MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: ERICA HELLEN

Could you tell us who you are and what it is that you do?

My name is Erica and I'm the Chief Development Officer at Foodshed Capital. We're a nonprofit loan fund with a mission to build more regenerative food systems. We do that by providing low-cost, non-extractive financing and wraparound business support services to farmers and food business owners who center ecosystem health, local food access, and community resilience. We prioritize our services to low-income, female, new American, and farmers of color—entrepreneurs who often face the greatest barriers to accessing capital and support.

What do you love about the work?

I like being part of a mission-driven organization that is taking a truly unique approach to supporting the people who feed us. 

I often say that money is the thing that greases every wheel—if you need land, labor, equipment, supplies, infrastructure, or even just cashflow, you need access to affordable capital from someone who actually understands your business, is rooting for your success, and can be flexible if things happen outside your control. 

Our lifetime average interest rate is just 1.5%, and about half of our loans have been deployed at 0% interest. We don't rely on credit scores, we don't charge fees or penalties, and we embed a no-questions-asked grace period into every loan. If we need to restructure, we do it. People are often surprised when we tell them that our repayment rate is 99% across our ~200 loans. Turns out, if you build your process with flexibility in mind, borrowers are more communicative and more committed to repayment because they know they are making capital more accessible to the next farmer.

Conventional finance (and agricultural finance in particular) is often built on a deeply extractive model that places nearly all the risk on borrowers. Yet the people growing our food face enormous risks outside their control, from droughts and floods to rising temperatures and other climate-related challenges. We know that many conventional food production systems degrade ecosystems, exploit workers, and contribute to poor health outcomes. If we want to build a different food system, capital providers have to be willing to share some of the risk that comes with creating it.

How did you arrive at this point in your career? What’s your backstory?

I came to Virginia in 2009 to build my own skills in regenerative food production through internships at a livestock farm in the Shenandoah Valley and later at Caromont Farm in Esmont. After that, I co-founded and operated a regenerative livestock farm in Free Union for ten years. It was a full and rewarding decade, and I still miss moving cows to fresh grass every day.

Eventually, I wanted to expand my impact beyond a single farm, so I stepped away to pursue a master's degree in environmental management at the Yale School of the Environment. When I returned to Charlottesville, a longtime farmers market customer reached out. He had recently launched a small loan fund and was looking for someone who understood the day-to-day realities of farming. Over the past five years, I've worked alongside him and our growing team to expand the organization through fundraising, partnerships, and outreach. It's a joy to remain farm-adjacent while helping mobilize resources for regenerative farmers across the country.

Has there been a light switch moment, a turning point (or two), professionally and or personally along the way?

Definitely. One realization that has stayed with me is that if agricultural policy truly understood and supported small-scale regenerative farmers, Foodshed Capital—and hundreds of other farm-serving nonprofits and advocacy organizations—wouldn't have to exist. Until then, we're here.

Who or what has been your greatest influence? 

The women in my field.

I attend a lot of agriculture and food systems conferences and regularly get to collaborate with brilliant women who are tackling the full complexity of our food system and creating new solutions to deeply entrenched challenges.

On a more personal level, my sister-in-law, and best friend, has been a tremendous influence. She's a professor of practice at UVA Batten and a total force of nature. She's a contrarian at heart, a humanitarian in practice, and brings extraordinary energy and curiosity to every conversation. She regularly challenges my assumptions, which pushes me to think more deeply about what I believe and how I act on those beliefs. She's also the person most capable of forcing me to be spontaneous. We hopped up to New York City for 36 hours last weekend on a whim, and I didn't realize how much I needed that.

What are you currently working on, excited about, looking forward to?

I'm one of the few people I know who can genuinely say that I love my job. Right now, I'm especially excited about some partnerships we're developing with other farm-serving organizations. Building better connective tissue across the ecosystem will help us address more of the challenges farmers face and create a more coordinated support network across the value chain.

Completely unrelated to work, I love the World Cup. Every four years I become completely invested and try to watch at least part of every match. Being part of a global community of billions of people focused on the same thing is a reminder that there are still experiences capable of bringing us together across differences, and I love that.

What are you reading these days?

I just finished The Antidote, which is a historical fiction based around the Dust Bowl woven together with some magical realism. It challenges the founding stories of early Americans, who were often ostracized and alienated in their own homelands and seeking better opportunity, only to forcibly and violently displace Native Americans. It explores the "better them than us" menality, and the ways we defend our actions as a means of self-preservation, even while actively doing harm to others. And it calls us to question the realities we allow ourselves to fabricate through "forgetting." It also leverages the real history of New Deal photographers, who were hired by the federal government to capture the impacts of the Depression, to challenge the characters' ideas of the past and the future.

I just started The Ministry of Time, a near-future fiction that blends time travel with questions about adapting to a changing world. I started it on Amtrak on my way back from NYC and lol'd to the point of making my seat companion uncomfortable. I guess that's a recommendation??

Anything we missed that you might care to share (closing thoughts)?

Glad to be part of this little community! I only work from here a few times each month, but I always appreciate the change of scenery. I look forward to meeting more of you over time.