When Michael Ham first began handing out samples of his company’s tea to Whole Foods shoppers in 2024, explaining that it was grown using regenerative farming on South Korea’s Jeju Island, he was often met with blank stares.
That didn’t last long. By the following year, “People were coming up saying, ‘Oh, you’re regenerative!’” says the co-founder and president of Westchester, New York-based Wild Orchard Tea Company.
Regenerative agriculture, an approach to farming that aims to improve soil health through practices like reduced use of pesticides and plowing, is having a moment. Championed by the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement and propelled by increasingly health-conscious consumers, regenerative products now generate some $2 billion a year in retail sales, and some in the industry are positioning the fast-growing category as the next organic.
Big food producers and retailers like Nestlé SA, PepsiCo Inc, General Mills Inc and Walmart Inc have made regenerative agriculture commitments, often as part of ESG goals. And late last year agencies including the US Department of Agriculture announced a $700 million pilot program to support regenerative agriculture projects on farms.
But unlike organic, regenerative agriculture is only lightly regulated at the federal level in the US. To earn US Department of Agriculture organic certification, producers must comply with detailed federal standards, including strict rules about synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, and undergo annual inspections. There’s no such equivalent for regenerative agriculture, and many products can be labeled as regenerative without having to verify their claims.
With the boom have come increasingly pressing questions from within and outside of the industry about what the label actually means and concerns from advocates about consumers being misled, especially because regenerative products tend to be more expensive.
Nora Brown, a 47-year-old who works in international development in Washington, DC, buys regenerative products when they’re available. She sees them as healthier for the environment and herself, especially since recovering from breast cancer.
But “I do have a fear of, we just love to label stuff for marketing. There’s pink washing, there’s greenwashing,” she said. “And I hope it doesn’t go the way of that.”
Certifying organizations like Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) aim to bring more rigor to the space. Last year, dollar sales of ROC-labeled products grew faster than those labeled certified organic, fair trade and non-GMO, according to the data provider SPINS. But across the broader landscape, regenerative agriculture standards can vary widely, differences that are not always evident to shoppers. As more of them encounter the label at grocery stores, experts worry that this variability could undermine the growing category.
The term “regenerative agriculture” dates back to at least the 1980s, but it didn’t pick up steam until the 2010s. Backed in the early days by organic farming advocates, regenerative agriculture may also cut down or eliminate synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, but puts a sharper focus on soil health and biodiversity. Proponents say in some ways it’s a return to old-school practices, including rotating crops and using plants like hedgerows as a living fence around fields.
Advocates “started to use the term, ‘We’re regenerating our landscapes, we’re regenerating our farms, regenerating the ecosystem,’” said Gabe Brown, a retired farmer sometimes credited as the movement’s godfather, who co-founded and serves as a board member of a certification program called Regenified. “And now you hear the word regenerative everywhere. Before, the buzzword was sustainability.”
The term’s appeal has been rapidly expanding. With products from baby food to snacks, bath care and pet food bearing the label, the regenerative agriculture category saw in-store retail dollar sales grow 10% over the last year and nearly 22% the year before, according to NielsenIQ data. Dairy is the largest category by dollar sales, and some of the fastest growth has been in regeneratively grown produce.
Advocates for regenerative agriculture say that it’s healthier for the planet and people. Among the environmental benefits they cite is that by deploying practices like no-till farming, which avoids plowing the land, and planting cover crops between growing seasons, farm soil can store more carbon. Other regenerative farming techniques include moving grazing animals around pasture to let the remaining portions recover, and planting trees and shrubs on working agricultural land next to crops or livestock. Experts, however, say that the climate change benefits may have been oversold.
The term regenerative has also been embraced by MAHA advocates, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, Calley Means — an advisor to Kennedy — and Kelly Ryerson, who goes by the moniker “The Glyphosate Girl,” a reference to a widely-used herbicide that many in MAHA want to restrict.
“There was so much press that went around vaccines, but actually this is just as, if not more core to the issues that we really care about,” said Ryerson, who is co-executive director of the advocacy group American Regeneration.
MAHA supporters say food grown using regenerative agriculture has more nutrients and fewer chemicals and is therefore healthier, but those claims are challenging to evaluate, scientists say, including because regenerative practices aren’t applied evenly across farms.
Even as the US government pushes to facilitate such practices, there is still little regulation for products bearing regenerative claims. Where federal oversight does exist, it remains limited: Meat and poultry sellers making claims like “raised using regenerative agriculture practices” have to submit documentation to the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, but critics note that it’s an honor system and third-party certification is recommended but not required.
The new federal pilot program, meanwhile, will offer technical assistance and financial support to implement regenerative practices and requires participants to test soil to track changes over time, but it does not include certification.
Some retailers are requiring certification or other proof for regenerative claims. Whole Foods, for example, has had such a policy in place since 2021, and so does the Seattle-based PCC Community Markets.
But even third-party certification programs vary widely in terms of what they measure, according to reports released this year by the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture and Friends of the Earth.
The Environmental Working Group, a health and agriculture-focused nonprofit, has warned consumers of “misleading” regenerative claims. While some labels, including ROC, indicate that food has been grown without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and require farm audits, other certifications allow continued use of synthetic chemicals, don’t require audits and don’t publicly disclose soil test results, the nonprofit said.
“Our biggest concern is that all of the momentum and buy-in and enthusiasm that’s been built around the term regenerative agriculture over the past number of years is frittered away because of greenwashing,” said Adam Kotin, managing director of the Soil & Climate Initiative, which offers its own certification.
For makers of these products, the biggest barrier might be their higher price tags and consumers’ lack of exposure.
Regenerative farming is still more expensive than conventional agriculture, with higher upfront costs, greater labor needs and a lack of scale. And because grocers try to reach as many shoppers as possible, a pricey, regeneratively grown olive oil is unlikely to be the first or even the second one on the shelf.
At online grocer Thrive Market, for example, regenerative products such as coffee beans, coconut oil, muffin mix and cans of sparkling green tea make up just 5% of the membership-only online platform’s offerings and customers are 20 times more likely to filter for organic products than regenerative ones, said April Lane, chief merchandising officer.
“We’re starting to see more and more brands come out with regenerative options,” she said. “But it’s still much, much smaller than organic or non-GMO certifications or gluten-free.”
Though awareness of regenerative agriculture roughly doubled between 2023 and 2024, only 10% of US consumers are actively seeking out such products, estimates Kristine Root, chief executive officer of Socha Branding, a strategy and growth marketing agency that works with natural, organic and regenerative brands.
To expand that share, companies have to do more than just slap the word “regenerative” on the package, she said.
“It takes more than just putting a seal on the pack to get the support of a consumer,” Root said. Shoppers “will pay more if they understand the story behind it. But you have to do the work.”
To contact the author of this story:
Emma Court in New York at ecourt1@bloomberg.net
breaks the traditional barrier between audience and newsroom. The show transforms
Fortune DailyFortune’s trusted reporting into actionable, conversational, and entertaining insights for an emerging class of business leaders.
Watch here.