Is Nutrient Density the Next Frontier in Sustainable Agriculture?

As science begins to explore how different farming practices affect the health properties of food, there are new opportunities to incentivise farmers to produce nutrient-rich ingredients

Nina Pullman

For centuries, farmers and scientists have been experimenting with ways to improve the health of plants, yet the relationship between plant health and human health has remained a largely unexplored area of research. That’s starting to change as the science linking the conditions under which a plant is grown and the wellbeing of our bodies becomes ever more compelling.

One consequence of this scientific epiphany is that the term ‘nutrient density’ is starting to gain traction in food and farming circles, fuelled by macro health issues such as the burden of diet-related chronic disease and changing eating habits linked to the rise in GLP-1 weight loss medication.

Food retailers, a group always alive to a marketing opportunity, have responded by launching new product ranges, such as M&S’ Nutrient Dense and Co-op’s Good Fuel, based on the promise that they combine a high concentration of nutrient-rich foods within one product or dish.

Although not marketed explicitly as nutrient dense, foodservice brands are also making nutrition a key pillar of their product development. Last year, Pret launched a Super Plates high-protein salad range, while Greggs is looking to target customers on weight loss drugs by rolling out smaller portion sizes and protein-rich products like its new egg pot.

Combining nutrient dense ingredients within convenience products is one way in which brands are seeking to turn the threat from appetite-suppressing drugs into an opportunity. But arguably of far greater consequence to the future food industry is how questions of nutrient density are also being explored at a chemical level within individual food types.

In the Cambridgeshire Fens, salad producer G’s has embarked on a large-scale transition to regenerative farming across 4,500 hectares. Motivated by declining fertility in its peat-based soils after years of intensive horticulture and heavy fertiliser use, the move was partly borne out of survival instinct – but the results have been dramatic. Fertiliser use has been cut by 40% on some crops thanks to applications of fungi-rich compost, as well as cover cropping and reduced tillage, which have helped re-activate the web of microorganisms within soils.

Initially focused purely on crop immunity and cost savings, teams also began to notice visible signs of increased crop health, such as a flush of deep red colour on Little Gems or waxy coatings on Iceberg leaves. And it was these signals, says Lucy Harler, future farming manager at G’s, which prompted the next stage of the programme.

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G’s was already doing its own sap and tissue testing to measure mineral and vitamin content, but results including improved phosphorus uptake from crops under the regenerative trial indicated a further link between farming method and nutrient intake. As a result, this summer new trials will begin with the aim of measuring secondary metabolites, like the phytochemicals produced by plants, as the first step towards the company gaining a more holistic picture of nutrient density.

Elsewhere, in west Wales, organic farmer Patrick Holden has worked with wholesaler Castell Howell to test a crop of organic carrots he is supplying into schools for their basic nutrient quantities in the hope of proving that sustainably-produced food is also good for human health.

And outside of fruit and vegetable production, regenerative flour brand Wildfarmed has trials well underway to show that its product is more nutritious than conventionally-produced wheat, and is now looking at how this nutritional content is transferred through the milling process into flour.

So what is motivating these early adopter farmers to explore the link between sustainable farming and nutrient density? And could others be incentivised to follow suit, creating a future scenario where the same ingredients are differentiated according to their nutritional value?

Health outcome for ‘regen’

Harler at G’s suggests measures of nutrient density could become a key part of how the company evidences beneficial outcomes from regenerative agriculture. “The angle for us is we’re transitioning how we farm to become regenerative. The nutritional profile might become the outcome for regen,” she says.

There’s a similar motivation for Holden as an organic farmer who says a consumer decision to buy organic is often “an act of faith”, rather than one based on robust evidence of nutritional difference. He believes the ability to generate reliable data based on a common set of principles around nutrient density could be a “game-changer” in a transition to more widescale adoption of sustainable food systems.

The ability to evidence positive outcomes from such a transition is hugely important for farmers, not least to justify their financial investment in regenerative farming and the risks associated with changing systems. But regen, as it’s known, is also an area of farming that is open to greenwash. Regenerative practice has no universal definition or certification, which means farmers could transition only a token corner of the farm, while benefiting from the halo effect of using the term on packs or with customers.

No consensus

The potential for businesses to make claims around nutrient density adds an extra layer of complexity to the already difficult task of measuring and reporting impact from regenerative agriculture. Using nutrient density as an indicator for regen would presumably require a standardised measurement, and even before that, a universal definition of what nutrient density actually means. And there is currently a level of variation across both aspects.

