The bosses of a dozen of the world’s largest food companies have formed a taskforce which aims to make regenerative farming approaches more accessible to farmers around the world. Cecilia Keating reports.
As part of the initiative, launched late last week, the chief executives of McCain Foods, McDonald’s, Waitrose and Partners, Olam and PepsiCo produced a joint action plan detailing how to boost adoption of regenerative farming practices globally, in a bid to reduce the food system’s impacts on climate and biodiversity.
Chair of the new Agribusiness Task Force, Grant Reid, suggested better economic incentives needed to be introduced to make a switch to regenerative farming practices a ’no brainer’ for farmers.
"These are unprecedented times, with supply chains under enormous pressure and the impacts of climate change all too real," he said.
"Regenerative farming is a critical part of the solution, and our report shows all too clearly that - despite pockets of great work - adoption rates are far too slow as the short-term economic case for change is not compelling enough for farmers."
After assessing the progress and impact of regenerative farming in three specific value chains - wheat in the US, basmati rice in India, and potatoes in the UK - the taskforce has set out a number of recommendations for how the approach could be deployed at scale.
Proposals include the creation of common metrics for assessing environmental outcomes, the introduction of measures that ensure farmers can generate income from environmental outcomes, such as the sale of carbon credits, and the creation of financing mechanisms that enable farmers to share the cost of transitioning to new practices with other stakeholders, such as food companies and governments.
Government policies that enable and reward farmers that make the transition and the development of new sourcing models to spread the cost of the transition could also boost take up of regenerative farming among farmers, the plan argues.
The Taskforce, which also includes the bosses of Mondelez, Yara International, Bayer, HowGood and Indigo Agriculture, said it would hold discussions with key stakeholders at this week’s COP27 Climate Summit that would help drive its work forward in 2023.
