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Media Kit

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ABOUT US

Mad Agriculture is an innovative non-profit organization that helps farmers and ranchers transition to and thrive in regenerative farming. Mad Agriculture provides land and business planning, regenerative research, and storytelling for farmers across the country. 

Mad Agriculture is part of the MAD! family of companies that also includes Public Benefit Corporations (PBC)  Mad Capital and Mad Markets.  Mad Capital offers financing for regenerative organic farmers.  Mad Markets connects farmers to values-aligned buyers and provides ingredient sourcing solutions. Collectively MAD! is working towards a shared mission of catalyzing a regenerative revolution in agriculture.

MAD! FAST FACTS 

In 2023:

  • Mad! collectively worked in 34 states

  • Mad! Capital’s work impacted 79,115 acres and Mad Agriculture’s work impacted 60,000 acres 

  • Mad! Markets worked with 85 food companies

  • Mad! collectively worked with 375 farmers 

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Mad! has been featured in:

Our Work:

Our three companies ensure that our farmer partners have the strategic (Mad Agriculture), financial (Mad Capital), and connective (Mad Markets) support they need to realize their vision for their farm. Having all three companies share the same vision allows us to develop cohesive, system-wide solutions in food, farming and climate. 

Mad Agriculture has two core teams that support our mission, Mad Lands and Mad Media. Both of these teams work with farmers and ranchers to activate and amplify regeneration on the ground.  

Mad Agriculture’s Mad Lands offers land and business planning that is farmer-first and place based. We help our farmers put their ideas into action. We validate these practices with science  for the benefit of farmers, food companies, and the regenerative movement.

Mad Agriculture’s Mad Media ignites engagement in the regenerative movement by sharing its stories. From our biannual Journal to our short films, our platform was created to help explore and create the new agrarian culture. We are dedicated to living the questions, trusting that in the living we will find the answers. 

Mad Markets PBC provides ingredient-sourcing solutions that advance regenerative agriculture. We connect farmers to values-aligned buyers and we focus on building regenerative supply systems that are transparent, reliable, and celebrate the story of ecological, economic, and cultural regeneration. With the acquisition of Timeless Natural Food, a renowned lentil and chickpea processing facility in Montana, we are beginning to invest in needed infrastructure. This strategic vertical integration positions Mad Markets as the premier supplier of regenerative organic pulse, grain, and oilseed crops.

Mad Capital PBC is financing the regenerative organic revolution. Our radical financing enables regenerative, organic, and transitioning farmers to achieve their goals to work with nature, rather than against it. We offer the most flexible, transparent, and customized financing and our services include real estate and land loans, equipment and infrastructure loans, transition and operating loans.

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From our Executive Director:

Mad! was born out of a frustration with the current paradigm for living within the Earth system. Today, the planet is a faint glimmer of what it wants to be, of what it can be. The bison are missing from the prairies, Native peoples have been massacred, the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico are choking in agricultural runoff, the plains have turned to vast monocultures of grains, rainforests have been razed to the ground, and so much more. We ask you, what is the story of the peoples and creatures in the place that you care most deeply for?  What does the land yearn to be? What does your soul need it to be?

We passionately believe the health of the land, sea and people is one and indivisible. As we do to one, we do to ourselves. As we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves. The modern tragedy of the Earth system is calling us to heal our relationship to Earth and one another. We are heeding the call.

Mad Agriculture, and our sister companies Mad Markets and Mad Capital, focus on agriculture because how we grow food largely defines our relationship to Earth. Modern agriculture has progressively subverted the economy of nature, degrading planetary ecosystems and creating some of the largest challenges humanity has ever faced, including climate change and the loss of fertile soil. It has also dehumanized food through its commoditization, and detached us from the understanding of how food inescapably bonds us to the planet.

We are calling on all to reimagine and restore our relationship to Earth.  The world that we believe in, envision and work for is so profoundly different from the one that is, that our work demands a bit of madness—hence the ‘Mad’ in our Agriculture. We are nothing less than working to catalyze a revolution in agriculture at the global scale. This revolution must be founded on the virtues of a good and true economy that seeks to achieve harmony between human and ecological well-being. It must start from the ground up, with the soil. It must be regenerative.

