Ensuring on-farm profitability and yield during the transition to regenerative practices requires collaboration and communication between farmers and industry stakeholders
Advancing regenerative agriculture farming has become a priority for agri-food stakeholders to mitigate some of the most pressing challenges threatening the resilience of global food systems, whilst tackling climate change. While companies have experimented with regenerative farming practices, these often remain limited to the pilot phase.
To explore this further, Innovation Forum and Vayda hosted a webinar to hold an honest conversation with agri-food stakeholders about the essential strategies needed to accelerate on-farm transformation and ensure long-term sustainable practice changes at an industry level.
The farmer-focused discussion delved into how farmers and food and beverage companies can best collaborate to de-risk and scale regenerative practice, and the biggest obstacles they face.
The panel discussed the complexities and challenges of transitioning to regenerative practices without risking a drop in yield and profitability, highlighting the need to balance profitability and yield while implementing new practices incrementally.
Farmers may lack sufficient knowledge or confidence in the feasibility and benefits of regenerative practices to be able to implement it effectively.
Farmers on the panel highlighted the importance of soil testing, reducing input costs, and the need for a detailed understanding of the financial aspects of regenerative practices.
Collaboration and partnerships between farmers, industry stakeholders, financiers and government bodies are key to support and incentivise farmers in adopting regenerative practices, ensuring the transition is economically viable.
Education and open communication among farmers and stakeholders play a key role in fostering a community of shared knowledge and support to drive the adoption of regenerative practices.
Farmer-focused approaches Farmers may resist change from traditional farming methods due to perceived risks and feasibility of regenerative practices, as well as concerns about long-term impacts and the time required to see benefits from regenerative practices. Context-specific variations in weather, resources available and culture can impact the adoption and scale of regenerative practices.
Solutions discussed:
Encouraging open communication and knowledge sharing between farmers is essential. This can be achieved through platforms including webinars, conferences and social media.
Providing agronomic support and access to research, data and success stories can build confidence and demonstrate the benefits of regenerative practices. Vayda’s tools and support guide farmers through complex on-farm operational management, to ensure that practices are implemented effectively given their context.
Encouraging mentorship and peer-to-peer learning can address scepticism and build community support through farmer groups.
Incremental approaches such as trialling regenerative practices on small scales before wider implementation can encourage farmers to experiment and learn progressively to minimise risks. For example, on the panel Jon Griffel (Illinois-based farmer) shared his experiences with implementing buffer strips with cover crops to test its potential impact.
Partnerships and collaboration
Building strong partnerships between farmers, the private sector and government is crucial for providing the necessary support and resources.
Solutions discussed:
Relating with farmers effectively can involve taking their current practices as a starting point, and to work with them in their transition to regenerative practices.
There is an opportunity for policy support, streamlined government programmes and incentives to facilitate easier access to resources for farmers to adopt regenerative practices. Government and institutional buy-in plays a pivotal role in driving widespread adoption of regenerative practices.
Programmes such as Walmart’s grants scheme to drive the regenerative transition through non-profit organisations are effective way in which food and beverage brands can collaborate.
To foster great collaboration between retailers and farmers, brands cansegment their landscapes by commodity and location, and fully grasp the natural capital risk in that context and to make positive change on a smaller scale, before scaling up.
Financing and incentives Farmers may perceive transitioning to regenerative practices as a risk to yield, profitability, and overall have an impact on the economic viability of farms. The financial burden of adopting new practices, such as the cost of seed and reduced tillage, while removing costs such as fuel for tillage, needs careful consideration.
Solutions discussed:
Implementing short-term and long-term incentives can help make the transition economically viable for farmers.
The financial sector has an opportunity to ensure more options to support the transition to regenerative agriculture, while reducing risk for both farmers and lenders.
The private sector should be encouraging initiatives to offer practical and timely economic incentives to farmers.
