Major food companies are racing to tout “regenerative agriculture,” but the term has no legal definition — and that vagueness is letting some companies claim environmental credit without necessarily cutting pesticide use, as Civil Eats senior staff reporter Lisa Held reports.
Consumer awareness has jumped: a June 2026 Consumer Reports survey found 24 percent of shoppers recognize “regenerative farming,” up from 18 percent three years ago. General Mills has pledged to advance regenerative practices on 1 million acres by 2030, while PepsiCo says it’s already reached 4.7 million acres and has raised its 2030 target to 10 million.
The trouble, critics say, is that “regenerative” commitments often boil down to cover crops and no-till farming — practices that don’t necessarily reduce chemical inputs, and in some cases increase herbicide use, according to a 2025 Friends of the Earth analysis. A 2026 As You Sow report similarly found that major food and agriculture companies have backtracked on earlier pesticide-reduction pledges.
“There are actors in the space who I think are doing a lot of good,” said Sarah Starman, senior campaigner for food and agriculture at Friends of the Earth. “There are also a lot of companies that are capitalizing on sort of the loosey-goosey nature of regenerative.”
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Not everyone in agriculture is convinced regenerative claims add up to much change on the ground. “Is the goal really a bunch of regenerative corn and soybeans across hundreds of millions of acres in the United States?” asked Brandon Welch, CEO of Mad Capital, adding that even well-intentioned practices raise the question, “who is it driving value for?”
Some farmers who’ve gone further say the payoff is real. Trey Hill of Harborview Farms in Maryland told Held he’s cut herbicide use by 65 percent and insecticide use by 90 percent through regenerative methods — though he’s blunt about trade-offs: “In terms of soil degradation and everything else, the trade-off is I use pesticides. So, I don’t know which is better or worse.”
