In recent years, there has been growing interest in a farming method known as regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture, which overlaps with the closely-related concepts of agroecology and circular agriculture, refers to farming systems and methods which have a beneficial impact on the environment. Proponents of regenerative agriculture argue that such systems can yield environmental benefits. Regenerative agricultural systems include mixed farming systems and rotational grazing systems, which incorporate crops and ruminant animals in symbiotic and sustainable food production.

Indeed, there are many environmental benefits which can be obtained through this kind of regenerative farming system. There is some evidence that certain ruminant grazing systems can sequester carbon in soil – there are even cases where these systems claim to be carbon negative (though such claims remain the subject of intense scientific debate).

This all seems like fantastic news for the conscientious carnivore. For the growing number of people who are concerned about the environmental impact of meat production, but aren’t ready to give up their steak, regenerative agriculture appears to offer a silver bullet solution: truly sustainable meat and dairy. But what can we really expect from regenerative agriculture? Is this really the solution we have been looking for on sustainable animal agriculture?

While it is true that regenerative agriculture systems can provide a range of ecological services and environmental benefits, it is also true that their application is extremely limited. It is important to be realistic about what regenerative agriculture can do – and what it cannot.

1. There is no legal or industry standard definition of regenerative agriculture. While various examples of regenerative practices have been offered, a 2021 systematic review of agroecology noted that ‘current interpretations range widely’ and ‘few actors have developed criteria and methodologies to identify and evaluate agroecological systems’. This lack of clear definition and method for evaluation means that some uses of ‘regenerative agriculture’ will include systems which cause net environmental harm, despite employing some regenerative practices.

2. The environmental benefits of livestock in regenerative systems are primarily limited to ruminants. This is because ruminants can digest cellulose from grass, whereas monogastrics generally compete with humans for grain or other feed. That means, while cows, sheep, and goats can provide some ecological services in regenerative systems, there are generally no such benefits to be obtained by rearing pigs, chickens, turkeys, or other monogastrics unless the entire grain supply chain is transformed. Regenerative animal products, therefore, are generally limited to some red meat and dairy products.

3. The potential for carbon sequestration from regenerative agriculture is often overstated. While some such systems can sequester carbon in the soil, the quantities are relatively small and they quickly plateau at a carbon saturation point, meaning overall soil carbon storage is very limited. Whilst the soil will eventually stop sequestering more carbon, every generation of ruminants on that land will continue to emit more methane. A 2025 meta-analysis found that the median soil carbon sequestration rates in regenerative grazing were not significantly different from zero, indicating essentially no carbon sequestration benefits at all. Moreover, any climate benefits from sequestered soil carbon are far smaller than the climate burdens of concurrent methane and nitrous oxide emissions.

4. The proportion of animal products coming from regenerative systems is extremely low. Ruminants are only 26% of all meat consumed, and it is estimated that just 8% of the beef supply is from purely grass-fed cows. That means that grass-fed ruminant meat accounts for no more than 2% of all meat consumed. While other mixed crop-livestock systems may sometimes be called regenerative, it is not clear how many of them actually provide a net environmental benefit.

5. Regenerative systems require approximately 2.5 times more land and more other resources than more intensive systems, and therefore cannot be scaled to reach existing demand. While these systems may have other environmental benefits, scaling them would require more agricultural land than we have available for protein production. Put bluntly, there is no more free land for agriculture (see also). As a result, any farming practice that requires more land must take land from somewhere else: for grazing land to increase, cropland or nature must decrease. This demand for agricultural land could drive deforestation to make up the necessary calories, which would threaten the 30×30 commitment many governments have made to protect 30% of land and sea for biodiversity by 2030. If we were to eat exclusively regenerative meat, our production capacity would require a significant decrease in meat consumption compared to the amounts consumed today.

6. The environmental benefits of regenerative grazing disappear when accounting for opportunity costs. Land is not free: we cannot simply discuss the benefits of regenerative grazing without comparing them to the benefits of using the land for other purposes. This is a concept economists call “opportunity costs”. In reality, almost all land that is fit for regenerative grazing would sequester far more carbon, and provide far more ecosystem services, if they were rewilded or reforested. Illustrating this, one study found that grass-fed beef (which is similar but not exactly the same as regenerative beef) emits 20% more carbon than beef where the cattle are “finished” on grain, but once opportunity costs are taken into account, grass fed systems emitted 43% more carbon. When we see claims that regenerative grazing stores more carbon in the soil, we must ask the critical question: how much more land does it use? What would be the carbon storing benefits of using that land for rewilding instead?

Regenerative agriculture can offer some environmental benefits – but these benefits are small, limited, and do not outweigh the environmental opportunity costs for the land used. Moreover, it generally only applies to red meat and dairy, it is a tiny proportion of today’s meat supply, and it cannot be scaled to supply existing levels of meat consumption. That means that, even with full implementation of regenerative agriculture, there is still a need to reduce our meat consumption.

