At ChangeNOW, one key theme is Deforestation-Free Supply Chains. But a backstory often skipped:
When pasture degrades, family ranchers fall into a trap: low yields → low cashflow → no reinvestment. Then input-heavy row-crop ag arrives with LT financing, and the offer to lease or sell is hard to refuse.
Ranch becomes cropland… BUT the cattle don't disappear. It moves. That displacement (“leakage”) pushes pressure into new frontiers — a vicious cycle.
We were founded in 2022 (at Stanford GSB + Doerr) to build a better, nature-positive path: silvopasture at scale — restoring degraded pasture while integrating ~180 trees/ha (≥50% native species) to enhance biodiversity, improve drought resilience, and generate long-term timber value that can replace demand for tropical hardwoods (often illegal logging).
Carbon isn’t the product — it’s the financing mechanism. Long-term contracted offtake facilitates upfront funding, so ranchers can recover their pastures, increase productivity, and build durable wealth (w/ out selling).
Where we are: 2,200 ha planted across ~20 contracts • 12k ha qualified (100k+ ha total pipeline) • $100M+ offtakes in negotiation w/ tech cos.
Our path: a repeatable million-hectare platform, starting with a 50k ha flagship financed via project finance.
🎵 And because humor is therapy during fundraising + offtake DD, here is a sertanejo track: drive.google.com/file/d/1ZD-Z...
Sadly, we (and the trees) were busy working and are here only virtually this year, but next year hope to be there in person to share how the ChangeNOW community helped us close our round and land 3 ex-ante carbon sales!
👉 Call to action (ChangeNOW):
• Seed investors to complete our round
• Partners for a $50M blended-finance PF SPV to scale
• Corporates for ex-ante sales or offtakes
• And 😄 if you know any ChangeNOW staff, our last Q1 OKR is to get this song to #1 on the ChangeNOW Connect billboards within 24 hours (and maybe even played at the close).
If you can help with any of these, comment or DM and we’ll follow up.
Investment
Collaboration
Partnership