March 28, 2026

Spotlight Stories

Spotlight 1 – Ark Valley Voice reports on a novel financing mechanism that is being used to develop regenerative food & agriculture applications in Colorado. Ready the story, here.

Spotlight 2 – Positive News delves into the link between healthy soil and a healthy body. Check it out, here.

Spotlight 3 – Fast Company highlights the most innovative companies in agriculture for 2026. Take a read, here.

Industry Updates

A global research team has used a new technique to capture minute-scale structural changes in farmland soil, revealing how farming practices influence soil water dynamics. The team, led by the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, employed distributed fiber-optic sensing, installed across an experimental farm at Harper Adams University in the United Kingdom, to achieve continuous, high-resolution monitoring of soil. By detecting tiny ground vibrations generated by natural and human activities, the researchers tracked how water moves through soil every single minute. The results show that healthy soil contains a natural internal “plumbing” network composed of microscopic pores and channels that allow water to infiltrate deeply into the ground, where it becomes available to plant roots. In fields subjected to frequent plowing or heavy tractor traffic, however, this pore network becomes severely disrupted. [link]

The tenth annual “Feeding the Economy” Report, a comprehensive study analyzing the economic contributions of the entire U.S. food and agriculture supply chain, has been released. The report highlights the broad impact of the food and agriculture value chain, from farms and ranches to distribution and equipment manufacturing. According to the report, America’s food and agriculture industries generate more than $10.4 trillion in economic activity, representing nearly 20% of the U.S. economy, and supporting 48.7 million jobs nationwide. The sector also provides more than $3 trillion in wages and contributes $1.35 trillion in federal, state, and local taxes. [link]

Food industry veterans, including former CSOs at Mars and General Mills, are pooling capital through a new UC Davis angel network, Food & Health Angels (FH Angels), to back early-stage food-tech startups. Beyond capital, FH Angels will provide founders with guidance and connections. The group is starting with 25 charter members that will pool and invest their own money into firms that are beyond the concept stage of their development. Investments are expected to range from $100,000 to $5 million, with the ability to co-invest alongside other investors. [link]

Retiring farmers are finding a new way to pass on their land, with a national nonprofit helping to transfer farmland into community ownership that ensures it will be managed sustainably. Farmers Land Trust is a national nonprofit that enables landowners to transfer their land into communal nonprofit ownership while then leasing this land at affordable, long-term rates to new farmers who might otherwise struggle to buy land. The new farmers pledge to use organic, regenerative farming methods, like planting cover crops and applying compost. [link]

Climate change may cut the amount of land suitable for grazing livestock by one-third to one-half by the year 2100, a new modeling study suggests. The impacts will be most strongly felt in sub-Saharan Africa, where many pastoralists depend on livestock for sustenance. Experts worry that the predicted change could reduce food access enough to endanger some low-income people’s health, based on the areas that would be hardest-hit. North America may actually gain a bit more grazing land than it loses under either scenario. In Asia, losses and gains could be about equal. In Europe and Africa, losses will be steep no matter how much societies curb carbon emissions. [link]

Researchers at the University of California San Diego are developing a probiotic that could give plants the microbes they need to grow healthier and stronger. Soil inoculation, or adding microbes to soil, has been studied for many years. But not enough has been studied about how the interactions between soil microbes can lead to particular outcomes. Current experiments are focused on lettuce plants at the Salk Institute Research greenhouse, with a control group being evaluated against a separate group that receives a few drops of probiotics made up of beneficial bacteria and fungi. Researchers are looking to learn more about plant-microbe interactions and how society can potentially boost microbe availability that points plants in a direction that is beneficial for food security and climate resilience. [link]

More farmers are deciding to plant soybeans early in the season, relying on seed treatments and inoculants to help manage the risks. While soybeans naturally fix nitrogen through root nodules, the process depends on the presence of Bradyrhizobium bacteria. Inoculants introduce these essential microbes to maximize nitrogen fixation and crop performance. The Crop Protection Network reports that inoculants are most often useful when fields have no history of soybean production, or when the field has gone four or more years without being planted to soybeans. [link]

