Investors and standard setters say they want to see evidence of progress on environmental outcomes<\/p>\n
Extreme weather is exposing the fragility of the UK\u2019s food system. More than a 10th of UK food imports are vulnerable to disruption from heat stress on farmers in developing nations, says<\/a> think-tank the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, while British arable farmers lost more than \u00a3800mn<\/a> in revenue in 2025 due to drought.<\/p>\n Advocates say regenerative agriculture can make crops more resilient<\/a> by helping soil retain water and reducing dependence on synthetic inputs, which are at risk from supply disruptions<\/a>. Regenerative farming lacks a universally agreed definition<\/a>, but generally means promoting soil health and positive outcomes for biodiversity, farmers and livestock.\u00a0<\/p>\n Many food companies are expanding regenerative agriculture programmes, with Unilever, Mars and PepsiCo all telling Sustainable Views that they are implementing regenerative practices<\/a> to make their supply chains more resilient. But for regenerative farming to play a meaningful role in a stable UK food system these pilot projects need to scale.<\/p>\n Standard setters focus on outcomes<\/p>\n In June, the Geneva-based food and beverage industry non-profit the SAI Platform launched<\/a> its Regenerating Together programme with the backing of 40 of the world\u2019s largest food companies including Nestl\u00e9, Arla Foods, Louis Dreyfus Company and Diageo. The programme seeks to establish a \u201cshared framework\u201d to align company efforts around regenerative agriculture.<\/p>\n A spokesperson from Nestl\u00e9 says the SAI Platform partnership represents a \u201cstrong step towards industry alignment\u201d.<\/p>\n Brendan Costelloe, director of policy and strategy at non-profit the Soil Association, says standards are best created by independent bodies, free from \u201ccommercial interests\u201d.<\/p>\n UK-headquartered investor network Fairr warns in a July report<\/a> that inconsistent standards and metrics make it difficult for investors to assess the credibility or impact of corporate initiatives. It calls for companies to disclose how their regenerative programmes reduce exposure to climate and biodiversity risks.<\/p>\n A February report<\/a> by farmer-led non-profit the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture analysed 29 monitoring, reporting and verification systems, finding that many \u201cstruggle to meaningfully integrate all three pillars of regeneration \u2014 ecological, social and economic \u2014 with equal vigour\u201d.<\/p>\n Among the strongest were the standards created and managed by Regenified, a London-based certification organisation, which have been implemented by several UK companies including supermarket Waitrose and bakery chain Gail\u2019s. <\/p>\n Regenified\u2019s agriculture standard<\/a> assesses farm management and environmental outcomes, including indicators of soil health, water function, biodiversity and wider ecosystem performance, John Gregson, head of public affairs, tells Sustainable Views. <\/p>\n \u201cA single global standard would be extremely difficult to design without either becoming too prescriptive for some farming contexts or too broad to be useful,\u201d says Gregson. But while multiple standards can coexist, they need \u201cclearly defined principles, independent verification and robust evidence of progress,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Simon Kraemer, executive director of the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture, suggests that in place of a single standard, \u201ca farmer-led international benchmark\u201d defining regenerative agriculture and its metrics could align multiple standards adapted to different farm contexts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe market needs a diversity of standards,\u201d says Franco Costantini, chief executive of international standard setter Regenagri, but he insists these need to be rigorously managed by independent third parties.<\/p>\n Companies want more standardisation\u00a0<\/p>\n A spokesperson from PepsiCo, which has a target to expand regenerative practices from 4.7mn acres of farmland in 2025 to 10mn by 2030, says greater industry \u201calignment\u201d would provide clarity for farmers, customers and investors, although standards should remain flexible enough to reflect \u201clocal agricultural realities\u201d.<\/p>\n The Nestl\u00e9 spokesperson says standardisation would \u201csimplify data collection and harmonise reporting\u201d. The company aims to source 50 per cent of its key ingredients from regenerative agriculture by 2030; up from 27.6 per cent<\/a> in 2025.<\/p>\n But while large companies are investing in regenerative programmes, Fairr research shows this makes up a tiny fraction of their turnover. <\/p>\n Mar\u00eda Montosa R\u00f3denas, a technical specialist at Fairr, says just 11 companies out of the 78 assessed by Fairr disclosed how much they were investing in regenerative agriculture, and these totals made up just 0.01 to 0.05 per cent of their annual revenue. <\/p>\n Nestl\u00e9 ranked highest, at about 0.25 per cent. R\u00f3denas says Fairr plans to engage companies on how much they are investing, including how much of this funding reaches farmers.<\/p>\n UK government wants fewer pesticides<\/p>\n Another area where investors would like to see greater transparency from companies is on their pesticide use, says R\u00f3denas. <\/p>\n None of the 78 companies assessed by Fairr has set a target to reduce the use of pesticides as part of its regenerative strategy. That was despite cover cropping and reduced or no tillage (practices that may involve herbicides or other pesticides) being reported by 68 per cent and 58 per cent of companies respectively.<\/p>\n The regenerative agriculture industry does not have an agreed position on pesticides but Costelloe says that for it to have high outcomes for nature and soils, \u201cthresholds on the amount of pesticides that can be used\u201d are needed.<\/p>\n Regenerative agriculture standards that do not take into account the full environmental impact of pesticides or animal pharmaceuticals risk \u201cgreenwashing\u201d, says Kraemer.<\/p>\n Organic farming, by contrast, has legally defined production rules<\/a>, which ban the use of synthetic pesticides, artificial fertilisers and genetically modified ingredients. <\/p>\n In its Farming Roadmap published<\/a> in June the government under former prime minister Keir Starmer said it will soon produce an organic action plan for England to harness \u201cwater quality, soil health, biodiversity, carbon emissions and animal welfare\u201d benefits.\u00a0<\/p>\n The total UK organic food and drink market was worth \u00a33.9bn in 2025, almost doubling from \u00a32bn in 2015. But the share of UK farmland managed organically has remained broadly flat at around 3 per cent<\/a>, according to government statistics<\/a>. This means that much of the organic food eaten in the UK is imported and its biodiversity benefits are felt overseas, says Costelloe.\u00a0The government does not publish estimates of the percentage of domestically grown organic food that is eaten in the UK.<\/p>\n Greenwashing risk intensifies\u00a0<\/p>\n The lack of agreed standards is also creating regulatory risk. In guidance published at the end of 2024, the Advertising Standards Authority, which has scaled up<\/a> its anti-greenwashing work in recent years, warned farmers and food companies against making broad regenerative claims when they had adopted only a limited number of practices. It told<\/a> businesses not to exaggerate the scale or nature of their initiatives.<\/p>\n A spokesperson from the ASA tells Sustainable Views that while it has not received complaints or published any rulings on regenerative farming claims since 2024, it plans to monitor regenerative claims using digital \u201cactive [advert] monitoring\u201d later this year. If misleading claims are found, companies could face sanctions or be forced to withdraw adverts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Investors and standard setters say they want to see evidence of progress on environmental outcomes Extreme weather is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":725669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[239970,59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-725668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-food-and-farming","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/725669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}