Regenerative Agriculture Is All Over the Agenda at Climate Week NYC. But What Does It Mean?

Regenerative beef. Regenerative breakfast cereal. Even regenerative whiskey.

Americans can now choose from a huge variety of foods and potables that producers claim are grown or raised with regenerative methods, which promise to improve soil and reduce climate impacts. 

As it turns out, you may not be able to drink or eat your way to climate absolution—at least not without understanding what, exactly, is regenerative and what is not.

The term has become a ubiquitous buzzword, increasingly deployed on marketing labels in recent years. But it can mean almost anything a producer or marketer wants it to. Federal agencies that oversee the food industry, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have not officially weighed in. 

“USDA has not created a definition. They have not created a list of practices that are regenerative practices,” said Anne Schechinger, who researches the climate impacts of agriculture for the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit advocacy organization. “I like to say we’re really in this gold-rush era of regenerative certifications and claims, because everyone, essentially, is rushing to label their food products, to label conservation practices—anything a farm is doing—as regenerative.”

Agriculture and food production accounts for nearly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from livestock and the land cleared to graze and grow feed for them. In recent years, recognizing these significant impacts, organizers of global climate summits have increasingly put food and agriculture events on agendas, a trend that climate advocates have largely embraced and applauded.

But this has also opened the door for food and industry players to influence discussions, something those same climate advocates have tracked and criticized. At this year’s iteration of Climate Week NYC, which started Sunday, at least 79 food- and agriculture-focused events are on the official schedule. And seemingly most of them are centered around regenerative agriculture. 

“What we’re seeing with Climate Week is interesting because it creates this place where experts, community leaders and nonprofits can share strategies and ideas,” said Stephanie Feldstein, population and sustainability director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “But at the same time, it’s created space for corporations to really dominate the discussion with high-profile events. …This year, overwhelmingly, just everything is labeled regenerative, no matter who’s involved in it.”

Though the details vary and are debated, regenerative agriculture encompasses a suite of farming practices that protect and repair soil. Some livestock producers also say that beef and dairy can be regenerative if cattle are grazed on pastures in a controlled way that restores soil or are raised on grain grown in a regenerative way. In any case, regenerative agriculture practices have an indirect climate benefit: Healthier soil sequesters more carbon. 

California was the first state to develop and officially define regenerative agriculture, earlier this year identifying it as “an integrated approach to farming and ranching rooted in principles of soil health, biodiversity and ecosystem resiliency leading to improved targeted outcomes.” Critics called the definition fuzzy, vague and potentially misleading. But it was a start, proponents argued.

In 2022, the Center for Biological Diversity, along with 25 other advocacy groups, sent a letter to Climate Week NYC organizers, expressing their concern about an event titled “Choosing a Climatarian Diet: The Case for Including Beef,” which was sponsored by the beef industry’s biggest lobby group, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. The letter asked the organizers to ensure that its programming is “based on the best available science for real-world climate action and does not promote industry-driven false solutions” and said “the continued inclusion of industry-sponsored events promoting beef as a climate solution calls into question whether Climate Week represents an ambitious path forward or merely an opportunity for polluter propaganda.”

“We have seen companies, specifically looking at the meat and dairy industry, try to use Climate Week in the past as a way to kind of wedge their events in there, and propagate their false solutions to the climate crisis,” Feldstein said.

The presence of beef and dairy lobbyists and companies at the most recent United Nations climate summits has raised similar concerns.

Vetting and policing industry claims can be a huge task for organizers of these events, which often sprawl over multiple days and many locations. 

Adam Lake, head of North American communications for Climate Group, the nonprofit that runs Climate Week NYC, explained that the purpose of the event is to spark conversations about climate impacts and solutions, not to police content. That task would be nearly impossible: There are around 1,000 events scheduled for this week, a record.

“If someone is coming forward and saying they have a solution for tackling climate change and from the face of it, from the due diligence that we do at the event, we think they have an argument—even if it’s an argument we might disagree with—we would allow that event to go forward,” he said, adding “a big part of Climate Week NYC is we want people to disagree, and so we push for those events to be open, so that people who think, ‘No, this is the wrong angle,’ can go to that event and ask questions.”

Companies can pay to sponsor a side event under the Climate Week NYC banner, but the sponsors of the event’s main programs have to meet a high bar for entry, Lake explained. Climate Week NYC does not allow the financial, oil or gas industries to sponsor panels, Lake noted.

Some advocacy groups worry that the absence of a standardized definition of regenerative agriculture makes it easier for companies to exploit the term—not just at these events, but in the marketplace and beyond.

