Our expert David Kesner shares reflections from Groundswell 2025, highlighting emerging economic opportunities available to farmers and other stakeholders through regenerative farming.
Groundswell 2025, the annual regenerative agriculture festival, was another thought-provoking event exploring how we can rethink farming and food systems. One message came through clearly this year: regenerative agriculture isn’t just about healthier soil; it’s about redesigning how we fund and value food production.
As food production intensifies, our environment faces mounting challenges like declining soil health, biodiversity loss, and reduced resilience to climate change. Regenerative agriculture offers a hopeful alternative to conventional farming methods, provided it is implemented effectively.
While government subsidies remain the main lever for incentivising sustainable farming, new business models are emerging that create income streams where none previously existed. These new approaches to the economics of farming could make regenerative food production more financially competitive.
Here are six emerging economic opportunities for farmers and landowners highlighted at Groundswell that could cultivate lasting change in the food and farming industry.
1. Water companies paying farmers for better land management
Wildfarmed-certified farmers now receive premium payments from water companies. The logic is simple: healthier soils reduce runoff and improve water quality, cutting treatment costs. This is a compelling case of environmental co-benefits translating directly into cash flow for farmers and a shift toward solving the root causes of problems rather than paying to treat the symptoms of a broken system.
2. Food companies backing resilience
James Young, McCain’s Vice President, Agriculture for GB & Ireland, set the tone for McCain’s presence at Groundswell during a panel on ‘Making regenerative agriculture the ‘no brainer’ business model’. The discussion underlined the importance of food security for business.
McCain’s supply chain hinges on a reliable potato crop, increasingly threatened by climate extremes. Their solution is to pay farmers a premium to adopt regenerative methods and to subsidise the transition with equipment support. This proactive approach is less about sustainability as a “nice-to-have” or compliance exercise and more about protecting the future of their core product.
3. Conservation grazing as a revenue stream
In an innovative session named ‘Conservation grazing: getting started and scaling it’, a farmer explained how their cattle aren’t raised for beef, but for biodiversity. By using livestock to manage conservation land, such as removing encroaching birch from peatlands, they’ve turned grazing into a profitable land management service. This subsidy-free, nature-based income model, dovetails with regenerative principles.
4. Carbon payments already in motion
Companies like Arla, one of the world’s largest dairy cooperatives, also present at Groundswell, are already rewarding farmers for carbon outcomes. Payments are linked to activities that reduce farm emissions, such as improving feed efficiency or changing fertiliser use. This adds another income stream in the present day and as carbon markets mature and standardise, the opportunity is likely to grow.
5. Food as medicine
Gabe Brown, author of the bestselling book “Dirt to Soil, One Family’s Journey Into Regenerative Agriculture” delivered a keynote at the event that pointed to a powerful long-term opportunity: if regenerative practices deliver higher nutrient density in food, this could help reduce chronic disease burdens and take pressure off the NHS. Public funds currently spent on treating illness could instead be channelled into supporting better diets through regenerative farming.
6. Local food systems as risk mitigation
Brown also highlighted that regenerative farming isn’t just about techniques, but also cultural change towards localised, decentralised food systems. In theory, this can reduce systemic risk. Instead of a single shock wiping out a centralised monoculture supply, distributed local production builds resilience. That creates an insurance argument of its own, helping buffer against price volatility and supply uncertainty in the face of climate extremes.
Land of opportunity
The key takeaway from Groundswell 2025 for me is that regenerative agriculture is not simply a set of practices designed to improve soil health and biodiversity, but a whole new way of thinking about the food economy. It opens the door to economic opportunities that touch multiple sectors beyond farming, from public health to insurance, water, conservation, ecosystem service markets, and localism.
If these opportunities are realised, regenerative farms may not only survive without subsidies but ultimately outperform conventional farming in both cost and value. Groundswell left me with the impression that a new agri-economy is taking shape – one that might finally reward the full value of how food is grown, not just how cheaply it reaches the shelf.
If you want to know how we can work with you to understand the following topics, get in touch with one of our natural economy experts today.
- Biodiversity and nature recovery
- Nature finance
- Cabon and natural capital baselining
- Climate adaptation and resilience
- Food systems and farming