Nature, farming, and environmental groups have warned that the term ‘regenerative’ in relation to food production is being misused, and influencing European policy in the process. The same companies that have driven intensive agriculture are even suggesting their own regenerative frameworks should be used to determine the flow of public subsidies towards ‘sustainable’ agriculture.
“What is called ‘regenerative’ can include highly degenerative practices masked by a few cosmetic measures,” warned the likes of the Pesticide Action Network (PAN), Friends of the Earth, and Ifoam Organics Europe this week. “While supporting transformative solutions through public and private initiatives is highly sensitive, too many ‘regenerative’ proposals focus only on narrow output metrics, diverting attention away from harmful inputs and merely tweaking, rather than transforming today’s agricultural systems.”
The joint statement comes on the back of research by Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), an NGO, which found lobby documents showing that since September 2024 corporations in the pesticide, dairy, and big food industries have “lobbied the European Commission, carefully deploying the concept of regenerative agriculture to promote a range of practices that are actually associated with environmental harm, including the continued use of synthetic agrochemicals”.
In an article accompanying the research – A degenerative lobby, published this week – CEO explains that multi-billion-dollar corporations such as Bayer and Syngenta are among “a very broad range” of global agribusiness and food manufacturing companies who are behind the push for what they call ‘regenerative agriculture’ in Europe and elsewhere.
CEO said: “Our findings come as the term is being inserted more regularly into EU decision-making spaces. This includes policy discussions on how billions of taxpayer money should be used to support the farming system in the coming years, and others on creating an overarching framework to measure sustainable farming through an exercise called ‘EU benchmarking’.”
The campaigners are also concerned that policymakers’ growing interest in regenerative agriculture could see this “hazy term” becoming more integrated into EU policy, thus embedding harmful industrial practices. The involvement of prominent non-profits, certification schemes, and farmers groups who are collaborating with companies in their engagement on ‘regenag’, is also a worry.
“The [CEO’s] article puts the spotlight on how ‘regenerative’ is increasingly being used as a vehicle for greenwashing,” noted Eduardo Cuoco, director of Ifoam Organics Europe, the European umbrella organisation for organic food and farming, on social media this week. “The same actors that built an input-intensive farming model now want to sell us the language of regeneration,” he added.
Flood of greenwashing?
Several major UK-based food and drink manufacturers, including Nestlé, PepsiCo, McCain Foods, Danone, and General Mills, have committed to scaling up regenerative agriculture practices within their supply chains. Pizza chain Ask Italian also boasts using 100% regenerative flour for its pizzas, certified by Wildfarmed.
Last month, 40 global food and drink companies – including Carlsberg, Diageo, FrieslandCampina, and Mondelēz – signed a shared declaration of intent in support of SAI Platform’s “Regenerating Together Programme” ahead of its upcoming launch. The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) Platform boasts members including Bayer, Cargill, ADM, Syngenta, Danone, PepsiCo, McDonalds, Nestlé and Unilever, and has released its own corporate regenerative agriculture definition, as well as a framework for benchmarking, assessments, and ‘normative claims’. These were released under the slogan: ‘Regenerating Together: A Global Framework for Regenerative Agriculture.’
SAI said the Regenerating Together Programme (RTP) “provides a structured, practical framework designed to help the global food and beverage supply chain transition to regenerative agriculture. Developed with input from farmers, agronomists, NGOs and academia, the programme establishes a set of shared impact areas, outcomes and indicators, while allowing flexibility for local adaptation.”
However, as CEO noted, there is “not a single word” about pesticide or fertiliser use, two input factors known to be devastating for biodiversity. “One simple question should be: how much reduction of pesticide and fertiliser use will be obtained by 2030, as a reference to the EU proposed Farm2Fork Strategy, which had clear ambitions (until the F2F Strategy got deleted by the same agro-business lobby and their political allies by 2024,” noted CEO.
Taking the (mis)lead
Defining regenerative farming is only part of the problem; understanding what the outcomes should be, and whether these should be couched in certifications or standards is also a hot potato.
Signatories to the joint statement on the risk of regenerative greenwashing this week acknowledged the “serious regenerative practices grounded in organic and agroecological principles as genuine allies”, but “the ‘regenerative’ umbrella includes far too many speculative initiatives hindering transformative solutions. These claims should not mislead consumers and policymakers,” they added.
