Guidance on the use of claims that involve regenerative farming will leave businesses stuck in the mud. By David Burrows.

Commservation. This year there has been “increasing chatter” around regenerative farming, notes the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in a new article that aims to offer guidance for companies looking to spread this new sustainability seed in their marketing. 

You could say that again. The likes of Marks and Spencer, Ask Italian and one of my favourite cafés in Edinburgh have all started using the term (on products audited by Wildfarmed). Nestlé meanwhile has a “consumer-friendly interpretation of regenerative agriculture” on some cereal packs.  Gipsy Hill Brew is another example, using regeneratively-farmed barley to create a claimed “negative” environmental footprint; while Honest Burgers has been having a go too. 

Organic growth. Expect other such claims to emerge on high street menus near you soon (so we have been reliably informed). And expect some widespread fudging of these environmentally-friendly farming practices. Most of what is out there “has nothing to do with regeneration … it’s to make a buck”, Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, CEO at Tree-Range farms and a man seeking to design truly regenerative systems for poultry, told me recently. “You have been sold fake claims in exchange for your money,” he said. 

Load of bull. Critics of the customisation of regenerative agriculture for the consumer market are not hard to find these days. One told me, without a hint of irony given we were standing in a field of livestock, that what’s out there currently is mostly bullsh*t. To claim anything is regenerative in 2024 seems premature. 

Tricky trickster. That isn’t to say some are striving for better production; just that marketing it as such is tricky. Indeed, if consumers feel they’re being tricked the whole thing could collapse. “It’s a trending term,” said Sodexo director of sustainability Claire Atkins Morris at a Footprint event earlier this year. “We feel it’s not fair on the farming community or our customers to have something in place when it’s not been fully defined.”

Defining moment? The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has stepped in to help companies out. Its new article outlines the practices involved in regenerative farming – limiting soil disturbance, maintaining year-round soil cover etc – but notes that not all regenerative farming is coalesced around both key actions taken, but also key outcomes, which are to do with the precise measurement of those actions taken. “Critically, these outcomes go beyond agricultural productivity alone and encompass consideration of other natural resources and public goods such as biodiversity and water quality,” the authority explains.

Compliance with science. The ASA’s advice is that companies making claims around regenerative farming should therefore: (i) ensure that they suitably clarify the basis for those claims and must always bear in mind the likely average consumer ‘take-out’ from them; (ii) speak about what they’ve done and are doing now, rather than what they plan to achieve in the future; and (iii) avoid implying that regenerative farming carries any kind of formal or legal standard (unlike organic, which does have legal status in the UK). 

And don’t forget: “Claiming to use regenerative farming methods alone is typically not going to be enough to substantiate claims of a product’s positive environmental benefit; advertisers also need to bear the whole lifecycle of a product in mind before making any such claims,” the ASA said. 

Met-tricks. There is a nod to why the whole concept is a marketing money-spinner: “[…] because there is currently no legal or universally agreed definition of the term, it could be used in a wide-ranging way as a descriptor, likely with various possible interpretations.” And “because there are so many metrics by which absolute claims such as these can be measured in a food-related context, even advertisers who use them in a conditional or comparative way run the risk of misleading consumers if their use is not suitably qualified or substantiated”. 

Stuck in the muddle. The further you get into the ASA’s guidance though the more lost you become. The authority for example suggests talking about “the journey that you’ve been on” rather than the “uncertain final destination” and yet “claims are likely to be much more capable of objective substantiation, where they are based on actual outcomes, rather than on future projections”. As Dominic Watkins from law firm DWF suggests: “While any guidance and clarity should be welcomed, this does not necessary help in giving clarity for those operating in the space.”