Our current agri-food system is unsustainable. It contributes to at least one third of global greenhouse gas emissions and agriculture is the leading driver of deforestation. Meanwhile, 20-40% of agricultural land is degraded, with declining soil health a key food security concern. 2.83 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet and in countries such as the UK, US, and Australia, around 50% of calories consumed come from ultra-processed foods.
While governments fail to take concrete action on these sustainability challenges, another set of actors has more than willingly volunteered to take charge – multi-national corporations (MNCs).
Corporate power via market concentration is a defining feature of our global agri-food system. For instance, just four companies dominate 70% of the global agrochemical inputs market. The exercise of this corporate power is now also moving beyond markets, with MNCs increasingly sharing the stage with world leaders and setting the agenda at global food governance events.
But how do these corporations plan on creating a sustainable agri-food system? One solution that they have been promoting loudly is regenerative agriculture (RA). RA is a social-environmental movement which promotes agriculture that rejuvenates landscapes and farms via the enhancement of water, nutrient, and carbon cycles through practices such as minimising soil disturbance, integrating livestock, maximising soil cover, rotational grazing, and lowering external inputs.
RA remained a fringe concept until around 2015, with awareness of the movement growing exponentially ever since. As my article in Globalizations, which has been awarded the 2025 AIPEN Richard Higgott Prize, demonstrates, one of the main drivers behind this rise of RA was powerful agri-food corporations.
In my analysis, I identify 21 major agri-food MNCs which had an active RA policy or program between 2021-23. Using Clapp & Fuchs’ (2009) power framework, I examined how these corporations are enacting instrumental, structural, and discursive means to co-opt the RA movement and entrench their power and influence in the global agri-food system.
These companies hold substantial instrumental power capacity through their material wealth, with US$1.646 trillion in collective revenue in 2020. 11 of these MNCs have also committed to investing a total of US$3.919 billion in RA. The largest of these commitments is from Syngenta who, as one of the world’s biggest agrochemical producers, has set a target to reduce the carbon intensity of its operations by 50% by 2030. Part of this commitment includes a US$2 billion investment over five years towards increasing “agricultural productivity in a sustainable and responsible way to advance regenerative agriculture”.
Some of these companies are also co-investing in RA programs. PepsiCo and Walmart have made a joint US$120 million investment to support the uptake of RA across two million acres of US farmland, with the aim of achieving four million metric tonnes of emissions reduction and removal by 2030.
However, while these investments in climate mitigation and farmland regeneration seem positive, there is little clarity on how these efforts relate to state-level mitigation policies or avoid double-counting. There are also unanswered questions regarding assumptions being made about the reliability of soil carbon sequestration to support climate mitigation (the linchpin of these companies’ RA-based mitigation programs).
These companies are also invoking more traditional instrumental power via lobbying. CEO of Syngenta Group, Erik Fyrwald, wrote an op-ed for CNBC calling on the Biden administration to ‘look to regenerative agriculture’ to help advance climate action. It is likely no coincidence that Syngenta is also growing its farm management and precision agriculture technologies, which are commonly used to support RA practices.
By virtue of their size and market share, MNCs also have a structural advantage over other actors when it comes to the RA movement. Each of these companies are dominant in their respective industries, and the scale of their supply chains means any rules or targets they set will impact a vast network of suppliers, many of whom are based in the Global South and already struggle to make a living wage.
Of the 21 companies analysed, 11 have set RA supply chain targets. For example, Nestlé has set a target to source 20% of its key ingredients through RA by 2025 and 50% by 2030. However, if Nestlé were to evenly distribute its pledged US$1.3 billion investment in RA across its 500,000 producers, each farm business would only receive US$2,600. This is unlikely to sufficiently offset the costs of converting to RA practices. However, with the market domination of these MNCs, and overlapping commitments across different supply chain stages, farmers are left with little choice but to comply.
Another form of structural power among MNCs is their move into private governance and authority, a tool to legitimise their power and ‘take responsibility’ for themselves. One example in RA is the One Planet Business for Biodiversity (OP2B) group, which was launched at the United Nation’s Climate Action Summit in 2019. OP2B is a coalition of MNCs focused on three action areas: scaling up RA practices, enhancing biodiversity, and protecting high-value ecosystems. It includes many of the corporations from my study, as well as other notable members such as Ikea, Microsoft, and BCG.
One of the key activities of OP2B has been the ‘Regenerative Agriculture Framework’, which outlines an agreed set of objectives for scaling up RA across supply chains, and metrics for evaluating RA programs. While this framework could improve accountability for these MNCs’ RA targets, it is also an example of how business groups like to write the rules before anyone else can. Discussion on how to define or measure RA outcomes among farmers and farming groups is ongoing, but OP2B has already set its own parameters and goals that will have repercussions along supply chains.
OP2B’s framework is also an example of discursive power, the shaping of ideas to achieve desired goals. News and media mentions similarly demonstrate how these MNCs have prominently featured in discourse around RA. Some 674 news items on ‘regenerative agriculture’ or ‘regenerative farming’ between 2014-2023 mention the companies analysed. In comparison, news mentions with ‘farmer’ yielded 2,002 results. This demonstrates the scale of corporate discourse in the RA movement, even just from these 21 companies.
These MNCs are also partnering with non-government organisations to further legitimise their RA programs and position in agri-food system governance (a practice known as the ‘halo effect’). Of the corporations analysed, five have partnered with the Nature Conservancy in their RA initiatives, three with WWF, and one with Conservation International.
It is important to remember that these MNCs have been key players in developing and growing the industrial and extractivist food system that RA is supposed to be counter to. The agrochemical products produced by Bayer, Syngenta, and Yara International have driven bird and pollinator population declines. Cargill and JBS manage vast intensive animal feedlots to deliver cheap and value-added meat products for mass consumption (despite the environmental and health impacts of high-meat diets). Likewise, Nestlé, Unilever, PepsiCo, Mars Inc., and McDonalds’ production and promotion of ultra-processed foods has caused malnutrition in nations that are otherwise food secure. The use of RA discourse by these companies could therefore be justifiably labelled as ‘greenwashing’.
What my article highlights is that some of the most powerful agri-food MNCs are attempting to legitimise their position in the governance of a sustainable agri-food system via the co-optation of RA. In alignment with what Harriet Friedmann described as the ‘corporate-environmental food regime’, these companies are positioning themselves as key players in the RA movement, investing capital beyond the means of farming organisations (and many governments), and setting targets that impact global supply chains. They have co-opted the RA discourse to disguise their impacts on humans and the environment, and frame themselves as legitimate actors in both the RA movement and global agri-food system governance, all while opening up new industries and economic opportunities for the ongoing spread of corporate concentration.
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