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Olivia B

May 9, 2025

min read

Regenerative Agriculture: Three Expert Perspectives

At the Collective's May event, three panelists discussed how regenerative agriculture can drive value for farmers, businesses, and communities.

Our soil is in a critical state. Conventional agricultural practices are decimating the lifegiving properties of soil around the globe, releasing additional carbon into the atmosphere and rendering croplands infertile. Already a third of our planet’s soil is degraded, and UNESCO predicts that the number could be as high as 90% by 2050. Nowhere is immune — agricultural systems from giant operations in the Midwest to subsistence farms in rural Malawi are affected by soil degradation.

Regenerative agriculture offers a way forward, using sustainable land management practices to not only avoid doing more harm, but also to restore already degraded soil. At our fourth community networking event, we welcomed three expert panelists to share their perspectives on this pressing agricultural issue: Melissa Spear, Executive Director at Tilth Alliance; Paul Shoemaker, CEO of Carnation Farms; and Richard Moe, Principal Technical Program Manager at Opportunity International’s Digital Innovation Group.

The Global Impact Collective brought together a diverse group of professionals from farmers to agronomists to professors to discuss this important subject. The topics ranged from the adoption to the economics and future of regenerative agriculture. A few key themes emerged:

Challenges

Establishing Standards of Regenerative Agriculture

Regenerative agriculture is widely defined as farming practices that are minimally disruptive to the soil, exercise crop diversity, utilize cover crops in the off season, and maintain living roots. However, unlike the rigorous criteria built around organic certification, we don’t yet have universally accepted standards and certifications for what it means to claim a company practices regenerative agriculture. If businesses and governments wish to certify and systematize regenerative farming, and if they want consumers to trust the certification, they will need hardier definitions.

Greenwashing: “Because it doesn’t have a definition, because there is no legal standard, regenerative agriculture is subject to greenwashing,” Melissa said. She pointed out that many large corporate food companies implement a no-till policy and label themselves regenerative despite still using pesticides and herbicides. “We have to figure out how to clarify and protect the integrity of what it is that we’re calling regenerative.”
“Organic Plus”: Despite the term generally gaining traction, an average consumer will not have a clear idea of what regenerative agriculture means when the label appears on a food item. Paul suggested pitching the concept to consumers as “organic plus,” signifying that regenerative food has all the same qualifications of organic food plus the benefit of reinvigorating the soil.

Entrenched Political Systems

A long history of political incentives has led the United States to favor large, corporate, conventional farms, often at the expense of smaller ones. Changing this existing bureaucracy is slow and arduous, but it can be done. Europe, for instance, is 10-15% organic, compared to only 1-2% in the US.

Historical precedent: Paul identified three moments in American farming that led to our current agricultural system:
- At the end of World War II, pesticides and herbicides were commercialized on a broad scale.
- Earl Butz, the Secretary of Agriculture under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, promoted a “get big or get out” approach to farming and urged farmers to plant commodity monocrops like corn “from fencerow to fencerow.”
- The focus on ethanol created a strong orientation towards conventional agriculture.
Lack of subsidies and financial support: The 2018 Farm Bill allocated $428 billion dollars over five years for agricultural subsidies with the majority of those funds supporting conventional farming. The federal financial support for sustainable farming is extremely low by comparison, and the shift from conventional to regenerative is difficult.

Economic Barriers to Adoption

“It’s expensive to be an organic, regenerative farmer,” Melissa said. “You have higher labor costs, you make different kinds of investments, it’s a more complicated method of farming, and certification costs money.”

Slow transition time: The transition period from conventional to organic certified is three years, and during that time the farmer cannot sell the food with an organic premium despite farming organically.
Lack of information: Rich pointed out that small-scale farmers, especially those living rurally and experiencing extreme poverty, often don’t know how to find markets, negotiate for better prices, and understand the economic outputs of their own farms. Existing resources are hard to access without basic literacy and access to the internet. “Getting information to the end user is critical,” he said.

Promising Developments

Farmers Educating Farmers

It’s critical that farmers teach one another. “We know that farmers learn best from farmers,” said Rich. To leverage this insight, Opportunity International is setting up a mentorship program in rural African farming communities and building its educational tools around insights gathered from the local farmers themselves. Rich mentioned OI’s agricultural team in Rwanda has implemented a system of “farmer support agents.” He says, “They get a bicycle, a pair of boots, a smartphone, and training, and in exchange they take the learnings out into their communities and spread it amongst the farmers in that community.”

