---
title: would you lend this way to living land
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/would-you-lend-this-way-to-living-land
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/would-you-lend-this-way-to-living-land.md
subtitle: the farm loan has buyers. the wetland loan is the question
category: nature-finance
---

# would you lend this way to living land

*the farm loan has buyers. the wetland loan is the question*

Mad Capital, a Boulder impact credit firm, went out to raise $25 million for its second regenerative farm lending fund and closed $78.4 million. Investors wanted farmland credit. This post asks whether anyone would lend the same way to land that is not a farm.

A farm, a prairie, a floodplain wetland, and a standing forest all exist whether or not anyone lends against them. A regenerative farm loan helps a farmer through a transition the crop is expected to pay for. The loan sits on the land for a term and then leaves. It is not the living thing. The definition, and how the loan works, is in [what regenerative farmland debt actually is](/guide/what-regenerative-farmland-debt-actually-is?from=guide).

:::johnson
**a farm can service a loan. a wetland usually cannot.** — There is no loan here and no fund. We do not lend, and nothing on this page is an offering or a solicitation. This is a question: if you lend the way Mad Capital does, or you would consider capital for a nature-based version, say so.

[say so →](/contact?from=guide&topic=nature-based-debt)
:::

## three readers, one question

Three people may have arrived here by the same search. They need different things, and only one of them needs us.

| reader | what you are looking for | where it is |
|---|---|---|
| A farmer or rancher in transition | A regenerative or organic farm loan | [Mad Capital](https://madcapital.com/loans). Not here |
| A credit investor already in Perennial Fund II | Whether this is the same trade | It is farm credit. Read on |
| Someone who wants that debt on a wetland or a forest | Whether a nature-based solutions loan can exist | The open question this post asks |

### what should you do if you need a regenerative farm loan?

Go to the lender. [Mad Capital's loan page](https://madcapital.com/loans) lists real estate and land loans, equipment and infrastructure, transition loans, and operating loans for organic, regenerative, and transitioning farmers and ranchers. They describe terms longer than a typical bank's and interest-only during the transition, in their own words in [how the capital is different](https://madcapital.com/articles/how-mad-capital-is-different). We are not a lender and we are not their competitor. If you borrow, you borrow from them, on terms they set. We cannot tell you the rate, and we will not guess.

Their nonprofit sister, [Mad Agriculture](https://madagriculture.org), is the farmer-facing ecosystem around that credit. Their site is the loan door. This one is not.

## the credit investor: the demand is real, and it is farm credit

### who invests in regenerative farmland debt?

Mad Capital's [September 2025 release](https://madcapital.com/perennial-fund-ii-press-release) says Perennial Fund II drew a mix that included family offices, foundations, and institutional investors, 111 in all, and closed at $78.4 million on September 15, 2025, against an initial target of $25 million. Early commitments named there include Builders Vision, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Schmidt Family Foundation. Fund I was $10 million in 2021. With the two funds and strategic lending partners, they describe $100 million under management.

If you are one of the 111, you already know what you bought. You bought a claim on loans to farms, and the farms pay you back. A farm in that book has a crop, sometimes a herd, sometimes an organic premium, and acres with a market value. Mad describes its schedules as interest-only through the transition. It is patient capital. It is still a loan, and the farm is still the payer.

That is the important reading of the $78.4 million. It is proof that investors will fund regenerative farmland credit when a working farm services it. It is not proof that a wetland loan would clear. Read it as farm credit, because that is what it is.

You might be thinking the same capital could move to a wetland fund on a longer schedule. Maybe. The schedule is not the wall. The payer is. Their sketch of a third fund, a semi-liquid vehicle they describe as exceeding $500 million, is still aimed at farm credit. It is not a close, and it is not a wetland loan.

## would nature-based solutions loans clear on living land

### would a nature-based solutions loan clear?

Here is the wall, stated plainly. A loan is a promise to pay on a calendar. Someone writes the check for interest whether or not the quarter was kind. On a regenerative farm, the crop writes that check. On land held for nature-based solutions, there is often nobody to write it.

