By Mel Luymes

Kim Keckes has been farming since 2001 near Angus, the fourth generation on that land. When she needed to upgrade the barn’s electrical panel, add an activity space, run hydro and install new water lines, any other farm could have taken out a bank loan. But not this farm.
Kim runs Moondance Organics, a market garden with an on-farm event and education space for the community. The business was deemed too high-risk. So too was Jennifer Osborn and Tim Fisher’s dream of purchasing milling equipment to process waste wool into useful products. So was Ben Gott’s plan to build an in-ground greenhouse at White Pines Artisan Market near Flesherton.
All these established entrepreneurs were denied loans from conventional lenders because they were deemed a high risk. 
“Well, I don’t consider sustainable, long-term, resilient farms a high risk,” says Sally Miller. She is the founder and Executive Director of Fair Finance Fund, which extended financing for the above projects in the last few years. 
The Fair Finance Fund (the Fund) grew out of a need for social impact investment in Ontario’s local food economy. It got its start with a grant in 2018 and has since had over 80 investments and lent just under 5 million dollars to 60 food and farm projects that would not otherwise have access to capital.  The loans are between $20,000 and $200,000 with a monthly repayment schedule over five years at approximately six per cent interest (varies annually), and an optional three-month grace period.
As for the investors, they are individuals and institutions that want to put their money where their values are, says Rebecca Jacobs, the Fund’s Marketing & Communications Coordinator. Farm businesses grow relatively slowly, working with nature and building up over seasons, and so they also need “slow money” to help it along. The Fund’s investors aren’t there to make a quick buck and run; instead, they are there for at least five years and make a modest return, but, more importantly, make a positive impact in communities across the province.
Investments are Community Bonds with a five-year term in increments of $5,000 with two per cent interest or $50,000 with three per cent interest, both issued annually without compounding interest. Eighty percent of the Fund’s investors are individuals and they contribute over 35 per cent to the Fund; the remainder are institutions.
The three to four per cent margin between the interest charged to clients and that paid to investors, along with various grants for new initiatives, is the fund’s operating budget, Sally describes. They have a small but mighty staff (that their clients rave about, I might add) providing ongoing support through webinars and workshops, along with 10 hours of one-on-one mentoring related to marketing, accounting, or whatever the client feels they need. 
There is a two-step application process, explains Sally, and before they even start talking about the money, they meet with a potential client to ensure that values are aligned. They are looking for food and farming businesses that are already established, wouldn’t qualify for traditional lending, and that are making a positive impact in their local communities and for the environment. If a client needs support developing the business plan and cash flow forecasting, or other resources, the staff can help, or provide access to REAL Assist mentors, or their Path to Purpose training platform. Every loan is reviewed by a volunteer committee that meets weekly. The Board sets the parameters of the loan program– interest rate, maximum amounts.  Because of this hands-on process, it is rare for the Fund to reject an applicant at the final stage. 
Even a small investment can have large ripple effects on the community in the long run. According to their 2023 Impact Report, 75 per cent of their clients are using organic or ecological farming methods, 45 per cent are actively decreasing energy use, 49 per cent are increasing ecological biodiversity, 51 per cent are using improved energy and emissions equipment and 37 per cent are reducing water usage in their businesses.  As for the economic benefit, as of 2023, their $4 million in turn generated $27.2 million in local food and beverage sales, created 244 local jobs in the community, and translated into $15.9 million purchased from local suppliers. 
But the real impact isn’t just in the numbers, it is in the lives and businesses that have been able to get ahead with the support of the Fair Finance Fund.
Ben Gott is the 33-year-old entrepreneur behind White Pines Artisan Market, near Flesherton.  He grew up on a farm outside of Collingwood and now grows fruits and vegetables on his parent’s property, while his friend Ryan cooks it up into gourmet street food for pop-up events and meals on the farm. They also created a Healthy Eats line of granola bars and other products. At the end of every year, they run a Give a Gift Fundraiser for local youth and donate their proceeds. Ben wondered if the Fund would approve of his paying things forward (instead of paying things back), but found they strongly encouraged him to make a social impact in his community. 
