Consumer Understanding Of Regenerative Agriculture Triples In Past Three Years

Kiss the Ground reveals a new survey revealing an uptick in understanding of regenerative agriculture

Kiss the Ground

Collecting data is one of the most important facets of regenerative agriculture as it stands today. In order to grow a movement, you need to be able to prove your case with hard facts.

Nonprofit Kiss the Ground, one of the most recognizable names in regenerative agriculture, reveals to me today the results of its latest survey, which demonstrates that the movement to make regenerative agriculture mainstream is moving in the right direction.

Over the past 12 months, consumer awareness of regenerative agriculture has grown from 7% to 13%, according to the new survey, conducted in partnership with Hierophant Insights and Strategy. It’s a significant uptick–more than tripling–from its initial 2023 survey where that number fell at just 4%.

Other important data uncovered in this study that food and beverage companies should leverage to make consumer-facing decisions moving forward include confusion among marketing claims on packaged products and the rise in nutrient density as a primary buying decision.

It also found that one in four Americans are now familiar with the term ‘regenerative agriculture’ with 37% of those individuals ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ familiar with the term.

The 2023 survey was conducted a year after CEO Evan Goldberg took the reins at Kiss the Ground. Under Goldberg’s leadership, the nonprofit has doubled down on what it has always known best–storytelling. That’s the primary factor Kiss the Ground credits to this increase in awareness.

The third-party survey, like its previous surveys, asked 2,000 American adults about their working understanding of regenerative agriculture. Tension within the regenerative agriculture community lies in the fact that there is no regulated definition of the term. For this survey, Kiss the Ground described ‘regenerative agriculture’ to its subjects as “holistic farming practices that aim to restore soil health, enhance biodiversity, with benefits for climate and wellness.”

The defining 2020 documentary on regenerative agriculture, Kiss the Ground, narrated by Woody Harrelson, kickstarted the organization’s storytelling platform. “While 4% seems like a very small number, that was the hardest number to get to–starting a movement to get enough people to care,” Goldberg tells me. “I credit the film and the early work of the organization with what helped make that happen.”

Kiss the Ground is a storytelling platform–that’s what’s at the heart of everything the organization does, and that’s exactly the way in which it believes this uptick stems from. “We’re storytellers who are trying to solve the problems people have when they’re looking to buy food that makes them healthy,” Goldberg says. “There’s a lot of confusion in our food system, and we’re trying to be a tour guide to aid human health with the right food choices.”

This storytelling platform, with a powerful brand behind it, has become more expansive since its feature documentary, now highlighting the work of regenerative agriculture in ways that can reach modern audiences more easily. That includes 10-minute short docs on YouTube, Tik-Tok style videos with its ‘Five with a Farmer’ series, and its ‘11 Questions in 11 Minutes’ series, more geared toward business leaders.

“People’s takeaway from these is that they understand that farmers are like artists who really care about the product they’re making,” Goldberg says. “That’s regenerative farming.”

Adam Kotin, Managing Director of the Soil and Climate Initiative, a farm-to-shelf regenerative agriculture transition and certification program, credits Kiss the Ground’s storytelling for simplifying the concepts of regenerative agriculture to grab people’s attention and impact purchasing decisions. “Kiss the Ground has been essential in building up awareness of soil health and regenerative agriculture in ways that are rooted in the realities of the food system but speak to the everyday consumer,” he tells me. “There’s a lot of complexity to the story of regenerative agriculture just by that nature of our food system being devastatingly broken.”

One aspect of Kiss the Ground’s storytelling, and why it believes it’s making progress, is that it primarily tells positive stories, focusing more on why these practices are so beneficial rather than the tragic environmental reality that has gotten us to this point. “We learned early on that when we argued policy and sat in the doom and gloom of the environmental space, we got black eyes and black noses,” Goldberg says. “All of our storytelling is educational, positive, inspirational, and connects healthy soil to healthy humans in some way, shape, or form. That’s what we know will be the connection point.”

This leads to today’s trends in consumer behavior and the way in which consumers choose to engage with certain topics like regenerative agriculture, which should impact the environment, human health and farmer welfare. The survey found that 30% of Americans’ top priorities when grocery shopping is nutrient density, suggesting that purchasing regenerative products may solely be for personal nutritional benefit, not the environmental one.

“Nutrient density is a newer topic that’s just starting to go mainstream…animals that eat grass that grows from nutrient-dense soil is going to be healthier,” Goldberg says. “Regenerative is getting to the point now where it’s becoming a term that is connected to ‘better-for-you.”

