Deep dive: Regenerative agriculture — what's working, what's not, and what's next

Asia-Pacific's agricultural sector manages 1.3 billion hectares of farmland—nearly 30% of global agricultural area—yet only 4.2% of this land operates under verified regenerative practices according to the Food and Agriculture Organization's 2024 State of Food and Agriculture report. This gap between potential and practice defines the current challenge. As multinational corporations face Scope 3 emissions disclosure requirements and consumer brands compete on sustainability credentials, the pressure to demonstrate agricultural supply chain improvements has intensified dramatically. But the uncomfortable truth emerging from 2024-2025 field data is that most regenerative agriculture claims lack the measurement rigor to distinguish genuine environmental gains from sophisticated greenwashing. This deep dive examines what data quality and standards alignment actually require, identifies which approaches deliver measurable outcomes versus measurement theater, and provides a practical framework for procurement teams navigating this complex landscape.

Why It Matters

The Asia-Pacific region produces 45% of global rice, 35% of wheat, and 60% of palm oil—commodity supply chains that anchor the Scope 3 emissions inventories of food, consumer goods, and retail companies worldwide. The International Sustainability Standards Board's IFRS S2 climate disclosures, now mandatory in Australia, Japan, and Singapore with adoption accelerating across the region, require companies to report supply chain emissions with increasing granularity. For a typical multinational food company, agricultural inputs constitute 70-85% of total carbon footprint, making farm-level interventions essential to meaningful emissions reduction.

The financial implications are substantial. McKinsey's 2024 analysis of Asia-Pacific agricultural value chains estimated that regenerative practices could unlock $45-65 billion in annual value through yield improvements, input cost reductions, carbon credit revenues, and premium pricing—but only if outcomes can be credibly measured and verified. Currently, <15% of regenerative agriculture programs in the region employ measurement systems capable of supporting carbon credit issuance or regulatory-grade emissions reporting.

Market signals reinforce this urgency. Unilever, Nestlé, and PepsiCo have collectively committed to transition 15 million hectares of supplier farmland to regenerative practices by 2030, with significant concentration in Southeast Asian and Australian operations. Japanese trading houses Mitsubishi Corporation and Mitsui & Co. launched dedicated regenerative agriculture investment vehicles totaling ¥180 billion ($1.2 billion) in 2024-2025. The Asia Development Bank's Climate Action program allocated $2.8 billion specifically for sustainable agriculture transitions across developing Asia through 2027.

Yet investment flows far outpace verification capacity. A 2024 audit by the Science Based Targets initiative found that 62% of Asia-Pacific food company transition plans relied on regenerative agriculture assumptions that lacked credible measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) frameworks. The gap between corporate commitments and verifiable outcomes represents both a reputational risk and a market opportunity for organizations that develop rigorous measurement capabilities.

Key Concepts

Regenerative Agriculture refers to farming practices designed to restore soil health, enhance biodiversity, improve water cycles, and sequester atmospheric carbon. Unlike "sustainable" agriculture, which aims to maintain current conditions, regenerative approaches seek active improvement of degraded systems. Core practices include minimal tillage, cover cropping, diverse crop rotations, integrated livestock management, and reduced synthetic input use. The term lacks standardized definition—a significant challenge for procurement teams—but the Regenerative Organic Alliance, Savory Institute, and Science Based Targets initiative have published frameworks attempting to establish measurable criteria.

Soil Carbon Sequestration describes the process by which atmospheric carbon dioxide is captured through photosynthesis and stored in soil organic matter. Healthy soils can sequester 0.4-1.2 tonnes of carbon per hectare annually under optimal conditions, making agricultural land a potentially significant carbon sink. However, sequestration rates vary enormously based on climate, soil type, starting conditions, and management practices. Critically, soil carbon is impermanent—gains can reverse rapidly if practices change—creating additionality and permanence challenges for carbon accounting.

Additionality is the requirement that claimed environmental benefits would not have occurred without the specific intervention being credited. In regenerative agriculture contexts, additionality asks whether soil carbon gains, emissions reductions, or biodiversity improvements result from new practices versus business-as-usual operations. Demonstrating additionality requires credible baselines—measurements of conditions before intervention—and counterfactual analysis of what would have occurred absent the program. Many Asia-Pacific programs fail additionality tests because they credit practices farmers would have adopted anyway or lack baseline measurements.

