Regenerating the Future, Together

Regenerating the Future, Together

When it comes to transforming agriculture, ADM’s re:generations™ program proves that collaboration at scale has the power to strengthen the entire agricultural value chain. Through deep partnerships spanning food and beverage companies, farmer organizations, data innovators, and technical advisors, ADM has created a global model for regenerative agriculture that drives measurable environmental impact, supports farmers’ livelihoods, and strengthens supply chain resilience.

What began as a series of pilot programs has evolved into one of the largest private sustainability initiatives in agriculture, with more than 5 million acres enrolled worldwide, including 4.5 million acres across the United States. The program’s impact stretches from the farmgate to global brands, proving that when collaboration scales, change becomes long-lasting.

Recognizing outstanding collaboration and cross-sector partnership in advancing continuous improvement of regenerative agriculture, the 2025 Collaboration of the Year Award honors ADM and partners – farmers, agronomy and data experts, and downstream customers – for their work on the ADM re:generations program.

Enrolled in Field to Market’s Project Directory, ADM’s Innovation project has helped farmers adopt regenerative agriculture practices at scale, leading to positive environmental impacts across the country to strengthen farms and the global food system.

A Shared Vision: Regeneration For Business and the Earth

Re:generations is founded on a simple but profound belief: that a resilient agricultural system must work for both people and the planet. For ADM and its partners, regenerative agriculture is not a passing trend—it’s a shared ambition and a long-term investment in the future of food.

“We started re:generations because we recognized that meaningful change in agriculture can’t happen in silos. Farmers, agribusinesses, and brands have a role to play in preserving the land,” says Michelle French, Senior Director of Global Sustainability Programs at ADM. “Regenerative agriculture gives us a way to bring everyone to the table, align on outcomes, and invest together in practices that make agriculture more resilient for the next generation.”

The program’s emphasis on shared value—where farmers, agribusinesses, and consumers all benefit—sets it apart.

“As the largest purchaser of peanuts in the U.S., we have a responsibility to help support the long-term sustainability of the supply chain and the economic viability of the farmers who produce the commodity,” says Rebecca Ott, J.M. Smucker Company Sustainability Director. “This project with ADM is a meaningful way for us to promote progress across each of these objectives.”

PepsiCo, the largest single funder of acres in ADM’s re:generations program, shares that ambition. “At our heart, PepsiCo is an agricultural company,” adds Caitlin Colegrove, Positive Agriculture Lead for North America at PepsiCo. “The resilience of our company is tied to the resilience of farmers. Regenerative agriculture offers opportunities to help future-proof farms against challenges that weather or economic forces may bring.”

For ADM, this alignment is the key to progress. “From growers eager to do more for their farms, to conservation and technical partners supporting every step, to downstream customers partnering to advance the industry, the success of regenerative agriculture depends on the entire value chain,” says Greg Morris, SVP and President of ADM's Agricultural Services and Oilseeds business unit.

Designed for Scale: From Pilot Projects to Global Impact

When ADM first began exploring sustainable agriculture more than a decade ago, the company’s sustainability team faced a common question: how can pilot projects be scaled in a way that’s meaningful, measurable, and manageable for farmers?

The answer came in 2022 with the launch of re:generations, a global program designed to integrate and amplify the best of ADM’s prior regenerative agriculture efforts while making it easier for farmers to participate and partners to collaborate.

“We started by figuring out how to take all of these smaller pilot projects we’d been doing for a number of years—some focused on sustainable agriculture, others on specific practices—and create something that could scale,” says French. “We wanted something that was farmer-centric, that worked for the people actually putting these practices in the ground.”

The successful program is structured around three farmer-focused pillars:

“Our overall program is very consistent,” French explains. “We have regional projects that roll up into the larger program, each following those three pillars with a specific, local focus based on the partners involved.”

Data that Builds Trust and Tells a Story

ADM’s collaboration with Gradable, a joint venture between ADM and Farmers Business Network, has been a game-changer in connecting farmers’ field-level data with downstream sustainability goals. Through API integrations with Field to Market’s Fieldprint Platform and farm management systems, Gradable dramatically simplifies data collection.

