Rice Project, working with BIPOC farmers across the American South to provide funding, a market pipeline and agronomic support to develop profitable regenerative rice farming systems.

The Jubilee team, along with expert technical assistance, support interested farmers to implement the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), a holistic no-till approach to rice cultivation, in their farming businesses.

This work and on-farm enterprise development is funded and financed in part by Potlikker Capital. The collaboration includes the organic, fair trade specialty rice company Lotus Foods, which wants to develop a domestic supply source. They have committed to buying all the produce generated through the Black Farmers Rice Project.

The collaboration has also managed to secure and deploy finance for a rice mill in Louisiana that is being set up as a farmer-owned cooperative mill.

The co-founders of Potlikker Capital, Mark Watson and Konda Mason, have collaboratively designed the fund to have systemic impact and address the multi-layered injustices facing their community of farmers:

“[There are existing initiatives that use] knowledge, money and policy initiatives blended together to support BIPOC farmers on the capacity side.

But it’s not enough just to throw a loan at somebody who’s already in a contaminated pool. Right?

You’ve got to change the water.”

— Mark Watson Co-Founder Potlikker Capital | Cited in Cadloff (2021)

https://www.potlikkercapital.com/

This case study is an extract from Regenerating Investment in Food and Farming: A Roadmap.