A floodplain wetland kept wet so it holds the flood, a prairie kept in grass for pollinators, a forest left standing so a watershed keeps working: each of these does real work. The town downstream floods less. The insurer pays out less. The water utility treats less. Those beneficiaries sit off the deed. They are not the borrower. A grazing lease or a hunting lease may cover some interest. It usually will not carry a land loan sized to the value of the acres.

Some nature-based debt already clears, and it clears because someone other than the acres pays. A [debt-for-nature swap](/guide/what-a-debt-for-nature-swap-actually-is?from=guide) is serviced by a sovereign or a fiscal budget. A conservation bond is serviced by the issuer's revenues or an outcome payer, not by the wetland. Those instruments have a payer. They do not answer whether the marsh itself can carry the note. The same limit shows up where title will not take a mortgage at all: tribal trust land, easement-encumbered ground, and commons tenure.

Nature-based solutions loans do not fail because lenders lack imagination. They fail on the same test every loan faces: is there a payer? Debt does not manufacture the payment. Debt assumes it. When land is asked to service a loan it cannot service, the land sits one missed payment away from the lender, and the living system is the collateral.

That is the case [ensurance](https://ensurance.app/?from=guide) exists for: the people who depend on the living system fund its condition, and the land is not asked to pay back a loan in order to stay itself.

A narrow version of the question still stands. Some acres held for nature-based solutions do have a payer: a grazer on the prairie, a timber sale on a schedule, a lease that pays on a schedule on one corner of the parcel, a utility willing to contract for the flood storage. Where that payer exists, a Mad-style loan already fits a working operation. Where it does not, copying Perennial Fund II does not create a payer. The capital has to fund the land's condition without asking the land to pay it back — program-related investment, a blended structure with a catalytic layer, or, on our side, a certificate or a syndicate paid by the people who depend on the acres. There is no price on this page.

We do not know how large this third group is. That is the honest state of the question. Nobody has put a real vehicle in front of them and counted the replies.

[What a nature-based REIT actually is](/guide/what-a-nature-based-reit-actually-is?from=guide) asks the equity version: who would own this land. This one asks who would lend against it, and says out loud that the answer may be "only when something services the debt."

## we are asking, not offering

Nobody here is originating a loan or raising a fund. There is no term sheet behind this post, and no rate. It is a demand question asked in public, the same way the REIT series asked its own.

If you lend the way Mad Capital does, say so. If you would consider capital for a nature-based version, on land that often cannot service a loan, say so, and say which reader you are: the lender who needs a payer on the parcel, the allocator who would accept a thinner or slower return because the acres are the asset, or the foundation whose capital does not need the land to pay it back. A reply is the evidence this series exists to collect. If you are a farmer who needs the loan, the door is Mad's, and we mean that.

[say so →](/contact?from=guide&topic=nature-based-debt)

[how we work with capital providers →](/solutions/capital-providers?from=guide&topic=nature-based-debt)

## sources

[Mad Capital, Perennial Fund II press release (September 17, 2025)](https://madcapital.com/perennial-fund-ii-press-release) — $78.4 million close on September 15, 2025 against a $25 million target; 111 investors; Fund I $10 million in 2021; $100 million under management with the two funds and strategic lending partners; family offices, foundations, and institutional investors, 111 in all; early commitments include Builders Vision, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Schmidt Family Foundation; Fund III is a sketch of a vehicle exceeding $500 million, not a close

[Mad Capital, loans](https://madcapital.com/loans) — real estate and land loans, equipment and infrastructure, transition loans, operating loans

[Mad Capital, how the capital is different](https://madcapital.com/articles/how-mad-capital-is-different) — longer terms and interest-only during transition, in the lender's own description

## the series

[what regenerative farmland debt actually is](/guide/what-regenerative-farmland-debt-actually-is?from=guide)

[a farm can pay the loan back](/guide/a-farm-can-pay-the-loan-back?from=guide)

[a wetland cannot service the same debt](/guide/a-wetland-cannot-service-the-same-debt?from=guide)

would you lend this way to living land — you are here