“It feels like every food company will be hosting a regenerative event at Climate Week, but they’re using regenerative in ways that can be awfully misleading, not just to experts … but to investors, other business partners and ultimately to consumers,” said Scott Faber, head of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group (EWG), adding that “consumers may be duped into buying something that they think is solving a problem when it really isn’t.”

The world’s biggest meat companies have come under legal scrutiny for making climate-related claims. In 2024, the New York Attorney General’s office sued the world’s largest beef company, JBS, for misleading consumers by promising to achieve “net zero” emissions by 2040, even though the company clearly has a growth strategy that relies on ramping up beef production. (In January of this year, the New York State Supreme Court granted JBS’s motion to dismiss the case, saying the attorney general had not made a clear case for why the matter should be handled in a New York court.) Also in 2024, EWG sued Tyson Foods for misleading consumers by marketing its beef as “climate smart.” That case is technically pending, although Tyson’s website no longer lists its “climate smart” beef products. Tyson did not reply to a request for comment from Inside Climate News.

A “regenerative agriculture” label invites less legal heat because it’s so vague, unlike a climate claim or other labels. The USDA’s organic label, despite some controversies and confusion, has a very specific set of requirements that farmers must meet to earn its imprimatur. 

The opacity of the regenerative term, critics say, is a deliberate play by the food industry.

Matthew Hayek, a researcher with New York University who studies the environmental and climate impacts of the food system, noted that rules and requirements defined by the USDA organic label came about because of a concerted, organized effort by proponents of organic agriculture in the 1990s.

“There was no coalition like that for regenerative because I think everyone is happy with the reputation laundering that the regenerative label is providing,” Hayek said. “There’s been an emergent choice of this network of producers and manufacturers to not pursue federal standardisation, because the width and inclusiveness [of the term] allows the maximum benefits of the positive association, even if the material climate benefits aren’t being produced.” 

As big companies call their products regenerative, advocates worry they’re appropriating and taking credit for a term that smaller producers have worked hard to pursue and legitimize. 

Regenerative agriculture practices, like minimizing tillage, planting cover crops and avoiding synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, often cost money and lower profits for farmers who deserve to be rewarded for the extra, truly “climate friendly” steps they take, advocates say.

“I think you’ll see some of these smaller producers pushing for a standard that can mean something,” Feldstein said. “Because they’re losing out—being out-competed by these industrial actors that are co-opting these terms for a profit.”

High-profile discussions at events like Climate Week NYC risk confusing matters more. 

“It’s all mixed together—these community-lead efforts and these corporate events make it really hard for people, including decision makers, to tell the difference between what’s a real solution and what’s just corporate spin,” Feldstein said. “There could be one panel that truly does understand regenerative in a really transformative way … and then you can have another panel that has a very similar-sounding title about regenerative that’s talking about cattle grazing or a single practice like cover crops and just slapping the regenerative label on it.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is pushing for a specific standard that spells out what regenerative agriculture is and how producers should adhere to its main principles—not disturbing the soil, growing cover crops, protecting roots and revitalizing soil health, which makes it better able to sequester carbon.

“The USDA is currently doing the worst job of policing regenerative claims and marketing,” Faber said. “They’re allowing regenerative terms to be used on USDA-regulated products regardless of whether farmers are adopting certain practices or measuring for outcomes. There’s no transparency, no auditing.”

At least 13 independent certification programs bestow a regenerative label, with more coming online all the time. 

“We struggled to understand the differences,” Faber said. “And of course, companies are not just making these claims on their packages, they’re making it in their social media posts and on their websites and at places like Climate Week.”

EWG published an analysis Monday to help consumers navigate the increasingly complicated claims. They determined that the USDA’s organic program, Regenerative Organic Alliance and Demeter clearly restrict farmers from using synthetic fertilizer and pesticides—in line with regenerative principles—and, importantly, require audits. 

“Those certifications are ones people can count on when buying food, if consumers are wanting to buy products produced with regenerative practices,” Schechinger explained. “But others are less reliable, especially ones that don’t restrict chemical use or require audits.”

Georgina Gustin

Reporter, Washington, D.C.

Georgina Gustin covers agriculture for Inside Climate News, and has reported on the intersections of farming, food systems and the environment for much of her journalism career. Her work has won numerous awards, including the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, and she was twice named the Glenn Cunningham Agricultural Journalist of the Year, once with ICN colleagues. She has worked as a reporter for The Day in New London, Conn., the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and CQ Roll Call, and her stories have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post and National Geographic’s The Plate, among others. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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