This Week's Regeneration in the Headlines
What Caught My Eye: Readings and reflections on regenerative finance, farming, and the forces reshaping sustainability.
Every week, I come across stories, insights, and case studies that sharpen how I think about regenerative processes across domains such as agriculture, climate accountability, and systemic change. Below are some that offer provocative, practical, and/or insightful that’s worth a closer look.
From carbon farming incentives that actually pay off, to mid-supply chain actors reshaping agricultural landscapes; from biodiversity offset failures in the UK to the global hotspots that still hold hope—these pieces challenge greenwashing, rethink finance, and elevate the role of smallholders and CSOs alike.
Read below for highlights and links on the following topics. I hope one or two spark something for you too.
Financing Regenerative Agriculture – Mirova treats ecosystems like infrastructure to fund global change
Empowering Smallholder Farmers – Cutting out the middleman to make regenerative farming accessible in India
Beyond Greenwashing – Why soil health alone isn’t enough—and what real regenerative looks like
Mid-Supply Chain Catalyst – How Griffith Foods is driving regionally tailored regenerative programs
Chief Sustainability Officers Recalibrate – Why CSOs are shifting from headlines to boardroom strategy
Carbon Farming Incentives – How Agreena’s carbon credits make regenerative practices pay off
Failed Offsets – The £1.5bn UK bypass that promised biodiversity—but delivered dead trees
Global Biodiversity Hotspots – 17 countries that hold the keys to our planet’s biological future
If you see any stories of note about these themes, please do be in touch!
Financing Regenerative Agriculture
Impact investment firm Mirova is scaling regenerative agriculture by treating ecosystems as long-term infrastructure assets that deliver ecosystem services like carbon storage and soil fertility. Through multi-year investments in projects across Latin America, Africa, and Asia—including a water-stressed citrus initiative in Morocco—Mirova aligns financial returns with measurable environmental and social outcomes, including gender-inclusive job creation.
Read more: How Mirova is financing regenerative agriculture at scale (WBCSD)
Empowering Smallholder Farmers
The Save Soil Regenerative Agriculture Programme in India is creating a new market model that bypasses exploitative middlemen by connecting smallholder farmers directly with local consumers and institutions. By combining training, digital platforms, and grassroots trust, the initiative enables farmers to transition to regenerative practices and earn premium prices without costly certifications.
Read more: Want to Make Regenerative Farming Mainstream? Cut the Middleman (Earth.org)
Beyond Greenwashing
Friends of the Earth argues that truly regenerative agriculture must go beyond soil health. Highlighting Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) systems as the gold standard, the article warns against greenwashing by pesticide-dependent no-till practices marketed as “regenerative.” It calls for stronger definitions, investment, and public awareness to ensure that regenerative agriculture protects ecosystems, pollinators, and human health while remaining profitable for farmers.
Read more: What are the Benefits of Regenerative Agriculture? (Friends of the Earth)
Mid-Supply Chain Catalyst
Griffith Foods is leveraging its mid-supply chain position to expand regenerative agriculture across 30,000 acres globally by co-developing region-specific programs with farmers and suppliers. Through co-investment, technical support, and crop purchasing commitments, the company fosters soil health, biodiversity, and long-term partnerships in places like Canada, Colombia, the UK, Brazil, and Thailand.
Read more: Griffith Foods on building ‘trust, transparency and long-term partnerships’ in regenerative agriculture (AFN)
Chief Sustainability Officers Recalibrate
As corporate climate targets face investor pushback and political backlash, Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs) are shifting from public-facing climate champions to behind-the-scenes strategists focused on core business risks. Some, like PepsiCo and Unilever, are doubling down on regenerative agriculture as a material area for impact, while others integrate sustainability with financial and policy functions.
Read more: Sustainability Chiefs Are Recalibrating in Bid to Keep Decarbonization on Map (WSJ)
Carbon Farming Incentives
Agreena’s soil carbon credit program exemplifies how regenerative farming can be made economically viable through market-based climate finance. By quantifying carbon sequestration and issuing verifiable CO₂e-certificates, the AgreenaCarbon platform incentivizes farmers to adopt regenerative practices like no-till farming and cover cropping. This dual-revenue model supports soil health and offers corporations credible carbon offsets—creating a scalable framework for climate-positive agriculture.
Read more: How Carbon Credit Incentives Are Making Sustainable Farming a Reality (AZO Clean Tech)
Failed Offsets
The UK’s £1.5bn A14 bypass, once hailed for promising an 11.5% biodiversity net gain, has instead left the environment worse off, with over 70% of the 860,000 mitigation trees dead and replanting efforts largely untraceable. The fiasco exposes the dangers of overpromising ecological offsets without proper planning, follow-through, or accountability—raising serious concerns about the credibility of biodiversity pledges in large infrastructure projects.
Read more: How a £1.5bn ‘wildlife-boosting’ bypass became an environmental disaster (Guardian)
Global Biodiversity Hotspots
Biodiversity is the richness and variety of life—including species numbers, endemism, and ecosystem complexity. Drawing from Conservation International and Mongabay data, this article ranks 17 “megadiverse” countries that host the majority of the world’s unique species: Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Colombia, Australia, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, China, Philippines, Madagascar, India, Ecuador, Peru, United States, Venezuela, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Malaysia.
Read more: The most biodiverse countries in the world (Conde Nast Traveller)
The regenerative business practices and sustainability innovations highlighted in this week's Regenerative Insights directly tackle the critical issues of corporate responsibility explored in my recent book explored in my recent book, The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profit and Socializes Cost.
