Regenerative agriculture for rural surveyors

At its core, regenerative farming is not new. Many of its ideas reflect long‑established principles of good land management that prioritise soil health, resilience and efficient use of resources.

In the past 80 years, technological and genetic advancement, backed by government policy encouraging certain agricultural practices, such as the Common Agricultural Policy, which rewarded maximum food production, has enabled farmers to intensively increase crop and livestock yields, but at the expense of soil health and biodiversity.

Regenerative agriculture, or 'regen', has been identified as an approach that creates the conditions for forms of natural life to thrive and interact with each other, providing the benefits that cultivations and synthetic inputs deliver artificially, with fewer negative effects.

Today UK farming is changing rapidly, even more so since the UK left the EU. Farmers and land managers feel increasingly vulnerable to geopolitics, with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in 2022 and then the Gulf conflict early this year resulting in significant spikes in energy and fertiliser prices.

There is also growing recognition of the impact of climate change, both in terms of farm profitability and national food security, after one of the driest and hottest summers on record. The potential for regenerative agriculture to help society and farmers address such challenges has become a major talking point.

In terms of business outcomes, farmers are typically aiming to see reduced reliance on volatile external inputs and greater resilience to weather and market shocks.

Five key principles underpin regenerative farming – most of which are shared with other farming approaches, such as conservation agriculture and organic farming. They are:

• minimising soil disturbance
• maintaining living roots for longer
• integrating livestock where appropriate
• keeping soil covered and building organic matter, and
• increasing crop diversity through crop rotation and cover crops.  

Figure 1 shows where renerative farming overlaps with other approaches. Given some principles are easier to deliver than others, farm businesses going down the regenerative route tend to change their farming practices in stages and tailor their strategy to their own soils, climate and business goals.

Regenerative farming is best seen as an approach, rather than as a distinct discipline that can be measured against a certain standard such as Red Tractor's Beef and Lamb Standards or the LEAF Marque.

Regenerative agriculture is an evolving framework, informed by science, farmer experience and economic reality, where continuous improvement is prioritised over perfection.

The Barclays Agriculture Customer Survey 2026 suggests that 56% of surveyed farmers have adopted regenerative practices, and a further 24% are planning to do so in the next two years.

While this is consistent with the information in the previous year's Barclays survey, it only measures self-declared regenerative practices, which can be interpreted differently depending on who you ask.

For example, a farmer reacting to worsening grassweed problems by broadening their crop rotation to include spring cropping, and perhaps cover crops in the interim, might be as well described as 'having adopted regen' as someone who had begun to apply compost from the local authority because it was cheap and easily available. Yet neither – or both – might consider themselves regenerative farmers.

How widespread and 'whole farm' regenerative practices are, and whether they are driven by a commitment to permanent change in a farming system or the availability of grants and premiums, therefore remains unclear.

One could consider a proxy – globally, research indicates that the area of cover cropping grew from 10m to 25m acres between 2015 and 2025, and is projected to double again by 2034. 

In the UK, Howard Nason, director of buying group Crop Advisors, describes a large shift towards cover crop seed in the past four years – it is now their second most in-demand product after wheat. This coincides with the launch of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) in England and the renewal of many existing Countryside Stewardship (CS) schemes, which reward cover cropping to reduce soil erosion and improve water quality.  

The most adopted options in CS/SFI according to Defra are herbal leys (SAM3) and winter bird food (AHL2), with cover crop use on the increase. All these options support the locking in of nitrogen to support soil fertility.

The Farming Equipment and Technology Fund (FETF) also provides evidence of more than 2,000 grants for direct, inter-row and air drills that will help regenerative practices such as no-till, companion cropping and cover crops.

However, there is no data about how this corresponds to inputs on the same land, whether this represents a long-term adoption of a regenerative approach and whether farmers would continue to implement these options if there were no grants.

Satellite checks or physical surveys could provide further evidence of activity; however, these would only prove the results and not the regenerative farming actions behind them. So, hard data and evidence to support a permanent shift in approach towards regenerative farming remains elusive.

Some of these required changes have associated risks and can be challenging to adopt in an existing, established farming system. 