Ben became interested in an in-ground heated greenhouse, following the success of Russ Finch and his ability to grow lemons, bananas and other tropical fruits in his geothermal greenhouse in Nebraska. When the banks didn’t support his vision, he found the Fund online and was able to access $70,000 to build the greenhouse, along with an on-farm market and commercial kitchen. The greenhouse was constructed in 2020 and is now a warm home to guava, olives, peppers and tomatoes and, earlier this year, Ben saw his first fruiting bananas. Now, they are in the middle of construction of the market space and hope to host people on the farm by the end of the year. 
Kim Keckes returned to her childhood home with her husband Tom nearly 25 years ago to start a market garden. After a degree in psychology and a career in the  “health” care system, even running a horticultural therapy program, she knew she needed to get back to the land to grow organic, nutritious food. She started Moondance Organics, growing vegetables for farmers’ markets and has her own on-farm market. She loves connecting people to the land, so she runs workshops at the farm and hosts a farm and forest school for children. The Fund helped her with $70,000 to install water lines in 2022 and do electrical upgrades in 2023.
The improvements are nothing they can see at first glance but go a long way to building the future of the farm. While Kim is 58 years old and still going strong, she and her husband are hoping to slow down eventually and thinking about transitioning to a next generation on the farm. As they live adjacent to a subdivision, they are hoping to work with Ontario Farmland Trust (OFT) to create a farmland easement to protect the farm from non-agricultural development (see last month’s issue for more on OFT). As well, they are open to working with new farmers that could potentially have long-term use of the farm property in the future. 
Jennifer Osborn and Tim Fisher have run All Sorts Acre since 2007, beginning on an acre outside of Guelph before they purchased 50 acres near Ayton. They run a permaculture farm, raise sheep, make wool products, have an incredible line of sheep milk gelato and do creative fine art projects to boot. They are even grazing sheep under a solar project at Conestoga College this summer. If you read the article on EcoWool here in the The Rural Voice a few months back, you’ll know they are developing a market for pelletized wool as a soil amendment. But they needed funding for the equipment to do on-farm wool processing and secured a loan of $65,000 from the Fund in late 2023. The last of the equipment was delayed and arrived only in May, so they were grateful for a three-month grace period in loan repayment.
There are dozens more examples of farms and food businesses that have accessed funding on the Fair Finance Fund’s website – these were just a few within The Rural Voice readership area to highlight. 
Community investing is not new, but it clearly wasn’t enough. Credit unions, like Vancity or the many we see in rural Ontario, are also non-profits and are owned by their local members. What makes the Fund different is that it is strategically investing in local, small-scale food and farming ventures. A similar fund, FarmWorks, was developed in Nova Scotia in 2011 and there is interest across Canada to launch similar agri-impact funds.
To truly support a local, sustainable food and farming movement, you need to understand it. And the Fund’s founder Sally Miller understands the movement perhaps better than anyone. With a PhD in Anthropology, she jumped into the local food economy by managing a successful farmer’s co-op that delivered to New York City. She came back to Ontario, got another degree (this time in environmental studies) and was deeply involved in the organic industry and in non-profits. She published her first book in 2008, Edible Action: Food Activism and Alternative Economics and another in 2016 that focused on farmland access and food sovereignty, Belongings: The Fight for Land and Food.  
The Fund is now also working on the Inclusive Prosperity Project. This project focuses on getting capital for land purchase specifically to equity-deserving farmers that are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). And more on that in the next article of this series. 
While access to capital is critical, the Fair Finance Fund is just one piece of a larger puzzle around local food, farmland prices and farm succession that many farmers and non-profits are wrestling with, in Ontario and around the world. The statistics show us that there will be a massive transition of farmland ownership in the next decade and Sally believes, like much of the agricultural community, that this land should be owned by farmers, staying out of the hands of speculators. She also knows first-hand the slim margins that farmers are living on, especially those growing at a smaller scale for local markets. While she has researched and written about these issues and alternative models, there is not a quick and easy solution to the problem, and she admits that it may need public support to solve.
I can’t help but think that if a problem is large and global, then perhaps the solutions are small and local. 
“The world is pretty disillusioning if you spend too much time thinking about it,” says Kim. “And then you lose the capacity to do the best with what you have right around you.” So, she focuses on a small patch of land near Angus and spends her efforts improving water lines, growing the health of the farm and of her community. 
And the Fair Finance Fund is a way to invest in small, local solutions like the Kims of the world.  Ghandi said “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”  And now you can invest in it too.
More information and more incredible stories of entrepreneurs and their impacts at www.fairfinancefund.org. ◊