Scaling Regenerative Farming: Levers For Action

The Agribusiness Task Force was established to answer the question: how can the private sector help accelerate the scale-up of regenerative farming worldwide?

In 2022 and 2023, we have worked together to identify the barriers and the Levers to mainstream regenerative farming. This informed the development of our "waves of actions" approach to scale up regenerative farming.

Throughout 2023, the Task Force met for several working sessions which included additional representatives from across the value chain such as financial institutions, food manufacturers, and farmer organisations. Building on the work done to map the 'Big Five', we identified four key Levers to overcome these issues, and developed a Blueprint for showcasing what these Levers could provide farmers with in reality.

Understanding the four Levers and bringing the Blueprint for Implementation to life will enable us to drive change within our own businesses and collaborate where we share local supply chains.

We have entered the first wave of actions, applying insights from the Task Force to existing farming programmes. Our aim is to take our actions to the next level as we enter the second wave by working together and to deliver scale and pace in wave three, through cross-industry collaboration. This is critical to drive the systemic transformation needed to make regenerative farming mainstream.

Our aim with this publication is to build a conclusive base to catalyse this third wave, as we demonstrate through cross-sector collaboration where transformation is possible and where actions can be scaled.

The need to do so is urgent. We have five harvests left until 2030, that is one harvest per year to work with farmers to change. In this publication, the Task Force is excited to present its Blueprint for Implementation, which has the potential to unlock many of the sticking points that have prevented regenerative farming from scaling faster. We look forward to putting this Blueprint into practice and sharing our learnings as we go, to inspire and support others to act too.

The first wave takes place within individual food and agriculture companies by setting targets and developing programmes for regenerative agriculture; the second wave unlocks the collaboration among food and agriculture companies with shared suppliers; and the third wave aims to deliver cross industry scale by engaging additional actors, such as banks, governments, asset managers, philanthropy and insurance, in order to make regenerative farming the new “business as usual”.

In 2022, we produced an Action Plan that highlighted the need to make regenerative farming a 'no-brainer' for farmers. It identified what eachsector within the value chain should do to achieve this, and highlighted the 'Big Five' issues that needed solving to enable regenerative agriculture to become mainstream.

In 2023, we focused our energy on resolving these issues through cross-sector workstreams. This "Levers for Implementation" publication outlinesour findings and provides a roadmap for what needs to be done to address the 'Big Five' issues and accelerate the transition to regenerative farming.

We have called this publication "Levers for Implementation" because that’s exactly what we intend to do next – to use these Levers to put ourfindings into practice.