Regenerative Agriculture: The Next Trend In Food Retailing
- Media Manager
- Aug 19, 2021
- 1 min read
Forbes
Written By: Jack Uldrich
Published: August 19th, 2021
Photo Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain
In 2019, General Mills, the manufacturer of Cheerios, Yoplait and Annie’s Mac and Cheese (among other products), announced it would begin sourcing a portion of its corn, wheat, dairy and sugar from farmers who were engaged in regenerative agriculture practices and committed to advancing the practice of regenerative agriculture on one million acres of land by 2030. In early 2020, Whole Foods announced regenerative agriculture would be the No. 1 food trend and, in spite of the pandemic and the rapid growth of online shopping overshadowing the trend, business interest in the field still spiked by 138%.
More recently, PepsiCo announced it was adopting regenerative agriculture practices among 7 million acres of its farmland. Cargill declared it intends to do the same on 10 million acres by 2030, and Walmart has committed to advancing the practice on 50 million acres. Other companies pursuing regenerative agriculture include Danone, Unilever, Hormel, Target and Land O’ Lakes.
To those who think these numbers are modest, understand that only 5 million acres of farmland are currently dedicated to organic farming practices. As a professional futurist who has been advising farmers and agri-businesses for the past few years, I have seen that regenerative agriculture is a BIG trend and encourage grocers to begin paying closer attention to how it will affect their business.
