About the Farm Security Initiative
Who We Are
The Farm Security Initiative (FSI) is a nonpartisan effort focused on structural risks embedded in the ownership and governance of American farmland. Over the last several decades, consolidation, financialization and market volatility have shifted economic risk away from concentrated actors and onto individual producers and rural communities.
As risk concentrates at the farm level, continuity breaks down. Succession failure, loss of local ownership and the erosion of the market, credit, and civic institutions that once absorbed risk follow, not as accidental developments, but as predictable consequences of a system that prioritizes short-term profits and efficiency over resilience and long-term stewardship.
FSI works to fortify family ownership of working land, correct incentive structures that accelerate risk transfer and rebuild the local and regional institutions required for a durable agricultural system.
Our Mission
FSI exists to fortify family and locally owned working land, strengthen local control and reduce systemic risk in the food systems the nation depends on. At its core, this work is about people; the stewards of the land, the communities it sustains and a country whose resilience depends on both.
Why FSI Exists
The challenge facing American agriculture is not merely agricultural. When farmland moves out of locally accountable hands, whether family-owned or owner-operated, the loss extends far beyond acreage. What disappears are place-based skills, durable institutions and the capacity of communities to withstand economic and systemic stress.
Without deliberate, structural action to fortify locally rooted ownership and strengthen rural communities, America risks losing more than food security. We risk becoming dependent on systems we no longer control—and unable to withstand their failure.
FSI exists to confront that risk while there is still time by advancing structural reforms and practical tools that fortify family and owner-operator ownership, strengthen rural communities and restore resilience to the land and food systems the nation depends on.
About Founder Stephen Banks
Steve is a builder, a writer and a citizen.
The oldest of five, Steve was raised by a single mother. When he was in high school, she bought a Victorian house in St. Paul, Minnesota and he and his younger brothers taught themselves to use a hammer, a tape measure and a circular saw.
He is a US Army Veteran and a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a degree in Chinese language.
He lived in Tokyo, Japan for three years where he wrote advertising and technical copy for Honda, Toyota, Canon, Mitsubishi, Yanmar Diesel, among others.
Steve, his first wife and his brother spent thirteen months riding Honda motorcycles through SE Asia, Australia, India, Nepal, and the African Continent; east to west from Tanzania to Togo then north across the desert to Algiers, the ferry to Marseilles.
Broke from the trip, Steve started a construction company. He grew it to sixty employees and $20M in annual revenue and ran it for twenty-eight years. The company was licensed and performed commercial and federal government projects in all fifty states.
As an athlete, Steve maxed the PT test in Army basic training, earned a blackbelt in Shotokan Karate in Tokyo, and raced triathlon for many years including Ironman, Half-Ironman, Escape from Alcatraz and numerous sprint events.
He married the love of his life, Jane. They’ve been married for 32 years and have two kids, Eli, 31 and Coco, 29. Steve and Jane live in Minneapolis with two cats and a dog.
Steve closed his company, Division21, Inc. in 2019. Now he rides his Harley Davidson through the farm fields of America and listens and reads and thinks and writes.