(Bloomberg) — The Grammy-nominated musician and the award-winning farmer are careers that are not usually synonymous.

But Andy Cato crosses this line. He plays around 40 gigs a year as one half of DJ duo Groove Armada, but he is also a knighted farmer in France and one of the UK’s most prominent voices calling for an overhaul of the way the world produces food.

Over the past six years, he has built a network of more than 100 farmers in the UK and France to grow wheat using regenerative farming methods. It has also persuaded some of the UK’s biggest retailers and restaurant chains to pay a premium for flour and bread made from wheat, known under its Wildfarmed brand. It’s also running a public education campaign, appearing everywhere from this year’s UK Labor Party conference to an Amazon Prime show hosted by former Top Gear star Jeremy Clarkson.

“We live in a world where none of the impact your farming practices have on water quality, nutritional quality or biodiversity is on the spreadsheet,” says Cato. “It is critical that we change this,” taking into account the benefits of climate-smart farming and ensuring “the supply chain from farm to plate is traceable.”

Regenerative agriculture is touted as a climate solution for farming; This solution helps protect soil, water and biodiversity while making crops and soil more resilient to weather conditions. This is an umbrella term that covers practices that include planting cover crops, no-till, and avoiding chemical inputs.

“We have good evidence that these practices benefit the soil,” says Lizzie Sagoo, chief soil scientist at agricultural and environmental consultancy ADAS. It can also help reduce emissions, although its benefits are a little less certain.

Major companies such as McDonald’s Corp, Nestle SA and Unilever Plc are showing interest in environmentally friendly agriculture as part of their sustainability goals. However, it failed to attract enough funding to generate widespread interest. As a result, farmers’ uptake has been relatively low. Although data is difficult to obtain, around 107,000 hectares (264,000 acres) in the UK are devoted to regenerative projects by some major agri-food companies, according to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. This is some of the country’s 6 million hectares of arable land.

But the need to increase adoption is growing. Although modern industrial agriculture helps provide affordable food for more people, it does so at the expense of nature. Cultivating the soil and using excessive fertilizer are major sources of greenhouse gases; Runoff pollutes waterways. The United Nations estimates that one-third of the world’s land is already degraded, and more than 90% could be degraded by 2050. Almost 3 billion people and more than half of the world’s food production live in areas experiencing worsening water scarcity, and intensive agriculture is contributing to this situation. decrease in insect species.

Cato says as he drives around potholes in the muddy roads that cut through his farm in Oxfordshire, England, that this transforms the soil “from a living biological environment to a dead mineral environment that essentially keeps plants upright while they are fed by chemical inputs.” September. The fields will soon be filled with wheat and beans, a cover crop that helps fix nitrogen in the soil.

The beginning of his regenerative agriculture journey began nearly 20 years ago, when he read an article on the environmental impacts of industrial food production while returning from work. Having just arrived from rain-soaked fields, he remembers the tenor of the piece: “If you don’t like the system, don’t trust it.”

The article led Cato down a “rabbit hole”, leading him to sell his music rights so he could try his hand at regenerative agriculture in France before landing on the 730-acre Colleymore Farm in England. He has the crisp, weather-beaten air of someone who’s much happier outside than stuck inside, his T-shirt covered in mud. Despite the glamor of being a world-famous DJ, he describes farming as “the best job in the world”.

But his vision extends beyond the secluded farmhouse. Wildfarmed helps farmers transition from an industrial approach. The company pays them a premium for their wheat when they commit to farming to the third-party audited group’s standards.

“If you make the environment better while producing food, you won’t get anything in return. “This is the fundamental problem,” he says.

To solve this problem, Wildfarmed is reaching out to businesses interested in purchasing renewable products. Over 400 brands across the UK use their products. Retailers Marks & Spencer Group Plc and Waitrose & Partners sell bread made with Wildfarmed flour. Restaurant chains such as Franco Manca, as well as various cafes in London, are among the customers.

“Customers want to know more about where their food comes from and how it’s produced,” Jake Pickering, Waitrose’s senior director of agriculture, said at this year’s World Agritech Innovation Summit in London. The company has committed to sourcing all meat, milk, eggs, fruit and vegetables produced in the UK from farms using regenerative practices by 2035.

It also has benefits for farmers. According to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, climate resilience brought by regenerative practices can increase long-term farm profits by up to 120% in some cases. But it can take up to five years for the benefits to show up, which can be risky for farmers dealing with thin profit margins and increasingly unstable weather conditions.

The size of this $9 trillion supply chain also challenges the change Cato wants to create. Annual support for widespread worldwide adoption of regenerative agriculture is about one-tenth of the estimated $200 billion to $450 billion needed to spur the transition, according to a Rockefeller Foundation report released in June. A paltry 4.3% of total global climate finance in 2019-20 went to agri-food systems.

Alice Legrix de la Salle, impact and regenerative finance lead at AXA Climate, says farmers will need more support to adopt new farming methods. The insurance company recently launched a product aimed at protecting farmers’ margins and the initial hit to yields when they switch to environmentally friendly practices. Although he does not disclose the exact number of hectares covered, he notes that this is still a relatively small-scale programme.

Farmers can also benefit from the sale of carbon credits or certificates generated by their practices; bank loans are another way to make the switch. Corporate giants also offered support.

Cato’s name and efforts have helped open some doors for the regenerative agriculture movement, but this can be challenging for other farmers operating without support or fame. According to an analysis by FAIRR, a global investor network, 50 of 79 agri-food companies surveyed publicly report their regenerative agriculture initiatives, but only 18 have formal quantitative targets. Only four offer financial support to farmers making the switch.

The lack of a formal definition for regenerative agriculture gives farmers flexibility while also giving companies leeway in making green paint. “Most companies setting regenerative targets do not specify what climate outcomes they hope to achieve; BloombergNEF analyst Helen Ramsbottom says they are solely committed to implementing regenerative practices. He adds that companies may not know how much carbon is sequestered in the soil for many years.

Research conducted by FAIRR also found that the lack of a clear definition makes regenerative agriculture claims “difficult to prove, posing significant risk to regulation and changing reporting frameworks.” Cato agrees on the need for clarity: “I don’t think everyone should do the same thing, but I do think people should be clear about what they’re doing.”

However, Sagoo says regenerative agriculture is not as simple as “we discovered the secret to good farming, and that is regenerative agriculture, and when everyone does it, we are all saved.” “These practices that we have are not necessarily easy for all farmers or all cropping systems.”

For now, Wildfarmed is focusing on supporting farmers who grow wheat regeneratively. Cato is trying to increase the company’s influence. Over the summer, she attended the Groundswell Regenerative Agriculture Festival, where she touted Wildfarmed’s approach and marketed its products. This included delivering a pizza made with the company’s flour to a customer who was also trying to reduce agriculture’s climate footprint: Prince William.

©2024 Bloomberg LP