Regenerative business practices influence of agriculture - Safaa

Description

By definition, a regenerative business acknowledges its place in the entire system where it operates—its community, its industry, its resources— and uses that knowledge of interdependence in their strategic decision-making, it is also about identifying one’s footprint and then moving away from linear systems towards circular ones. It’s about managing natural assets in a way that allows and enables them to restore themselves sustainably. There is no industry standard definition of what exactly mean when companies refer to regenerative business in agriculture, but there is indeed a clearer and supportive definition of what regenerative business mean in agricultural aspect, like PepsiCo, Unilever, Nestle', and Walmart stress that their companies is eager to act now regarding farming (Agriculture) rather than waiting for a consensus to be developed by governmental institutions.The practices these companies use to influence agriculture are as following:

1. Growing more and using less of food production.

2. Creating and active management system for the chemicals.

3. Finding more sustainable agricultural supply chain for water and food waste management.

4. Improving the livelihood of supply chain.

5. Focusing on sustainable resourcing.

Enablers

Businesses are already adopting regenerative agriculture in response to current and anticipated challenges, seeing yield impacts ranging from 68% up to 300%. Companies seeing changes to production as a result of degraded land are beginning to understand the potential impacts of inaction. Businesses such as AB InBev, LEAF Africa, Nespresso, Olam, Touton, and Twiga Foods have already implemented programs in the SSA region to reach over 100,000 farms. Three categories have been identified as broad success factors in these business programs:

1. Demonstrate evidence to scale up uptake: This was implemented through; Using demonstration plots to build farmer trust, Training programs to support independent implementation, and Showing farmers the value of regenerative practices.

2. Engage with local communities: The above mentioned companies did that by; Tailoring engagement to local context, Fostering equitable gender participation, Building stronger local governance.

3. Consider the broader context: It was done through; Extend investment across the supply chain, Leverage digital access, and Align public and private finance streams.

Inhibitors

1. The cost (or perceived cost) remains a commonly cited obstacle amongst farmers and organisations serving farmers.

2. Behavior and cultural change: farmers enter into, navigate, and, importantly, sustain the required paradigm shift in their approach to managing their properties, farm businesses, and personal lives.

3. Land access: The cost of farmland is high—so high that it is often impossible for new farmers and ranchers to get started in farming without a family connection or renting it from company owners.

4. Trusted Technical Assistance: Farmers and ranchers are extraordinarily busy people, managing complex businesses in a risky, low-margin, and ever-changing business environment, so adopting new technology is indeed a big help to them but also the matter of building a trust with "Machines" is a big step that need to be worked on with them.

Paradigms

- Extractive agriculture: The significant financial cost of mechanisation and high levels of off-farm inputs has led to mounting debt, along with the consolidation of farm and infrastructure ownership in the hands of fewer and fewer large companies.

- Conservative agriculture: Efficiency is paramount in this paradigm. Practices like precision agriculture, integrated pest management, and high-efficiency irrigation enable farms to ‘do more with less.’ More efficient machinery is used to plant and manage more efficient crops. Combining digital field monitoring, fine-tuned fertiliser application, and more targeted biocides allows farmers to reduce their inputs and costs.

- Net-positive agriculture: This paradigm explicitly aims to build soil, improve water cycle health, and increase biodiversity while producing food for communities and economic wellbeing for farmers.

Experts

Starting in the 1970s, the farmer Robert Rodale already shaped the term “regenerative organic agriculture” in order to differentiate from merely “sustainable agriculture”. Since then, pioneers such as Gabe Brown, Joel Salatin and Dr. Elaine Ingham have shaped the movement significantly

Timing

- 1980s: Started with Climate change- Costs were $18 billion.

- 1990s: Cost got more expensive to spend in Climate change and agriculture.

- 2012: There are also significant public health costs associated with climate change. According to one study, climate change caused $10 billion in health-related expenses.

- Between 2017 and 2019, natural disasters cost the U.S. an average of $153.5 billion each year.

- 2018: economic costs $149 billion.

- 2019: Cost of public health associated with climate change is on current increase (Limaye, Max, Constable, & Knowlton, 2019).

- 2021: Greater costs are likely in the future as climate change worsens. Low-income and minority communities suffer this burden most heavily. If society will bear the economic costs of climate change regardless, markets should be arranged so that that money is spent proactively in preventing greater future costs. Otherwise, we will continue to passively pay the ever-increasing costs that come from inaction, which will far eclipse the costs of prevention now.