Nutrient density, in simple terms, is the concentration of macro and micro nutrients within a food (fatty acids, proteins, vitamins and minerals etc), as well as levels of phytochemicals, like carotenoids and polyphenols.

One of the limitations in this area is that only a fraction of phytochemicals – some of which have been found to increase immunity or fight cancer cells – within food have been identified. The rest are known only as ‘dark matter’ in food nutrition science, making any measure of nutrient density inherently incomplete. Global populations also have differing levels of nutrient deficiency and malnutrition, so optimal density levels to improve health differ according to context.

That said, commercial testing of nutrient density is starting to become available, including by US company Edacious, which is working with Wildfarmed and will become the testing partner on G’s new regenerative trials.

Edacious founder Eric Smith is cautious of generalised statements about what improves nutrient density in food, but says results from its 150 global customers suggest it is a combination of crop genetics and farming system.

The company is also wary of data variability in what is an emerging and complex area. “We only work with customers who are ready to do physical testing and gain their own primary data, because we know how variable the data can be,” explains Smith.

One influential database and tool has been developed by the Bionutrient Food Association (BFA), based on 25,000 crop samples from multiple continents, made accessible through a hand-held spectrometer device. Results have found widespread variation between nutrient density within the same food types.

While Smith and Edacious consider genetics to play a role, the BFA, led by Dan Kittredge, has found that the only thing to have “meaningful causal links” to nutrient density is soil health, with no impact from genetics, certification or individual practice.

Farming practice

Other evidence, however, supports the link between wider farming practice and nutrient density. Much of this was compiled by farmer and doctor Hannah Fraser in her 2025 Nuffield report, ’Displacing empty calories with nutrient dense food’, which identified the four areas where it has been possible to improve nutrient density as soil health, breeding, biofortification and animal feed.

In a long-term wheat trial at Rothamsted Research in the UK, for example, Fraser observed that even in plots where no fertilisers were applied, the nutrient content of modern dwarf wheat varieties was still lower than that of older varieties.

“This suggests that the issue is not simply a dilution effect derived from increased yields, but that genetic changes in the wheat itself have reduced the crops’ ability to take up and accumulate minerals,” she notes.

Breeding for nutrient density using natural methods is certainly possible. Examples from around the world include high vitamin A sweet potatoes, high iron beans and high lycopene tomatoes.

Speak to fruit and veg breeders, however, and although nutrient density is on their radar, it is not considered a priority. The impact of climate change combined with declining availability of chemical products, means that disease resilience is by far the greatest requirement when selecting new crop varieties, followed by yield, and very occasionally, taste. As one breeder puts it: “It’s better to have something rather than nothing.”

Another sees current health trends as being more significant, with retailers under pressure to sell more healthy food, but believes a better answer lies in communicating what nutrients are contained in existing varieties of fruit and veg, for example the high vitamin C content of some pepper varieties.

Price or policy

For those farmers who are experimenting with testing and improving nutrient density, their motivation is, at least in part, the hope of securing a premium in price somewhere down the line.

Edd Lees of flour brand Wildfarmed has spoken previously about how he expects nutrition to be “a total unlock” for consumers to buy sustainably-produced food.

No doubt there will always be those who can afford to pay more for a proven health benefit, something currently playing out in the burgeoning marketing noise around protein or fibre. But adding higher priced nutrient dense food into the mix also risks widening the gap in health inequality in the UK, where food deserts and the cost-of-living disproportionately affect the ability of people on lower incomes to access healthy food.

Perhaps instead, policy incentives could encourage farmers to improve nutrient density in a way that brings nutrient dense products to market in a fairer way. This would be welcomed by farmers, believes Harler, at G’s, given that schemes such as the government’s Sustainable Farming Incentive can disadvantage early adopters of sustainable practice, who have a higher baseline of biodiversity or soil health. In contrast, increasing nutrient density takes years of activating soil health with no short-cuts, she explains, and any evidence-based payments would inherently have to recognise this.

For now, the main barriers to making nutrient density a focus for farmers are the cost of testing secondary nutrients such as phytochemicals, a general lack of understanding about what should be tested, and an absence of pressure from those further down the supply chain like retailers and foodservice operators.

As the food and farming system moves towards inevitable and significant restructure, nutrient density provides a compelling narrative around the value in improving the health of soils alongside human health. But doing this in a way that maximises public health benefits, while incentivising and rewarding farmers, is likely to prove a far greater challenge.