 Please join us.

PHIL TAYLOR

CO-FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, Mad Agriculture

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Team members available for Speaking Engagements

Co-Founder & Executive Director

Philip Taylor, Ph.D. (he/him) is the co-founder and Executive Director of Mad Agriculture, along with the co-founder of Mad Capital and Mad Markets. He co-founded the organization in 2016 with his life partner, Nicole Brinks, to reimagine and restore our relationship to the land, sea, and each other through good agriculture. Prior to founding Mad Ag, Philip was a career global ecologist who specialized in ecosystem and soil carbon cycling. His research ranged widely, from understanding soil ecology and ecosystem biogeochemistry to exploring solutions to the sustainability challenges of agriculture. Philip’s work has been published in numerous journals, including Nature, Nature Climate Change, and Ecology, and he has diverse international experience in both private and public sectors, having led research and business efforts throughout North America, Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Now, he is bringing his entire being into Mad Agriculture—his life’s work, until he returns to the soil.

Chief Strategy Officer

Elizabeth (she/her) has worked at the intersection of food, climate, and agriculture for the past fifteen years. She is Chief Strategy Officer for Mad Agriculture, a non-profit that works with farmers as agents of change. Elizabeth’s role is to implement strategic initiatives in collaboration with our diverse network of partners in order to accelerate systematic change in our food system and help spark the regenerative revolution in agriculture. Prior to joining Mad, Elizabeth was President of Demeter USA, the non-profit certifier of Biodynamic farms and products.  Demeter, internationally, is the oldest ecological certification program in the world.

Chief Financing & Operating Officer

Tanner (he/him) grew up amongst the citrus orchards and ephemeral creeks of Ojai Valley, near California’s central coast. Working with the land on a small ranch and adventuring through the native oak groves and orange orchards helped him foster respect and joy for nature—in both agricultural and non-agricultural settings, and especially where they intersect. His degrees in Ethnic Studies and Environmental Planning and Management each supplement his history and his vision for creating businesses that are a source of food for people and the planet. Tanner works with farmers to create resilient and productive farmlands and enterprises. With a view that agriculture functions best with consideration for the dynamics of soil, water, plants, and people—where all parts of the system work to support one another—he believes that by using ingenuity and planning to connect tradition and knowledge with modern technology and science, we can keep farmlands productive and profitable.

Director of Stewardship

Clark (he/him) has worked deeply with natural resources over the last two decades in a multitude of diverse landscapes, cultures and ecosystems. Prior to joining the team at Mad Agriculture, he was a soil scientist for the USDA NRCS for over 16 years, as well as the manager and caretaker of a land based business for another two years. Through his experiences, he has learned that by listening to the land, we can discover the answer to the question “What does this place want to be”? His role at Mad Agriculture as the Director of Stewardship is to help producers think holistically along their journey to answer the reciprocal question, “What does this land need me to be”?

Director of Mad! Media

After over a decade working in agriculture and media production, Jonnah has gained access and insight into the power of food to shape movements, cultures, and ecological solutions. Her family’s CSA (community supported agriculture) farm, Vermont Valley Community Farm in Blue Mounds, WI, was one of the pioneering CSA’s in the Midwest. Jonnah’s leadership within the farm shaped her worldview on food and agriculture. In 2019 her family transitioned their CSA into an organic seed potato operation under a new name, Mythic Farm, which serves farmers and gardeners nationally. Jonnah has directed and designed projects of many scopes, from grassroots initiatives to corporate and federally-funded campaigns. Her work focuses on the intersection of food, agriculture, climate change, art, and conservation. 

Contact Us 

Chief Marketing Officer: 

Jane Cavagnero

jane@madagriculture.org


Chief Strategy Officer:

Elizabeth Candelario 

elizabeth@madagriculture.org


director of Mad Media 

Jonnah Perkins

jonnah@madagriculture.org