The Regenerative Shift: Scaling Regenerative Agriculture Together
At the recent Foodvalley Innovation Insights event on March 18, the Regenerative Agriculture Community explored a pressing question: How can we scale regenerative agriculture effectively?
The Community is part of the Regenerative Innovation Portfolio, a collaboration between EIT Food, Foodvalley and the Food Innovation Hub Europe. The session brought together thought leaders, farmers, and business innovators to reflect on the critical levers for system-wide change and the challenges that still stand in the way.
Lighthouse Farms: Models for Scaling
Mariana Debernardini, Coordinator of the Global Network of Lighthouse Farms at Wageningen University & Research introduced the inspiring collection of 13 exemplary farms, each operating in unique agroecological and socio-economic contexts. These farms serve as models for different aspects of future-proof farming, embodying three distinct, yet complementary, strategies for scale:
- Scaling up – policy change: ERF, one of the largest organic farms in the Netherlands, successfully influenced the EU agricultural policy by advocating for strip cropping under the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) – removing administrative hurdles and enabling broader adoption.
- Scaling deep – changing mindsets: Grand Farm in Austria is an organic farm with a strong focus on soil-health, applying low-tillage methods to maintain and improve the soil. They are a front runner in advancing vermiculture and vermicomposting (composting with the help of earthworms). Their soil first approach shifts people’s perspectives on sustainable land management.
- Scaling out – Inspiring others: La Junquera in Spain, situated in a high-altitude dryland region, has addressed desertification and rural decline through collaboration and knowledge-sharing with other stakeholders in the region, creating a wider resilient ecosystem inspired by regenerative practices.
Photograpy: Marnix Klooster
Barriers to scaling: insights from ReGeNL
Eline van der Mast shared insights from the ReGeNL programme, which is actively working to identify and address the four main barriers in the transition toward regenerative agriculture:
- Uncertainty on revenue models
- High cost of transition
- Uncertainty on outcomes of regenerative practices
- Lack of knowledge on regenerative practices
A central challenge lies in the mismatch between regenerative farming outputs – typically diverse, small-scale, and mixed – and current market structures that favour volume and uniformity. This leads to challenges in processing, distribution, and market access. The participants split into three breakout groups to answer the question: How do we efficiently scale the diversity of regenerative agriculture?
Photograpy: Marnix Klooster
Perspectives from the breakout sessions
1. Consumers and retail: Making Regeneration Accessible
This group highlighted the need to prioritize convenience and affordability to make regenerative products mainstream. For regenerative products to grow in demand, they must be convenient, affordable, and visible. Despite growing consumer interest, traditional labelling systems were seen as ineffective, and in some cases, counterproductive:
“Labelling [with organic] doesn’t work – we labelled a product with organic but sold it for the same price as conventional products, and sales even went down”.
Strict marketing regulations further complicate the ability to communicate the true value of regenerative goods. The group concluded that local initiatives could raise awareness but will need scale-oriented infrastructure to truly shift mainstream consumer behaviour.
2. Value Chains and Business Models: Rethinking the System
Here, the discussion focused on structural transformation. Conventional value chains favour large volumes of uniform products, whereas regenerative farms often produce a diversity of crops in smaller volumes. Regenerative farming thrives on complexity, locality, and circularity – which is currently not accommodated in the value chain. Incentives (financial and non-financial) are needed to disrupt the current way of trading across value chains.
One proposed solution: smaller, regional hubs to aggregate and process produce—decentralizing infrastructure to enable efficiency while preserving farm diversity. Measuring and marketing nutritional value within regenerative produce was also seen as a promising route to differentiate regenerative products.
3. Supply Chain and Investment: Securing Farmer Futures
This group focused on risk, trust, and capital. Without guaranteed offtakes, the transition to regenerative remains high risk. There was consensus that farmers, both in Europe and in more tropical areas, are often overlooked in the value chain. Therefore, participants called for equitable partnerships, policy incentives, and independent facilitators to coordinate change across value chains.
Building momentum will require compelling narratives and, critically, a critical mass of aligned actors. It was also emphasized that the value proposition to scale regenerative agriculture should be better defined, to raise the capital to demand change. Certification could support these efforts by providing leverage, but it must serve as a tool for the transition – not as an endpoint.
Looking Ahead: Building a Movement
All sessions highlighted a shared understanding: to scale regenerative agriculture, we must restructure the system and not retrofit it. From value chain design and investment strategies to education and policy, change will require deep collaboration, strong coordination, and a common platform for learning and alignment.
That’s exactly what the Regenerative Agriculture Community aims to offer. We continue working on these challenges, fostering collaboration and providing an independent platform to drive systemic change.
Ready to get involved?
Do you want to join the conversation? Fill in the information request form and tick “Regenerative Agriculture Community”. We’ll get in touch with you to hear more about you, your organisation and will invite you for our next Community session.