Can regenerative agriculture deliver nutritious food and a just food system?

For farmers and others committed to transforming our food systems, the term regenerative agriculture (RA) 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?

Farm-level confidence in RA’s farm-scale benefits seems high, and research on regenerative practices is growing. However, modelling struggles to navigate uneven agro-ecological data and the complexities of context-specific solutions, while the focus on farm-level data often positions RA as a purely agricultural concern.

Calls for new food policy demand connection between food, health and environment, and the incentivisation of a just transition in what we grow and what we eat. The effects of a regenerative shift in UK food supply across diverse farm systems will have both local and global consequences for food affordability, availability, nutritional quality and supply stability, as well as for land use.

This Sprint aims to clarify if and how RA 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.

Working with various partners and stakeholders, the research team from TABLE will explore diverse visions of RA and investigate their implications for the UK food system and its impacts overseas. Through deliberative workshops and wide engagement, we will produce an account of what these visions and associated practices imply for society. What would the different versions of regenerative agriculture identified mean for the composition, quality and affordability of our diets, for our environment and the species we farm and share it with? What policy and supply system needs, risks and opportunities would be entailed? We will ask modellers and practitioners to consider the indicators available to mark progress in relation to different versions of RA. Recognising the mistrust sometimes at play between researchers and practitioners, we will ask this group to explore how far the preferred RA futures can be measured, analysed and understood by modelling.

A collaboratively developed picture of regenerative agriculture and its implications can enable greater confidence in the development of food policy integrated with environmental and social aims, drive more rigorous private sector strategies, and support civil society in holding both government and other sectors to account.

Why this project? Why now?

There is considerable interest, among public and private actors, in regenerative agriculture (RA) as a route to achieving land-based goals around net zero, biodiversity, soil health and climate resilience, matched by corporate commitments and increasing investments in research. However, the potential system-level implications of a shift towards regenerative farming remain unclear.

As a new government grapples with calls for comprehensive food policy, and the response and implementation periods for strategic publications such as the Land Use Framework and CCC reports play out in the next two years, there is a receptive policy environment for approaches that can genuinely connect environmental, health and social goals. Increasingly public corporate commitments on RA suggest space for private-public collaboration on these goals too; however, concerns and differences remain around the potential for greenwashing and the nature of the farming systems and types of transition desired.

Co-design and engagement will enable this project to contribute to a better environment for collaboration on RA between private, public and third sectors.

We will be working directly with partners The Food Foundation and Green Alliance. We will also collaborate closely with a core stakeholder group that includes FAIRR, Nestle, the Soil Association, Waitrose, the John Innes Centre & Norwich Institute for Sustainable Development, Landworkers’ Alliance, Pasture-fed Livestock Association, Nature-friendly Farming Network, British Ecological Society, and the RSPB.