Coherent Public and Private Governance Initiatives for Regenerative Agriculture

PhD project by Celine Klooster. The global agri-food system faces immense environmental pressures that threaten its long-term viability. Regenerative agriculture is a promising approach to address these challenges. This study, aims to assess and improve coherence of public and private governance initiatives for regenerative agriculture. The global agri-food system is under increasing environmental and social pressure, threatening long-term viability. In response, there is an urgent need to transition towards more sustainable agricultural practices. Regenerative agriculture (RA) is widely seen as a pathway to achieve this, focusing on soil health to restore ecosystem services, enhance biodiversity, and build resilient farming systems. RA offers environmental benefits but also social and economic gains. In case of RA, proliferation of public and private governance initiatives – each with its objectives, criteria, and indicators – raises critical questions about their coherence and effectiveness in guiding the transition. Despite growing efforts, realizing RA’s full potential requires systemic governance change across sectors and levels of governance. This aligns with the concept of governance coherence: the extent to which governance initiatives are mutually supportive, minimize conflict, and enhance synergies across governance areas to achieve shared goals. Achieving coherence is essential to ensure governance initiatives work in harmony to guide the transition toward RA. This study, part of the ReGeNL project, aims to assess and improve coherence of public and private governance initiatives for RA. It aims to answer the following main question: “How does (in)coherence within and between public and private governance initiatives related to regenerative agriculture indicate opportunities for enhancing coherence?”. The research pursues four key objectives. First, it develops a heuristic to assess RA governance initiatives. Second, it analyzes (in)coherence of public and private governance initiatives. Third, it examines how regenerative farmers experience (in)coherence. Finally, it designs recommendations to enhance coherence. To achieve these objectives, the study combines bottom-up and top-down approaches through content analyses, interviews, and focus groups.