Regenerative Agriculture
Overview
Global food systems depend on ecosystem services, including healthy soils, clean water, a stable climate and biodiversity. Yet over 25% of the world's agricultural land has been degraded by intensive farming practices, and without decisive action, this figure could rise to 50%, severely undermining food security and supply chain resilience.
Regenerative agriculture has emerged as a vital opportunity to reverse this trend.
Although there is little industry consensus on the definition of regenerative agriculture, the practices typically associated with the term focus on generating positive environmental outcomes, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to carbon sequestration and removal, building resilience to climate change, and improving soil health, biodiversity, and water availability and quality.
Material Risks & Opportunities
Mitigating Financial Risks Through Regenerative Agriculture
Regenerative agriculture can support companies, farmers and investors to mitigate some of the financially material risks associated with conventional agriculture. These include:
supply chain and operational vulnerabilities linked to increasingly frequent droughts, floods, heatwaves and irregular rainfall;
dependency on expensive inputs such as synthetic fertilisers, which are linked to heightened pollution and health risks;
transition risks linked to a shift away from conventional protein production and consumption patterns.
Balancing Growth Opportunities with Livestock and Implementation Risks
Taking a regenerative approach to agriculture can also create opportunities for companies and farmers, ranging from improved crop yields and pricing models to more secure farmer livelihoods.
However, it can also create or exacerbate a number of risks prevalent in livestock production, including:
antimicrobial resistance linked to the use of manure from industrial farms where antibiotics are given to livestock;
waste and pollution risks linked to the application of manure as fertiliser;
conversion of cropland and natural ecosystems, driven by the need to use increasing amounts of land to farm regeneratively.
Furthermore, companies that make regenerative agriculture commitments without setting specific and measurable implementation targets
How can investors assess corporate regenerative agriculture efforts
Investors with exposure to the agri-food sector can play a critical role in driving livestock producers, retailers and food manufacturers to improve the credibility of their regenerative agriculture efforts. Doing so can help to deliver meaningful outcomes for climate, nature and long-term food system resilience, while also protecting investment value.
Investors can:
Assess the links between commitments and materiality
A clear indicator of credibility is whether the outcomes companies seek through regenerative agriculture are acknowledged as financially material. Where targets are vague, deployment-focused or absent entirely, investors can challenge companies to set quantified, outcome-based goals and disclose progress against them, or to link commitments to science-based targets for climate and nature, supported by credible transition plans.
Drive transparency on farmer support
A regenerative agriculture transition can only succeed if it integrates environmental and socioeconomic considerations, including farmer protection and empowerment. Investors can assess whether financial incentives, price premiums and transition support are explicitly embedded in corporate programmes and disclosed with sufficient transparency.
Engage companies on contradictions and limitations
Investors can engage with companies on how they identify and manage trade-offs associated with regenerative practices. Alignment with standards such as the Global Biodiversity Framework, focused on reducing pesticides and fertilisers, may indicate more robust approaches to managing such trade-offs.
Regenerative Agriculture: Moving from Ambition to Credibility
Read FAIRR’s latest report to understand how corporate regenerative agriculture commitments and practices have evolved over the past three years. With a strong focus on credibility, the report highlights areas of progress while exposing key gaps in aligning climate and nature strategies with regenerative agriculture.
View ReportRegenerative agriculture at a glance
The current agri-food system is unsustainable, and the cost of inaction is becoming impossible to ignore. The challenge is no longer limited to reducing negative impacts but ensuring long-term resilience and operational viability in an increasingly unpredictable environment.
34%
of the world's agricultural land has been degraded by human activities. [1]US$12trn
in environmental, health and developmental damages generated by today’s food production and land-use practices each year. [2]US$1.4trn
in business opportunities associated with productive and regenerative agriculture by 2030. [3]62 million
new jobs could be created through the adoption of productive and regenerative agriculture practices by 2030. [4]How credible are corporate disclosures on regenerative agriculture?
This is the central question explored in our latest report. As regenerative agriculture continues to gain prominence in corporate sustainability strategies, understanding the quality, transparency, and credibility of company disclosures has never been more important.
Watch this short video for an overview of the report, including the questions it seeks to answer, the approach behind the analysis, and some of its key findings.
Equipping Investors with Agri-Food Risk Solutions
FAIRR equips investors with the robust data, research and tools needed to understand and assess material risks across the food system, from climate and biodiversity loss to supply chain vulnerabilities.
Regenerative agriculture is deeply relevant to this work, representing one of several solutions that can be used to support a sustainable food system transition, alongside protein diversification, and food loss and waste.
