Foodscapes as Living Laboratories: Emerging Lessons for Advancing Regenerative Transitions
Drawing on lessons from six landscapes across four continents, this learning brief explores how regenerative agriculture can scale by strengthening the systems that support lasting change. The report highlights practical insights on farmer engagement, policy, markets, finance, and learning, while identifying the partnerships and institutions needed to accelerate positive outcomes for people, nature, water, and climate.
Subject Tags
- Agriculture
- Land management
- Regenerative food systems
Abstract
This learning brief synthesizes emerging lessons from The Nature Conservancy's Regenerative Foodscapes portfolio, a set of landscape-scale initiatives spanning the United States, Argentina, Colombia, Kenya, and India. Drawing on several years of implementation, the report examines how regenerative transitions can be accelerated by strengthening five interconnected enabling systems: farmer delivery, policy alignment, market development, transition finance, and measurement and learning. Across diverse contexts, the portfolio reveals that durable change depends not only on the adoption of regenerative practices, but also on the institutions, incentives, partnerships, and financing structures that support them. The brief identifies three cross-cutting lessons that emerge across landscapes: the importance of adaptive management, the value of cross-landscape learning, and the critical role of intermediary institutions in enabling collective action and scale. Intended for practitioners, companies, governments, donors, and implementation partners, the report offers practical insights for advancing regenerative food systems that deliver benefits for climate, water, nature, and rural livelihoods.
TNC Authors
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Saswati Bora
Global Director, Regenerative Food Systems
The Nature Conservancy
Email: saswati.bora@tnc.org