Background
Why We Exist
TIFS exists to bridge the “Missing Middle” in food-systems finance—the persistent divide between the capital needs of regenerative producers and the mandates of institutional investors. While trillions of dollars circulate in global markets, very little reaches the farmers, enterprises, and communities driving the transition to regenerative and equitable food systems. TIFS was created to close this gap by redesigning how capital flows—prototyping and implementing solutions that enable financing producers and businesses at scale, and aligning investment with the real economy of food, nature, and community resilience.
Learn more about our Missing Middle methodology →
Our Origins
TIFS was co-founded in 2018 by philanthropists and investors who recognized the need for a bridge between finance and philanthropy, connecting the goals of enterprise success with the goals of systemic transformation.
Formally launched in early 2020 and incubated by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, TIFS is guided by the principles of agroecology and by those of the Global Alliance: renewability, resilience, equity, diversity, healthfulness, inclusivity, and interconnectedness. These continue to ground our approach to transforming how food and finance work together.
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Building Precedent for Systemic Change
From the start, TIFS has developed practical, systemic solutions that show what regenerative finance looks like in action. We began by designing tools and methodologies that help investors and practitioners align finance with system-level outcomes, refining those tools through real-world application and global collaboration.
Today, our work spans five continents — Brazil, Canada, East Africa, Europe, Indonesia, and the United States — engaging producers, investors, philanthropists, and policymakers in creating new financial architectures for food systems.
By integrating efforts across natural capital, infrastructure, lending, insurance, and data, we're helping build the foundation for a more resilient, equitable, and regenerative global food economy.
“Moving forward demands more than incremental fixes; it requires systemic interventions grounded in principles and a willingness to innovate.”
— Tim Crosby, TIFS Chair & Co-Founder
Strategy
TIFS' strategy advances the market maturity of regenerative food systems. We focus on closing the Missing Middle in food-systems finance — the data, finance, and physical infrastructure gaps between capital and the businesses ready to receive it. We achieve this by combining systems thinking, financial innovation, and natural capital insights to redesign how investment flows through the real economy of food and nature.
Across our work, we integrate natural-capital accounting and systems-based analysis into financial design, recognizing that the health of ecosystems is inseparable from the resilience of markets and communities. By embedding ecological and social value into investment structures, we help partners create financing models that work for both capital providers and the landscapes they depend on.
TIFS' strategy rests on two pillars: working from the ground up, we improve the resilience and livelihoods of food producers, stewards of nature, and their communities; working from the top down, we understand the needs of institutional investors and help them deploy capital to regenerative and agroecological enterprises.
Leveraging our networks, thought leadership, and methodologies, we build investing ecosystems in multiple geographies. Once we understand the structural gaps in specific sectors and places, we co-create financial structures and innovations that increase capital flows to innovators driving this transition.
Learn more about regenerative food systems and natural capital investing →