Food & Climate
Major companies such as Nestlé and Unilever have expanded their regenerative agriculture programmes, helping to restore degraded lands while securing supply chains, and impacting over 500,000 smallholder farmers, according to the UN Yearbook of Global Climate Action 2024, which was introduced today, at the outset of COP29 in Baku.
The methods of regenerative agriculture are meant to restore soil and ecosystem health, address inequity, and leave our land, waters, and climate in better shape for the future, according a report seen by “Food & Climate” platform.
As a philosophy and approach to land management, regenerative agriculture asks us to think about how all aspects of agriculture are connected through a web—a network of entities who grow, enhance, exchange, distribute, and consume goods and services—instead of a linear supply chain.
It’s about farming and ranching in a style that nourishes people and the earth, with specific practices varying from grower to grower and from region to region. There’s no strict rule book, but the holistic principles behind the dynamic system of regenerative agriculture are meant to restore soil and ecosystem health, address inequity, and leave our land, waters, and climate in better shape for future generations, according to “NRDC.Org“.
Regenerative agriculture in Unilever
Huge Unilever said that it takes around 4 million hectares of land to grow the raw materials for Unilever products, which are used by 3.4 billion people every day. “We want to make sustainable living commonplace – and we simply can’t do that unless we protect and regenerate the natural world”, according its website.
“We believe nature holds the key to solving the climate crisis too – by capturing and storing carbon in land and ocean ecosystems. It’s estimated that by protecting and restoring forests around the world, humanity can achieve around one-fifth of the emissions cuts needed by 2030 to prevent catastrophic climate change”.
And the current level of nature loss and climate change is already resulting in real and significant risks to economies, businesses and communities. So, the only option now is systemic change – transforming the way we use land everywhere.
“This crisis calls for a paradigm shift in everything about the way we approach our relationship with nature and the way we design our agricultural systems. It’s time to regenerate agricultural systems that have been overworked, overused and depleted”, the company added.
Regenerative agriculture is critical for Unilever business. It helps the company to ensure food security and supply chain resilience through the supply of agricultural raw materials. It is also a key lever for Unilever’s Nutrition Business Group to progress towards it net zero target.
Unilever’s Climate & Nature Fund is helping to accelerate and scale regenerative agriculture. Launched in 2020, our Climate & Nature Fund is a commitment to invest €1 billion by 2030 in meaningful climate, nature, and resource efficiency projects, to transform the way its products are made and reach end of life.
“At a farm level, this means applying regenerative agriculture practices – which is why we’ve developed our Regenerative Agriculture Principles (PDF 8.34 MB), designed to enhance our Sustainable Agriculture Principles (PDF 897.59 KB)”.
Nestlé
Nestle sees regenerative agriculture by another way, according Its website.
Regenerative agriculture is a holistic approach to farming that actively supports the three key agricultural resources – biodiversity, water and soil – and which can benefit communities as part of a just transition, the company said.
The Nestlé model brings regenerative agriculture to life through five pillars: biodiversity, water security and quality; soil health; diverse cropping systems and livestock integration; collective and landscape action.
“We are supporting farmers and food producers to be part of this transformation by scaling regenerative agriculture, aiming to improve soil health, sequester carbon, support food security, restore water resources and enable biodiversity”, the company said.
In Indonesia and Mexico, our pilot financial support scheme for coffee farmers is promoting the transition to regenerative agriculture through higher incomes, covering around 1000 smallholder farms in each country.
And in Côte d’Ivoire, our income accelerator program is enabling cocoa farming families to raise their incomes, keep children in school and benefit the local environment. Working with smallholder farmers to build skills and knowledge, they are using techniques to improve the quality of the local soils while developing new revenue streams by growing a wider variety of crops.
In Indonesia, we are piloting a weather insurance program for more than 800 smallholder coffee farmers that supply coffee to the Nescafé brand. The insurance scheme, in collaboration with Blue Marble, a specialist in climate insurance, provides financial protection to help farmers cope with unpredictable weather patterns of rainfall and severe drought.