To the extent that there are environmental benefits of regenerative agriculture, these can only be realised to the extent that consumers are empowered to clearly identify meat which has been produced through these systems. That is only possible with clear mandatory environmental labels.

One issue is that implementing regenerative principles is likely to represent a cost to farmers: not only will they need to invest time and money in establishing new systems, they may also see lower yields than conventional systems – an average of 25% lower, according to one analysis. This is likely to mean that regeneratively farmed animal products will be more expensive than conventional animal products.

If we want to harness the ecological benefits of regenerative agriculture, we must empower regenerative farmers to add value to their products by enabling them to demonstrate to conscientious carnivores that their products are from regenerative systems. To this end, we must introduce universal mandatory environmental labels for food products.

There are several private regenerative certification schemes: Certified Regenerative by A Greener World, Regenagri by Control Union, and Regenerative Agriculture Standard by FoodChainID, to name a few. While optional private certifications like these can enable regenerative producers to add value to their products, there are some drawbacks to this approach.

• First, the existence of several different certifications, each with their own set of standards, is likely to lead to consumer confusion about what the certifications actually mean. This confusion leaves room for greenwashing, whereby producers can add meaningless labels like ‘naturally raised’ to their products and increase their prices without providing any real ecosystem services.

• Second, labelling only the best-performing products is likely to skew consumers’ perceptions of the environmental impact of all animal products. If consumers occasionally see an optional regenerative certificate, but never see equivalent labels indicating that meat products are not regeneratively-produced, the reality that regenerative products are a tiny proportion will be obscured. Indeed, the lack of a certification could mean the product does not meet the standards, or simply that the producer has not subscribed to the certification.

• Third, the business model of private certification schemes could lead to perverse incentives when it comes to enforcement, which threatens the integrity of these labels. Private certification schemes operate on a subscription model whereby the producer pays the cost of the evaluation and certification. Therefore, such schemes are financially incentivized to take a lenient approach on enforcement: rescinding a certification means losing revenue.

Given the potential for consumer confusion and greenwashing, the incomplete information communicated by only labelling the best products, and the perverse incentive structures around private certification schemes, there is a strong case for implementing universal mandatory environmental labels on food products. These labels could co-exist alongside the current private certification schemes, but would ensure that all consumers have clear information on which products are regeneratively-farmed, and which are not.

The case for mandatory labelling has become more urgent in the face of recent political setbacks. In April 2024, DEFRA confirmed that “Government has no plans at present to introduce a mandatory eco-label, nor to endorse an existing or new eco-labelling scheme,” effectively shelving the Food Data Transparency Partnership’s ambition to standardise environmental reporting across the sector. The stated rationale – that there is “limited evidence that eco-labelling has an impact on in-store consumer behaviour” – is worth scrutinising. The absence of impact in a voluntary, fragmented labelling environment is precisely why a consistent mandatory standard is needed.

At the EU level, the situation is similarly stalled. The European Commission’s proposed Green Claims Directive, which would have required any environmental claim on a product to be verified and certified against a common standard, was effectively withdrawn in June 2025 after the conservative EPP bloc withdrew support amid concerns about compliance costs for small enterprises. What remains is the Green Transition Directive (adopted February 2024, applying from September 2026), which prohibits unsubstantiated environmental claims under consumer protection law but stops well short of requiring positive, standardised sustainability disclosure at the point of sale.

The net result is that consumers in both the UK and EU are left navigating a landscape of voluntary, inconsistent, and largely unverified eco-claims on meat and dairy products – the exact conditions under which labels lose credibility and conscientious purchasing becomes effectively impossible.

The case for universal mandatory environmental labels becomes clear by analogy to health and nutrition labels. Clearly, it is important for consumers to have precise information on nutritional content, and food sold in the UK is rightly required to clearly communicate calories, fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, sugars, proteins and salt. A patchwork assortment of private nutrition certifications which are only displayed on the healthiest foods would clearly be an inadequate substitute and lead to worse health outcomes for the population.

Whereas measuring foods’ nutritional contents is relatively straightforward, measuring foods’ environmental impact is more complex. The implementation of mandatory universal environmental labelling would require a standardized metric similar to the Product Environmental Footprint, which should take account of greenhouse gas emissions, air and water pollution, and impacts on biodiversity.

Regenerative agriculture can provide ecological benefits – but we must be realistic about its limitations, and critical about its implementation. The environmental benefits of regenerative livestock farming are modest, and fail to outweigh the considerable environmental opportunity costs. Moreover, regeneratively farmed meat currently makes up no more than 2% of all meat and cannot be scaled up to meet existing demand.

If we want to capture the ecological benefits of regenerative agriculture, we must implement universal mandatory environmental labels to incentivize adoption of regenerative systems, protect regenerative products from greenwashing, and provide consumers with complete information about their food. We would not accept a patchwork of private certification schemes as good enough for nutritional labels, and if we want to incentivize truly regenerative agriculture, we should not accept it as good enough for environmental labels.