The future of agriculture in Europe hinges on a transformative approach that balances production with measurable environmental and social benefits. Regenerative agriculture has emerged as a critical solution, aiming to enhance soil health, biodiversity, climate resilience, water resources, and farming livelihoods. To ensure a sustainable future, the adoption of regenerative practices must become the norm across Europe.
Regenerative agriculture integrates farming practices that restore and improve natural ecosystems. By focusing on soil productivity, water quality, carbon capture, biodiversity, and resilience to climate extremes, it offers a pathway to address pressing challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and water management. The expansion of regenerative farming is essential to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Achieving this would require regenerative practices to cover 40% of global cropland by 2030, up from the current 15%. For Europe, this means transitioning 40 million hectares of farmland within the next five years. This ambitious target can be realized through a coordinated effort, with collective investments from public and private sectors ensuring both economic benefits for farmers and resilience for food systems.
Nature’s role in agriculture is indispensable, providing ecosystem services such as soil fertility, water regulation, pollination, pest control, nutrient cycling, and climate mitigation. Regenerative practices often create synergies between carbon storage and biodiversity enhancement, with minimal long-term trade-offs for food production. However, the urgency of the situation cannot be overstated. With only five harvest cycles remaining until 2030, scaling up regenerative agriculture from isolated pilot projects to comprehensive landscape-level transformations is critical to staying within planetary boundaries.
Collaboration is the cornerstone of this transformation. Achieving a widespread transition to regenerative agriculture requires cooperation among farmers, businesses, financial institutions, and policymakers. To facilitate this, a set of nine policy recommendations has been proposed to accelerate the adoption of regenerative practices:
- Adopt a holistic, performance-based vision for agricultural policy to align incentives with sustainability outcomes.
- Support the development of innovative business models that reward ecosystem services provided by farmers.
- Enhance access to peer-to-peer learning platforms to enable farmers to share best practices and experiences.
- Promote public-private partnerships to scale up regenerative agriculture and encourage collaboration across value chains.
- Establish risk-sharing mechanisms and insurance programs to protect farmers during the transition.
- Repurpose agricultural subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy to prioritize regenerative practices.
- Align policy frameworks with global sustainability standards to ensure consistency and accountability.
- Develop clear and consistent metrics to measure the impact of regenerative agriculture and guide decision-making.
- Empower farmers with improved on-farm data rights and compensation to support their transition efforts.
A clear and coordinated pathway, supported by these policies, can unlock the potential of regenerative agriculture to address environmental challenges while securing the livelihoods of farmers and the resilience of food systems. By embracing this vision, Europe can lead the way in transforming its agricultural systems to ensure a sustainable and prosperous future for all.