“With previous platforms, data entry could take eight hours,” French adds. “Now it takes about 45 minutes. That’s a huge win for farmers on the data side.”

Gradable’s streamlined approach enables farmers to track progress against key sustainability indicators including greenhouse gas emissions, soil carbon, biodiversity, and water quality, while also giving downstream customers credible data to report on Scope 3 emissions. At the end of the year, farmers receive a customized report that shows the impact of their practices on those indicators.

“The Fieldprint Platform provides conservation metrics that are pivotal—sort of like the currency for how these programs and markets run—and created by a congregation of all the different interests of the supply chain,” says Kurt Alles, Head of Sustainable Business at Gradable. “It’s provided a non-competitive infrastructure with metrics, outcomes, and claims that are critical for this sort of program to be successful.”

“[The Platform] has a lot of value, too, in helping us communicate with farmers on what practices could improve different sustainability metrics,” explains Paul Scheetz, Director of Climate-Smart Ag Origination at ADM. “It helps us tell the story to the farmers, communicating and quantifying the why.”

For participating farmers, including Illinois farmer Chase Brown, that sustainability data and the communication provided by the program’s team has been invaluable.

“That’s probably one of the things I enjoy the most with the ADM program,” remarks Brown. “With our report, they’re able to analyze our operation and say ‘hey, you’re doing great, making changes, and your environmental footprint is going down.’ That’s really helpful to see and hear.”

“We're largely a data-driven company… it’s a key part of our sustainability program,” adds participating Illinois farmer Blake Noland. “This program provides us the opportunity to have some data associated with the positive decisions we’re making for the business.”

Farmer-Centered, Flexible, and Built on Trust

While data drives the program’s credibility, trust drives its participation. ADM’s century-long relationships with growers have been critical in earning buy-in for new sustainability practices.

“We knew from the start that the program had to be easy in, easy out,” says French. “We knew if we built the program correctly with clear and concise offerings, were very transparent and brought in technical support, and kept our farmers at the center, we’d be able to not only scale, but retain participation. And it’s worked—we’re seeing over 90 percent retention.”

Enabling the farmer to choose how they want to participate, whether it be a cover crop program, nitrogen use efficiency program, or something else, ensures participants feel not only comfortable with their participation, but more excited for it.

“We understand that not every farm, for example, is going to be a candidate for cover crops,” adds French. “We really just try to make sure that we have that farmer flexibility that allows farmers to participate and choose elements that best fit their operation and their needs.”

"We didn’t want to disincentivize the early movers. Those farmers are often the best advocates. They’re the ones showing their neighbors what’s possible.”
Michelle French Senior Director of Global Sustainability Programs ADM

“Any successful, collaborative sustainability program has to remain farmer centered,” remarks Torey Colburn, Midwest Conservation Agronomist at American Farmland Trust—one of the program’s technical assistance providers. “The farmer facing component of the program needs to always be focused on helping the producer be successful with a new practice so that they will continue with it into the future, and this program does that.”

The program also focuses on ensuring that early adopters—those who have already implemented regenerative practices—are rewarded rather than excluded.

“We didn’t want to disincentivize the early movers,” French adds. “Those farmers are often the best advocates. They’re the ones showing their neighbors what’s possible.”

Partnering with local, trusted organizations has increased the program's success.  Six technical assistance partners—American Farmland Trust, Ducks Unlimited, Flint River Soil and Water Conservation District, Kansas Association of Conservation Districts (KACD), Minnesota Soil Health Coalition, and Practical Farmers of Iowa—provide on-the-ground support in different areas. Farmers know they have someone they can turn to that knows their farm, their region, and what could work best for them.

“We have to have people that are local because every acre is different. Every region is different, too,” explains Scheetz. “All of our technical assistance providers are local and they understand their farmers. Farmers can lean on them and trust them to explore what the best practices could be for their operation’s needs.”

“KACD, and our conservation districts, promote the program, making producers aware of a cover crop program that could be a great opportunity for them,” says Dan Meyerhoff, KACD Executive Director. "People feel comfortable working with their local conservation districts, they know them and they trust them.”

