#118 - PURATOS, CO SNOWPACK, ENGLISH

This Week in Regenerative Agriculture
Wednesday, July 16th

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Puratos USA is scaling up its regenerative agriculture strategy by enrolling roughly 30% of its wheat flour volumes into mass-balance regenerative programs, moving the initiative from pilot stage to broader implementation as part of a larger goal to hit 50% regenerative sourcing by 2030. The company is working with farmers, cooperatives, and millers to promote practices like crop rotation, reduced tillage, and cover cropping, which it says improve soil organic matter and water retention over time. As senior procurement manager Luther Hardin put it, “Everything starts with the soil, but most people never see it,” underscoring the company’s push to embed sustainability directly into existing supply chains rather than treating it as a separate or theoretical initiative.

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PepsiCo is leaning on direct collaboration with farmers to advance its 2030 goal of implementing regenerative agriculture practices across 10 million acres globally, with company VP Margaret Henry noting that farmers already using these methods are seeing improved soil, water, and biodiversity outcomes alongside stronger productivity. The company’s Regenerative Agriculture 2030 Plan targets multiple fronts at once—building soil health, cutting emissions, protecting watersheds, boosting biodiversity, and improving farmer profitability—signaling a shift toward treating sustainability and farm economics as linked rather than competing priorities.

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Colorado’s lowest snowpack on record — worsened by a March heat wave scientists say was “virtually impossible” without climate change — has left Western Slope farmers like Felix Tornare relying on cover crops and rotational grazing to retain scarce soil moisture after going three weeks without water from Cattle Creek. State climatologist Russ Schumacher noted some areas saw a week of March days warmer than any in the past 75 years, driving an early snowmelt that left farms starting the season with unusually dry soil.

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Walmart, General Mills, and ADM have launched a new collaboration targeting 40,000 Midwest wheat acres to expand regenerative practices like no-till farming and cover cropping, building on programs already underway across more than 560,000 of a planned 600,000 acres by 2030. ADM, which manages nearly 5 million regenerative acres globally, will provide on-the-ground technical assistance and financial incentives to farmers in Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri, aiming to strengthen supply chain resilience for wheat used in products sold through Walmart and Sam’s Club.

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WBCSD’s One Planet Business for Biodiversity (OP2B) and EIT Food have launched a co-financed pilot to tackle one of regenerative agriculture’s biggest obstacles—who bears the financial risk of transition—by pooling €185,000 in funding to implement a blended finance model across 272,000 hectares and 1,645 farms in the East of England. The model combines outcome-based grants, recoverable grants, and preferential loans to fund roughly £131 million over ten years, an approach projected to leave transitioned cropland about £764 per hectare better off than conventional farming while nearly halving transition costs for participating companies.

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1. Scottish Barley Growers Strong Regenerative Farming Study [Link]

2. Grant Awarded to Build Regenerative Farmer Network in Michigan [Link]

Venture of the Week

Groundbreaking Organizations.

Agricarbon is a UK-based company that directly measures soil organic carbon and bulk density at scale, using mechanized sampling and automated lab analysis to deliver rigorous, cost-effective soil carbon data for carbon markets, corporate GHG accounting, and regenerative agriculture projects.

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This Week In Regenerative Agriculture is published by Why Regenerative. It is compiled by Jackson Baris with ChatGPT. Sign up for our newsletter here.