The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) Platform has launched its Regenerating Together Programme (RTP), setting out to move regenerative agriculture beyond broad principles towards practical, verifiable implementation at scale.
Unveiled at the organisation’s annual member event in Saskatoon, Canada, and during London Climate Action Week, the programme is being positioned as a major step forward in tackling a persistent industry challenge: the lack of consistent, credible ways to define and measure regenerative agriculture outcomes.
Backed by more than 40 global agrifood companies – including Nestlé, Louis Dreyfus Company, McCain Foods and Diageo – the RTP aims to provide a shared foundation that enables businesses, farmers and supply chains to track progress with greater transparency.
A common framework – without a one-size-fits-all model
At the core of the RTP is the Regenerating Together framework, which sets out a four-step process designed to work across crop, beef and dairy systems, and across geographies.
Crucially, the framework seeks to balance two competing priorities that have long hindered regenerative agriculture:
- Consistency: establishing a common baseline for measurement, reporting and outcomes
- Flexibility: allowing farmers to adapt practices to local environmental, economic and operational realities
Rather than prescribing specific practices, the programme focuses on outcome-based metrics – such as soil health, biodiversity, water stewardship and climate resilience – while giving farmers agency to determine how best to achieve them.
This reflects a growing industry consensus that regenerative agriculture cannot be standardised through rigid rules but still requires robust systems to demonstrate impact.
Verification and benchmarking at the centre
A defining feature of the RTP is its emphasis on independent verification and benchmarking – an area widely seen as a weak point in current regenerative agriculture efforts.
Newly developed protocols will allow companies and farmers to verify regenerative claims through third-party assessment, benchmark progress against a shared framework, and track outcomes over time in a consistent way.
By aligning measurement approaches across supply chains, the programme aims to tackle concerns over greenwashing, inconsistent claims and fragmented reporting.
The framework is designed to create a “common language” for regenerative agriculture, enabling comparability between programmes while still accommodating local variation.
Built through multi-stakeholder collaboration
The RTP is the result of more than four years of collaboration between farmers and agronomists, NGOs and academic institutions and food and agriculture companies.
It has already been tested through pilot projects across 23 production systems and 25 countries, giving it a degree of real-world validation often lacking in sustainability frameworks.
SAI Platform has also worked closely with partners such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), Regen10 and EIT Food, alongside implementation organisations including the Earthworm Foundation and The Nature Conservancy.
This multi-party approach reflects a broader recognition that no single actor can define or scale regenerative agriculture alone.
Farmer agency and practical adoption
A key design principle of the programme is to ensure it is workable at farm level, rather than an additional administrative burden.
The RTP intends to reduce reporting complexity by aligning frameworks, allow farmers to choose locally relevant practices, and increase visibility of the environmental and economic value farmers create.
By focusing on outcomes rather than prescriptive inputs, the programme aims to support farmer decision-making while maintaining accountability.
This approach also responds to criticism that some sustainability schemes are too rigid or disconnected from on-the-ground realities.
Industry backing signals shift to implementation
For SAI Platform – a global coalition originally founded by Danone, Nestlé and Unilever – the RTP marks a shift from alignment on definitions to execution.
Dionys Forster, director general at SAI Platform, said the sector must now focus on scaling implementation: “While significant progress has been made in understanding what regenerative agriculture entails, the challenge now is implementation at scale. The Regenerating Together Programme offers a pragmatic solution… by providing the industry with a practical and credible foundation.”
He added that collaboration would be key to success: “The level of collaboration behind the programme reflects a growing recognition that meaningful progress will only come through shared approaches and collective action.”
