Iroquois Valley: Investing in Farmers Transitioning to Organic, Regenerative Agriculture

As more people are starting to realize — and as Indigenous Peoples have understood for millennia — how we treat the land affects everything from food and water security to carbon sequestration and climate change.

Many farms in the United States are multigenerational family operations, and, as they are passed down, some members of the next generation are exploring the transition to agricultural practices that are better for the planet and healthier for our food system.

Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT is an investment company that focuses on helping farmers transition to organic, regenerative agriculture. Since the company began 17 years ago, it has partnered with more than 70 farmers. It has a total of $126 million invested in 36,000 acres of farmland on 115 farms across 20 states.

Iroquois Valley provides low-interest, long-term financing to farmers with the goal of building a food system that is more sustainable by preserving farmland to be used for organic production.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT (@iroquoisvalley)

Iroquois Valley’s first investment of 2025 was with fifth-generation farmer Rex Wettstein. Wettstein started partnering with the company in 2019, when he decided to expand his family’s operations by adding a 200-acre farm in Woodford County, Illinois, a press release from Iroquois Valley said.

“We very much view the relationship with our farmers as one of a long-term partnership. Our leases are set up and structured… to be six years in duration initially, and they can be evergreen thereafter,” Chris Zuehlsdorff, CEO of Iroquois Valley, told EcoWatch. “The main product that we offer farmers is what we call a purchase lease. So a farmer like Rex, for example, will identify a 200-acre farm that is down the road or that he would like to add to his portfolio and his business plan. And we’ll buy that farm and lease it back to the farmer over a six-year term. So that gets them through the organic certification. After year six, [the leases] auto-renew for every two years. We also offer the farmer an opportunity to purchase the farm from us at the end of year six, should they want to.”

Last year, Iroquois Valley distributed $37 million from investors to 18 farmers.

“Rex is a good example of a farmer in our portfolio. We first did a purchase of a farm for him and his family back in 2020, and he successfully transitioned that farm… to certified organic production,” Zuehlsdorff told EcoWatch. “He’s looking to grow his operation — his acreage portfolio, if you will — and so he identified this opportunity late last year to purchase another farm, and he brought that opportunity to us.”

Organic wheat, soy and corn will be grown on Wettstein’s farm, but it will also become the first Iroquois Valley partner to invest in renewable energy.

“For us, it is the first investment in our portfolio that has wind turbines on it. It has two operating wind turbines and an existing renewable energy lease attached to that farm,” Zuehlsdorff said. “We’re excited that we get to partner, again, to help Rex grow his farm business. And we’re adding some additional diversification and resilience to our portfolio as well through a wind turbine lease. We are also keen on exploring opportunities around community solar in our portfolio as well, to the extent the opportunities are there and there are organizations that we can partner with.”

Everything Wettstein farms is organic, and when he acquires new land, he transitions that into organic. Wettstein said organic farming not only makes for better soil health, but has economic advantages too.

“I’ve done organic farming all my life. But then any new farms that we get, we do transition them to organic,” Wettstein said in a recent interview. “There’s definitely more of a return on the organic side. And if you’re talking to someone who maybe is a conventional farmer, and they ask you, ‘What do you see as the benefits of organic over conventional?’ we feel like it’s healthier for the soil, for us and everything. We’re obviously smaller farmers, and it gives more opportunity for us. I mean, if it wasn’t for organic, I probably couldn’t farm.”

Wettstein said there are probably at least 25 to 30 organic farms in the area around his farm in Eureka, Illinois, and the number is growing.

“Expanding Rex’s operations is not just about growing more organic crops, but also about building a thriving organic hub here in Illinois,” said Andy Ambriole, Iroquois Valley’s managing director of farmland investments, in the press release. “By building resilient, organic communities it creates a model for sustainable, profitable farming that benefits the community, the environment and future generations.”

