Members of the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI), including McCain Foods, recently launched an innovative farm Lighthouse Project called “Routes to Regen” to show how cross-sector collaboration can help make regenerative farming a more appealing business proposition for farmers in the UK.

Implemented in the East of England during 2025, the project aims to address the environmental problems brought on by the global food system, which continues to be the leading driver of nature loss and is responsible for about 30% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

Notwithstanding the well-established benefits of regenerative farming, the Agribusiness Hub of the SMI has shown that financial risk and a fragmented support system often deter farmers from adopting the practice.

Top food and finance companies, such as McCain Foods, McDonald’s, Lloyds Banking Group, Waitrose & Partners, NatWest, Barclays, Aon, Tokio Marine Kiln, and Lloyd’s, will use this project to put the research’s findings into practice. By combining and streamlining support systems into an understandable framework for farmers and providing professional assistance to help them choose the best options for their particular business, it seeks to show a unified approach to addressing transitional obstacles.

The project will be program-managed by The Royal Countryside Fund, with on-farm advice from Ceres Rural and will provide participating farmers with Financial support: Awareness of the discounted capital available, business planning advice, opportunities to supply rotational crops, discounted seeds for cover crops and pollinators, weather insurance, advice to make best use of public funding schemes; Technical support: Research and trial insights, connections to local livestock farmers, assistance with measurement/data collection such as discounted soil sampling; Peer-to-Peer support: Opportunities to attend demonstration days and knowledge sharing events.

By taking a whole-farm approach, the program aims to reduce risk for the farmer, increase adoption rates, and make regenerative agriculture a more viable and attractive choice for farmers.

The support options have been provided by the SMI members leading the work alongside other companies and initiatives operating in the region including ADM, British Sugar, Burgess Farms, Cranswick plc, Farm Carbon Toolkit, Frontier, Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENs), Muntons, North Farm Livestock, Soil Association Exchange, Sustainable Food Trust and Wildfarmed.

Testing SAI Platform’s Recently Developed Regenerating Together Framework

The project will also test SAI Platform’s recently developed Regenerating Together Framework, which offers a globally aligned definition and farmer-centric approach for regenerative agriculture, as the basis for its measurement and evaluation.

The group intends to showcase learning from the project to other organizations aiming to accelerate regenerative farming around the world, with ambitions for it to be replicated in other regions, with more support for farmers added. A key area of opportunity will be leveraging the Sustainable Markets Initiative’s network of over 250 CEOs globally, to unite the food, finance, and insurance sectors, facilitating the essential collaboration needed.

The Sustainable Markets Initiative’s Agribusiness Hub was launched in 2020 with the aim of accelerating the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices within the industry while ensuring positive partnerships with the world’s farmers.

In 2022, its ‘Scaling Regenerative Farming: An Action Plan’ identified five key barriers to adoption—costs, policy, sourcing, metrics, and income—while its 2023 report ‘Levers for Implementation’ outlined a blueprint for businesses to drive change.

More recently, in January 2025, the Agribusiness Transition Hub launched a practical guide using UK insights, led by Lloyds Banking Group, to increase cross-industry collaboration and public and private sector alignment to support efforts to scale regenerative agriculture.

With this innovative project, members of the Hub are now putting those insights into action, aiming to demonstrate how a united approach can accelerate adoption and unlock long-term sustainability for farmers worldwide.