Reckoning with Regeneration: AGILE research sprint

Can regenerative agriculture deliver nutritious food and a just food system?

For farmers and others committed to transforming our food systems, the term regenerative agriculture has become a unifying concept and one which has enabled a wider community of producers, retailers, financers and others to embrace an agenda of change. But how confident are we in regenerative agriculture’s environmental and productivity claims? And what would a regenerative shift in UK agriculture mean for our food system as a whole?

Farm-level confidence in RA’s farm-scale benefits seems high, and research on regenerative practices is growing. However, modelling struggles to navigate uneven agro-ecological data and the complexities of context-specific solutions, while the focus on farm-level data often positions RA as a purely agricultural concern. 

Calls for new food policy demand connection between food, health and environment, and the incentivisation of a just transition in what we grow and what we eat. The effects of a regenerative shift in UK food supply across diverse farm systems will have both local and global consequences for food affordability, availability, nutritional quality and supply stability, as well as for land use. 

This one year project aims to clarify if and how RA can lead to greater alignment of food and nutrition security goals, with those for land and environment, and support policy to enable a just transition for the sector and for those it supplies. Does a move to regenerative agriculture support a regenerative food system?

TABLE’s interdisciplinary research team will work with partners The Food Foundation and Green Alliance to explore diverse versions of RA envisaged by advocates, brands and practitioners, and to investigate, qualitatively and in detail, their implications for the UK food system and its impacts overseas. We will collaborate closely with a core stakeholder group that includes FAIRR, Nestlé, the Soil Association, Waitrose, the John Innes Centre & Norwich Institute for Sustainable Development, Landworkers’ Alliance, Pasture-fed Livestock Association, Nature-friendly Farming Network, Cranfield, NFU, Hodmedod's, the British Ecological Society, and the RSPB. Through deliberative workshops and wide engagement, we will produce an account of these versions’ implications for society - including via the composition, quality and affordability of our diets - and for our environment and the species we farm and share it with, to support policy and supply system choices.

We will ask modellers and practitioners to consider, together, the indicators available to mark progress in relation to different versions of RA. Recognising the mistrust sometimes at play between researchers and practitioners, we will ask this group to explore how far the preferred RA futures can be measured, analysed and understood by modelling. 

A collaboratively developed picture of regenerative agriculture and its implications can enable greater confidence in the development of food policy integrated with environmental and social aims, drive more rigorous private sector strategies, and support civil society in holding both government and other sectors to account.

Explore TABLE's existing work on regenerative agriculture

Watch this space for updates on the Reckoning with Regeneration project. 

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