Unit Economics refers to the per-hectare or per-tonne financial analysis of regenerative transitions. Viable programs must demonstrate that benefits (yield improvements, input savings, premium payments, carbon revenues) exceed costs (practice changes, monitoring, certification) within acceptable timeframes. Current data from Asia-Pacific programs suggests payback periods of 3-7 years for most regenerative transitions—acceptable for landowners but challenging for tenant farmers who predominate in countries like India, Vietnam, and the Philippines where average lease terms are 2-3 years.

Scope 3 Emissions encompass indirect emissions occurring in a company's value chain, including purchased goods and services. For food and agricultural commodity companies, Scope 3 Category 1 (purchased goods) emissions from farming operations typically represent 60-85% of total corporate footprint. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol's 2024 Land Sector and Removals Guidance clarified methodologies for accounting agricultural emissions and removals, but implementation complexity remains high. Companies must choose between spend-based estimates (low effort, high uncertainty) and supplier-specific primary data (high effort, higher accuracy) for Scope 3 reporting.

What's Working and What Isn't

What's Working

Outcome-Based Payment Programs with Robust MRV: Programs that pay farmers for verified environmental outcomes rather than practice adoption consistently outperform input-based approaches. Indigo Agriculture's carbon program, expanded to Australian grain operations in 2023, uses satellite-verified practice monitoring combined with stratified soil sampling to validate sequestration claims. Participating Australian wheat farmers achieved average verified carbon sequestration of 0.7 tonnes CO2e per hectare annually, with payment rates of AUD $25-40 per tonne providing meaningful income diversification. The key success factor: outcomes are measured independently, and payment flows only after verification.

Integrated Landscape Approaches in Commodity Supply Chains: Olam Food Ingredients' AtSource program across Southeast Asian cocoa and coffee operations demonstrates that regenerative practices scale when embedded in existing procurement relationships. Rather than standalone projects, AtSource integrates soil health monitoring, biodiversity assessments, and farmer training into standard sourcing contracts. By 2024, the program covered 312,000 smallholder farmers across Indonesia, Vietnam, and Papua New Guinea, with third-party verification showing 23% average reduction in fertilizer use and 18% improvement in soil organic matter compared to non-participating farmers. Success traces to leveraging existing farmer relationships and procurement infrastructure rather than building parallel systems.

Digital MRV Reducing Verification Costs: Traditional soil carbon measurement costs $30-80 per hectare annually—prohibitive for smallholder systems averaging 1-3 hectares across much of Asia. Emerging digital MRV platforms combining satellite imagery, machine learning, and targeted soil sampling reduce costs to $5-15 per hectare while maintaining accuracy within ±15% of intensive field measurements. Regrow Ag's partnership with Suntory across Japanese barley supply chains demonstrated that digital MRV could verify regenerative practice adoption across 45,000 hectares at 80% lower cost than traditional auditing. These cost reductions make verification economically viable for crops and farm sizes previously excluded.

Blended Finance Structures De-Risking Farmer Transitions: The transition to regenerative practices often requires 2-4 seasons before economic benefits materialize—a gap that conventional agricultural credit cannot bridge. Rabobank's Acorn program, operating across Indonesian palm oil and Vietnamese coffee supply chains, combines carbon pre-payments with concessional lending to fund transition periods. Farmers receive 60% of projected carbon revenue upfront, repaid through verified credit issuance over 5-7 years. Default rates through 2024 remained below 4%, suggesting the model adequately addresses transition economics. The Asian Development Bank's guarantee facilities backing similar structures have catalyzed $800 million in private regenerative agriculture lending since 2023.

What Isn't Working

Practice-Based Certification Without Outcome Verification: Certification schemes that audit practice adoption rather than environmental outcomes consistently produce results indistinguishable from conventional agriculture when rigorously measured. A 2024 meta-analysis in Nature Food examined 847 Asia-Pacific farms across five practice-based certification programs and found no statistically significant difference in soil carbon, biodiversity indices, or water quality metrics compared to matched conventional operations. The programs verified that farmers tilled less, planted cover crops, and reduced inputs—but these practice changes didn't translate to measurable environmental gains, often because practices were implemented superficially to pass audits.

Carbon Credit Projects Without Permanence Provisions: Soil carbon sequestration reverses rapidly when regenerative practices cease—a reality that many early-generation carbon projects ignored. Analysis by CarbonPlan found that 34% of Asia-Pacific soil carbon credits issued through 2023 lacked enforceable permanence mechanisms, meaning credited carbon could be released without consequence if farmers returned to conventional practices. Several Indonesian and Indian projects have already experienced "carbon reversals" when commodity price spikes incentivized farmers to abandon regenerative practices for higher-yielding conventional approaches. Projects without permanence buffers, reversal penalties, or insurance mechanisms should be treated as unreliable.

Top-Down Corporate Programs Ignoring Farmer Economics: Multinational sustainability programs that mandate regenerative practices without addressing farmer unit economics consistently fail at scale. A prominent Southeast Asian palm oil initiative launched in 2021 with commitments from three major refiners collapsed by 2024 when participating smallholders experienced 15-25% yield reductions during transition without compensating income support. The program assumed farmers would absorb transition costs for future benefits that proved too distant and uncertain. Successful programs front-load benefits or guarantee floor prices during transition periods.

Fragmented Standards Creating Buyer Confusion: The Asia-Pacific region hosts over 40 regenerative agriculture certification schemes, standards, and labeling programs with minimal interoperability. Japanese retailers recognize different certifications than Australian importers; Indonesian government programs don't align with European buyer requirements. This fragmentation imposes duplicative compliance costs on farmers seeking multiple market access, while enabling low-rigor schemes to persist because buyers cannot compare claims. The absence of mutual recognition agreements or harmonized minimum standards allows measurement theater to flourish.

Key Players

Established Leaders

Olam Food Ingredients operates the largest regenerative agriculture program in Asia-Pacific by farmer count, with AtSource covering 450,000+ farmers across 12 countries. Their integrated approach embeds sustainability verification into standard procurement, avoiding parallel systems.

Syngenta Group has committed $2 billion to regenerative agriculture through 2025, with significant Asia-Pacific deployment including India's largest regenerative rice program (180,000 farmers) and Australian broadacre trials demonstrating 12% yield improvements alongside carbon benefits.

Wilmar International, Singapore-headquartered and the world's largest palm oil processor, launched Regenerative Agriculture Guidelines in 2024 requiring outcome-based metrics across 200,000+ supplier smallholders, representing the most aggressive mandatory approach from a major commodity trader.

Nutrien Ltd. expanded its Carbon Program to Australian and Southeast Asian markets in 2024, providing agronomic services, digital MRV, and carbon credit aggregation for grain and oilseed producers transitioning to regenerative practices.

Fonterra Co-operative Group, the world's largest dairy exporter, implemented regenerative grazing programs across New Zealand and Australian supplier farms with verified soil carbon improvements averaging 0.5 tonnes CO2e per hectare annually across 2.1 million hectares.

Emerging Startups

Regrow Ag (US-based, APAC operations) provides satellite-based MRV for agricultural supply chains, with major deployments across Australian grain, Southeast Asian commodities, and Japanese specialty crops. Their platform reduces verification costs by 70-80% versus field-intensive approaches.

AgriWebb (Australia) offers livestock management software with integrated carbon accounting, enabling pastoral operations to quantify emissions reductions from grazing management changes. Over 22 million head of livestock are tracked on the platform.

Cropin (India) provides AI-powered farm monitoring and sustainability verification for 16 million farmers across Asia, with Scope 3 reporting modules supporting multinational buyer requirements.

CarbonFarm (Australia) aggregates soil carbon credits from broadacre farms, managing MRV, registry submissions, and buyer relationships for 850+ participating properties covering 4.2 million hectares.

Aruna (Indonesia) operates digital traceability for 55,000+ fishing and aquaculture operations, with 2024 expansion into regenerative seafood certification providing verified environmental outcome data for Scope 3 reporting.

Key Investors & Funders

Temasek Holdings (Singapore) allocated SGD 500 million to regenerative agriculture and food systems through its GenZero platform, with focus on Asia-Pacific tropical commodity transitions.

Asian Development Bank committed $2.8 billion through 2027 for sustainable agriculture across developing Asia, including dedicated regenerative agriculture technical assistance facilities.

HSBC Asset Management launched a $500 million Natural Capital strategy in 2024 with significant allocation to Asia-Pacific regenerative agriculture, focusing on carbon and biodiversity credit generation.

The Rockefeller Foundation invested $75 million in regenerative agriculture MRV infrastructure across India and Southeast Asia through its Food Initiative, targeting measurement systems for smallholder-dominant supply chains.

Australian Clean Energy Finance Corporation provided AUD $300 million in concessional lending for regenerative agriculture transitions, primarily supporting soil carbon projects in Australian grain and livestock operations.

Examples

Olam's Cocoa Regeneration Program, Indonesia: Across 47,000 smallholder cocoa farms in Sulawesi, Olam implemented integrated regenerative practices including shade tree planting, composting, and reduced agrochemical use beginning in 2021. Third-party verification by Control Union in 2024 documented 31% reduction in synthetic fertilizer use, 0.4 tonnes CO2e per hectare annual sequestration, and 18% cocoa yield improvement after 3-year establishment. Critically, farmers received AUD $180-240 per hectare annually in sustainability premiums through Olam's customer relationships with Mars, Mondelez, and Nestlé—payments that exceeded the value of foregone conventional yields during transition. The program demonstrates that premium market access, not standalone carbon credits, often provides the most reliable revenue for regenerative transitions.

Suntory Barley Regeneration, Japan: Beverage giant Suntory partnered with Regrow Ag and Japanese agricultural cooperatives to implement regenerative practices across 45,000 hectares of malting barley production in Hokkaido and Tohoku regions. The 2023-2024 program combined cover cropping, reduced tillage, and precision nutrient management. Satellite-verified practice adoption reached 89% of contracted hectares, with modeled soil carbon improvement of 0.6 tonnes CO2e per hectare annually. Suntory committed to 15-year offtake agreements guaranteeing premium pricing, addressing the permanence challenge by ensuring farmers face no economic pressure to revert. The program explicitly excluded carbon credit generation, focusing instead on supply chain emissions accounting—an approach that sidesteps additionality debates while supporting verified Scope 3 claims.

Fonterra Regenerative Dairy, New Zealand and Australia: Fonterra's Tiaki Sustainable Dairying Programme covers 8,500 farms across New Zealand and Victoria, Australia, representing 2.1 million hectares of pastoral land. The program combines riparian planting, rotational grazing optimization, and winter forage management with farm-level emissions monitoring. 2024 verification documented average emissions intensity reduction of 12% per kilogram of milk solids across participating farms, with soil carbon improvements of 0.5 tonnes CO2e per hectare in well-managed operations. Fonterra pays farmer premiums of NZD $0.10-0.15 per kilogram of milk solids for verified compliance—modest individually but material at farm scale. The program integrates with New Zealand's Emissions Trading Scheme, enabling farmers to monetize verified sequestration through national carbon markets rather than voluntary systems.

Action Checklist

• Require outcome-based verification for any regenerative agriculture claims in procurement contracts—practice adoption alone is insufficient evidence of environmental benefit.

• Establish baseline measurements before program initiation, including soil organic carbon, biodiversity indices, and emissions intensity metrics, to enable credible additionality claims.

• Specify permanence requirements in all carbon-related agreements, including buffer pool contributions, reversal penalties, or insurance mechanisms covering minimum 20-year periods.

• Evaluate supplier MRV systems for cost-effectiveness at smallholder scale—verification costs exceeding $20 per hectare annually likely exclude the majority of Asia-Pacific farming operations.

• Align verification standards with buyer market requirements before program launch—ensure recognized certifications or data formats match downstream customer expectations and regulatory frameworks.

• Structure payment mechanisms to address farmer transition economics, including upfront premiums, guaranteed floor prices, or concessional credit during the 2-4 season establishment period.

• Integrate regenerative agriculture data into existing Scope 3 accounting systems rather than maintaining parallel reporting—sustainability claims without financial system integration lack credibility.

• Conduct independent third-party verification annually, not self-reported assessments—the correlation between self-reported and independently verified outcomes in Asia-Pacific programs is <0.4.

• Build long-term supplier relationships (minimum 5-7 years) rather than spot transactions—permanence requires continuity that short-term procurement cannot support.

• Pilot programs in representative geographies before scale commitments—soil carbon response varies dramatically by climate, soil type, and baseline conditions.

FAQ

Q: How do procurement teams distinguish credible regenerative agriculture claims from greenwashing? A: Apply four tests. First, demand outcome verification rather than practice certification—programs that measure soil carbon, biodiversity, or emissions directly outperform those auditing activities. Second, verify baseline establishment—claims without documented starting conditions cannot demonstrate additionality. Third, examine permanence mechanisms—any carbon sequestration claim should include reversal provisions. Fourth, check for independent verification—self-reported outcomes show <40% correlation with independent measurements in Asia-Pacific agricultural programs. Credible programs welcome scrutiny; programs that resist verification likely cannot withstand it.

Q: What measurement approaches provide acceptable accuracy at affordable cost for Asia-Pacific smallholder systems? A: Hybrid digital MRV combining satellite remote sensing, machine learning models, and stratified soil sampling achieves accuracy within ±15% of intensive field measurement at costs of $5-15 per hectare annually. This approach uses satellite imagery to verify practice adoption and model carbon outcomes, with targeted soil sampling (typically 5-10% of fields) to calibrate and validate models. Pure remote sensing without ground-truthing produces unacceptable uncertainty (>40%); intensive sampling at adequate density costs $50+ per hectare—prohibitive for smallholders. The hybrid approach represents current best practice for cost-accuracy optimization.

Q: Should procurement teams prioritize carbon credit generation or Scope 3 accounting from regenerative agriculture programs? A: Prioritize Scope 3 accounting integration. Carbon credit markets face persistent additionality, permanence, and verification challenges that create reputational risk; credit prices remain volatile ($15-60 per tonne for agricultural carbon in 2024); and credit purchases do not reduce reported Scope 3 emissions under current GHG Protocol guidance. In contrast, documented emissions reductions in supply chains directly reduce Scope 3 inventories, supporting science-based targets and regulatory compliance. Companies like Suntory have explicitly excluded carbon credit generation from regenerative programs to avoid these complications while maximizing supply chain decarbonization value.

Q: How do Asia-Pacific standards compare with European and North American frameworks? A: Significant fragmentation persists. The EU's Carbon Removal Certification Framework (effective 2025) requires permanence monitoring and reversal provisions that few Asia-Pacific programs currently meet. USDA's climate-smart commodities program emphasizes practice adoption over outcome verification—an approach increasingly criticized as insufficient. Australian Carbon Credit Units under the Emissions Reduction Fund provide the most rigorous regional framework, requiring intensive soil sampling and 25-year permanence periods, but costs limit smallholder participation. No mutual recognition agreements exist between major frameworks, forcing suppliers seeking multiple market access to maintain parallel compliance systems at substantial cost.

Q: What timeline should procurement teams expect for regenerative agriculture transitions? A: Plan for 5-7 year horizons. Initial practice adoption typically requires 1-2 seasons; measurable soil health improvements emerge over 2-4 seasons; and verified carbon sequestration stabilizes after 4-6 seasons in most Asia-Pacific systems. Economic payback for farmers—the point at which cumulative benefits exceed transition costs—averages 3-5 years in well-supported programs. Programs promising faster timelines typically either measure poorly or operate in exceptional conditions unlikely to generalize. Procurement commitments shorter than 5 years create perverse incentives for superficial practice adoption rather than genuine system transformation.

Sources

• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, "The State of Food and Agriculture 2024: Agricultural Transformation for Sustainable Food Systems," Rome, 2024
• McKinsey & Company, "Agricultural Transformation in Asia-Pacific: Value Creation Pathways to 2030," Singapore, 2024
• Science Based Targets initiative, "SBTi Monitoring Report: Food, Agriculture, and Forest Products Sector," 2024
• CarbonPlan, "Systematic Assessment of Soil Carbon Credit Quality," San Francisco, 2024
• CSIRO, "Australian Soil Carbon Sequestration Potential: Evidence from Long-term Trials," Canberra, 2024
• Nature Food, "Environmental Outcomes of Practice-Based Agricultural Certification: A Meta-Analysis," 2024
• Greenhouse Gas Protocol, "Land Sector and Removals Guidance," World Resources Institute, 2024
• International Sustainability Standards Board, "IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures: Implementation Guide for Agricultural Value Chains," 2024