Only 12% of respondents claimed price to be an issue when considering buying regenerative products. Companies from startup CPGs to corporates to retailers and other nonprofits must take this new data into consideration and recognize that consumers are generally willing to pay a premium for products that are proven to be higher quality and more nutrient-rich.

“The consumer has spoken,” Goldberg says. “They want food that’s going to make them healthier.”

It begs a couple of questions: If consumers are purchasing regenerative products more for the human health aspect, should farming systems that use aggressive synthetic pesticides be understood as regenerative, even if they have adopted other beneficial practices?

And, does the reason why consumers buy these products really matter, so long as they’re buying them? Consistently outperforming over the past three years of surveys, 72% said they shop for food that has personal health benefits whereas 32% shopped for broader environmental concerns.

“If some people see the compelling story as ‘better for me,’ that’s fantastic. If they see it as better for me and for the planet, even better,” Kotin says. “The whole regenerative story has different angles. Our job is to open those doors so that consumers see themselves in this movement and this way of producing food, and they’re able to make their decisions based on what they value.”

There are several marketing terms–like ‘natural’ or ‘fresh’–on product packaging that are essentially void of any significant meaning, and consumers are becoming more knowledgeable, thus skeptical, about these terms. 60% of people surveyed said that they read food labels while 66% said food labels confuse them. That’s why, as consumers further understand the term ‘regenerative,’ it’s critical that it maintains its integrity so that consumers don’t brush it off as glorified copywriting.

At its core, unlike those meaningless marketing terms, ‘regenerative,’ when used responsibly, is legitimately full of deep meaning and has the potential to make significant human and environmental change when adopted at scale.

“There’s a danger–and we’ve seen greenwashing–that we miss the opportunity to really hook people’s hearts and minds because we’re not bold enough in talking about the truly transformative work that is underway here,” Kotin adds. “I hope the work that Kiss the Ground is doing to build those stories and data compels more folks in the food system to tell these stories truthfully and powerfully.”

Kiss the Ground is a leading voice in the movement and maintains that it wants to be an inclusive voice as well. “We want to meet people where they’re at. It’s not about perfection, it’s about doing the best you can.” Goldberg says, “We want to be a major component of driving the movement to the tipping point.”

That ‘tipping point’ he refers to is an allusion to Malcolm Gladwell’s theory of reaching about 25% of consumer demand in order to spark tangible change. That’s one of Kiss the Ground’s goals it wants to reach by 2030. “That’s the point where supply chains change radically,” Goldberg explains, “and that’s when government subsidies will come around and really put money towards today’s more modern food system.”

Kiss the Ground’s continued storytelling is the knowledge gap that needs to shrink in order to work toward that tipping point.

“Last year we engaged five million people and reached 20 million people with our increased storytelling,” Goldberg says. “This year we’re focused on growing that engagement number and fine-tuning our storytelling.”

Another powerful tool Kiss the Ground has implemented is its Regenerative Buying Guides and Regenerative Farm Locators, showcasing products and farms that Kiss the Ground itself has vetted to directly guide consumers in the right direction.

Kiss the Ground’s threshold for farmers to get listed on these maps is for them to begin at least three regenerative practices on their farms. This alone would likely not earn any of these farms a regenerative certification, but Kiss the Ground says it wants to see earnest efforts to encourage moving in the right direction, in line with meeting farmers where they’re at.

The nonprofit has a budget of about $3 million annually. Much of this funding goes towards helping farmers transition their land toward regenerative practices, and amplify these stories. “We’re able to write a $500,000 check directly to farmers, which transitions 73,000 acres and reaches people with their story–that’s the key,” says Goldberg. “Now it’s about rinse and repeat.”

Kotin adds, “The different kinds of stories that are possible will create a tapestry of associations with regenerative agriculture that is fundamentally marketable.” He continues, “storytelling around soil health and regenerative agriculture allows us to feel a connection to the source of our food that’s likely the next best thing to buying food directly from the person who grew it.”

Scaling change is difficult. Kiss the Ground wants to see change at a large scale. Its theory of getting there is by making incremental changes at the consumer level, not going immediately to policy reform or Big Food. Naturally, if consumers demand anything enough, those larger changes will follow. “We’ve chosen to go direct to the consumer and help alleviate the noise,” Goldberg says. “Companies of all sizes are getting engaged in how they’re sourcing products. Change is already happening in a very meaningful way.”