Disclaimer: the photos are taken not at the event described. The top photo is from The State of Regenerative event, which I talk about in the last paragraph.
Here I am at New York Climate Week, sitting in a presentation by one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies. With annual revenues in the tens of billions, their massive portfolio includes everything from sodas and sports drinks to chips and oatmeal. A wide array of these products is on display, and I’ve just been handed a goodie bag filled with them.
To be honest, I don’t consider most of these items to be actual food, they’re products I actively avoid. While I instinctively took the bag, I now face a modern dilemma. Eat it? I’d rather not. Throw it away? That feels like food/resources waste. Give it to a person experiencing homelessness? That feels strangely insulting. I eventually leave the bag on a public table, a quiet testament to my indecision, hoping it will be taken by someone who wants it before the area is cleaned.
The corporate presentation begins, a masterclass in modern storytelling. It’s all about regenerative agriculture, complete with polished introductions and careful framing by hired consultants. Then comes the artistic touch: storytellers and photographers sharing videos of what regenerative agriculture means to them and to the farmers they’ve met. I just observe the crowd and I see them being fully absorbed by the beautiful content and just nodding.
It all sounds painfully familiar. In our own work, we’ve had to navigate these same careful lines. How do you prevent your work from being co-opted for “regenerative washing”? I use this term, much like “greenwashing,” to describe when the powerful concept of regeneration is used to publicize minimal changes or to frame incremental steps as the ultimate solution to massive environmental and social problems.
This corporate vision stands in vivid contrast to the farms we visited with Cycle to Farms. We were meeting true pioneers, people crafting ecological and economic alternatives to industrial agriculture. For them, regenerative agriculture was defined by clear, non-negotiable principles:
- No external inputs, especially no synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.
- Multilayered, multifunctional landscapes where biodiversity thrived and monocultures were unthinkable.
- A strong social dimension, whether that meant working with local communities, providing robust employee training, and ensuring access to the high-quality food produced on the farm.
I understand that a massive, conventional monoculture farm can’t transform into a biodiverse paradise overnight. I know the process is risky, complicated, and expensive. But I struggle to accept the celebratory stories of a monoculture corn farm becoming “regenerative” simply by stopping tilling or planting a single cover crop—especially when its harvest is destined to become the kind of highly processed product I would rather fast than eat.
When the term “regenerative” is applied to these diluted scenarios, it feels like it fundamentally ignores the tremendous work and holistic achievements of the farmers practicing deep regeneration.
Thankfully, the Climate Week wasn’t all corporate performances. In other spaces, for example hosted by https://whyregenerative.com/ where the top picture is taken with Cortland and Jackson, I found brands offering genuinely regenerative products, from probiotic-rich fermented nuts to artisanal cheeses and wines. These small brands offer a glimpse of what’s possible, but they are easily overshadowed by the giants in the room.