Melissa also pointed to the Transition to Organic Partnership Program, which helps provide resources to aspiring organic and regenerative farmers. “Paying farmers to talk to farmers: that is really where the information gets transferred, because it’s often not as simple as reading a couple sentences. You need someone there to show you, to explain it to you, to demonstrate.”

Technological Advancements

Recent developments in technology, especially in the AI sector, have exciting implications for agriculture and education.

Precision agriculture: With better instruments, companies and farmers can manage their farms more effectively. Robotic tools that monitor the soil, for instance, can inform users when they need to irrigate, look for pests, know when to apply pesticides, and so forth. “I think this is actually going to reduce the use of some of the more toxic synthetic chemicals on even conventional farms,” Melissa said. “Any stop toward eliminating or reducing the use of those chemicals is good.”
Agricultural education: Using generative AI and other tools, Rich and the Digital Innovation Group at Opportunity International are building a WhatsApp chatbot to help rural farmers in the field get answers to their questions. Given many might be illiterate, the bot can take verbal inputs in the farmers’ native languages, and it can analyze pictures of crops to determine diseases and offer advice.

Climate and Economic Resilience

Farms that practice regenerative agriculture withstand both market pressures and extreme weather. "You're more resilient to drought. You’re more resilient to heat. Your yields will remain higher in the face of a drastic climatic event,” Melissa said.

Community relevance: Paul extrapolated this concept into economic resilience for whole communities by extension, using White Oak Pastures as an example. “They employ nearly a couple hundred people in their local community,” he said. “That’s economic resilience at all levels. The way to try to think about economic resilience is to think locally, think regionally, think within the Puget Sound to try to solve the problem in that domain if you have the chance.”
Interested customers: If consumers remain willing to pay the price premium for organic food, regenerative products will likely also do well on the market provided the certification issues are solved.
Shifting markets: Melissa mentioned market research by the Organic Trade Association that found young people driving demand for organic food. “Younger generations are faced with this existential crisis of climate change, are recognizing that eating is a political act, and that their food choices actually have social, environmental, and economic impacts. And they are willing to make the investment to go organic and regenerative.”

a crowd of attendees mingles in the Tactile event space — Attendees mingle before the panel.

Reflections

As the panel ended, the discussion was far from over with an insightful Q&A and further networking discussion. Dan Schiaffo, a consultant at Slalom who is currently pursuing a master’s program focused on sustainability, was left thinking about how to shift the public’s focus from organic to regenerative. “This sort of conversation is music to my ears. I absolutely love it,” he said.

Pamela Cardone shared the recent documentary Common Ground as a resource. The question of how to inspire conventional farms to use regenerative methods —even those who are hostile towards sustainability — piqued her interest as a financial risk analyst. “We have to show that they will make more money, even without the principles.” She wants to put her risk knowledge to better use in this space.

Several attendees were intimately familiar with the challenges growers face as growers themselves. George Thomas owns an alfalfa farm and recently got a grant from Tilth Alliance to plant a food forest and a prairie strip. The difficulty of growing alfalfa means that getting organic certified is a very unlikely prospect, but he still wants to make the farm more regenerative. “It’s important work. I think I could get there, eventually.”

Andrew Tuttle, a permaculture expert and educator currently restoring a historic farm in Arlington, is creating an online learning platform where participants can partake in virtual tours of regenerative lands. He wanted to stress that there is big investment in the field from nongovernmental sources. “The thing is, regenerative farming can make people really, really rich,” he said. “We don’t talk about that enough, and if it were more widely known, we could convince more farms to make the switch.”

He was excited to attend the event and wished there were more like it in his field. “We just need a pure opportunity to get together because the future of this industry depends on community. Cultural relationship-building comes from working together, and this is the way you do that.”

Zachary Gray from Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies, a company that is using fungi to protect plants from heat stress and difficult environments, echoed that sentiment.

The diversity of backgrounds and professions present at the event highlight just how interdisciplinary the challenge of implementing regenerative agriculture is, and the networking that took place promises that this wicked challenge has ever more brilliant minds working on it. A huge thank you to our panelists and everyone who attended.

Follow us on LinkedIn to stay connected to this vibrant and growing community, and we hope to see you at our next event in the fall.

