April 2025

The Regenerative ‘Brand’ 

• There has been a steady growth for the Regenerative ‘brand’ since 2020, with UK and international food and drink businesses announcing new and expanded ambitions around regenerative and sustainable agriculture. These ambitions are reflected in new targets, partnerships, pilots and investments aimed at increasing the amount of land that is farmed regeneratively through these businesses' supply chains. Most recent UK examples include: Mccain’s consumer awareness campaigns with celebrities highlighting the benefits of regenerative agriculture, Waitrose’s new target to source all meat, milk, eggs, fruit and vegetables from UK farms using regenerative practices by 2035, or Heineken launching their first large scale regenerative programme for barley, focused on an outcome-based farming approach. Such ambitions are also reflected in a global trend. As part of the COP28 Action Agenda on Regenerative Landscapes, PepsiCo and Nestlé were among businesses that agreed to advance regenerative agriculture practices on 160 million hectares of land (triple the size of France), involving approximately 3.6 million farmers.   

• Soil health plays a prominent role in all these initiatives – as both an outcome and indicator of progress, and we continue to see the Regenerative ‘brand’ as an important driver of overall soil awareness and understanding – uniquely capable of uniting corporations, consumers and farmers behind a common cause… but the concept remains undefined. 

• An important caveat is that the definitions and criteria used to classify regenerative agriculture remain diverse, making it a challenge to identify trends, commonalities or a tangible evidence base. While we continue to believe (as we argued in and earlier blog), that a loose, bottom-up philosophy will generate the best results, those results need to be clearly and transparently quantified and communicated if the regenerative concept is to be trusted.  

• Some businesses have agreed to report and monitor the impact of their regenerative projects against several metrics such as soil health, greenhouse gas emissions and farmer livelihoods, but the lack of detail leaves the term – and its advocates – open to accusations of greenwashing. Research by FAIRR on 79 global agri-food firms found that despite 50 (63%) publicly referring to the potential of regenerative agriculture as a solution to the climate and biodiversity crises, more than half of these (32/50), have not put in place any formal quantitative company-wide targets to achieve those ambitions. In light of growing greenwashing concerns, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) published guidance in November on how to communicate regenerative farming initiatives with the hope to improve consumer understanding, awareness, and confidence in the term ‘regenerative agriculture’.  

Beyond soil carbon 

• Practical concerns around the application of regenerative practices on farms have also emerged, in particular the over-emphasis of biodiversity/carbon enhancement outcomes at the expense of overall soil health. A widespread example is farmers adopting minimum tillage and direct drilling without first understanding – and addressing problems in their sub-soils. Ignoring compacted subsoils for example can lead to runoff, surface water flooding and nitrous oxide being lost because of anaerobic conditions. In other words ‘regenerative practices’, if applied in the wrong context – and without an underlying understanding of soil health, risk achieving the opposite of what was intended.  

• To avoid this, the regenerative ‘curriculum’ must address soil health holistically, and not just carbon. It must acknowledge risk as much as opportunity and it must be built around outcomes, rather than a onesize-fits all approach to practices. 

Regenerative vs Resilience 

• 2024 saw discussions about soil continue to crystalise around the term Regenerative, but the term Resilience has also been on the rise – with the launch of the Food and Drink Sector Council Resilience Roundtable. 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. 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. We believe there is value in the growth of the ‘regenerative brand’ – and our work looks to bridge the gap between resilience and regenerative, making an evidence-based case for soils that resonates throughout and across businesses whether we engage with CEOs, sustainability experts or those at the frontline of farmer relationships.  

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.