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
/f/109506/6000x4000/e35e38e664/green-wheat.jpg)
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.
Agribusiness Task Force
Key Resources
White Paper 03 November 2022 Full Report: Scaling Regenerative Farming: An Action Plan
The SMI Agribusiness Task Force makes clear what the private sector can do to make regenerative farming a 'no-brainer' for farmers and accelerate its adoption worldwide.
White Paper 03 November 2022 Executive Summary: Scaling Regenerative Farming: An Action Plan
The SMI Agribusiness Task Force makes clear what the private sector can do to make regenerative farming a 'no-brainer' for farmers and accelerate its adoption worldwide.
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
Ramon Laguarta
Dirk Van de Put
Sunny George Verghese
Svein Tore Holsether
Werner Baumann
Ron Hovsepian
Max Koeune
James Bailey
Patrick Holden
Alexander Gillett
Paul Pomroy
Further Information
For roundtable and Task Force enquiries please contact:
Email: info@sustainable-markets.org