Regenerative agriculture: Working towards sustainability goals together

As our climate continues to change, it’s becoming increasingly clear that our food system needs to evolve. Climate change is causing more frequent and severe weather events, shifting growing seasons, and declining soil health. To meet the demands of a growing global population, we need to ensure that our food system can adapt to these challenges and continue to produce enough food in a more sustainable and responsible way.

We believe transformation starts where the food system begins – at the farm. While some elements are beyond farmers’ direct control, others are within their reach. Regenerative agriculture (RegenAg) takes a holistic view and achieves proven results: it will help to reduce emissions, improve water quality and use, and build up healthy soils for the next generation.

Over the last several years, the number of companies with specific targets or ambitions around RegenAg has rapidly grown. Cargill aims to make RegenAg a standard practice across our global supply chains, working with farmers to implement practices that enhance soil health, sequester carbon, improve water quality, and increase biodiversity.

RegenAg is not a one-size-fits-all. Each farm will implement the practices that make the most sense for their own operation and goals. We run our own program, Cargill RegenConnect® which is a voluntary, market-based regenerative agriculture program that helps farmers improve soil health and decarbonize the agriculture supply chain. We can demonstrate direct or indirect links to our customers by mapping supply chains that matter to them and support them in their decarbonization efforts.

However, we can't do it alone – we will need partners from across the food and agriculture sector to join us. Therefore, we are also collaborating and driving innovation via partnerships with academia, technology partners and multi-stakeholder groups.

Beyond RegenConnect^®, three other interesting projects and collaborations that we are involved in are:

• Reforest’Action Partnership: We initiated an agroforestry program for row crops with farmers in France. This collaboration aims to support farmers in adopting regenerative agriculture practices, which can help improve soil health, restore biodiversity, increase carbon sequestration, and enhance farmer productivity and resiliency. This includes planting 21,000 trees across 20 pilot sites and testing agroforestry models with 19,000 hedgerow trees to contribute to enhance biodiversity,  improve drought resilience and water infiltration, and sequester carbon.
• Navarra 360º RegenAg Project: A multi-stakeholder initiative led by EIT Food with the participation of Cargill, Intermalta, Danone Ecosystem and Alpro. Together, we are supporting farmers in northern Spain with their crop rotation system. The project aims to support farmers on carbon, soil health, biodiversity, water, social and economic indicators via 360-degree approach. The implementation is expected to inform the design and delivery of further landscape projects in other parts of Europe. Navarra 360º landscape is part of the Regenerative Innovation Portfolio is an ecosystem collaboration, established as a Food Innovation Hub Europe Initiative of the World Economic Forum, and delivered by EIT Food and Foodvalley NL.
• Wageningen University & Research (WUR): Cargill is supporting the WUR to explore the transition towards RegenAg in Europe through various projects. These initiatives include evaluating the status of RegenAg in Europe, assessing the economic implications of the transition, and exploring ways to accelerate the adoption of RegenAg practices.

These initiatives are crucial as we aim to make RegenAg a common practice across our global supply chains, strengthen our partnership with farmers, and build value with customers.

More on our RegenAg programs