Regenerating agriculture through industry collaboration
16th June 2020
SAI Platform is presently co-ordinating 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. Launched in December 2019, with six founding project members involved, SAI Platform’s Harmonizing Solutions: Regenerative Agriculture has since grown to twelve members including: ABInBev, Barry Callebaut, Bonduelle, Danone North America, Diageo, General Mills, Ingredion, Kellogg’s, Nestlé, Ocean Spray, PepsiCo and Unilever.
Regenerative agriculture is an agronomic approach that nurtures greater biodiversity, contributes to building soil health as well as encouraging vibrant and profitable farming communities.
In response to the priorities and input from SAI Platform members into Spotlight, this project addresses specific needs related to regenerative agriculture, including alignment on principles, metrics and indicators, as well as targeted outcomes for the collective industry.
The first stage of the project is now complete. Participating members have aligned to a set of principles and practices to guide implementation of regenerative agriculture within their supply chains.
In pursuit of climate change solutions, enabling farm and community economic vitality and healthy agroecosystems, SAI Platform and project members support regenerative agriculture principles to be adapted to local conditions to:
- Maintain soil cover
- Enable living root systems
- Maximize biodiversity
- Minimize disturbance
- Integrate animals and organic fertilizers
Participating members further aligned on a range of indicators to continually improve the regenerative approach on-farm. These indicators provide a menu from which farmers can pick various measures and metrics to understand and improve the farm’s capacity to progress from low- to high-regenerative capacity. By aligning on the principles, practices, and indicators, SAI Platform members are ensuring that regenerative agriculture remains a clear, defined term while providing a credibly adaptable toolkit to implement on farms in our supply chains to facilitate continuous improvement in pursuit of SAI Platform’s mission.
