Making sense of shifts in our agriculture system: Roadmapping to the future with the Three Horizons Framework 

If you ask a group of 10-year-olds about the future, they’re hopeful and excited, quick to brainstorm solutions, and can’t wait to share the role they want to play when they “grow up.” We are all born as visionary, imaginative creatures. But our current reality --- from climate and ecological catastrophe to war and geopolitical turmoil --- often clouds our vision for what’s possible, especially as we get older. At Forum for the Future (Forum), we are passionate about finding alternatives to these deeply engrained paradigms. Out of all the tools in our futures and system change toolbox, the Three Horizons Framework is particularly helpful in asking ourselves: what’s dying, what’s emerging, and what’s on the horizon that we can’t see yet? How can we collectively move closer to these new future realities – especially the ones in which we can all thrive? 

Above: The Three Horizons Framework, a tool Forum uses to plot patterns, signals, and visions and map their prevalence over time. To learn more about the Three Horizons, check out resources published by our sister organization, the School of System Change.  

Our team is hardwired to navigate complex changes and generate solutions to reach an ambitious new vision for our agriculture system. For five years, the Growing our Future initiative did just that, gathering change-makers from across food and agriculture, learning about our current system, and identifying what pathways exist to get to a more just and regenerative agriculture future for all. 

Roadmap for the Future: Harnessing connectivity for a just transition to regenerative agriculture 

When it launched in 2020, Growing our Future was ahead of its time. It had a bold vision: to transform how agriculture operates in the United States (US), shifting the paradigm from industrial agriculture to a system that regenerates both nature and communities and prioritizes socioeconomic justice alongside climate action.

For five years, this multi-stakeholder collaboration, which gathered over 350 people and organizations across the value chain, tackled key opportunity areas --- like policy advocacy, innovative financing, and new pathways to market --- with the potential to unlock systemic transformation. From our first convenings, in which we took stock of what was happening in the landscape and co-created a vision of change, we worked to transform how diverse change-makers see their role in food and agriculture, prototyped and piloted new models, and shaped stories and narratives to advance a just transition to regenerative agriculture in the US.

In 2025, we gathered stakeholders across the US for a refreshed landscape analysis and the development of a ‘roadmap’ for the future. We used the Three Horizons framework to analyze and visualize the insights emerging from these events and to support change-makers to pinpoint solutions -- and see themselves in the regenerative transition.  

Across these gatherings, the widening gap between challenge and opportunity became clear – and so did the need to make sense of this rapidly shifting context. We heard how farmers are facing big losses on every acre, more land is under threat of development and increased consolidation is squeezing farmers’ already thin margins, with more farmworkers lives and livelihoods at risk. And yet, the growing momentum behind the regenerative agriculture movement is palpable – from promising upticks in consumer demand to increased investment in regenerative transition across philanthropic and venture capital, alongside public and corporate investments. 

While the current reality can be daunting, our visions for the future of agriculture (and the solutions that get us there) are stronger than ever.

Above: Participants at our Roadmap for the Future event, held in September 2025 during Climate Week NYC in partnership with Why Regenerative and the Regenerative Agriculture Foundation. Participants shared opportunities, challenges, visions, and innovative solutions. This event, along with our 5-Year Retrospective virtual event held in October 2025, informed the insights below. 

Persistent barriers, promising signals of transformation: The state of regenerative agriculture today 

Above: The visualizations are organized into thematic areas that correspond to key opportunity areas, or levers of change, explored through the Growing our Future initiative. Levers of change we explored across all three horizons include shaping policy, engaging landowners, activating consumers, and prioritizing nutritional benefits. Download the Horizon 1 diagram here. 

We often begin systems analyses by exploring the First Horizon or “business as usual.” This constitutes observations we can see in the here and now where the status quo is no longer serving us. Here are our top insights about Horizon One. 

1. While farmers and farmworkers are experiencing hardship and the stakes are high, the regenerative transition is creating a compass for action 

Across the board, participants at our 2025 Climate Week NYC gathering noted how low commodity prices and sky-high input costs make it hard for farmers to weather the storm – both metaphorically and literally – as evidenced by rising bankruptcy rates for farmers. And this is only exacerbated by increased farm consolidation and the funding cuts and current geopolitical turmoil. 

