Steward Ratings at a Glance
Steward is an online crowdfunding platform that provides tailored and flexible loans to grow, expand and sustain small and medium-sized farms that practice regenerative agriculture. Founded in 2016 by Dan Miller, previously a co-founder and president of Fundrise, Steward allows you to lend as little as $100 to farms, ranches, fisheries and community-based food producers and earn interest.
While not specifically an investment vehicle, the loans you give money toward can pay you interest and support the ecological and environmental rebirth of farmland. This Steward review delves into how it all works, including the pricing, features and benefits to help you decide whether the platform aligns with your investment goals and values.
How Does Steward Work?
Steward, which can be found online at GoSteward, is unlike other platforms that let you invest directly or indirectly in farmland. Steward allows you to participate in financing short- or long-term loans to farmers and local food producers who work in sustainable agriculture.
For now, the investment is strictly on the debt side. You can invest as little as $100 in loans to individual projects or into a loan pool with the potential to earn as much as 10% interest. Interest is paid on the 15th of every month until a loan is repaid.
Of course, that means you could lose your money if a farmer defaults on the loan. Also, if the farm does well, you don’t get to enjoy any of the returns you would have received from an equity investment. However, at the time of this Steward review, a nine-month loan to the pool, known as Steward Regenerative Capital, paid an annual percentage rate of 6.5%.
Getting started in investing in regenerative agriculture through Steward is simple. You open an account by filling in your first and last name, an email address and a password. Once you’re in your dashboard, you can view and lend to individual projects, with a return between 5% and 8% over four to six years or you can lend to the Steward Regenerative Capital Pool, which provides short-term bridge loans.
Before you can lend money, you must self-qualify: state that you understand financial transactions and have the financial wherewithal to make loans. Those receiving loans must have been operating for at least three years and must do sustainable farming.
Steward doesn’t charge you anything to participate in loans. Zero. With Steward lending, you pay no fees related to the loans to farmers and food producers. The company originates and services all loans without passing along associated fees to lenders.
The goal is to make it as easy as possible to get loans to farmers, ranchers, fisheries, and community-based food producers to continue growing, raising and catching food responsibly and sustainably.
Steward’s focused intent of keeping it simple to lend to farmers carries throughout the platform. Consider these features:
- Open an account in less than five minutes
- Choose and fund a project easily
- Track the status and value of your funded projects
- Keep up with your interest earnings with ease
Once you sign up, your dashboard opens for you to begin viewing and funding projects or lending to the Steward Regenerative Capital fund.
Since Miller wants to promote sustainable farming, he invites users of Steward to connect with the company. Just click on the “contact” link and GoSteward provides a form you can fill out, an email address you can tap, the street address for Steward and a telephone number. You can search the FAQs if you need more answers.
While the company was not listed on Trustpilot at the time of this Steward review, it has been featured in Fast Company, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg among other publications and its applicants for loans come mostly from word of mouth.
When you land on GoSteward, most sections provide brief but explanatory information, leaving longer but clear explanations to drop-downs with a list of questions under the heading, “What You Need to Know.”
The almost Spartan pages can give you a feeling of openness and transparency; you get only the information you need and none of what you don’t want. This is apparent from the first page, which tells you why you’re there and gives you a button to “Open an Account.” Signing up requires you to verify your email, but the entire process is a snap.
Through a mix of brief text, photos, graphics and video, you can learn about Steward’s mission and why it believes it is critical. The directness of the mission leaves little need for a deep library of educational resources. Still, the company has experienced farmers and financial people ready to answer questions.
Steward does not appear to have a mobile app. You can monitor your Steward investments through the company’s website, which is compatible with your desktop and your mobile device.
Steward considers the security of its lenders a top priority. To participate as a lender, Dwolla, a third-party payment facilitator, requires you to provide your Social Security number or an employer identification number (EIN). Verifying an identity keeps Steward in compliance with know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering laws. You may also have to provide a photo ID or documentation.
To protect your account, Steward uses two-factor authentication, requiring you to sign on with your email address and password and input a code into an authenticator app.
Miller is an advocate for restoring the health of soil and introducing or reintroducing healthy food to communities through regenerative farming. Steward was built for that purpose, assisting small and mid-size operations that farm with regenerative practices.
The website explains that Steward doesn’t view your loan as an investment, although you can earn interest from the money you lend. If you’re interested in supporting sustainable farming to save the ecology and environment around you, Steward presents itself for what it is.
Steward vs. Competitors
When it comes to farm crowdfunding, Steward stands alone as a site more focused on providing farmers and food producers the loans they need to grow and expand their sustainable agricultural operations.
FarmTogether, AcreTrader and Harvest Returns are considered competitors, but they mostly offer equity investments in farmland. Harvest Returns offers the opportunity for a debt investment, but not solely to support regenerative agriculture.
You also don’t need to be an accredited investor (i.e., worth $1 million or more or earn $200,000 per year) to participate on Steward.
Frequently Asked Questions
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A 2023 economic study of soil health – the overall purpose of regenerative agriculture – on 30 farms across the U.S. that had started using soil health management systems in their farming showed that 29 of the farms had increased net income by an average of $65 per acre. The other farm, an organic farm, was excluded to avoid skewing the results with the high revenue it received from price premiums.
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Regenerative farming is a type of agriculture that is geared toward regenerating topsoil, increasing biodiversity, improving water quality and capturing carbon in the ground.
That stands in contrast to conventional agriculture, which relies on synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and monocultures to produce a high yield at the lowest cost, often depleting soil of nutrients, undermining biodiversity and producing food that is less nutrient dense.
