A Just Transition to regenerative agriculture: putting support for small-scale farmers and workers at the heart of company action

There is huge potential for regenerative agriculture to strengthen and deliver on climate mitigation (climate targets), adaptation (resilience of farmers to climate change) and supply chain resilience (continued supply in the face of climate change). Done well, regenerative agriculture can support positive outcomes for farmers, workers and local communities, delivering on company sustainable livelihoods and human rights commitments too. Many companies are embracing regenerative agriculture as an exciting and important approach in their responsible sourcing strategies.

At a recent AIM-Progress members meeting, practitioners Proforest, Solidaridad and Regen10 shared their experience and perspective on the urgent need to ensure a just transition as part of this process. That means ensuring that farmers and workers are not disadvantaged by the drive to meet climate targets, and that we ensure that the model of regenerative agriculture used includes respect for human rights, decent work and sustainable livelihoods for producers and communities.

Regenerative Agriculture practices- such as using bio-fertilisers, no tillage, cover crops, reduced agrochemical and energy use, integrating livestock and intercropping- have potential to deliver both carbon sequestration and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. But they cannot be implemented overnight; technical support and experimentation by growers of the best practices for local conditions are needed, and farmers need to see evidence of benefit before taking the risk to change or scaling up roll-out. Speakers at the webinar cited evidence from multiple countries that it can take 3-10 years for regenerative agriculture systems to break even, and that there is a potential mismatch in the companies’ urgency to deliver on carbon targets vs the time to perceive yield increases or profitability by those upstream.

Therefore, financial and technical transition support, fair compensation and long- term partnerships with farmers and suppliers are key for companies to support a just transition. This is especially in the case of smallholder farmers, who are already vulnerable to the increasing impacts of climate change, and who will not have spare land on which to experiment, are unlikely to have insurance against crop failures, and have no savings buffer for their family to cope in case of crop failure or reduced yields. There is typically an initial loss of productivity whilst regenerative agricultural practices are established, and whilst even in Year One there may be positive climate change impacts (often the priority for downstream companies) we may need to wait many years to see quality and yield outcomes as well as profitability. This is also where some companies’ human rights teams have flagged potential risk of increased child labour or poor labour practices as regenerative agriculture demands labour-intensive work, but without early income gains.

Costs and timelines are of course highly context-specific and vary by production landscape and it is therefore crucial that companies take the time to understand the specifics of their supply chains and production regions.

It therefore becomes essential for companies to find ways to leverage support to help the producer and provide a buffer financially by absorbing this initial loss of productivity. A downstream focus on climate change targets and quick results can fail to capture the long-term nature of this transition, and it is this mindset shift that could help companies to ensure that they are fully engaging in a just transition.

Practitioners emphasised that a farmer-centric approach is crucial to providing a just transition to regenerative agriculture – and in increasing the confidence in uptake by producers. This means engaging farmers in the planning and design of the approach, understanding their challenges and helping to address some of the key risks and impacts at the production level, to move from transactional engagements to long term partnerships.

In conclusion a shift towards RA practices in a fair way involves companies

- Implementing and supporting longer term contracts (4-year min. contract) and relationships, recognising the long-term nature of the transition.

- Implementing fair pricing models that incentivise and reward and ensure decent living standards for smallholder producers, their workers and families

- Invest in farmer aggregation, organisation, technical capacities and resilience

By building transition costs in to planning and developing co-investment strategies for the transition with suppliers along the chain and governments, companies can begin to build strong foundations for agriculture that delivers soil health, water conservation, nature protection and carbon capture: that also supports resilient local livelihoods and ethical labour practices.

For a recording of the AIM Progress webinar click here or use the links for additional resources for companies from the work of AIM Progress, Proforest, Solidaridad and Regen10.