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SDG: 11 Sustainable cities and communities

Sustainable cities and communities

The Challenge

For farmers and others committed to transforming our food systems, the term regenerative agriculture (Regen Ag) has become a unifying concept and one which has enabled a wider community of producers, retailers, financers and others to embrace an agenda of change. But how confident are we in regenerative agriculture’s environmental and productivity claims? And what would a regenerative shift in UK agriculture mean for our food system as a whole?

This Sprint aimed to clarify if and how Regen Ag can lead to greater alignment between land and environmental goals on the one hand, and food and nutrition security on the other, while identifying what policies would enable a just transition for the sector and for those it supplies.

The Solutions

This Sprint found that Regen Ag’s flexibility can empower farmers, foster innovation, and build resilience, but also creates governance and labelling challenges. Realising its benefits requires supply chain reform, supportive policy, transparent standards, improved assessment approaches, and cross-sector collaboration.

Findings indicate that Regen Ag’s value lies less in prescribing specific practices and more in strengthening the capacity of farming systems to balance trade-offs and respond to complex sustainability goals. Extensive stakeholder engagement—including surveys, interviews, and workshops involving actors across policy, industry, and civil society—highlighted the need for context-rich, inclusive decision-support tools covering environmental, social, and economic dimensions of farm systems. Supply chains require longer, flexible contracts that share risk, investment in new farm skills and equipment, improved data for decision-making, and peer-led knowledge networks. Policy should expand independent advisory services, support low-input and mixed farming research, strengthen local market infrastructure, regulate supply chain practices, and align food system transformation with health and sustainability goals.

The Sprint has also helped reframe debates on regenerative agriculture by shifting attention from farming practices alone to wider questions of governance, power, and food system transformation. It contributed to national policy discussions and aligned with key policy developments, including DEFRA’s evolving farming agenda and broader climate policy priorities.

The Pathway

The Regen Ag Sprint co-authored its key outputs with partners, The Food Foundation and the Green Alliance, who have played a central role in disseminating findings to policy and industry audiences. The project engaged a large and diverse stakeholder network—including government, private sector, and civil society organisations—which continues beyond the Sprint and is expected to support ongoing uptake and impact.

Targeted engagement also brought in perspectives from groups often underrepresented in food system debates, including those experiencing food insecurity, shaping the Sprint’s focus on equity and justice. The findings are already informing discussions among policymakers, practitioners, and industry actors, and are likely to be taken forward through continued collaboration and follow-on work.

What happened next

Following the end of the Sprint, the research team was invited to submit expert commentary on Regen Ag’s role in reducing fertiliser dependency in light of global supply shocks (e.g. disruptions linked to the Strait of Hormuz), further demonstrating the timeliness and policy relevance of the research.

The Challenge

Adolescent mental health is a growing policy concern in the UK. Within this context, the Department for Education identified a need to explore whether nature-based programmes could form part of a credible policy response. 

These programmes had been proposed as a way to improve mental health and wellbeing, while also aligning with wider sustainability and education priorities. However, the evidence base remained limited and fragmented, particularly at the secondary school level where policy demand was most immediate. 

This created a gap between policy ambition and actionable evidence. Decision-makers needed clarity on whether nature-based programmes could deliver measurable benefits, how they could be implemented in practice, and what trade-offs or resource implications might arise. 

At the same time, the lack of robust and stakeholder-informed evidence limited confidence in integrating these approaches into policy. Questions remained around effectiveness, scalability, and value for money. 

The challenge for the Sprint was therefore to rapidly generate interdisciplinary evidence that reflected the perspectives of policymakers, educators, and young people, while addressing key uncertainties around delivery and impact. 

The Solutions

The Sprint delivered a structured and policy-relevant evidence base to support the Department for Education in assessing nature-based programmes as a response to adolescent mental health challenges. 

 By combining multiple strands of analysis, the work moved the evidence base from fragmented to actionable, and delivered the following: 

  • A rapid systematic review identifying early positive impacts on anxiety, wellbeing, and engagement, while highlighting gaps in consistency, evaluation, and UK-specific evidence.  
  • Stakeholder-informed insights from educators, identifying enabling factors such as access to green space and leadership support, alongside barriers including curriculum pressures and limited staff capacity.  
  • An economic evaluation framework linking school-based interventions to longer-term societal benefits, demonstrating potential cost-effectiveness if implemented well.  
  • A set of co-developed policy directions for the Department for Education, including integration into whole-school approaches, improved evaluation, and cross-sector collaboration.  
  • Case studies from schools across England, providing practical examples of delivery in diverse contexts.  

Together, these outputs clarified both the potential and the limitations of nature-based programmes. They showed that such approaches are not a standalone solution, but can play a valuable role within a wider system of mental health support. 

The Pathway

The Sprint followed a structured pathway from evidence generation to policy application, designed to directly inform decision-making within the Department for Education. 

It began with rapid evidence synthesis to assess the effectiveness of nature-based programmes across different groups, settings, and outcomes. This provided a foundation for understanding what is known and where key evidence gaps remain. 

This was complemented by detailed analysis of implementation in real-world school settings. Through co-production with educators and young people, the Sprint examined how programmes are delivered in practice, including resource requirements, institutional constraints, and delivery challenges. 

In parallel, the team developed an economic framework to assess the wider costs and benefits of these interventions. This linked individual mental health outcomes to longer-term impacts across education, health, and society. 

These strands were then integrated into a coherent, policy-facing evidence base. Case studies co-produced with schools provided concrete examples of delivery, scalability, and impact. 

The pathway remained responsive to a changing policy context. Early uncertainty under a change in government gave way to closer collaboration with members of the Department for Education’s Sustainability and Climate Change Unit  as policy priorities evolved. This ensured that outputs were timely, relevant, and aligned with emerging priorities, including equity, access, skills, and wellbeing. 

What Happened Next?

Following the Sprint, the research was translated into outputs designed for immediate use by policymakers, educators, and wider stakeholders. Co-creation with the Department for Education, educators, and a young people’s advisory group strengthened both the credibility and legitimacy of the findings. 

The work achieved early policy traction. Findings were positively received by the Department for Education, which requested additional case studies to strengthen its evidence base. The research was also referenced by the Minister for School Standards in response to a parliamentary question on access to nature in education. 

The work provided a practical pathway for implementation within schools. This emphasised the role of senior leadership teams in embedding nature-based approaches within whole-school mental health systems, supported by curriculum integration, improved access to green space, and partnerships with external providers. 

The Sprint also set out a staged approach for policy development: 

  • Immediate actions based on existing evidence and practice  
  • Medium-term system development aligned with current policy priorities  
  • Longer-term transformation to address remaining evidence gaps  

Together, these next steps positioned the research to inform both strategic policy direction and practical delivery. They also highlighted where further evidence, investment, and cross-sector collaboration are needed to support scale and long-term impact.