Advertisers should “avoid conflating” regenerative farming approaches with organic practices, the UK Advertising Standards Authority has told brands in new advice aimed at “cultivating compliance” in the sector. 

The new advice is set out in an article published this week on the ASA’s website, which responds to grower usage of the term by the food industry. 

The article points out that, currently, no legal or universally agreed definition of the term exists, meaning that it likely to be used as descriptor in “wide-ranging ways and … with various possible interpretations”. 

So, while regenerative (or ‘regen’) agriculture is generally positioned as a climate-friendly way of farming, involving practices aimed at restoring the health of the soil and the entire farm ecosystem, it can take different forms. While typically involving some mix of limiting soil disturbance, maintaining year-round soil cover, promoting biodiversity and crop rotations, keeping living roots in the soil and integrating livestock and arable systems, not all regenerative farmers employ all these practices. Furthermore, the ASA points out, these practices in themselves do not provide any guarantee of soil or nature restoration. 

The advertising watchdog says regen brands should “suitably clarify the basis” for claims they make. Similarly they should avoid “cherry-picking or tokenism” (for instance making regen claims when only one or two of the previously mentioned farming practices have been employed. They should also avoid “absolute claims” – such as ‘regenerative’, nature-friendly’ or ‘sustainable’ – unless they can be supported with “a very high level of substantiation”. 

The ASA warns specifically against making misleading comparisons with others farming systems, such as organic. It notes that some regenerative farmers use chemical pesticides, such as glyphosate, which are expressly prohibited by organic standards. The watchdog also warns advertisers not to imply that regenerative farming carries any kind of formal or legal standard (unlike organic, which does have legal status in the UK and around the world).