Social outcomes as a pillar for building a just and regenerative agriculture system

Centering equity, livelihoods, and community well-being alongside environmental outcomes in regenerative agriculture standards and supply chains.

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

Bridging the gap: Including social outcomes in regenerative agriculture standards and certifications for recommendations and guidance, alongside further areas of action, for stakeholders to develop criteria and metrics for what ‘just practices’ look like in regenerative agriculture.

Read our 2025 toolkit addendum

We are what we measure: Tracking and understanding regenerative agriculture's social impacts, grounded in evidence gathered across two participatory workshops in 2025, this resource illuminates the needs, barriers, and pathways for implementation for social impact metrics and alignment within agricultural supply chains.

Background: Why we focused on Social Outcomes

Market-driven incentives for regenerative agriculture have grown at a prolific rate. Companies like Kering, Nestlé, General Mills and PepsiCo have set ambitious targets to source regenerative ingredients or support the transition to regenerative systems on range and farmlands. As a result, there are also a growing number of standards, certifications and verification programs that provide clear measurement criteria for whether a farm or product is “regenerative.” These labels and verification programs can help raise awareness about regenerative practices, support consumers to understand and trust the claims companies make about their products, and ensure quality control and transparency across supply chains.

While this progress is promising, our report, Growing our Future: What’s next for regenerative agriculture in the US?, illustrated that these programs almost exclusively focus on criteria for landscape-level or environmental outcomes such as soil health, carbon sequestration, and water. They rarely include criteria related to positive social impact – such as worker safety, farmer livelihoods and wellbeing, and economic prosperity.

New benchmarks have been developed to help large buyers assess environmental outcomes and shift their procurement to regenerative agriculture. There is an immense need and opportunity with these new benchmarks to prioritize social outcomes as a key pillar of regenerative programs.

That’s why, as part of the Growing our Future initiative, Forum for the Future has asked:

What if equity, justice, and thriving farm communities were incentivized alongside positive environmental outcomes in regenerative agriculture? What if farm communities were centered in the design and measurement of social metrics?

Highlights and learnings from our Social Outcomes work, 2020-2025

We coalesced a multi-stakeholder working group around what outcomes farmers, ranchers, and farmworkers want to see in the regenerative agriculture movement; culminating insight gathering at the Rural Coalition Winter Forum in 2023.

We hosted in-person and virtual meetings that featured partner work on measuring social outcomes, such as the tools developed by ABLE ecosystems, American Farmland Trust, and Oatly.

We presented our work at various partner conferences and working group meetings, such as the Sustainable Agriculture Summit in Anaheim, CA in 2025.

Spotlight on Regeneration in Action: Promoting a more holistic approach to understanding and measuring regenerative outcomes

Through interviews, workshops and conversations, we’ve learned that producers want to see tangible and long-term benefits for their workforce (farmers, ranchers, and farmworkers), positive outcomes in their own local communities, and fundamental shifts in the dynamics between producers and buyers – outcomes not easily captured in a metric or standard.

Certifications like Regenerative Organic Certification, which has shown 22% year over year dollar growth since launch, include ambitious Social Fairness standards alongside ecological outcomes. But certifiers aren’t the only stakeholders who can drive change by measuring social outcomes. Companies, aggregators, and suppliers can join the movement to measure social outcomes, enabling:

A better understanding of the holistic impacts of regenerative investments on the ground

More robust, data-backed evidence for how regenerative investments drive on-farm profits

Supply chain resilience starting at the farm level

Increased marketplace access for producers and more visibility for brands and retailers

Nevertheless, employing social metrics alone – while a critical lever for building regenerative supply sheds – will not build an equitable agriculture system if the process of adoption, measurement, and enforcement is inequitable.

Together, we can build agricultural programs that deliver benefits to ecosystems, climate, and people. Need support on strategy, implementation, or case-making for agricultural impact? Forum is here to help.
Above photo: Forum strategist and Growing our Future project director Michelle Stearn engages a captive workshop audience on social impact metrics at the Sustainable Agriculture Summit in Anaheim, California in November 2025.

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