For instance, cover crops can be difficult to establish in dry conditions or difficult to destroy in preparation for a following crop, especially if the farm does not have livestock to graze them off. Integrating livestock can also be a challenge, in terms of sourcing stock, husbandry, fencing and providing water. 

Other regenerative practices may require investment in machinery because the existing equipment cannot handle the resulting biomass, or for direct drilling or intercropping. 

The step that should be taken last, and only when soils show signs of real improvement, is one that many adopt first: the relinquishing of all cultivations. Farmers set themselves up for the best possible chance of success if they do not attempt to minimise soil disturbance until they have diligently applied the other four elements of the regen approach.

Overcoming these issues takes time and demands perseverance, which is a barrier when the tried-and-tested approach is easier and – in a good year – works so well. 

Our conditioning and received wisdom are hard to challenge; the relentless, regular and cumulative technological advances in twentieth-century agriculture have provided almost instantaneous solutions to farming problems. 

So, why would anyone choose a regenerative system, if the results are so hard to quantify and take so long to manifest?

There are also longer-term variable cost savings. Data increasingly shows that cover crops can lock in more than 30kg of nitrogen per hectare , which could potentially reduce the fertiliser bill for milling wheat by more than 10 % – subject to the type and efficacy of the cover crop paired with the following crop, and the associated risks of adopting cover crops as mentioned

As an example of how a regenerative approach could potentially de-risk a business heavily exposed to input costs, Table 1 shows the figures for two types of cropping approach. The conventional crop is a traditional milling wheat/barley rotation, and the second a regenerative rotation including wheat, beans, oats and peas as companion crops, with winter cover crops between cycles.

While in a stable year for input prices the average margin is lower for the regen system, the vulnerability of the conventional system to price shock is 20%. In a year where input prices spike, the regen system only sees an 8% reduction in margin. 

In essence, this is a trade-off of risk against reward. As the risk of some sort of climate or price disaster increases, and the ability to increase crop yields and therefore profit margins through conventional methods appears to have peaked, more businesses may gravitate towards the lower-risk, lower-reward system provided by a regenerative approach.

Retailers are also creating new opportunities for farmers looking to adopt regenerative practices. For example, Nestlé has announced a commitment in the UK to manufacturing KitKat wafers with at least 50% regeneratively grown wheat. Wildfarmed, the leading processor of regenerative wheat in the UK, having paid significant premiums for its wheat for the past two years, is now also partnering with Lloyds Bank to provide a fund for transitioning to regenerative practices.

There is also concern about the corporatisation of the movement. A consortium of regenerative farming proponents recently wrote an open letter about the dangers of the corporate world adopting 'regenerative' as a buzzword, rather than as a meaningful indication of the credentials of their food.

Support payments for implementing elements of regenerative systems are available but limited, with the challenge of securing funding exacerbated by the closure of the SFI26 application window in less than six hours. 

In England, Defra's Farming Roadmap 2050 recognises the need for a long-term commitment to regenerative agriculture, although the document indicates strongly that funding for actions that broadly fall within regenerative activities will be transitional, not permanent.

Instead, many of the principles of regenerative agriculture may be enshrined in regulation going forwards – more akin to environmental health protections. This could lead to regenerative premiums reducing or falling away as these products become more widely available.

Adopting regenerative agriculture as a short-term solution to gas- or oil-derived input price volatility is not realistic. It is a long-term process that should be considered to address the challenges that are likely to be facing farmers in ten or 15 years. This brings to mind the old farming adage: 'Live as if you'll die tomorrow, but farm as if you will live forever'.

The need to move away from fossil fuel reliance, and the challenges of global warming, are likely to enforce a real commitment in farming to adopt new, more resilient systems of agriculture. Whether in ten years we will call this regenerative farming or just farming is less important than the required outcomes: improved soil health, water quality and better business outcomes for our farms.

This free RICS webinar for members features Will Maris, regenerative agronomist and soil consultant at Terrafarmer, and Harry Epsom MRICS, founder and regenerative land agent at Epsom Rural.

Find out more: How regenerative agriculture supports sustainable land management webinar