Regenerative Agriculture and Greenwashing: How to Tell Real Transformation Apart

By: Juan Legelen Dutra

A new model for understanding sustainable agriculture

Over the past few months, I’ve been watching how the global conversation on regenerative agriculture and sustainability has evolved within the agri-food sector, and how these issues are increasingly shaping investment decisions, corporate strategies and long-term sourcing models.

More and more companies are adopting commitments around sustainable sourcing, emissions reduction, supply chain traceability, biodiversity enhancement and more.

And this isn’t just about reputation.

The market has begun to understand that the degradation of natural capital is not only an environmental problem. It also becomes an operational, financial and supply risk, and translates directly into lost competitiveness.

The World Economic Forum estimates that more than half of global GDP is moderately or highly dependent on nature and ecosystem services. And among the most exposed sectors is precisely agri-food, whose operations depend directly on variables such as soil health, water availability, pollination and climate stability.

At the same time, the WEF estimates that the transition to “nature-positive” models, which seek not only to protect but also to restore and enhance the natural capital that farming depends on, could generate more than USD 10 trillion a year in new business opportunities by 2030.

This helps explain why the conversation is no longer purely environmental and has begun to directly affect corporate strategy, investment, sourcing and risk management.

In this context, regenerative agriculture emerges as one of the tools with the greatest potential for the agri-food sector.

How do these risks arise in global agri-food chains?

As regenerative agriculture gains weight in corporate strategies and sustainable investment, a major and increasingly visible risk is also emerging: communicating through vague claims whose key indicators are not backed by recognised frameworks, and doing so before the technical and operational capacity needed to sustain the transformation has actually been built.

This misuse of regenerative agriculture in corporate communication does not necessarily reflect an intent to deceive. Building a real productive transformation is one thing. Communicating it effectively is quite another.

Company announcements rest on ambitious goals: Net Zero, regenerative supply chains, deforestation-free sourcing and all kinds of commitments to a positive impact on nature.

But when those commitments are brought down to the ground, problems often appear:

• Incomplete traceability
• Non-standardised metrics
• Limited data availability
• Regional differences with heterogeneous characteristics
• Operational complexity
• Producers working under very different economic realities

All of this makes it extremely difficult to align the expectations communicated from headquarters with what can actually be implemented in the field.

A concern for consumers and for companies

In this context, concern has been growing about the reliability and quality of the information being published. The World Economic Forum has also identified this concern as one of the main emerging risks.

Global Risks 2024: A World at a Turning Point — World Economic Forum

And honestly, I think this point deserves deeper analysis.

Because the debate is usually framed as if there were only two options: committed companies or companies greenwashing.

But in my view, reality is usually more complex.

When we talk about greenwashing in food and agribusiness companies, that is where the real fine line appears: between a legitimate ambition to implement sustainable practices and, on the other hand, communicating the results with too much optimism and too little legitimacy.

That is why we increasingly need to understand what greenwashing is and how it works, especially within global agri-food chains, which involve working with a large number of different producers, different regulatory frameworks, uneven data availability, traceability challenges and very different production contexts across regions.

At the same time, companies face growing pressure from investors, markets, regulators, consumers and ever more demanding ESG targets.

The FAO estimates that around a third of the world’s soils show some level of degradation. This helps explain why we are no longer talking only about an environmental problem, but also about an economic and strategic one.

The market, too, is starting to demand real evidence. We see growing requirements for traceability back to the origin of raw materials, validation of environmental claims, emissions, biodiversity and climate risk management.

This pushes companies to move from general commitments to far more concrete models of implementation and validation.

Regulations such as the EU’s EmpCo Directive and Green Claims Directive, which require stronger technical backing with verifiable evidence for environmental claims, reflect a clear trend: the need to reduce the risk of greenwashing. Communicating intentions is no longer enough; companies now need to show that the impacts they claim are real, measurable and traceable.

Regenerative agriculture as real transformation: the role of specialised strategic consulting

Regenerative agriculture cannot be limited to a communication or brand differentiation strategy. We need to turn it into a real operational capability within agri-food chains.

And that is probably one of the biggest challenges facing the sector today.

Because the problem is no longer just defining what “regenerative” means. The real challenge is how to translate those commitments into production systems that are measurable, technically scalable and, above all, economically viable.

In my view, the companies best positioned in this transition will not necessarily be the ones that communicate the most, or the most beautifully. They will be the ones that manage to integrate sustainability into their operations, their sourcing, their information systems and their relationships with producers. And if they also manage to communicate it well, even better.

That is the space where we can add real value.

The difference between regenerative agriculture as real transformation and greenwashing will depend less and less on what companies show, and more and more on what they are actually able to measure and demonstrate.