Scoring & Contracting Regeneration
Quantifying ecological gains made in farmer’s fields over time isn’t easy, but it’s possible. There are processes, problems, and protocols all vying to bring transparency into agribusiness.
1… How Land Management Changes Begin
A farmer’s journey away from high-input monocropping through the integration of new management practices does not happen overnight. It involves years of hard work in learning, and developing courage to try new things.
For the early adopters, the idea to change their farming system typically stemmed from a sense that it was the right thing to do, and a hunch that it would pay off eventually. Governments are now stepping in and paying farmers for the ecological restorations that are public goods.
Traditionally, farm revenue was generated by the crop’s yield*price alone. Now the economics include new streams from government payments, subsidies from non-profits, carbon trading platforms, and market premiums.
Regenerative value chains are far from complete with market premiums still rare, and carbon payments extremely inconsistent. There are enormous differences between new short-chain direct marketing value creation, and the defensive reconfiguration underway amid the dominant processors, manufacturers, and input suppliers in agriculture and food.
2… Building for a Transparent Future
Seeing the upswell of consumer consciousness around where their food comes from, survival-oriented incumbents are deliberating their future role. Technologies like blockchain for traceability, AI for story-making, and QR codes in brand marketing will open up a new universe of information and transparency for end-use consumers.
It’s time to make hay while the sun shines, so the saying goes. There is a crop of experienced regenerating farmland managers well into the transition, whose data is ready to be harvested, bound up, stacked together and offered to brands to count towards their corporate ESG commitments.
There’s also a new certification regime rolling out that looks positioned to scale. Regenified takes a methodological approach to capturing multi-dimensional scores, eliminating the mystery around regenerative agriculture lacking a definition. Trained validators measure relevant outcomes from implementing a formulated plan; assign scores and place field production into a tier that can be marketed.
Writing a plan is necessary at the outset and is considered critical for formulating a realistic and successful strategy for farmers entering this program. Business plans for fields contain subject matter expertise from independent consultants and tactical strategies to support a farm’s goals, where ‘sustainable’ is defined as economically viable over the long term, as measured by a multi-year return on investment (ROI) analysis.
3…Where to Next?
As multiple new marketing seals start to scale, the door is opening to aggregated volumes from multiple farms to be segregated and marketed to food processors and manufacturers. It is up to brands and their marketing professionals to assess the potential match of any protocol with their customer’s values, and the market share preservation a seal and it’s story might offer.
Each new piece of the puzzle that comes along helps us move past the mainstream debate about regenerative agriculture, which is ‘who’s going to pay for it?’ Since the industry started asking that question, it has since been determined that:
The bulk of the profit margin in food supply chains appears to reside with large corporations operating in oligopolies, most with bold EGS and emissions commitments to fulfill.
Farmer practice adoption is covered by government payments and other regional programs.
Policies are coming into place that limit market access.
Consumer-facing premiums for certified organic foods aren’t always delivering their understood features and benefits.
The deck chairs are still being rearranged, but the process of redesigning the agriculture and food industry is steadily advancing. Maybe someday seals like Regenified gain similar status in consumer markets to certified organic. Maybe the policies limiting imports into Europe from deforested lands are extended to more crops, forcing a deeper shift in practices and trade flows.
It’s still difficult to predict where each stakeholder will ultimately end up financially, but at this stage, both farmers and corporations appear to be taken care of by public programs, heritage market share, and economies of scale. To satisfy the demands of society, perhaps then these are the counterparties that will drive the ‘existing middle’ of the supply chain into more transparent contracting systems.