Resources

Coalition for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture (CORA) is a coalition of farmers, businesses, organizations, and activists advocating for progressive programs and policies in support of organic and regenerative agriculture in Washington State. The Tilth Alliance is one of the 11 member organizations.
White Oak Pastures transitioned away from industrial agriculture techniques in 1995 and began operating their farm as a living ecosystem. They now raise 10 species of humanely treated animals, and the land is managed to increase living organic matter. They employ more than 155 members of their local community.
Common Ground Film is the sequel to Kiss the Ground, which the filmmakers claim inspired the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to put $20 billion toward soil health. The film explores the money, power, and politics intertwined in our broken food system and profiles farmers using regenerative agriculture models that could stabilize the climate, improve health, and grow America’s economy.
Transition to Organic Partnership Program is investing up to $100 million over five years in cooperative agreements with non-profit organizations providing technical assistance support, training, education, and outreach to aspiring organic farmers.
The Nature Conservancy supports building regenerative food systems and has a variety of resources on regenerative practices, food system solutions, technological innovations, as well as their Foodscapes Report, which provides a global perspective on necessary food systems transitions to meet “this century’s most pressing challenge: the threats posed by climate change, biodiversity loss, and increased demand on the integrity of the global food system.”
Regenerative Agriculture Podcast is a podcast for professional growers and agronomists who want to learn about the science and principles of regenerative agriculture systems to increase quality, yield, and profitability.
Noble Research Institute was founded in 1945 and is the nation’s largest nonprofit dedicated to farm and ranch management education to build soil health and increase profitability on U.S. farms and ranches. The organization has an entire category of research dedicated to regenerative agriculture.

Agriculture

3 Keys to Successful Corporate Sustainability Partnerships with NGOs

Judith Hochhauser Schneider
Feb 28, 2024
6 min read

When I was asked to lead a roundtable discussion at GreenBiz 24 – the premier sustainability conference for business leaders – I jumped at the chance!

The session called, “Elevate, Collaborate, Stand Out: Keys to Successful Corporate Sustainability Partnerships with NGOs,” pulled from my eight years leading global partnerships at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for some of the biggest brands including Walmart, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Nike, as well as my decade of corporate work before that. I shared my learnings with a robust mix of sustainability professionals, eager with questions about partnerships. After the session, there was continued interest from those who couldn’t attend. Here are some of those insights...

In my experience, strong personal relationships are at the core of any successful corporate partnership with NGOs. But if you don’t already have those relationships, where do you begin? Start by focusing on these three key elements:

1. Choose the right partner

To create a successful partnership, start by selecting the right partner. While the organization is important, so are the specific types of projects each side wants to work on. The “WHO“ is as important as the “WHAT”. Potential partners who look good on paper could want to focus on vastly different initiatives, which doesn’t make it a good fit. So, how do you find that perfect match?

Align on values and objectives: Prioritize partners who share similar values and sustainability objectives. Ensuring alignment at this fundamental level lays the groundwork for a harmonious and purpose-driven collaboration.
Confirm partner capacity: Assess the partner's capacity and capabilities to dedicate to a partnership. This involves evaluating their resources, expertise, and track record in relevant areas of sustainability.
Choose mutually beneficial projects: Successful partnerships thrive when there is a balance of give-and-take, with each party contributing and receiving value in return.
Ensure organizational buy-in: Confirm that there is genuine commitment and support from all key stakeholders. Buy-in needs to come from leadership at equivalent levels within both entities, as well as from field teams and business units. Again, it is about balance.

Begin by being introspective about the values and capabilities of your own organization and whether your prospective partner shares those same values around sustainability. Not only do the values need to align, but so does the level of contribution from each partner, which will obviously look different for each party. Companies have dollars, but the strength of their brand and marketing capabilities can further amplify the work bringing along other players. NGOs and companies might both have technical expertise (science, R&D) and convening power, but each brings its own - and unique - networks and knowledge base.

The WWF and The Coca-Cola Company Partnership, which I led back in 2012, is a great example. It was the first of its kind; a corporation and an NGO joining forces to create a sustainability partnership focused on environmental challenges ranging from freshwater conservation to global agricultural issues and natural resource scarcity. Together the partnership was able to address Coca-Cola’s supply chain risk associated with its single most important ingredient… fresh water. Over time, the partnership grew and spanned over 50 countries, focusing on ensuring healthy, thriving freshwater basins worldwide. With WWF's conservation network extending to 100+ countries around the world, and Coca-Cola boasting bottling and manufacturing facilities in over 200 countries, there was an obvious fit with regard to the size and reach of these two organizations. Their alignment of values and objectives in sustainability was critical and instrumental to the energy, commitment, and success of this relationship. Like the WWF/Coca-Cola Partnership, find the right organizational fit, then select the right first project that is mutually and equally beneficial for all organizations, and grow from there.