Co-founded by Dr. Stephen Rivard, a former emergency medicine doctor, and Dave Miller, a former commercial real estate banker, the origin story of Iroquois Valley is an illustration of the importance of organic farming for human health and the well-being of the planet.

Rivard and Miller “grew up in the same small town, Kankakee, Illinois, farm country in central Illinois. And after 30-plus year careers… came together and were just reflecting on some comments Doc was making about the decline in health metrics of his patient population — this was in 2007, 2008 — whether it’s the increasing rates of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, higher levels of autism among children. But that was what inspired them to begin to explore solutions,” Zuehlsdorff told EcoWatch. “And the one solution that they came up with was to buy a farm in Iroquois County, Illinois — hence the name, Iroquois Valley — and convert that farm to organic, to get chemicals out of the food system, to just try to make a small impact on outcomes in the environment.”

That was the first farm Iroquois Valley purchased, but now their model is one of partnership with farmers.

“Harold Wilkins would have been the first farmer in our portfolio in Iroquois County, Illinois, that they worked with to transition… to certified organic production. And then maybe 18 months later, they bought another farm in the same area. And by 2012, they [had] created a small LLC,” Zuehlsdorff explained. “[They] continued raising capital and buying and converting farmland to organic. And then in 2016, they converted the fund to the structure that it is today, which is a real estate investment trust and a public benefit corporation… And what I really like is we really democratize access for individuals and for people to own a diversified portfolio of organic farmland.”

In 2000, the amount of certified organic land being used for agriculture or livestock in the United States was 1.8 million acres, according to the U.S Department of Agriculture. But by 2021, that number had increased to 4.9 million acres.

“We continue to see a growing need for more organic, regenerative farming in America,” Zuehlsdorff said in the press release. “Iroquois Valley receives support from over 925 accredited and non-accredited individuals and institutional investors, and investments range from $5,000 to over $9 million. Patient investor capital is the cornerstone of our long-term support for organic, regenerative farmers, but we need more individuals and institutional investors who want to join our mission.”

Zuehlsdorff shared some of his thoughts about the importance of organic farming for healthy food and drinking water.

“Something like 80% of all pesticides are applied to five crops — corn, soybeans, wheat, potatoes and cotton, I think. And so much of that gets funneled right down the Mississippi River and right into the watersheds in a number of these farming communities and beyond,” Zuehlsdorff told EcoWatch. “Certified organic production removes the synthetic chemicals, pesticides, fertilizers from the soil and from the downstream negative impacts that comes with that.”

Zuehlsdorff said individuals can support organic farming by buying produce and other products through community supported agriculture programs and local cooperatives. They can also cultivate awareness by growing their own food.

“I think having a backyard garden or a small garden plot where you’re getting your hands dirty and you understand how hard it is to grow and how hard farming can be and various challenges that come with it is very tangible and creates awareness. And then, ultimately, it’s about creating demand for organic produce, organic grown crops,” Zuehlsdorff said. “So the more awareness we can create amongst the consumer in the buying community and the more demand that’s out there, the supply side is going to respond. And so that’s a very important piece to the puzzle, I think, is to feel more connected to the food [we] eat and where it’s grown and how it’s grown.”

Zuehlsdorff said he sees organic farming continuing to expand for the health of water, soil, humans and wildlife.

“We started farming organically 60, 70 years ago, before we started putting chemicals on fields en masse. And I think we absolutely have to continue to transition more acres from conventional to organic and regenerative practices,” Zuehlsdorff told EcoWatch. “For us, organic certification is the baseline, and then all of the regenerative practices that farmers can do on top of that — cover crops and crop rotations and integrating livestock, buffer strips for biodiversity — whatever that may be, is added on top of that core organic certification, which is our baseline. Our vision is to transform agriculture through organic land stewardship, and we feel like we have one generation to do that. That’s our goal. We’re going to continue to try to get as many acres as we can transition, and we’ll work with any and all partners to achieve that vision.”