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We’re pioneering an ambitious approach to restore the health of our planet, both in our supply chain and beyond.
It takes around 4 million hectares of land to grow the raw materials for Unilever products, which are used by 3.4 billion people every day. We want to make sustainable living commonplace – and we simply can’t do that unless we protect and regenerate the natural world.
We believe nature holds the key to solving the climate crisis too – by capturing and storing carbon in land and ocean ecosystems. It’s estimated that by protecting and restoring forests around the world, humanity can achieve around one-fifth of the emissions cuts needed by 2030 to prevent catastrophic climate change.
The current level of nature loss and climate change is already resulting in real and significant risks to economies, businesses and communities.
The only option now is systemic change – transforming the way we use land everywhere. This crisis calls for a paradigm shift in everything about the way we approach our relationship with nature and the way we design our agricultural systems. It’s time to regenerate agricultural systems that have been overworked, overused and depleted.
Regenerative agriculture is critical for our business. It helps us to ensure food security and supply chain resilience through the supply of agricultural raw materials. It is also a key lever for Unilever’s Nutrition Business Group to progress towards our net zero target.
Unilever’s Climate & Nature Fund is helping to accelerate and scale regenerative agriculture. Launched in 2020, our Climate & Nature Fund is a commitment to invest €1 billion by 2030 in meaningful climate, nature, and resource efficiency projects, to transform the way our products are made and reach end of life. The projects supported by the fund aim to help Unilever progress towards its goal to improve the health of the planet, including reaching net zero by 2039, while also driving growth and increasing resilience.
At a farm level, this means applying regenerative agriculture practices – which is why we’ve developed our Regenerative Agriculture Principles (PDF 8.34 MB), designed to enhance our Sustainable Agriculture Principles (PDF 880.27 KB).
It also means being more ambitious than ever before by looking outside of the farm boundary and aiming to protect and regenerate natural spaces, both in our supply chain and beyond it.
A healthy natural ecosystem is essential for the resilience of our supply chain and our business. It is also a critical lever for achieving net zero. Our approach to nature encompasses regeneration and restoration – enabled by partnerships, transparency and technology.
Through our sustainable sourcing programme we have reached hundreds of suppliers and hundreds of thousands of farmers, helping them implement the principles of sustainable agriculture.
However, this has not yet reached the level where the overall decline in soil health and biodiversity has been stopped or reversed, farming has become more profitable, water quality has been improved, or where farming has become truly climate resilient.
So, we need to acknowledge that the compliance-oriented approach has not been effective enough and introduce a new way of working. We need to urgently scale up the use of technologies and agriculture practices that can protect soils, increase water efficiency, manage on-farm vegetation and crop diversity, and reduce emissions while maintaining yields.
To do this, we’re working with a wide variety of stakeholders on targeted programmes to implement regenerative farming practices and protect, conserve and restore natural ecosystems. A big part of this is engaging and supporting the farmers and smallholders who are vital to the maintenance of these environments.
We have created a set of Regenerative Agriculture Principles (PDF 8.34 MB), which sit alongside our Sustainable Agriculture Principles (PDF 880.27 KB).
The Unilever Regenerative Agriculture Principles are agricultural practices focused on delivering positive outcomes in terms of nourishing the soil, increasing farm biodiversity, improving water quality and climate resilience, capturing carbon, and restoring and regenerating the land.
We are members of the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform (SAI Platform), and our own Regenerative Agricultural Principles supported the development of its new ‘Regenerating Together’ global framework. Together with 170 members across the agri-food industry, we are using a globally aligned approach for the transition to regenerative agriculture practices. The ‘Regenerating Together’ programme has grown from the industry recognising that we must evolve our approach to sustainable agriculture, to an agreement that we need to drive measurable outcomes to create a resilient food supply chain. We believe this framework sets a new standard for regenerative agriculture globally, while providing the flexibility that’s needed at farm level.
Our regenerative agriculture programme was launched with suppliers in 2022, building on our previous Lighthouse Programmes. Since then, we have set up projects, designed to implement our Regenerative Agriculture Principles, addressing the challenges and unique needs of different crops and landscapes. Together with a network of soil and farming experts, we’re helping suppliers to identify which practices will deliver the most positive impact overall.
The programme also aims to provide a framework to measure the project impacts. Although change in agriculture is usually measured over several years, we have begun to gather early results from these projects. They show that the projects are starting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase biodiversity, improve water efficiency and quality, and strengthen soil health.
Knorr is working with a tomato supplier in Spain to help farmers to protect their crops from the effects of decreased rainfall and depleted underground water reserves, as well as protect the area’s biodiversity.
The aim:
Knorr, in partnership with Spanish tomato supplier Agraz, is working to help farmers protect their crops from the effects of decreased rainfall and depleted underground water reserves, as well as protect the area’s biodiversity.
The project:
The farmers are using sensors and soil probes to inform them about the exact amount of water their crops need. The new irrigation systems have resulted in financial savings and a more resilient crop production.
In a second parallel trial, three farmers have planted wildflower borders to increase the biodiversity around their farms.
The 2022 results:
Knorr has teamed up with US rice supplier Riviana and the University of Arkansas to find ways for farmers to grow rice while preserving water reserves and decreasing methane emissions.
The aim:
Knorr teamed up with US rice supplier Riviana and the University of Arkansas (UARK) to find ways to reduce the amount of methane released when rice fields are flooded, while preserving water reserves.
The project:
The programme introduced a suite of new practices, including furrow irrigation and a method called wetting and drying. These practices reduce the amount of time the rice fields stay under water, decreasing the amount of methane released.
The 2022 results:
Hellmann’s has been working with Practical Farmers of Iowa, PepsiCo and soybean supplier ADM to protect the soil used to grow soybeans for mayonnaise in the US, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and nitrate levels in water.
The aim:
Since 2018, Hellmann’s has been working with Practical Farmers of Iowa, PepsiCo and soybean supplier ADM to protect the soil used to grow soybeans for mayonnaise in the US, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and nitrate levels in water.
The project:
The programme was developed around three pillars – financial assistance, technical assistance and peer support/learning.
523 farmers and over 35,000 hectares of farmland were involved in the cover crop planting project. Farmers were provided with financial and technical support to plant non-commercial cover crops to protect the soil from the depleting effect of adverse weather, such as wind and rain in between commercial crop planting.
The 2022 results:
Knorr is working with Italian supplier Parboriz to find ways to reduce water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, while also increasing biodiversity.
The aim:
Knorr worked with Italian supplier Parboriz to find ways to reduce water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, while also increasing biodiversity.
The project:
This initiative was based on four farms spanning 900 hectares. The project aim was to test new practices and understand how they could be applied to commercial farms. None of the rice grown was processed or used by Unilever.
The learnings and results from the farms were so impactful that the practices are being rolled out to over 200 rice farmers in the area.
The 2022 results:
Practices on the demonstration farms successfully decreased the amount of chemical residue found in water. This included:
