Funding regeneration collectively

How every food sale is funding the regeneration of the next acre.

Author

Mitch Hinrichs
August 02, 2024

Read Time: 4 minutes

We all agree that regenerative agriculture solves many modern problems, including climate change, ecological degradation, biodiversity collapse, rampant chronic diseases, the obesity epidemic, etcetera.

However, catalyzing change and figuring out which levers to pull remain some of the most crucial bottlenecks. Seeing so much private money flooding the space to fund new startups focused on regenerative agriculture is exciting.

But what if a fraction of every food dollar spent could fuel farmers to adopt and implement regenerative agriculture on their farms, one acre at a time?

With total food and beverage sales in the United States reaching $2.3 trillion in 2023, imagine if 1% was set aside to fund regeneration.

Well, Zero Foodprint is paving the way for that reality.

Do Market Incentives Really Drive Change?

The Failed Adoption of Organic Agriculture in America

Organic agriculture accounts for less than 1% of the total acres under production in the United States. However, demand for organic produce and products has grown significantly, accounting for 5.5% of annual food sales.

Organic acres have been trending upward, but not enough to keep up with domestic demand. Despite the high premiums of organic products, imported organic foods have outpaced domestic adoption in the United States.

All despite organic farming often being more profitable than conventional.

Source: USDA

So, why don’t more farmers switch to organic if it’s so lucrative?

For 50 years, organic has shown increasing demand in the marketplace, fetching consistent premiums, but adoption amongst farmers has ultimately failed to capture significant market share across farmland.

If incentives from premiums and consumer demand were strong enough to change agricultural practices, don’t you think organic farming would have gained a stronghold among producers?

Transitioning to organic takes three years, a period ripe with risk, both financially and agronomically. Soils take time to rejuvenate, and farmers cannot access organic premiums while they wean off conventional inputs.

Farmers are strapped financially and barely making ends meet, receiving only $0.14 from every food dollar. Most don’t have a “regenerative” savings account to plant cover crops, build hedgerows, or adopt agroforestry, let alone take the leap to transition to organic agriculture with no safety net.

Federal funding programs through the USDA exist to help farms adopt conservation practices, such as the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP), and about $4 billion is allocated annually.

This amount appears significant, but these programs are often backlogged, and many farmers are turned away. I’ve also talked with farmers who avoid these programs, as they limit what practices can be implemented and what the farmer can do within them.

Farmers wanting to transition to organic have assistant options, with more government-funded programs on the rise, but what if funding could come collectively from every single food sale?

Generating Resources for Regenerative Adoption

Zero Foodprint is rallying the food and beverage industry and consumers to capture “small donations” from food sales to help fund regenerative agriculture.

By teaming up with restaurants, grocery stores, and food service businesses, consumers and businesses contribute small percentages (1%) of food sales to fund farmers wanting to practice regenerative agriculture.

Those selling food align themselves with what consumers value, especially Gen Z. Consumers can truly “vote with their dollars,” knowing firsthand that a percentage of their money is directly helping regenerate farmland.

With tipping becoming the norm and annoyingly demanding upwards of 20% for a cup of coffee, a 1% regenerative “tip” is a practical channel for funding change. Of course, it still gives the option to opt-out.

“A 1% nationwide food tax is not on the policy horizon, yet almost every jurisdiction could create real climate action by establishing optional fees of 1% from the local food economy for reinvestment in the regional foodshed. San Diego, for example, could create a funding mechanism to scale up its Carbon Farming Program Pilot. A 1% optional (opt-out) fee at San Diego’s 8,100 restaurants would generate over $100 million per year, or more than $400 per acre/year.“

Regenerative Grants for Famers - Applications Now Open

Zero Foodprint distributes various grant packages to farmers from the money generated through consumer sales at their partner businesses.

These grants aim to help farmers return carbon to the soil and implement regenerative practices on their land.

They are currently working with farmers in California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, with plans to expand to more states as they onboard more food service businesses in those areas.

To date, they have awarded $2.4m in grants to farmers that have sequestered more than 104,000 tons of CO2e.

If you know any farmers in California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington who want to implement regenerative practices on their farms, have them apply to Zero Foodprint’s Restore Grant! Applications close on August 20th.

Changes in Consumer Behavior Isn’t Enough

Anthony Myint, founder of Zero Foodprint, wrote a position paper outlining their vision for collective regeneration. Read it if you have time, but I’ll share the main point that resonated with me.

Changing Eating vs Changing Farming

“The topic of who eats the beef is another systems-level quandary. If one thousand individual consumers chose a plant-based diet, we wouldn’t know if it actually contributed to meat replacement in the larger food system. So much depends on the boundary of analysis – plant-based meat sales in the US are soaring, but US beef exports concurrently hit record highs. In other words, successfully changing consumption does not seem to reduce beef production worldwide. It certainly reduces a personal or organizational carbon footprint, but because global demand for beef outpaces the reduction in first-world beef consumption, the macroeconomic impact is almost certainly not a 1:1 effect. There is definitely leakage and the effect of a shift in consumption may be negligible. In the absence of government intervention around production or consumption, the only certain systemic progress is improved grazing.“

This really resonates with me, as many of the proposed solutions we hear are focused on changing consumer behavior. If every single person ate plant-based food, then the entire farming system would miraculously change, but the truth is more complex. Or if we all just biked, then we’d slow emissions.

Change in consumer behavior is important, but it often isn’t 1:1.

That’s important to remember as we search for the biggest levers for transformation. If we want to regenerate all farmland acres, we need to change more than just consumer habits.

The solution may not be in what we eat but rather in shaving a small percentage of all food sales to fund farmers actively regenerating their land.

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