Scaling Collaboration Across the Value Chain

The re:generations program thrives on collaboration across every link of the agricultural value chain.

“It takes a village to make this work and to get to scale,” says French. “Thousands of farmers, 250 ADM staff, our five technical assistance partners and their teams, the Gradable crew, and 19 downstream customers. This isn’t just a supply chain—it’s a value chain, because there’s value at every stage.”

“No one organization, agency, or company, can go it alone,” adds Meyerhoff. “We have to collaborate. We’ve all got the same long-term goals and outcomes that we want to see, and this has been proven to be a very successful model in getting work done, together.”

“We provide the technology that facilitates date collection, runs quality assurance and quality control, and executes environmental modeling through our API integration with the Fieldprint Platform,” adds Alles. “But without downstream demand from companies like PepsiCo, without connectivity through the supply chain with ADM, and without technical service providers on the ground helping farmers, this program couldn’t run. It’s not always easy to get all groups like this to align, but it’s a special thing when it happens, and it’s happened here with re:generations.”

“Our work with ADM is one of several large-scale collaborations we have in the U.S.,” says PepsiCo’s Colegrove. “It’s particularly exciting because we’re co-investing in this work across the value chain. We’re leveraging ADM’s relationships with growers to expand the conversation beyond price and quality to include sustainability.”

The J.M. Smucker Co.’s partnership with ADM’s Golden Peanut division is another example of how collaboration has helped the program achieve new heights. Together, as part of the re:generations program, they launched the first regenerative agriculture initiative focused on U.S. peanuts—an effort that also involves the National Black Growers Council to ensure inclusivity and access.

“NBGC’s involvement has been instrumental in expanding access to technical assistance and amplifying the voices of Black farmers within the regenerative agriculture movement,” remarks Ott.

Scheetz noted that these partnerships make re:generations both scalable and credible.

“When we partner with companies like PepsiCo or Smucker’s, we’re aligning on shared goals,” he says. “That means farmers get consistent messages, consistent support, and we all move faster.”

The results are tangible. Farmers are seeing economic gains through reduced input costs and yield resilience. Downstream partners can credibly measure emissions reductions for Scope 3 targets. And consumers benefit from food grown in systems that protect soil, water, and biodiversity.

“I am a huge believer in how cover crops can benefit our farm by limiting erosion and decreasing herbicide use,” says Nebraska farmer Trent Mastny. “It was a no brainer to get compensated for practices we were already doing and it helped increase our ROI of cover crops.”

Data Meets Storytelling

“Farmers are the original technologists,” says Alles. “All of these practices that we’re supporting, that we’re building programs around, originated with them. We’re just helping scale what they’ve already proven works.”

One of the program’s most powerful impacts lies in its ability to connect data with human stories—turning environmental indicators and metrics into meaning. ADM and its partners host field days, storytelling campaigns, and on-farm events that showcase how regenerative agriculture is improving real farms and livelihoods.

“Things like field days are critical,” says Scheetz “It helps our downstream customers understand what’s going on at the farm.”

For participating farmers, those visits create powerful bridges.

“They’ve brought ADM’s customers out to the farm to see what we’re doing,” says Brown. “Real conversations can’t happen until they’re all at the farm, can see it, feel it, touch it, and smell it. That’s huge and that’s what leads to real change.”

“There are a lot of things that look really good on paper, but are incredibly difficult to implement on the ground,” adds Noland. “When stakeholders can get together on the farm and better understand the practicality of their ideas, it makes for even better programs.”

The Road Ahead: Collaboration as a Catalyst for Change

As re:generations continues to expand globally, ADM and its partners remain focused on the same core mission: scaling impact through collaboration.

“We’ve gone from a niche idea to demonstrating business value,” remarks French. “We’ve proven that this can work.”

Scheetz echoed that sentiment. “This program is proof that collaboration at scale works,” he says. “I truly believe that without even one of our partners, we wouldn’t have been as successful at scaling up to the level that we’re ultimately seeing.”

Across millions of acres and thousands of farms, the message is the same: regenerative agriculture is no longer an experiment—it’s the future of agriculture.