While the regenerative transition has attracted significant attention, much of the related progress hasn’t been codified and may not be permanent. Despite an immense lobbying push, such as the increase in farmworker advocacy and activism, there’s still a way to go before regeneration, land access and access to capital become mainstream advocacy terms. That said, pursuing common goals, like prioritizing healthy foods, has provided some respite to Congressional gridlock, and has even brought trade unions and grocery industry together in support of recent national policy changes for nutrition. 

“National Young Farmers Coalition recently worked with a major food retailer to turn an initial $1M investment into $300M in USDA funds to allocate to producers, including young and beginning farmers. There is hope, even amidst geopolitical turmoil, that if we join forces, harness current resource- and power-holders, and think big about how we shape our food and ag systems, we can move mountains.”

- Vanessa García Polanco, Policy Campaigns Co-Director, National Young Farmers Coalition 

2. Farmers and grassroots coalitions are stepping up to support funding and financing while government programs get slashed  

Many farmers have stepped up to fill critical infrastructure and funding gaps – shifting their own business models, diversifying revenue streams, and pursuing direct-to-consumer avenues to market their goods. But many are still fighting to reinstate their frozen funds in the wake up major federal funding cuts. On a positive note, it’s more widely acknowledged that farmers learn best from each other in peer-to-peer networks, with an uptick in programs that honor (and compensate) farmers as the experts of their own operations and craft. 

Mutual aid groups, values-driven philanthropies, farmer cooperatives, state-sponsored local processing facilities, and cost sharing programs have become even more essential for farms to survive. This signal points to an overall increased demand for “patient” capital, or funding that honors longer-term time horizons associated with agriculture and ecosystem restoration.  

3. Agriculture can be a carbon sink, helping companies show greenhouse gas reductions. But are we measuring what matters? 

Measurement of soil health indicators and carbon accounting continue to dominate the regenerative agriculture space. New and emerging accountability mechanisms (such as new land sector removal guidelines within the global Greenhouse Gas Protocol), coupled with more rigorous standards and third-party auditors, help ensure accountability. At the same time, farmers and farmworkers share that any regenerative transition needs to benefit the people who make our agriculture system work. An overemphasis on climate accounting raises the risk that our efforts miss important qualitative markers of success, like Growing our Future's guidance for prioritizing livelihoods, farmer resilience, and long-term relational benefits.  

4. “Regenerative” has gained visibility and consumers are excited, yet skeptical of greenwashing 

For the average consumer, “regenerative” products have drummed up some attention on grocery store shelves: while farmers pursue direct-to-consumer marketing strategies, many companies are turning to "regenerative" as a positive brand strategy, bolstered by demand signals and clear market growth for new certifications like Regenerative Organic.  

Despite consumer curiosity, there’s still a lack of cohesive storytelling for how brands and farmers alike can market regeneratively produced goods. This confusion can be linked to consumer fatigue and skepticism of greenwashing – for example, one study found that over 58% of consumers have boycotted a food brand due to misinformation about sustainable claims.  

This theme nods to the continued lack of understanding of the energy, resources, and capital it takes to nourish our communities --- there’s still a veil of mystery that shrouds the true "grit" behind farming. That’s why so much of our attention as the Growing our Future initiative has been around shifting narratives – the way we talk about food and agriculture in media can have a real impact on outcomes for farmers and ecosystems. Classism, racism and other power dynamics persist, with knock-on effects. 

Many participants across our convenings challenged the classism and white supremacy embedded in the mainstream regenerative agriculture movement. Farmers, especially Black, Indigenous, Latina/o/e, and young farmers shared how fatiguing it is to constantly need to "prove" their identities to obtain resources and markets. Recent policy changes have had measurable negative effects on producers and have exacerbated existing inequities -- especially on Black farmers who often play a pivotal role in direct community food access. 

“Collectively, we must share power, organize, shift resources, and orient towards a culturally responsible transition, one that meets real needs of producers, and centers return of land to tribes and Indigenous stewardship as a core tenet.”

- Chanel Ford, Director of Programs, Native American Agriculture Fund

There’s a huge opportunity to focus on the intersectionality of the agriculture sector as a unifier across community development, health, climate, and our economy.