Industry Task Force

Agribusiness Task Force

    Accelerating Regenerative Agriculture

    At the invitation of The former Prince of Wales, executives from some of the industry’s largest agribusiness companies and organisations have come together as members of the Sustainable Markets Initiative’s Agribusiness Task Force (ATF), designed to accelerate regenerative agriculture into becoming the predominant agricultural system in the world.

    Outgoing Mars, Inc. CEO, Grant F. Reid chairs the Task Force. In 2022, ATF Members collaborated to identify what actions the private sector could take to make farming regeneratively a 'no-brainer' for farmers and develop scalable value chain blueprints to speed up the adoption of regenerative systems.

    What Business Can Do to Drive Change

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    Despite clear long-term benefits, the rate of farmers adopting regenerative agriculture is too slow to make a significant difference to climate change and biodiversity loss in the near future. According to sustainability analysts Systemiq, regenerative farming is growing but the rate must triple to deliver against the planet’s need to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees.

    The Agribusiness Task Force has so far focused its attention on three case study value chains (US wheat, UK potatoes and Indian Basmati rice) from which to identify learnings transferable to other crops and geographies. The findings are captured in its report - Scaling Regenerative Farming: An Action Plan - which details five key areas which it believes require urgent action to make the economics of regenerative farming more appealing to farmers. These are:

    • Agree common metrics for environmental outcomes

    • Build farmers’ income from environmental outcomes such as carbon reduction and removal

    • Create mechanisms to share the cost of transition with farmers

    • Ensure government policy enables and rewards farmers for transition

    • Develop new sourcing models to spread the cost of transition

    The Action Plan also includes a guide outlining the actions each sector of the value chain can take now along with key insights for successful implementation.

    The Task Force is set to continue its work into 2023 to drive the implementation of the report’s Big 5 recommendations.

    Membership Composition

    The Agribusiness Task Force operates as an industry sub-group of the SMI and is chaired by Grant F. Reid, CEO of Mars, Incorporated. The Task Force is comprised of leaders from the Agribusiness industry, including:

    Grant F. Reid

    CEO, Mars Incorporated.

    Ramon Laguarta

    CEO & Chairman, PepsiCo

    Dirk Van de Put

    CEO, Mondelēz International

    Sunny George Verghese

    CEO, Olam

    Svein Tore Holsether

    President & CEO, Yara International

    Werner Baumann

    CEO, Bayer

    Ron Hovsepian

    CEO, Indigo Agriculture

    Max Koeune

    CEO, McCain Foods

    James Bailey

    Executive Director, Waitrose & Partners

    Patrick Holden

    Founding Director, Sustainable Food Trust

    Alexander Gillett

    CEO, HowGood

    Paul Pomroy

    SVP International Operated Markets, McDonald's

    Further Information

    For roundtable and Task Force enquiries please contact:

    Email: info@sustainable-markets.org