2. Define goals, metrics, and accountability

In partnerships, success hinges on more than good intentions. Effective partnerships require a clear alignment of goals, metrics, and accountability measures to ensure that efforts are not only meaningful but also impactful.

Set measurable targets: Begin by defining clear, measurable targets that reflect the desired outcomes of the partnership, as well as those of each partner. Ideally these targets should be relevant to the overarching sustainability goals of the company and the mission of the NGO and demonstrate tangible impact. Do this at the beginning! Setting these at the beginning fosters accountability, open dialog, and sets the specific metrics for evaluating success.
Monitor performance: Establish robust accountability mechanisms to track progress effectively. Continuously monitor performance against predefined metrics. Be proactive in identifying any deviations or challenges and make necessary adjustments to stay on track.
Evaluate impact: Assess the collaboration's effectiveness by checking if desired goals are met and identifying areas for improvement or adjustment. There is no right or wrong number for how often you assess whether the partnership is meeting its goals. It could be annually, quarterly, or weekly. The key is to ensure the governance structure allows ample time for adjustments when goals aren't being met. Most importantly, you want to ensure it is based on the governance structure agreed to by both parties and should be set up to give you sufficient time to course correct once it’s obvious that goals aren’t being met.

Through this focused approach, organizations can foster strong, mutually beneficial partnerships that drive meaningful change and achieve shared goals. Partnership goals should be aligned with internal incentives for long-term success. Aligning goals, metrics, and accountability lays the groundwork for collaboration that is not only effective but also sustainable overall.

3. Regular clear, transparent, and consistent communication

Consistent and honest communication is crucial to foster a sense of trust and reliability within the partnership. Building this trust on a personal level strengthens the relationship and paves the way for smoother collaboration. Be available to meet face-to-face so you get to know each other beyond the roles you hold around the partnership. Establish group norms and culture within the partnership. Remember, you are people first.

Drive honest communication: Embrace openness in all communications by being direct and clear when conveying ideas, concerns, and updates. Transparency builds trust and fosters a sense of openness within the partnership. Encourage open dialogue and active listening to foster a collaborative problem-solving environment.
Establish consistent cadence of timely communication: Set a regular rhythm for communication to ensure that information flows smoothly among all parties. Consistency in communication helps maintain momentum and prevents misunderstandings. It also fosters a space for addressing concerns or challenges if they arise. Communicate results to leadership, employees, and customers to further amplify the partnership’s impact and ensure the longevity of the relationship.
Avoid surprises: Stay proactive in communication. Keep all parties informed about relevant developments, challenges, or changes in plans to eliminate unexpected surprises that may disrupt the partnership or corrode trust.
Ask the hard questions: Address difficult topics early and often. Open communication requires a willingness to confront challenges head-on and seek clarity on important issues, even if they may be uncomfortable.

Communication is essential for both the maintenance of the partnership and further program growth. Know who supports this partnership and why. Clear, transparent, and consistent communication serves as a cornerstone for collaboration, fostering trust, alignment, and driving collective impact.

In conclusion, remain flexible

Everyone knows there are no quick fixes in sustainability. Corporate partnerships are no exception. Start small but think big and approach the partnership with a long-term perspective. Always. And remain flexible so you are ready to adapt to all changing conditions.

During my summer internship in Nairobi, one of my advisors reminded me of the African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” That is the essence of these partnerships! Building successful corporate sustainability partnerships with NGOs requires choosing the right partner, strategic alignment of goals, transparent communication, accountability, and a steadfast commitment to long-term success. It is not always easy. But it is certainly worth it.

At Global Impact Collective, we have deep expertise in fostering these exact kinds of partnerships, and it is one of our key differentiators. Our seasoned professionals have built the trust and relationships over multiple decades in the sustainability, strategy, technology, and design sectors. The Global Impact Collective has a practice designed to help other organizations do the same. If we can help you with partnership development, in the U.S. or globally, please contact us.