Forty of the world’s leading food and agriculture companies, including Carlsberg, Diageo, FrieslandCampina and Mondelez, have signed a joint declaration to accelerate the adoption of regenerative agriculture across global supply chains.
The move, led by SAI Platform, marks one of the most significant attempts yet to align industry players behind a common framework for regenerative agriculture. But despite the scale of corporate backing, a central question remains: can alignment alone deliver real system-wide change without solving the challenge of transition finance?
From fragmentation to alignment
The declaration supports the rollout of SAI Platform’s Regenerating Together Programme (RTP), a structured framework designed to help companies integrate regenerative practices into sourcing systems at scale.
It reflects growing recognition across the industry that environmental pressures – from soil degradation and biodiversity loss to water scarcity and climate change – cannot be addressed through isolated initiatives.
Dionys Forster, director general of SAI Platform, described the commitment as a turning point.
“Securing this level of support is a pivotal moment in moving regenerative agriculture from ambition to action,” he said. “The breadth and calibre of signatories is a clear signal that the industry is ready to leave fragmented approaches behind.”
The RTP aims to create shared definitions of regenerative agriculture, common outcome-based metrics and practical tools for implementation across different geographies.
Crucially, it is designed as a flexible, global reference framework rather than a rigid standard – an approach intended to enable adoption across diverse farming systems.
Scaling beyond pilots
The initiative comes as regenerative agriculture efforts across the sector face a familiar bottleneck: moving beyond pilot projects into consistent, large-scale deployment.
SAI Platform argues that industry alignment is a key missing piece.
“One of the biggest challenges today is moving regenerative agriculture from isolated pilots to consistent implementation at scale,” Forster told AgNavigator. “That requires greater alignment across the supply chain on what regenerative agriculture means in practice.”
The RTP is intended to address this by reducing duplication and enabling companies to adopt a shared structure for implementation, rather than developing their own bespoke systems.
For corporates like Carlsberg, the value lies in consistency.
“To create and scale resilient agricultural supply chains, we need alignment and collaboration – not isolated efforts,” said Simon Boas Hoffmeyer, the brewer’s global head of sustainability and ESG.
The financing gap at the heart of the transition
Yet even as companies align around frameworks and metrics, a more fundamental constraint remains unresolved: who pays for the transition at farm level?
Regenerative agriculture often requires upfront investment, changes in farming practices and short-term yield or financial risk.
Forster acknowledged that this remains a critical barrier.
“Farmers cannot be expected to shoulder the cost and risk alone,” he said. “Meaningful progress depends on shared responsibility across the value chain, including buyers, supply chain partners and, in many cases, wider financial support.”
He added that while the RTP provides a structure for action, “broader transition finance remains a critical issue for the future of the sector.”
Economic viability as the key constraint
The emphasis on financing reflects a growing consensus across the industry: regenerative agriculture will only scale if it works economically for farmers.
Unlike many sustainability initiatives, regenerative practices cannot be mandated solely through policy or corporate commitments. Adoption depends on maintaining or improving farm incomes, reducing production risk and providing clear economic incentives.
“The success of regenerative agriculture programmes must be measured through an outcome-based approach that improves, or at a minimum maintains, farmer livelihoods,” said Forster. “Economic viability at farm level is therefore fundamental to the programme’s design.”
This requirement puts additional pressure on supply chains to develop new incentive models, share risk with growers and create long-term commercial relationships.
From framework to implementation
While industry alignment is widely seen as a necessary step, translating this into real-world impact will require deeper collaboration across the food system.
Forster emphasised that scaling regenerative agriculture depends on a broader shift in thinking on coordination between food and beverage companies, suppliers and traders, financial institutions and implementation partners.
“Commercially, scaling transition requires longer-term collaboration across buyers, suppliers, financial actors and implementation partners, because no single organisation can solve these challenges alone,” he said.
A more mature phase for regenerative agriculture
The declaration signals a new phase in the development of regenerative agriculture. If the first phase of regenerative agriculture was about proving concept, the next phase is about proving it can be implemented, financed and sustained at scale.
