Financing the transition to a just and regenerative agriculture system

Designing financial pathways that support farmers, ecosystems, and resilient food systems.

This work was part of a collaborative initiative of the Growing our Future US project from 2020-2025.

Explore our tools & resources from the 5-year collaborative period

Don’t miss our 2023 toolkit

to guide you on using insetting in climate adaptation and regenerative agricultural production.

Read Ecosystem services market programs in action

to learn from the first-ever application of regenerative cotton protocols in the US during the 2022/23 growing season.

Background: Why we focused on Financing the Transition

Agriculture accounts for more than 11% of greenhouse gas emissions annually in the US and contributes to soil erosion and water contamination. Farmers are struggling to survive the economic pressures of inflation and increasing challenges from erratic weather patterns. Though demand continues to increase, low prices are forcing growers to make tough decisions to make ends meet.

Various incentives, financial instruments and business models have emerged to begin to address these intersecting challenges and embed more environmentally and socially sustainable practices; however, there is often a mismatch between farmer realities and flows of capital and risk coverage. As regenerative approaches become more available, collaborative efforts are needed to ensure that innovations can succeed at scale – and with integrity – to advance a just and inclusive vision for our agriculture system.

Highlights and learnings from our Financing the Transition work, 2020-2025

Convened changemakers through our Financing the Transition workstream to ideate, imagine, and scope innovative business models to de-risk the transition to regenerative systems

Launched a pilot in partnership with the Ecosystem Services Market Consortium, engaging four producers and one brand in applying first-of-its-kind regenerative protocols for cotton in the US

Presented our findings from the our working group and the cotton pilot with partners like Textile Exchange, to continue exploring applications for the learnings

Conducted dozens of interviews and prototyped social impact metrics for integration in ecologically-focused MMRV platforms (see our work on measuring social outcomes of regenerative agriculture)

Spotlight on Regeneration in Action: Payments for ecosystem services as a pathway for inclusive, innovative financing models

From 2022-2024, in partnership with Ecosystem Services Market Consortium (ESMC), we piloted the first-ever application of a regenerative protocol to the US cotton sector. We engaged apparel brands and retailers interested in understanding how such financial mechanisms can enable regenerative transitions, building resiliency in their industry; assist in meeting their business's climate targets; and address scope 3 emission concerns within their supply chain.

This marked the first-ever application of regenerative cotton protocols in the US, along with the development of a specific monitoring and verification system to track, quantify, and verify carbon outcomes on farms using state-of-the-art Measurement, Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MMRV) and bio-geochemical modeling.

Through this initiative, we:

Built partnerships and demonstrated the viability of new business models that encourage long-term resilience – and distribute value more equitably.

Supported cotton growers in transitioning to regenerative practices, providing technical assistance and capital.

Helped companies/brands/suppliers meet their sustainability and emissions reductions targets.

Trialed the measurement of social outcomes, encouraging buyers to develop sourcing strategies that prioritize farmer livelihoods and other regenerative outcomes.

Generated and shared insights encouraging a more holistic definition of regenerative cotton.

The first full growing season of the pilot supported the adoption of regenerative practices and the quantification of insetting outcomes (carbon dioxide (CO2) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions and removals) as ecosystem services credits. The pilot successfully engaged four producers across Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas, enrolling a total of 2,276 acres of which 1,524 acres were modeled with 191.552 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (mtCO2e) removed and reduced through a combination of modeling, soil sampling and upstream emissions. Another key success of the pilot was the commitment of an Italian luxury brand to purchase the volume of the cotton grown through the initiative, in addition to the regenerative cotton credits generated from the application of these newly-developed regenerative practices.

In the year following our pilot to test the application of regenerative cotton protocols in the Southeastern US, we continued to track the opportunities that financing through payments for ecosystem services (PES) can provide, along with challenges and barriers to implementation and integration across multiple sectors and commodities.

We spoke to brands, middle actors, farmers, and service providers to get a better understanding of what’s needed next to responsibly finance the transition. Find out more in our Spotlight on the State of Payments for Ecosystem Services.

Key insights from our post-pilot exploration:

Insetting programs continue to have the potential to provide a huge opportunity for farmers.

