**East Anglia**: A collaborative initiative, Routes to Regen, launched by food and finance giants aims to aid farmers transitioning to regenerative practices. Highlighting the need for streamlined support, it combines financial aid, technical assistance, and peer mentorship to foster a sustainable agricultural future.
A collaborative initiative has been launched involving prominent food and finance corporations aimed at supporting farmers in East Anglia as they transition to regenerative farming practices. The programme, named Routes to Regen, is expected to unfold throughout 2025 and is spearheaded by members of the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI), which seeks to address environmental challenges stemming from the global food system, a major contributor to climate change and biodiversity loss.
Prominent companies participating in the project include McCain Foods, McDonald’s, Lloyds Banking Group, Waitrose & Partners, NatWest, Barclays, Aon, and Tokio Marine Kiln. The initiative is anchored in research from SMI’s Agribusiness Hub, which indicates that economic risks and a disjointed support framework often deter farmers from adopting regenerative approaches, despite the established environmental benefits associated with such farming methods.
Routes to Regen aims to consolidate various support mechanisms into a user-friendly framework designed to guide farmers through the transition. According to the announcement, this comprehensive strategy is intended to simplify the support farmers receive and increase the adoption rates of regenerative agriculture, effectively making it a more attractive and viable option.
The project will be programme-managed by The Royal Countryside Fund, with on-farm guidance provided by Ceres Rural. Participating farmers will have access to a ‘menu’ of support that includes:
- Financial assistance, such as information on discounted capital, business planning advice, guidance on rotational crop supply, and weather insurance options.
- Technical support, encompassing research insights, connections to local livestock farmers, and assistance with data collection and soil sampling.
- Peer-to-peer support through demonstration days and knowledge-sharing events.
The project also intends to test out the SAI Platform’s Regenerating Together Framework, which aims to establish globally aligned definitions for regenerative agriculture and provide a farmer-centric approach for its measurement and evaluation.
Jennifer Jordan-Saifi, CEO of the Sustainable Markets Initiative, remarked that the Routes to Regen project builds on the insights gained from previous studies highlighting the financial risks and fragmented support systems as obstacles to adopting regenerative farming practices. “It exemplifies the power of cross-sector collaboration that the SMI is uniquely positioned to facilitate and aims to demonstrate a new model for how industries can unite to drive sustainable change on a global scale,” she stated.
Beth Hart, Chief Sustainability and Social Impact Officer at McDonald’s, commented on the critical opportunity that regenerative agriculture presents for securing a sustainable future in farming. “We’re continuing to test and learn, but we already know that implementing regenerative practices requires real and lasting partnership across the supply chain to support and incentivise farmers to adopt these practices,” she said, expressing enthusiasm about the project and its alignment with McDonald’s sustainability objectives.
With ambitions to extend the findings from this initiative to similar projects globally, Routes to Regen is poised to potentially inspire a broader adoption of regenerative farming practices across different regions by leveraging a network of over 250 CEOs worldwide to foster essential collaboration between food, finance, and insurance sectors.
Source: Noah Wire Services
Subscribe to Industry Updates