There is an argument they already are. Indeed, ‘regenerative’ is increasingly the catch-all being used by corporates to sell their sustainability ambitions. As many water down their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) targets, they have stuck with those relating to regenerative ingredients, and in some cases expanded them.
PepsiCo’s commitment for example is: “Spreading the adoption of regenerative agriculture, restorative, or protective practices across 10 million acres of land supporting the growth of our key crops and ingredients.” This is up from the 7 million acres originally targeted.
The owner of Pepsi, Doritos, and Quaker considers an acre to have delivered “regenerative agriculture impact when it is an acre utilised to grow crops and when the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices results in quantified improvements on productive lands in at least two of the environmental outcome areas among soil, water, climate, and the promotion of biodiversity within productive acres, with a preference for climate to be one impact area”.
That statement, within its guidelines, naturally leaves plenty of wriggle room. The trouble is that these brands are by-and-large marking their own homework. What regenerative means to one, will be different to another. The outputs required will also differ. SAI is trying to overcome that but to what end, given that it is backed by the world’s largest agribusinesses?
Recent research by the Food Foundation, an NGO, with help from Green Alliance, an independent think tank, and Table, the global food systems platform hosted by the University of Oxford, picked up on the buzz around regen ag and the concerns that existing power imbalances between food system actors will lead to larger corporations co-opting the definition – and indeed this potentially powerful and positive movement – for their own interests.
Among the risks were the farmers being burdened with all the heavy lifting (and in some cases not compensated) and small trials being used to greenwash entire ingredient categories, for example, ‘this milk is regenerative’. They also noted how easy it is for companies to opt for the lowest hanging fruits, and ignore core issues such as improving soils or environmental improvement across the whole of the food system (meat and dairy companies are for example buying in big-time to regenerative approaches in order to push back on the ‘less meat’ narrative, for example).
This does not wash with experts. And the conflation of sustainable farming concepts also poses a risk to organic farmers. “Let’s be honest,” said Ifoam’s Cuoco: “A cover crop does not make a system regenerative. A carbon credit does not make a supply chain fair. A flower strip around a field does not erase pesticide dependency. A pilot project does not transform a business model. A beautiful word does not replace public rules.”
As he explained, farmers are not the target here, with many genuinely trying to rebuild soil fertility, reduce the use of external inputs and protect biodiversity, all in order to ensure they are more resilient. The problem is that food companies have taken some of these efforts and wrapped them in “nice language”, said Cuoco, and are using that to “avoid deeper change”.
Shallow remarks
Research led by academics at the University of Wageningen, the Netherlands, assessed the websites of 849 ‘actors’ promoting ‘regenag’ and spoke to more than 100 regenerative farmers. Their analysis, covering Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, France and Portugal, showed soil health and biodiversity were the most promoted themes; among nearly 5,000 cited practices, cover cropping and crop diversification dominated.
In their paper the journal NPJ sustainable agriculture, published in November, they wrote: “Farmers often equated regenerative agriculture with specific practices, including the complete elimination of tillage, synthetic pesticides, and synthetic fertilisers. In contrast, supply and processing companies frequently referred to the reduction of these practices, without clarifying the extent or scale of the reduction or the timeline for phasing them out.”
Interest in and communication of regenerative farming has also snowballed, but the number of farmers engaged in these approaches has seemingly melted away. “Our research suggests that regenerative agriculture originated as a grassroots approach to farming that was co-opted by non-farming actors around 2020.” They added, “Since 2021, the number of new regenerative farmers declined, raising concerns that the focus shifted from farming to marketing driven by multinational companies.”
Maybe we should not be surprised. The Ethical Butcher, which champions regenerative farming as “a compassionate approach that mimics natural cycles and gives back more to the land than it takes”, noted some time ago in a blog: “[…] as the regenerative agriculture movement gathers pace it was only a matter of time before the food industry took note and, of course, wants a piece of the consumer action”.
Currently, food corporates are looking to have their cake and eat it (“this cake is regen”). Farmers, nature, and we, the consumers, will be the ones who pay the price for their inflated, conflated, or wholly mendacious claims.
“Millions of farmers contribute every day to making our food systems more resilient across Europe, by staying clear of pesticides, GMOs, and soil-polluting fertilisers,” said Luigi Tozzi, deputy director at SAFE (Safe food advocacy Europe), who also signed the joint statement this week. “The law must protect these good farmers and consumers, from farms that are just sustainable in name. The term regenerative agriculture cannot become a trick for greenwashing, used like a magic word without any connection to reality,” he added.
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