Despite the high potential of PES programs to increase flow of capital to regenerative adoption, there’s still skepticism and overwhelm. Long term agreements, trust-building, and additional tools are needed to reduce financial risks for farmers.

PES programs must be better integrated into business models to ensure traceability, longevity, and sustainability of regenerative farming. Patient and blended capital models are need to move from pilots to full-scale integration.
Engaging the full supply chain, including middle actors, can help unlock data and capital flows to mitigate risk and show ROI for all stakeholders.

“Insetting leads to stronger relationships grounded it listening, farmers want to feel heard, and this creates more energy + buy-in for the program. Farmers want fairness, stability, and simplicity. Insetting allows for that." - Timothy Bradford Jr. (T.J.), Ph.D., Senior Agronomist & Owner, Bradford Agricultural Consulting and Bradford Farms

“At the end of the day if we see if it's working, we will do it. Farmers have the exact same goal as brands. None of these ideas - i.e. cover crops - are new. What creates the domino effect is financial success.” - Growing our Future partner

Join us

We're still exploring questions, such as:

How can we go beyond carbon in measuring ecological and social outcomes, like biodiversity, water quality, and farmer wellbeing + livelihoods?

How do we address claiming issues or “double-counting” when brands invest in similar supply sheds or across a crop rotation?

In what ways can brands and suppliers collaborate to demystify the traceability challenges that prevent buyers from investing directly in farmers?

Email [email protected] to learn more and join us to convene around these topics and others.

Latest

Now Recruiting: Global Board of Trustees Members

Do you want to create impactful change, addressing critical global challenges? Do you have a collaborative approach to relationship building, a successful track record of leading through change, experience in convening and a commitment to our mission?
Lavanya Garg

Associate Director, India
The next phase of India’s energy transition

India’s renewable energy transition is entering a more complex phase where speed and scale alone are no longer enough. Reflecting on discussions from the Responsible Renewable Energy Summit 2026, this article explores why community trust, biodiversity, accountability, and responsible implementation must become central to the transition. It highlights the growing need for collaborative, systems-based approaches that balance rapid deployment with long-term social and ecological resilience.
Inside Forum’s Learning and Impact Week, May 2026

What happens when an organisation intentionally creates time to pause, reflect, and learn together? In this reflection from Forum’s May 2026 Learning and Impact Week, we explore why learning is central to how impact happens, and why making space for collective inquiry matters more than ever.

Sustainability News from 3BL
The Five Capitals - a framework for sustainability

The Five Capitals Model provides a basis for understanding sustainability in terms of the economic concept of wealth creation or ‘capital’. Any organisation will use five types of capital to deliver its products or services. A sustainable organisation will maintain and where possible enhance these stocks of capital assets, rather than deplete or degrade them.
Jobs

We are a growing organisation and we are regularly on the look out for new recruits to join our teams around the world.
For a just and regenerative future

Forum for the Future is a leading international sustainability organisation running out of offices in the UK, US, India and Singapore.
Growing our Future US

Working together to accelerate the transition to a just and regenerative agriculture system in the United States.
Sustainability and system change

Climate change, malnutrition, inequality, poverty, ecological degradation. The global challenges we face are so urgent and tricky that we need a solution to match their scale and complexity. This is where system change comes in. We use systems thinking to understand the web of interrelations that create complex problems, anticipate unintended consequences, and identify how and where to take action to meet the SDG goals.
What is Net Positive?

We reinvent strategies for a 1.5°C world. Our Net Positive approach helps business put back more into society and environment than it takes out. Unilever’s pioneering commitment to eliminate fossil fuels from its operations and directly support the generation of more renewable energy than they consume was driven behind the scenes by Forum.
Working at Forum

Reimagining the way the world works is our day job - and it could be yours too.
Transport or Mobility: What’s the difference and why does it matter?

Recently, the word transportation is being replaced with mobility. Why is this happening? What’s the difference between them? And why should we care about this change?
6 ways Unilever has achieved success through sustainability - and how your business can too

A year ago this week, Unilever launched its Sustainable Living Plan (USLP), one of the most ambitious strategies that a global company has ever embarked on. Pioneering a bold new business model, the company pledged to double in size at the same time as halving its environmental footprint.