“A Landmark Moment for Regenerative Agriculture”: What is SAI Platform’s Regenerating Together Programme?

Backed by more than 40 global food and agriculture companies, SAI Platform’s new Regenerating Together Programme aims to move regenerative agriculture from ambition to implementation—providing a common framework, verification protocols and practical guidance to help scale adoption across global food supply chains.

Regenerative Agriculture at Scale

As pressure grows on the food and beverage industry to address climate risk, biodiversity loss and supply chain resilience, regenerative agriculture has emerged as one of the sector’s most significant sustainability priorities.

Yet despite widespread commitments, many organisations have struggled with a fundamental challenge: how to consistently implement, measure and verify regenerative agriculture at scale.

The organisation has officially launched its Regenerating Together Programme (RTP), a new industry-wide initiative designed to help food and agriculture businesses move beyond definitions and pilot projects towards practical implementation across global supply chains.

Supported by more than 40 leading food and agriculture companies—including Nestlé, Louis Dreyfus Company, McCain Foods, Carlsberg and Diageo—the programme seeks to provide the frameworks, tools and governance needed to accelerate regenerative agriculture adoption while improving consistency and credibility across the sector.

“A Landmark Moment”

Dionys Forster, Director General of SAI Platform, described the launch as a significant milestone for the sector.

“Today represents a landmark moment for regenerative agriculture and is the result of years of collaboration across the sector. While significant progress has been made in understanding regenerative agriculture entails, the challenge now is implementation at scale.”

“The Regenerating Together Programme offers a pragmatic solution to addressing this challenge by providing the industry with a practical and credible foundation to transition towards more resilient global supply chains.”

Moving Beyond Principles to Practical Implementation

For several years, regenerative agriculture has been one of the most discussed topics in food system sustainability. However, differing definitions and measurement approaches have often created confusion for farmers, food manufacturers and supply chain partners alike.

The Regenerating Together Programme is designed to address that challenge as the initiative is designed to mark a shift from defining regenerative agriculture to enabling its practical implementation. At its core is a revised Regenerating Together framework that provides a four-step process supported by implementation guidance across crop, beef and dairy production systems.

The framework has been developed for use across both large- and small-scale farming operations and is intended to be applicable in all geographies and was developed through collaboration with farmers, agronomists, NGOs, academics and industry stakeholders, reflecting the increasingly multi-stakeholder nature of agricultural sustainability initiatives.

“We Need Practical and Credible Frameworks”

The launch comes at a time when food and beverage businesses are facing mounting environmental and operational pressures.

Climate change, water scarcity, soil degradation and biodiversity loss are increasingly recognised as material business risks that can directly affect agricultural productivity and long-term supply security. At the same time, companies are under growing pressure from investors, regulators and consumers to demonstrate measurable progress against sustainability commitments.

Regenerative agriculture has gained traction because it seeks to address multiple challenges simultaneously by supporting soil health, biodiversity, water management and farm resilience.

However, scaling adoption across complex global supply chains has proven difficult.

The Regenerating Together Programme aims to create greater alignment across the industry by providing a common foundation for implementation and measurement, helping companies track progress while increasing visibility of the outcomes being delivered at farm level.

“Regenerative agriculture shows great potential to strengthen supply chain resilience against climate change while helping improve farmers’ livelihoods,” said Pascal Chapot, VP Head of Agriculture at Nestlé.

“To accelerate adoption, we need practical and credible frameworks that can be consistently applied across the value chain.”

Bringing Verification and Credibility to Regenerative Agriculture

One of the most significant developments within the programme is the introduction of independent verification and benchmarking protocols.

For the first time, the framework includes guidance for third-party verification of regenerative agriculture practices, helping organisations assess progress against a common set of criteria.

For sustainability leaders, this could help address one of the sector’s biggest challenges: demonstrating credible outcomes while reducing confusion caused by multiple competing frameworks and definitions.

The verification component is designed to improve transparency, consistency and trust across value chains while helping businesses benchmark regenerative agriculture efforts more effectively.

As sustainability reporting requirements continue to evolve, robust measurement and verification mechanisms are becoming increasingly important for companies seeking to substantiate environmental claims.

What does RTP Change?

“Over the past decade, significant work has gone into turning regenerative agriculture from an emerging ambition into a practical transition across the food and beverage sector. Companies, farmers, supply chain partners and industry bodies have tested approaches, built knowledge and learned what works. That hard work is now beginning to pay off, with clearer alignment emerging around standards, outcomes and what credible implementation looks like in practice,” said Simon Boas Hoffmeyer
VP, Global Head of Sustainability & ESG at Carlsberg Group.

“The launch of the Regenerating Together Programme (RTP) today signals a shift – not because it introduces a fundamentally new idea, but because it addresses one of the industry’s biggest bottlenecks: the lack of alignment, measurement and practical pathways for implementation at scale.”

A Collaborative Industry Approach

A defining feature of the programme is the breadth of organisations involved in its development.

Beyond corporate support, SAI Platform has worked with environmental and implementation partners including The Nature Conservancy and Earthworm Foundation. The initiative also aligns with wider industry efforts involving organisations such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), Regen10 and EIT Food.

These partnerships reflect a growing recognition that transforming food systems will require collaboration across the entire value chain rather than isolated action by individual companies.

The programme itself is the result of more than four years of collaboration, including pilot initiatives spanning 23 production systems across 25 countries.

Keeping Farmers at the Centre

A recurring challenge in agricultural sustainability programmes is ensuring they remain practical for farmers.

SAI Platform says farmers have played a central role in shaping the Regenerating Together Programme, helping ensure the framework remains workable at farm level while avoiding unnecessary administrative complexity.

The programme is designed to support farmer agency by allowing producers to determine which practices and approaches are most relevant to their operations. It also seeks to improve recognition of the value farmers create through regenerative outcomes.

By reducing reporting burdens and increasing visibility of positive environmental performance, the programme aims to make participation more accessible and attractive for producers.