Seeding Sustainability in Agriculture Value Chains
Managing Risk, Building Resilience, and Supporting Farmers through the Transition
10th February 2025
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In the past year alone, both agriculture and food & beverage industries have faced significant challenges due to an unpredictable climate, farm labour shortages, and rising demands from stakeholders. Many farms are experiencing climate-related risks and impacts firsthand, from severe flooding in Vermont, to olive shortages in Greece and declining cocoa quality and yield globally. The unpredictability of climate change is negatively impacting both farmers and the companies that depend on food and fiber from the field.
Balancing environmental goals with social equity is uniquely challenging for many agriculture stakeholders like aggregators, processors, distributors, and consumer-packaged goods companies. Facing external pressures from consumers, investors, and complex global regulations, these companies are tasked with achieving landscape-level restoration while also improving viable livelihoods for farm workers in complex and fragmented value chains. To succeed, a business must identify the risks, pain points, and opportunities within their unique business model to implement regenerative agriculture solutions that deliver measurable outcomes without overburdening farm workers or creating operational inefficiencies.
At Anthesis, we guide clients through their agricultural value chain challenges by leveraging strategic planning, multi-stakeholder collaboration, data, and innovative technology to align regenerative agriculture targets and programs with our clients’ environmental and social goals.
A Vision for a Regenerative Future
To ensure long-term business resilience and sustained value creation, companies must address environmental and social challenges in their agricultural value chains.
By investing in regenerative agriculture, companies can:
Build Resilient Supply Chains
Companies investing in regenerative agriculture can secure stable, sustainable commodity sourcing.
Regenerative agriculture restores soil health, reduces freshwater usage, increases biodiversity, and helps mitigate the impacts of climate change. Practices like cover crops, riparian buffers, and crop rotation protect soil health, provide resilience to extreme weather events such as drought or floods, and offer companies more stable and resilient production, creating fewer shocks and disruptions in supply chains.
Enhance Social Outcomes
Strengthened farmer livelihoods, fair labour practices, and supported communities foster long-term value for farmers and companies that rely on them.
By scaling no-till and cover crops to 80% adoption, American corn and soybean farmers could reap an additional $250 billion in economic value over a decade with net income increase, land value gains from improved soil health and ecosystem productivity, and ecosystem service payments for carbon or biodiversity.
Generate Climate and Nature Benefits Beyond Carbon
Regenerative agriculture can improve soil health, conserve both freshwater and groundwater use, and restore biodiversity while boosting crop productivity.
Regenerative practices protect soil by utilising cover crops, minimal or no-tillage, and rotational grazing to keep soil nutrients and moisture in the ground. In standard monocropping or conventional systems, soil can become excessively dry and vulnerable to erosion.
Secure Market Leadership
Demonstrating commitments to regenerative agriculture that are supported by data-driven outcomes can strengthen brand reputation and competitive advantage.
Embracing sustainable practices has tangible benefits and improves brand reputation. Consumers want to buy products that they know are sustainable, and responsible business practices enhance brand reputation by aligning with consumers’ growing values around impact. Data shows that consumers are more loyal to brands which share their values and align with their lifestyle. On the other hand, it is not uncommon to see a company directly impacted reputationally by an incident which exposes negative environmental or social impact, particularly when this is compliance-related or there are legal actions taken.
Explore our Agriculture Solutions
Our global team of sustainable agri-food experts works with clients across the entire value chain to build sustainable agriculture and food production solutions that have real business value.
Enabling the Transition to Regenerative Agriculture
When regenerative agriculture is isolated within one business function (e.g., sustainability) or viewed solely as a cost center, it is likely to fail. Transitioning to regenerative agriculture is a journey that evolves from basic compliance to exemplifying the highest standards of regenerative practices. This “good > better > best” pathway ensures that companies can adapt progressively and effectively.
At Anthesis, we work with our clients to place regenerative agriculture at the core of their business model, securing their current operations and futureproofing them to drive new growth and brand engagement.
Our framework for success includes:
- Mapping the Current State: Companies often struggle to identify what is working well and the obstacles they face in achieving their climate or regenerative agriculture targets. We facilitate collaborative multi-stakeholder engagement across C-Suite, finance, R&D, sustainability, and farmer relations teams to build cross-functional awareness, clarify existing ambiguity, and help clients recognise the unique strengths and opportunities that exist within their business.
- Risk and Regulatory Assessment: Many companies are exposed to climate and human rights risks in their agricultural value chains and often respond reactively to regulations, treating them like a patchwork quilt. Using a suite of industry-aligned risk tools tailored to unique client needs, we help companies assess climate, production, manufacturing, and human rights in their supply chains, enabling them to manage risks effectively and proactively while ensuring compliance with relevant regulations.
- Strategy and Program Development: Many organisations face challenges in prioritising effectively, diluting focus and limiting program success. We collaborate with our clients to create strategic roadmaps with clear, actionable, and measurable goals that are supported by strong business cases for regenerative agriculture. We also engage directly with the farmers and ranchers in our clients’ value chains, co-developing or linking to regionally tailored solutions that incorporate farmer insights to ensure on-the-ground viability.
- Program Implementation and Scale: We help our clients leverage technology to engage their suppliers, collect farm-level data, and measure impact. We help clients scale outcome-driven approaches that deliver healthier soils, increased biodiversity, and strengthened community resilience. By developing new business models that view resiliency as a growth engine, supported by tangible case studies, we also help clients access innovative funding to drive on-farm change without passing on costs to consumers or negatively influencing cost of goods sold (COGS).
By guiding clients through this framework, we ensure that regenerative agriculture becomes an integral part of our clients’ core business models and is a source of sustainable growth and brand engagement for today and for the future.
We are the world’s leading purpose driven, digitally enabled, science-based activator. And always welcome inquiries and partnerships to drive positive change together.
