By: Aman Jalan
Forests VC is exploring whether productive land can combine underlying real estate, biological growth and multiple revenue horizons into a differentiated natural asset.
Investors have long understood the appeal of real assets. Real estate, infrastructure and commodities offer something tangible beneath the financial structure.
Forests VC believes another category deserves greater attention: productive natural capital.
The natural capital development company, co-founded by regenerative finance executive Ronny Castillo and business strategist Kimberly Lacayo, is building a model to acquire or partner on undervalued land and develop it into diversified productive assets.
The investment premise starts with a familiar discipline: buy an asset whose potential exceeds its current use, improve it intelligently, and create additional value.
The difference is that part of this asset can literally grow.
High-value regenerative forestry can create biological growth with long-duration asset value. Agriculture can provide nearer-term production and revenue. Processing can retain more of the property’s economics locally, while circular systems can convert byproducts into productive inputs or new outputs. Depending on the property, tourism and measurable ecosystem services can provide additional opportunities.
That creates something increasingly relevant to investors: multiple potential economic engines operating across different time horizons around an underlying real asset.
“Capital is extraordinarily good at finding opportunity,” says Castillo. “The challenge is designing natural assets that deserve that capital, with real economics, measurable performance and structures investors can understand.”
Forests VC calls its development methodology the FINCA Framework: Acquire, Design, Grow, Measure, Optimize and Connect.
Costa Rican businessman and business partner Marco Zúñiga brings the property-development perspective to that process.
“The question extends beyond what the land is worth today,” Zúñiga says. “It’s what the land could become.”
That question matters because physical reality ultimately governs productive land.
Forester Javier Esquivel, whose experience includes decades in tropical forestry and silviculture, offers a useful reminder for anyone approaching forests principally through spreadsheets:
“A forest has yet to grow according to your financial model. The biology has to work first.”
That discipline is central to the investment proposition.
Species selection, soil, water, climate, agricultural systems, infrastructure and management all influence what a property can realistically support. Measurement can then provide the information needed to improve those systems over time.
Forests VC plans to use remote sensing, ground-level monitoring and a digital twin to create greater visibility into the performance and evolution of its natural assets.
Its flagship Costa Rican development, Raíz de Oro, where Castillo serves as president, is intended to put the approach into practice across high-value regenerative forestry, agriculture and complementary productive systems.
The longer-term opportunity extends beyond one property.
Forests VC ultimately envisions an acquisition and development platform that can identify undervalued farms, apply FINCA to unlock more of their productive potential, and connect improved natural assets with investors seeking differentiated real-world opportunities.
As those opportunities are connected with capital, legal and regulatory architecture becomes part of the platform itself. Melissa Rivera, who leads compliance, legal and regulatory work for Forests VC, sees that discipline as essential to investor confidence.
“Innovation in natural assets has to be matched by discipline in how those opportunities are structured and brought to market,” Rivera says. “Building the right legal and regulatory foundation is part of building investor confidence.”
That creates two potential sources of opportunity: landowners with assets ready for transformation and capital seeking productive places to deploy.
Natural capital investing is sometimes presented principally through its environmental benefits. Forests VC is pursuing an additional proposition: better stewardship can become a mechanism for better economics.
For investors accustomed to creating value by repositioning real estate or improving companies, the concept may sound surprisingly familiar.
Acquire intelligently. Improve the asset. Diversify its economics. Measure its performance. Create enduring value.
In this case, however, part of the appreciation may be biological.
