Feb 2025

The Sustainable Soils Alliance (SSA) has been tracking the food industry’s progress in regards to supporting soil health throughout their supply chains via its Soil Health Industry Platform (SHIP). The 2024 SHIP report highlights our key Observations, soil-related Business Initiatives and based on our analysis we’ve recommended six Priority Actions to take forward in 2025.

Resilient vs Regenerative 

2024 saw discussions about soil crystalise around two terms: Resilient and Regenerative. Resilient is used to describe soil’s ‘bounce-back ability’ - its ability to recover, and return to productivity, from the effects of extreme weather – especially last year’s long, wet winter. While regenerative continues to gain momentum as the umbrella term for sustainable, nature-friendly farming with soil at its heart. 

Of course, these terms are essentially proxies for the same thing - healthy soils that are rich in carbon, well-structured and maintain a high degree of biological activity. A regeneratively managed soil will also be a resilient one. 

The difference lies in where these terms are used – and how, especially at a corporate level. Resilience is about preparedness – anticipating the worst circumstances and soil’s ability to withstand it and is applied by those responsible for maintaining secure supply chains, informing decisions about yield risk, where to source from, and contracts. 

Regenerative meanwhile, is more upbeat - capturing the landscape’s ability to improve and enhance soil, carbon storage and biodiversity – not just maintain the status quo. It resonates with consumers and so is used in advertising, marketing campaigns and CSR reports.  

What both terms demonstrate is the value to any business of investing in soils – whether it is for short-term branding and growth purposes or long term, sustainable supply. Our work looks to bridge the gap between the two, making an evidence-based case for soils that resonates throughout and across businesses whether we are engaging with CEOs, sustainability experts or those at the frontline of farmer relationships. 

 Soils and Growth 

There is an equally urgent need to demonstrate to government the importance of investing in soils.  Shortly after the election, we wrote to the Environment Minister explaining how soils contribute to the achievement of four of its five environmental goals (clean rivers, lakes and seas, food security, nature recovery, flood protection).  

More challenging is how to demonstrate the ways soil contributes to its other great ambition – that of ‘Growth’. This need is particularly pressing in the wake of recent weeks where Labour’s ‘Growth’ and ‘Environment’ agendas have been presented as in conflict with one another. 

At a macro, abstract level, it is widely recognised that healthy soils are critical for profitable farms, businesses, regions and countries. However, at a granular level, the business case – especially in the short term – it is not easy to evidence since changes to soils can be slow, unpredictable and hard to quantify. This is particularly evident when soils are pitched against other, more immediate and tangible environmental outcomes. 

Nevertheless, a variety of different mechanisms for investing in soils are being trialled by both private and public sectors - county-wide bonds, farming cluster collaborations, Sustainable Farming Incentives, regenerative premiums etc. We will analyse novel pathways for soils finance, trying to understand what impact they are having (economically and environmentally) – learning what success looks like and how this translates into a compelling, universal business case. 

Growing corporate interest in soils 

2024 saw Soil’s ‘resilience’, and especially its water holding capacity attract a new collection of corporate stakeholders including insurance companies, water companies and transport infrastructure, all of whom see the importance of soil for their bottom line – and are piloting new mechanisms for channelling investment into soils.  

In many instances, e.g. through the Environment Agency, catchments or Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENs) projects, this investment is happening alongside that from supply chain businesses, bringing new, potential sources of ‘stacked’ investment into farming. 

This new interest does raise the question of who is paying for what, using what metrics and against what outcomes. Businesses, in particular food and drink, are faced by a complex and rapidly evolving array of policy drivers that dictate how they can – and should include soil within their climate and nature reporting – at both national and global level. 

We continue to analyse these different drivers: the Carbon Removals Certification Framework (EU) and the BSI Nature Markets Standards Programme UK, Greenhouse Gas Protocol and SBTi, Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), and explain what they mean for soils and the businesses that depend on them. We look to align different corporate interests to make them add up to more than the sum of their parts – and make the case for the importance of soil health, not just soil carbon.  

Universal understanding of soil health 

There is a risk that the different players bringing their different perspectives to soil and a ‘silo-isation’ of the services soils deliver and the measurements used to evaluate change. Some focus on carbon (for scope three/offsetting purposes), others on water-holding capacity/structure (for resilience), chemistry (nutrient neutrality) and biology (Biodiversity Net Gain). 

The Holy Grail for soil understanding is of course all of these characteristics coming together, being understood as interdependent by all the different stakeholders with a vested interest in soil health and ‘interpretable’ for different soil types and in different climates, geographies and landscapes.  

We continue to push for a uniform, consistent approach to soil measurement and interpretation that can be rolled out by a variety of users in a variety of contexts, and look forward to the publication, hopefully later this year, of a DEFRA soil health measurement framework. This should unlock a new era of universal soils appreciation, as well as simplified and standardised data collection. 

This work is part of our Soil Health Industry Platform (SHIP), which has been running for three years to foster collaboration and cooperation in the field of soil health among major UK food and drink businesses. The SHIP consists of 11 members: Arla, G’s Fresh, Kellogg’s, Morrisons, Nestlé, Noble Foods, Nomad Foods, PepsiCo, Sainsbury's, Tesco, Waitrose, Yeo Valley. If you are interested in joining the Platform or would like to learn more about it, please get in touch: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..