Regenerative agriculture is now a food security imperative – interview with Marc Palahì

Article published in Business Green, 8 July 2026: Regenerative agriculture is now a food security imperative | BusinessGreen Opinion

Last month, while fridges and freezer in major supermarkets were marked with printed notices as customers encountered empty aisles, University of Oxford professor Paul Behrens urged the government to act on the food security "crisis" he said the UK is facing, as he warned that extreme weather events will continue to send food prices skyrocketing.

His message comes one month after the Fourth UK Climate Change Risk Assessment flagged that climate change risks to agriculture and food systems as requiring "critical" attention.

This stark warning is already affecting our economy: compounding nature and climate shocks are disrupting food prices, undermining supply security, and squeezing margins across the food value chain.

It is time to transform our current agri-food system so it becomes part of the solution, rather than a driver of the climate and nature crises

It is time to transform our current agri-food system so it becomes part of the solution, rather than a driver of the climate and nature crises, while supporting healthier diets and enhancing resilience.

Regenerative agriculture, which is at the centre of the annual Groundswell festival which took place last week in the UK, offers us a unique opportunity to rethink our food systems in ways that centre around nature, planetary health and human health.

Read also: Soil-first farming: why regenerative agriculture is gaining ground

From sustainability narrative to financial reality Last summer, a report by the European Investment Bank and Howden Insurance Group estimated that climate impacts such as droughts and flooding are already costing Europe's agricultural sector around EUR 28 billion every year – and that figure could almost double over the next two to three decades under a business-as-usual trajectory.

Concurrently, a new scientific study has identified more than 15 global food supply chains that have been significantly disrupted by extreme weather events driven by climate change in just the past four years.

In response, the narrative and responsibilities within major food companies are also changing fast - from treating nature degradation and climate change as sustainability-only issues to recognising them as fundamental economic risks.

Chief financial officers are increasingly taking the lead. The reason is that ecosystem risks are now material financial risks, manifesting as price volatility, declining quality, disrupted throughput, and weakened supply chain resilience.

The negative environmental externalities generated by conventional food systems are now causing these systems to fail

The negative environmental externalities generated by conventional food systems – which account for around 30 per cent of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and are linked to 80-90 per cent of global biodiversity loss – are now causing these systems to fail.

The pressure is intensifying as geopolitical shocks drive up the cost of synthetic fertilisers. Conventional agriculture – dependent on fossil-based inputs while accelerating climate change and nature degradation – has reached its limits.

A regenerative approach – one that simultaneously manages the unavoidable and avoids the unmanageable – is not a new paradigm. It has existed for centuries in farming and Indigenous communities around the world.

The difference is that now science and technology allow us for understanding the ecological principles behind it and accounting for the environmental and economic outcomes that it delivers. It is time for it to become mainstream and adopted at scale.

Regenerative agriculture is a holistic approach designed to regenerate and restore the health, resilience, and long-term productivity of soils and the wider socioecological systems they support.

Read also: Growing up – vertical farming sector suffers investment slowdown, but leading firms prove profitability potential

Regenerative agriculture is a holistic approach designed to regenerate and restore the health, resilience, and long-term productivity of soils and the wider socioecological systems they support

It does this by reducing reliance on synthetic chemical inputs and minimising physical disturbance (e.g. minimising tilling), while prioritising practices that build soil health, increase biodiversity, and strengthen natural carbon sinks (e.g. integrating trees, hedgerows and livestock in farms, optimising crop rotations and intercropping, using compost, biochar and other organic inputs).

The result is a farming model that is better able to withstand extreme weather and climate shocks, improving resilience not just on farms, but across the landscape and entire food value chain. While there is no broadly agreed-upon definition of regenerative agriculture, most definitions share a clear premise: it is not a one-size-fits-all model.

Rather, it is a farmer-led, context-specific journey that is shaped by soil type and condition, local ecosystems and microclimates, crop choices, and the socio-economic and cultural factors in which farming operates.

Regenerative agriculture is a process that requires continuous learning, data collection, and on-farm innovation. This less prescriptive, outcomes-based approach is precisely why many farmers consider regenerative agriculture a much more attractive proposition.

Evidence is also increasingly showing that regenerative agriculture can deliver stronger economic outcomes at farm level over the medium to long term. Analysis of German farms on a per hectare basis indicates that, once regenerative practices are fully implemented, typically over a period of six to ten years, profits from cereal and oilseed crops can increase by up to 60 per cent (this is now an underestimation as the study is prior to current geopolitical tensions resulting in sharp increases in synthetic fertilisers).

Read also: Putting nature at the heart of our economy – Marc Palahí explores the vital role of nature-based investing

These gains are driven primarily by lower input costs, improved soil resilience leading to fewer yield losses, and more stable production over time. This strengthens the case for regenerative agriculture not only as an environmental necessity, but as a financially compelling model for farmers and the wider food system.

While very promising, regenerative approaches are still evolving from early adoption and pilot phases towards more consistent, scalable, and economically validated models

While very promising, regenerative approaches are still evolving from early adoption and pilot phases towards more consistent, scalable, and economically validated models. There is therefore a critical opportunity to accelerate learning, target investment where it is most needed, and build the enabling conditions to scale economically validated models.

The Circular Bioeconomy Alliance (CBA) recently brought together at Windsor Castle those involved in supporting, building, investing in and operating the agri-food system. From these discussions, five urgent action points stand out:

1. Commit to long-term offtake. The single most powerful thing a buyer can do is commit to supporting regenerative agriculture. Long-term supply agreements send a clear signal to farmers and investors that demand is real, permanent and moving in one direction. Without them, farmers cannot plan, and investors will not follow

2. Invest in knowledge and peer learning. The transition accelerates when farmers can see it working on someone else's land. Investment in independent agronomic advice and peer-to-peer learning networks is one of the most cost-effective tools available. Co-developing pilot projects in the value chains where the transition is most needed and most complex is another promising approach. Our CBA Living Labs generate rigorous evidence and support capacity building on the ground

3. Reprice risk. Our financial system still treats regenerative farming as high-risk. The evidence is starting to say otherwise. Lenders, insurers and investors need to update their frameworks to reflect the true risk profile of transition - and recognise regenerative land management for what it is: long-term economic infrastructure

4. Change the story. Too few people know this is working. The evidence base is growing, what is missing is the narrative. For farmers, this is a story of resilience. For consumers, it is about healthier food from healthier landscapes. The private sector has a role to play here: the communications budgets, supply chain reach and consumer relationships to move this story into the mainstream already exist, they simply need to be pointed in the right direction

5. Strengthen shared methods and frameworks for a science-based transition. Scaling regenerative agriculture requires better shared, science-based tools for measuring and verifying outcomes so that what works in one context can be understood, compared and replicated in another. Rigorous, independent evidence is the foundation on which farmer confidence, investor appetite and consumer trust are all built. Considerable work is already underway across the sector. The priority now is to build on existing initiatives, keeping farmers in control of their own data.