Landscape Level Investment: Cross-Industry Collaboration to scale Regen Ag

Fragmented financing approaches, overlapping pilot programs, and inconsistent measurement systems continue to slow progress in scaling regenerative agriculture. Landscape-level investment directly addresses this, aiming to bring together different actors located in the same area but involved in different value chains. This essential cross-collaboration at a larger scale is among the core enablers to effectively support the regenerative transition in a holistic way.

Join experts from OP2B, EIT Food and Regrow as they explore the essential questions that organizations must confront to make landscape-level investment work in practice.

In less than one hour, you’ll learn about:

• How to bring multiple stakeholders to invest at the landscape level
• What are the essential frameworks and standards for cross-industry collaboration
• How to measure at the farm-level and report at scale
• What successful landscape-level investment means for farmers

Expert Q&A: Scaling Regenerative Agriculture Through Landscape Investment

Following our recent webinar, our panel of experts addressed critical questions regarding the financial architecture, risk mitigation, and standardization required to transition supply chains to regenerative models.

1. Are institutional investors focused on food production or biodiversity?

The short answer: Both. The landscape approach integrates food production with nature-based resilience by involving a multi-sectoral group of financial actors.

• De-risking the Transition: Development banks play a primary role in de-risking the transition for farmers within specific geographic areas to ensure long-term resilience.
• The Role of Patient Capital: Pension funds and other sources of "patient capital" are being mapped to join water utilities and infrastructure companies in these financing structures.
• Commercial Banking: Beyond institutional funds, commercial banks are essential for expanding preferential terms of credit through specialized lending schemes, moving the "real economy" toward regenerative practices.

2. How does a landscape become "investable" for agrifood companies?

Investability is achieved by moving away from fragmented funding toward a coordinated "capital stack."

• Catalytic Capital: Initial "non-recoverable" capital is required to cover the high startup costs of the transition and the creation of Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs)—the coordinating mechanisms that allow multiple stakeholders to invest safely.
• A Layered Approach: While recoverable grants and preferential loans currently play a smaller role, they are instrumental in building a pipeline that eventually attracts large-scale commercial investment.

3. What does the financial architecture look like in practice?

Landscape projects rely on a co-investment model that balances public and private contributions.

• Consortia-Based Funding: Organizations often apply through open calls as part of a consortia. Proposals are selected based on their social, climate, and economic relevance.
• Implementation & MRV: Co-investment funds the technical foundations, including soil measurements (baselines), Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) solutions, and farmer training.
• Corporate Incentives: Within this framework, off-takers and corporates define the specific premiums and incentives they offer to farmers to drive adoption.

4. How are climate benefits allocated, and how is "leakage" prevented?

To maintain integrity, landscape accounting must align with established frameworks like the GHG Protocol and SBTi FLAG.

• Parallel Flows: We separate the project mechanics (enabling the farmer) from the accounting mechanics (allocating benefits). Catalytic investments may cover a full crop rotation initially, even if all supply chain partners are not yet present. These outcomes are later reconciled with the real investments.
• Mitigating Leakage: While data is measured at the field level, the project is managed at the landscape level. Working across an entire "supply shed" mitigates the risk of practice leakage—where a farmer might only apply regenerative methods to a single field—by creating a cohesive, territory-wide transition.

Discover how Soil Capital aligns with the GHG Protocol and watch our webinar on LSRS & CRCF, introducing Soil Capital's Permanence Fund

5. Does a project need to comply with the SAI Framework?

Standardization is the key to moving from isolated pilots to repeatable, scalable systems.

• Metric Alignment: The Regenerative Agriculture Metrics Initiative (developed by OP2B) is an outcomes-based framework that is closely aligned with the SAI Platform. These serve as the operating standards for disclosing project progress.
• Ecosystem Collaboration: By using standardized metrics across partners landscapes become more attractive to investors who require repeatable systems rather than one-off projects.

Read our case study with SAI Platform and Royal Canin, assessing 6,000 hectares of winter wheat and grain corn in France.

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