The regenerative agriculture industry has spent years debating definitions, metrics and environmental outcomes.
According to Ethan Soloviev, co-creator of Regen House and chief innovation officer at sustainability intelligence platform HowGood, the conversation now needs to move on.
The priority, he argues, is far simpler: getting more money into the hands of farmers.
Speaking to AgNavigator following this year’s Regen House event, held alongside London Climate Action Week, Soloviev said the sector has reached broad consensus on the value of regenerative agriculture. What is holding back adoption is not a lack of evidence, but a lack of financial mechanisms capable of scaling it.
“It’s not how we define it or measure it,” he said. “It’s how we get more money to farmers for doing it. That’s the key thing.”
From sustainability metrics to regenerative action
HowGood works with some of the world’s largest food companies, retailers and ingredient suppliers, including Ahold Delhaize, Ferrero, Mondelez, ADM and Ingredion, helping them track and reduce the environmental impacts of products and supply chains.
“We have literally millions of products tracked to their exact impact,” said Soloviev.
“We help retailers, brands and upstream commodity traders and ingredient suppliers understand exactly what their impact is, calculate their carbon emissions and land usage, communicate them and share them with each other, and then help them draft and implement plans towards reduction. That’s where regenerative agriculture comes in in a big way.”
Regen House was created to help transform those discussions into practical action.
“It is the home for strategic action on regenerative food systems,” said Soloviev. “It is where people come not just to talk, not just to hit their points, but to actually make connections and make deals that push regenerative agriculture forward in the world.”
The forum has become a showcase for major initiatives. Last year, Nespresso announced it would become the first coffee brand to source coffee certified under the Rainforest Alliance’s new Regenerative Agriculture Standard, while this year’s event included a session in which ALDI South Group outlined its approach to tackling climate change, nature loss and inequality in food systems while maintaining affordable food prices.
Regenerative agriculture has proved the concept
Soloviev believes the industry no longer needs to persuade people that regenerative agriculture works.
“In the last five years, we have broad agreement that regenerative agriculture is the right way to go for the food system,” he said.
“We’ve had so many pilots that have shown increased productivity for farmers, decreased environmental impact, reduction in carbon footprint, enhanced resilience and stability. Regenerative agriculture works and it’s been shown.”
The problem, he argues, is that corporate sustainability programmes alone cannot fund the next phase of adoption.
“Companies in the food system can’t just keep funding it on their own, paying out of pocket for it to happen,” he said.
“It needs to move to a larger scale. To do that, they need more finance.”
Bringing banks and insurers into the conversation
A major focus at this year’s Regen House was finding new ways to attract mainstream financial institutions into regenerative agriculture.
Soloviev believes banks are the most likely source of scale-up capital, but says many lenders still view agricultural transitions as too risky.
“The most likely path is that we will get some more traditional finance institutions, banks especially, who will show up to partner with their corporate partners,” he said.
One solution lies in insurance.
“One of the things that needs to happen and is starting to happen is that the role of insurance is that insurance can de-risk financial interactions and transactions.”
To explore that challenge, Regen House brought together a small group of bankers, insurers, farmers and food companies.
Participants included Andrew Walton, chief sustainability officer at Lloyds Bank, representatives from ING and Federated Hermes, insurers including Howden and Humanity Insured, farmers from the UK, Ireland and Slovenia, and sustainability leaders from companies including Danone and Ahold Delhaize.
The objective was to identify structures that would encourage banks to provide larger amounts of capital for regenerative transitions.
“The discussion focused on what structures we need, both within our own organisations and between them, to make regenerative agriculture investable at scale,” Soloviev explained.
In his vision, innovative insurance products help reduce risk for farmers, giving lenders greater confidence to finance transitions. Food companies support the model through long-term offtake agreements, while farmers gain access to finance, longer-term contracts and insurance-backed security.
“That’s the kind of equation that needs to happen,” he said.
The future is regional
While many discussions around regenerative agriculture take place at national or global level, Soloviev believes the most effective solutions will emerge regionally.
“It doesn’t need to happen at a country level or at a world level,” he said. “It needs to happen at an individual agricultural region level.”
He points to the Roots to Regen initiative in eastern England as an example of the model he would like to see replicated elsewhere.
The project brings together philanthropic organisations such as the Royal Countryside Fund alongside corporate partners including McCain and McDonald’s, all focused on supporting regenerative transitions tailored to local farming conditions.
“We need things like that in each little agricultural region around the world,” he said. “Pulling from local philanthropists, local banks, bigger banks, the companies that want it, and really coordinating to make shifts happen.”
Less debate, more capital
Soloviev argues that industry debates over what constitutes regenerative agriculture are becoming less important as common measurement frameworks emerge.
“Regeneration is very diverse. The world is radically different in different places,” he said.
“We’ve got metrics agreed. People are arguing less about definitions and really it’s getting the financial capital flowing into innovative farmers and innovative companies around the world that are pushing things forward.”
Less ESG, more resilience?
While ESG and net-zero commitments have faced increasing political and commercial scrutiny in recent years, Soloviev does not believe that will derail regenerative agriculture.
In fact, he argues the backlash has prompted companies to focus on the business fundamentals that make regenerative agriculture attractive in the first place.
“There has been pushback against net zero. Companies have dropped their targets, and yet they’re still working with farmers on making their supply more resilient, helping with productivity, diversifying incomes and reducing reliance on fertilisers,” he said.
For Soloviev, that reflects a growing recognition that regenerative agriculture is about far more than carbon reduction.
“Food companies have a business continuity risk if they don’t support farmers to be profitable and resilient,” he said.
“One of the good things that’s happened with the pushback against ESG and net zero is there’s been a refocus on resilience, productivity and the human relationships that make supply chains work, so that companies can keep producing their products.”
Soloviev admits that shifting political sentiment once looked like a potential threat to the regenerative agriculture movement.
“One of the things I might have thought was a threat was political weather shifting, as it were, in the United States or anywhere in the world, with this sort of pushback against environmentalism writ large,” he said.
However, he believes recent developments tell a different story.
“After a couple of years of the political weather having changed, one thing that was clear at Regen House and across London Climate Action Week is that companies haven’t stopped.”
Instead, he says, companies continue to build regenerative agriculture programmes, work with farmers and invest in supply-chain resilience, even if they are speaking less publicly about their ESG credentials than they were a few years ago.
Soloviev also points to signs of political support emerging from unexpected places.
“Even in the United States, the Trump administration released an executive order on regenerative agriculture,” he said. “It wasn’t the best. There wasn’t actually enough substance in what they said they were doing. But there is some motion.”
For Soloviev, the lesson is that regenerative agriculture’s future is likely to be determined less by climate commitments and more by its ability to improve productivity, strengthen farm businesses and build more resilient food systems.
Follow the money
Ultimately, Soloviev wants to see far more commercial activity emerge from events such as Regen House.
“For better or worse, we’re in capitalism,” he said. “Capitalism flows by money. Deals make the money flow.”
Examples already exist, from Wildfarmed’s partnership with Nestlé to introduce regenerative wheat into KitKat supply chains, to McDonald’s investment in regenerative beef production in the US. But Soloviev believes the scale remains far too small.
“I want more banker-insurance company-farmer deals,” he said.
“Deals are being done, but we need to be working on the scale of tens of billions and not hundreds of millions.”
