Principles and Practices of Regenerative Agriculture – Scaling to a global and common approach

SAI Platform is coordinating 13 member-led projects across a range of crops, global regions and sustainability themes. One of the most recent projects focuses on the principles and practices of Regenerative Agriculture.

SAI Platform’s Harmonizing Solutions: Regenerative Agriculture Project was initiated in December 2019 when five companies came together to discuss mechanisms for harmonizing their approach to regenerative agriculture. Due to the multiple definitions, concepts, theories and even certifications around regenerative practices, there was a clear consensus that the industry could take steps to harmonize the principles on which to collaborate, as well as the metrics to focus on when asking farmers to measure their regenerative capacity on-farm. 

Farmers and supply chain in North America

The scale of the project now includes 12 members and covers all crops grown in the United States and Canada. This expansion brings in members who are actively engaged in grower, manufacturing and trading crops from east to west, north to south, cranberries to grain corn, field vegetables to tree fruit. Furthermore, a larger group can take the principles developed and build in themes to understand the farmer perspective and develop an understanding of the drivers, indicators and outcomes, all tied to evidence-based, peer-reviewed scientific sources.

Scaling to global and on-the-ground

On January 14, 2021 (10:00am ET), SAI Platform will hold a Global Regenerative Agriculture Workshop to scope out how to integrate the principles and indicators for crop agriculture into a global framework and reference for all farmed species.

Leveraging the work done in North America is an important step to building a consensus to scale a global approach, align for consistent reporting and aggregating of on-farm metrics across supply chains, and connect interested members around specific geographic and supply chain interests. Continuing this harmonizing and aligning approach also helps decrease complexity for farmers and enables further scalability of regenerative agriculture solutions.

While the work is scaling globally through the SAI Platform community, project members are also coalescing the application of the principles and an indicator menu to affect change in scaling projects in the United States.

About our Project

Launched in December 2019, with 6 founding project members involved, SAI Platform’s Harmonizing Solutions: Regenerative Agriculture has since grown to 12 members including: ABInBev, Barry Callebaut, Bonduelle, Danone North America, Diageo, General Mills, Ingredion, Kellogg’s, Nestlé, Ocean Spray, PepsiCo and Unilever.