The agricultural landscape has undergone a significant transformation over the
years — with small, local farms often giving way to industrial megafarms, thanks
to developments in modern-day machinery and fertilizers, and a focus on
monocultural farming. However, the prioritization of quick growth and mass
production has contributed to climate change — in 2021, the UN FAO estimated
the food and agriculture value chain contributes 31 percent of global
greenhouse gas emissions (GhGs).
The industry is increasingly aware of the need to rein in its footprint; and
some industry leaders are stepping up and utilizing climate-smart technologies
to shift to regenerative
practices
— which will help safeguard their produce, reduce their emissions, and restore
the surrounding ecosystems. The growing regenerative-ag movement is essential to
ensuring our ability to feed a growing population in a climate-changing world;
but this work needs sophisticated monitoring that enables stakeholders to see
changing agriculture practices and their environmental impacts at scale.
Growing the regenerative ag movement
Food giant General Mills is one major player
embracing and accelerating regenerative agriculture — driven by the belief it
can help restore farm ecosystems while reducing GhG emissions and building
greater climate resilience.
“Over the last five years, we have been on a journey in our
regenerative-agriculture work, which is underpinned by two key strategies,”
General Mills’ Director of Regenerative Agriculture, Jay
Watson, explained to
Sustainable Brands®. “One is to invest in the farmer-led movement to
help farmers be successful in their understanding and implementation of
regenerative principles and management systems; the second is to measure the
outcomes and impact at field, farm and landscape scale.”
The SB Resilience Summit
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The six regenerative principles informed by partners and supported by General
Mills
are:
-
understanding the context of each farm and ranch
-
minimizing soil disturbance
-
maximizing plant diversity
-
keeping the soil covered
-
maintaining living roots year-round, and
-
integrating livestock.
These principles differentiate the company’s regenerative approach as they allow
farmers to make context-based decisions that can drive resilience across farms,
ecosystems and communities.
“Investments that we’re seeing companies make are mainly to protect their supply
chain in a very volatile, kinetically impacted environment,” Regrow
Ag CEO and co-founder Anastasia Volkova, PhD.
tells SB. “Given that so many purchased goods are true commodities in
agriculture that are otherwise not protected, it’s gratifying to see how
companies are aligning their thinking internally — to not just invest in
regenerative because it's good for emissions or farm profitability; but really
to have a stable, climate-resilient supply chain.
“For all these brands that have emissions-reduction goals, they need to have
better visibility into what and where their impacts are; and we're giving them
the visibility that they’ve never had before.” Volkova added. “We don’t have
long — there are only seven harvests between now and 2030 — so, I hope that by
enabling the industry [through Regrow’s platform], we can accelerate the
transition that we all need.”
The value of collaboration and technology
Regrow’s Sustainable Insights software —
part of its Agriculture Resilience platform — helps companies plan
investments to lower scope 3 GhG
emissions,
monitor trends in regenerative-practice adoption, and quantify the impact. The
platform is powered by data collected through an Operational Tillage
Information System (OpTIS), which
uses satellite imagery and the
DeNitrification-DeComposition
soil-carbon model — the only scientific model that has been granted generalized
approval by the Climate Action Reserve under its Soil Enrichment
Protocol.
General Mills is leveraging Regrow’s science-based
tech
to gain clarity and visibility into its ag-based scope 3 GhG emissions. The
platform enables General Mills to monitor agricultural practices and
environmental impacts across 150 million acres of farmland in North America,
which represents General Mills’ estimated priority supply sheds — the regions
where the company sources its key ingredients including wheat, oat and dairy.
Within the total acreage being monitored, General Mills sources its ingredients
from roughly three million acres of farmland each year.
Regrow’s platform is one important tool enabling General Mills to make progress
on its climate commitments to reduce GhG emissions by 30 percent by 2030 and
reach net zero by 2050. Further advancing regenerative agriculture is one of
many ways the company believes it can progress towards this goal.
“Regrow gives us the capability to better plan and update our emissions
baseline, which is a key component of the investment,” Watson says. “Most
companies today are using static, generic emissions factors that are based on
regional and sometimes global life cycle assessments. Regrow’s Sustainability
Insights gives us the opportunity to develop emissions factors that are specific
to a particular crop in a particular place, which helps us shape our investments
and our strategies.”
General Mills seeks to align agri-food stakeholders, from farm to fork, on the
critical mission of advancing regenerative practices to ensure a thriving
future for both people and the planet. Regrow’s platform enables the company to
share and promote insightful data that can spur increased shared investment and
in turn more farmer adoption.
“Many of our customers, consumers and suppliers are also interested in the
outcomes of regenerative agriculture; so, it is really important for us to
openly share our leadership insights from the last five years and invite other
food industry players to join the regenerative movement,” Watson asserts. “We
see our role as an accelerator and convener. Through strategic investments in
key partners, we are demonstrating what success can look like for farmers,
companies — and most importantly the ecosystems we all depend on. Now, we
continue to invite others in — illuminating for them the promise of regenerative
agriculture and inviting co-investment to drive scale.”
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Scarlett Buckley is a London-based freelance sustainability writer with an MSc in Creative Arts & Mental Health.
Published Jul 17, 2023 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST