Sustainability Atlas
Food, Agriculture & Materials·15 min read··...

Interview: the builder's playbook for Regenerative agriculture — hard-earned lessons

A practitioner conversation: what surprised them, what failed, and what they'd do differently. Focus on data quality, standards alignment, and how to avoid measurement theater.

The regenerative agriculture market reached $12.66 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $57.16 billion by 2033—an 18.7% compound annual growth rate that signals a fundamental transformation in how food systems operate. Yet beneath the headline numbers lies a more complex story: PepsiCo has enrolled 3.5 million acres in regenerative programs, but only about a third of US farmers view cover cropping positively for return on investment. We spoke with founders, agronomists, and supply chain leaders to understand what separates successful regenerative transitions from expensive disappointments—and how builders can avoid the measurement theater that has plagued early efforts.

The practitioners we interviewed shared a consistent theme: regenerative agriculture requires patience measured in soil cycles, not quarterly reports. The 3-5 year transition period demands financial structures that traditional agricultural lending simply cannot provide. Here's what they've learned building in this space.

Why It Matters

Agriculture accounts for approximately 10-12% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with an additional 21% coming from land use changes driven by farming expansion. Soil degradation affects 40% of the world's agricultural land, threatening the food security of 3.2 billion people. The carbon sequestration potential of global agricultural soils could offset 5-15% of annual fossil fuel emissions if managed regeneratively—but only if practitioners can solve the measurement, verification, and economic challenges that have stalled adoption at scale.

For founders building in this space, the opportunity extends beyond carbon. Corporate commitments are creating guaranteed demand: 63% of surveyed food companies now mention regenerative agriculture in public roadmaps. Nestlé has committed CHF 1.2 billion through 2025 to source 50% of priority ingredients from regenerative farms by 2030. PepsiCo expanded its regenerative agriculture target from 7 million to 10 million acres in May 2025, with 1.6 million metric tons of net GHG reduction already achieved.

The voluntary agriculture carbon credit market reached $36.1 million in 2024 and is projected to grow to $648.3 million by 2034—a 31.9% CAGR that reflects both the nascent state of the market and its explosive potential. Yet this growth will only materialize if practitioners solve the MRV (Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification) challenges that have undermined buyer confidence in agricultural carbon credits.

Key Concepts

The Transition Timeline Challenge

"Everyone wants to talk about the endpoint—healthy soils, carbon credits, premium pricing—but the conversation needs to start with the transition dip," explains a founder who built a regenerative input company. "Farmers experience 2-3 years of lower yields and higher costs before soil biology recovers. That's not a bug in the system; it's the biology of soil restoration."

The data supports this timeline: cover cropping delivers an average reduction of 1.29 tonnes CO₂ equivalent per hectare per year, but benefits compound over time as soil organic carbon builds. No-till introduction shows more modest initial gains (0.38 tCO₂e/ha/year) that increase significantly after year three as soil structure improves and mycorrhizal networks establish.

MRV: The Make-or-Break Infrastructure

Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification has emerged as the critical infrastructure layer for regenerative agriculture. Without credible MRV, carbon credits cannot command premium prices, supply chain claims remain unverifiable, and the entire regenerative transition loses its economic foundation.

"We spent eighteen months building what we thought was an elegant soil sampling protocol," recalls a startup founder who pivoted after initial customer feedback. "Then we learned that spatial variability in soil organic carbon is so high that our sample density was statistically meaningless. We had to completely rethink our approach."

The industry has coalesced around three MRV approaches: physical soil sampling (expensive but accurate), satellite-based remote sensing (scalable but model-dependent), and biogeochemical modeling (predictive but requires calibration). Leading platforms like Regrow, Perennial, and Agreena now combine all three, using machine learning to reduce required physical sampling by 95% while maintaining project-level accuracy above 90%.

The Standards Gap

Unlike organic agriculture, which has USDA National Organic Program certification, regenerative agriculture lacks a centralized certification body. This creates both challenges and opportunities. "The flexibility means we can design programs that actually work for different geographies and crop systems," notes a sustainability director at a major food company. "But it also means buyers face a bewildering array of standards and can't easily compare programs."

Key certification frameworks include the Regenerative Organic Alliance (which layers regenerative requirements on top of organic), Savory Institute's Land to Market program (focused on holistic grazing), and Verra's VM0042 methodology for soil carbon credits. Each serves different use cases, and practitioners increasingly report that the standards landscape is consolidating around a few credible protocols.

What's Working

PepsiCo's Scale Demonstration

PepsiCo's Positive Agriculture program has enrolled 3.5 million acres across approximately 20,000 farmers—the largest regenerative agriculture commitment to show measurable emissions impact. In 2024, the company reported 1.6 million metric tons of net GHG reduction, including soil carbon sequestration. The program works by embedding regenerative practices into existing supplier relationships rather than creating parallel procurement channels.

"They're not asking farmers to become regenerative certification experts," explains an agronomist who works with program participants. "They're providing technical assistance, covering transition costs, and guaranteeing offtake. That removes the three biggest barriers simultaneously."

PepsiCo's Brazil Cerrado pilot is testing a hybrid model: Payment for Practice (compensating farmers for adoption) plus Payment for Outcomes (bonuses for verified carbon sequestration). This hybrid approach addresses farmer concerns about measurement risk while maintaining incentives for actual impact.

The ADM-General Mills-Walmart Corridor

A partnership between ADM, General Mills, and Walmart has created an unusual supply chain alignment, with each party taking responsibility for a portion of the transition risk. ADM hit 5 million regenerative acres in 2024, surpassing its 2025 goal early. General Mills reached 600,000 acres (60% of its 1 million acre goal). Walmart provides market access and consumer-facing claims.

"What makes this work is the multi-year commitment," notes a supply chain executive familiar with the partnership. "Farmers know they have a market for three to five years, which matches the transition timeline. That's fundamentally different from annual commodity contracts."

Klim's Digital Infrastructure

German startup Klim raised $22 million in Series A funding from BNP Paribas, Earthshot Ventures, and Rabobank to build digital tools for regenerative transitions. The platform now serves over 3,500 farmers managing 700,000 hectares, providing practice tracking, carbon quantification, and connection to premium markets.

"The insight was that farmers don't need another app—they need something that integrates with their existing farm management systems and actually reduces their workload," explains a product lead at a competing platform. "Klim got the user experience right, which is why adoption scaled."

What's Not Working

Carbon Credit Economics for Small Farms

The fundamental economics of soil carbon credits remain challenging for farms under 500 hectares. MRV costs, verification fees, and project development expenses can exceed $10 per acre, while carbon credits may generate only $15-25 per acre annually. For a 100-hectare farm, the net benefit barely covers the management overhead—and that's before accounting for the 3-5 year timeline to first credit issuance.

"We enrolled in a carbon program expecting to see revenue in 12 months. It took 18 months just to get the project listed, then another 10 months for verification and credit issuance," reports a Midwest farmer who participated in an early pilot. "By the time we got paid, we'd spent more in time and aggravation than we received."

Group enrollment models are emerging as a solution, allowing aggregators to spread fixed costs across many farms. But these models introduce new challenges around data sharing, liability allocation, and ensuring that individual farmer practices actually meet program requirements.

Measurement Uncertainty

Soil organic carbon changes slowly—typically 0.1-0.5% per year in the first decade of regenerative transition—against a background of spatial variability that can exceed 30% within a single field. Detecting this signal requires either expensive high-density sampling or sophisticated modeling approaches that buyers may not trust.

"We've seen projects where the modeled carbon sequestration was five times higher than what physical sampling showed," notes a scientist at a verification organization. "The models aren't wrong—they're calibrated to different assumptions. But that variability destroys buyer confidence."

Indigo Ag's 2024 study across 553,743 hectares provides a reality check: of 398,408 tonnes CO₂e in estimated emissions reductions, only 296,662 tonnes (74%) survived the uncertainty deductions required for credit issuance. Projects that don't account for this haircut upfront set themselves up for economic disappointment.

Land Tenure Barriers

Approximately 50% of US farmers rent some or all of their land, creating a fundamental misalignment between the multi-year regenerative transition and annual or short-term lease structures. A farmer who invests in cover cropping and reduced tillage may lose access to the improved soil before realizing the economic benefits.

"Landlord engagement is the missing piece of almost every regenerative program I've seen," observes a lender specializing in agricultural finance. "Until we figure out how to share transition costs and benefits between tenants and landowners, half of American farmland is essentially locked out of regenerative transitions."

Some programs are experimenting with landlord education and lease modification templates, but progress remains slow. The most successful models involve vertically integrated operations where the same entity controls both the land and the farming operation.

Key Players

Established Leaders

  • Indigo Ag — Pioneer in agricultural carbon credits with the largest dataset of MRV outcomes. Issued 296,662 metric tonnes CO₂e across 553,743 hectares in their 2024 program. Partnership with Google ($1.5M) to support Oklahoma farmers.

  • ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) — Agricultural commodity giant that reached 5 million regenerative acres in 2024. Partners with PepsiCo, General Mills, and Mars on supply chain programs.

  • Pivot Bio — Raised $430M Series D for microbial nitrogen solutions that replace synthetic fertilizers. Products now deployed across millions of acres in corn production.

  • Regrow — Leading MRV platform providing satellite integration, farm management system automation, and real-time dashboards. Covers 15+ crops across 5 continents.

Emerging Startups

  • Klim — German digital platform serving 3,500+ farmers managing 700,000 hectares. $22M Series A from BNP Paribas, Earthshot Ventures, and Rabobank.

  • Perennial — ATLAS-SOC platform uses 350,000+ soil samples and machine learning to achieve 90% project-level accuracy while reducing physical sampling by 95%.

  • Agreena — Issues CO₂ certificates to farmers switching to regenerative practices. Operates across 19 countries with 2 million+ hectares enrolled.

  • Loam Bio — Uses microbial seed coatings to enhance soil carbon sequestration. Raised $73M to scale deployment across broadacre crops.

  • Sound Agriculture — Develops crop inputs that improve nutrient efficiency. $22M funding for technologies creating more resilient, nutrient-dense crops.

Key Investors & Funders

  • USDA Regenerative Pilot Program — $700 million announced December 2025: $400M via EQIP, $300M via CSP. Public-private partnership opportunities available.

  • Breakthrough Energy Ventures — Bill Gates-backed fund investing in agricultural decarbonization including Pivot Bio and soil carbon platforms.

  • Rabobank — Dutch agricultural bank with dedicated regenerative agriculture financing products and investments in platforms like Klim.

  • Mad Capital — Specialty finance for regenerative farmers, targeting $50M Perennial Fund II with support from Rockefeller Foundation and Schmidt Family Foundation.

  • EU Innovation Fund — Supports agricultural decarbonization projects across Europe with multi-million euro grants.

Action Checklist

  1. Start with MRV infrastructure before carbon credit ambitions. Build or partner with credible measurement platforms before promising outcomes to buyers. The 74% haircut between modeled and verified carbon in Indigo's program should inform realistic projections.

  2. Design for the 3-5 year transition timeline. Financial models, farmer incentive structures, and customer commitments must align with soil biology timelines, not venture capital timelines. Programs expecting year-one carbon revenue will disappoint.

  3. Solve the landlord-tenant problem. Develop lease modification templates, landlord education programs, and benefit-sharing mechanisms that extend regenerative incentives to rented land. This unlocks approximately 50% of US farmland.

  4. Aggregate to scale MRV economics. Fixed costs of verification, project development, and platform access require farm aggregation of at least 10,000 hectares to achieve unit economics that work for farmers.

  5. Integrate with existing farm management systems. Farmers already use precision agriculture tools. Products that require parallel data entry or separate apps face adoption barriers. Successful platforms like Klim prioritize integration.

  6. Build multi-year supply chain commitments. Partner with food companies making regenerative sourcing commitments. The PepsiCo-ADM-General Mills corridor demonstrates that guaranteed offtake unlocks farmer adoption.

  7. Layer payment structures. Combine Payment for Practice (adoption incentives) with Payment for Outcomes (verified sequestration bonuses) to reduce farmer risk while maintaining impact incentives.

  8. Prepare for standards consolidation. The proliferation of regenerative certifications will consolidate. Build flexibility to adapt to evolving standards rather than betting on a single certification framework.

FAQ

Q: How long does it take for a regenerative agriculture program to generate verified carbon credits?

A: Most programs require 18-36 months from farmer enrollment to first credit issuance. This includes baseline establishment (3-6 months), first-year practice verification (12 months), soil sampling and analysis (3-6 months), and registry verification and issuance (3-6 months). Programs that promise faster timelines are typically either pre-selling unverified credits or using less rigorous methodologies that may not command premium prices. The Verra VM0042 methodology requires 3-5 years of historical baseline data, extending timelines further for new projects.

Q: What's the realistic revenue potential per acre from regenerative practices?

A: Current economics vary significantly by geography and practice adoption. Cover cropping sequesters approximately 1.29 tonnes CO₂e per hectare per year. At carbon credit prices of $20-40 per tonne, this generates $25-50 per hectare ($10-20 per acre) in gross carbon revenue. After MRV costs, aggregator fees, and uncertainty deductions (typically 25-35%), net farmer payments range from $5-15 per acre annually. However, the larger economic benefit comes from reduced input costs (less synthetic fertilizer, improved water retention) and yield stability over time—benefits that compound but don't appear immediately.

Q: How do regenerative agriculture carbon credits compare to forestry credits in terms of buyer perception?

A: Agricultural carbon credits face more buyer skepticism than forestry credits due to measurement challenges and permanence concerns. Soil carbon can be released if practices change, while forest carbon (in theory) remains stored for decades. However, this perception is shifting as MRV technology improves and buyers recognize that agricultural credits often deliver co-benefits (water quality, biodiversity, farmer livelihoods) that forestry credits don't. Corporate buyers increasingly seek agricultural credits specifically to address Scope 3 emissions in food supply chains. The ICVCM (Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market) validation of Verra VM0042 has improved buyer confidence in high-quality agricultural credits.

Q: What percentage of farmers who start regenerative transitions complete them?

A: Data on completion rates is limited, but program managers report 15-25% dropout rates in the first two years, primarily driven by financial pressure during the transition dip and lack of technical support. Programs that provide transition financing (covering 50-70% of first-year costs), dedicated agronomic support, and guaranteed market access show dropout rates below 10%. The General Mills-ALUS pilot in Canada, which combined all three elements, exceeded enrollment targets with minimal dropout. Successful programs front-load support during the vulnerable early years rather than distributing it evenly across the transition period.

Q: How should founders think about competing with Indigo Ag and other well-funded incumbents?

A: Indigo Ag's $800M+ in total funding and first-mover position in agricultural carbon creates barriers to direct competition. However, practitioners consistently identify gaps that startups can address: regional specialization (Indigo's models are calibrated primarily to US corn and soy), crop-specific solutions (specialty crops, permanent crops, and grazing systems are underserved), vertical integration with specific commodity chains, and international markets where Indigo has limited presence. The most successful new entrants focus on becoming the infrastructure layer for specific geographies or crop systems rather than competing horizontally across all of regenerative agriculture.

Sources

The regenerative agriculture transition represents both a generational opportunity and a formidable operational challenge. Founders who understand the 3-5 year biology of soil restoration, build credible MRV infrastructure, and design financial structures that align incentives across the transition timeline will capture disproportionate value as the market grows from $12.66 billion to $57 billion over the next decade. The technology and market demand exist; the question is who builds the operational playbook that actually works at scale.

Topics

regenerativeagriculturesupply chainbenchmark KPIsbiocharcapexnitrogen

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