The National Geographic Society and PepsiCo have announced five new grants funding on-farm research to support practical advancements in regenerative agriculture, from rewilding prairies to leveraging AI technology to translate complex genomics into tangible farming guidance. The research is funded as part of Food for Tomorrow, a collaboration between the Society and PepsiCo which aims to harness the power of science, storytelling and education to inspire positive change throughout the global food system, with a focus on regenerative agriculture. Food and drink company PepsiCo has been working to scale regenerative agriculture globally and recently expanded a global goal to spread the adoption of regenerative, restorative or protective practices across 10 million acres by 2030. [link]

A new article in npj Sustainable Agriculture assessed where regenerative farming practices might increase crop yields and, thus, have the greatest impact on global croplands. The research team used a Random Forest model trained on field-scale data from multiple meta-analyses linked with global climate, soil, and environmental datasets at 5-arc-minute resolution. Broadly, yield increases varied by practice, with cover crops showing the greatest potential for yield improvement (45%), followed by agroforestry (41%), no-tillage (37%), and organic farming (5%). Cover crops delivered widespread geographic benefits, including yield enhancement certainty in the eastern U.S., South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and Eastern Asia. Agroforestry’s benefits were measured mainly across the southern hemisphere, while no-tillage and organic farming led to potential benefits in more specific areas around the world. [link]

Honey production in the United States is at an all-time low. In a recent report, the US Department of Agriculture said that US honey production in 2025 totaled 116 million lbs, down 14% from 2024 and the lowest amount the United States has ever produced in one year since records were started in 1939. The USDA said the total number of honey-producing colonies in the United States totaled 2.41 million, down 7% from 2024. The average yield of 48 lbs of honey per colony also was about 7% lower from the prior year’s average. Honey is one of the few sweetener products increasing in demand in the US, at present. [link]

The European Union and Australia have finalized a long-anticipated free trade agreement (FTA), marking a significant shift in food and beverage trade flows. The agreement, worth around €6 billion in trade, was negotiated over several years and recently announced by president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese. Notably, it will eliminate tariffs on the vast majority of goods traded between the two markets, including key food and beverage categories such as wine, chocolate, biscuits, bread and seafood. Nearly all EU exports to Australia and a large share of Australian agricultural exports to the EU are expected to benefit from reduced or zero duties, improving price competitiveness and market access. [link]

Beverage major Kirin reports evidence demonstrating that rice-husk-derived biochar can simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions while improving agricultural productivity across the company’s beer barley supply chain. The findings stem from a joint research project launched in October 2024 in collaboration with the Tochigi Prefectural Agricultural Experiment Station and Waseda University. The study investigated how applying 100 to 500 kilograms of biochar per 10 acres influenced soil properties, crop performance, and emissions outcomes in barley fields. Gains in soil health, yields, and carbon sequestration were seen thanks to biochar. [link]

The University of Kentucky Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment recently hosted its first Sustainable Healthy Foods Research Symposium, inviting global research scholars and experts to address ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and to discuss new ideas and innovations for developing healthier and more nutritious foods for consumers. The symposium was led by Youling Xiong, regular faculty in the Department of Animal and Food Science at Martin-Gatton CAFE and one of The Bill Gatton Foundation Distinguished Professors, in partnership with the UK Seeding Partnerships for International Research Engagement (UKinSPIRE) and the UK International Center. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 70% of the food that Americans consume is considered ultra-processed foods (UPFs) — leading to increased health risks such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity. [link]

The Shapiro Administration in Pennsylvania has announced over $5.5 million in funding to improve soil and water quality, and make farms in the Susquehanna River Basin more environmentally and economically sustainable. The grants will support 16 farms through the Sustainable Agriculture Grant program and 6 conservation organizations through the Public Private Partnership Grant program, with a focus on practices like cover crops, rotational grazing, tree plantings, and precision nutrient management. This investment in Pennsylvania’s agricultural sector aims to help the state meet its water quality goals for the Chesapeake Bay under the TMDL and Watershed Implementation Plan. [link]

A University of Guelph researcher has received government funding to help Canadian farmers grow wheat using fertilizer more efficiently while strengthening soil health and the wheat microbiome. Dr. Kari Dunfield, professor in the School of Environmental Sciences, Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) has received $3,920,000 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Alliance Advantage program. The governments of Canada and Ontario, as well as industry partners contributed an additional $1,960,000 in funding and $143,695 of in-kind support. Dunfield and her team will test sustainable nitrogen management strategies by combining agronomy, precision technology and wheat microbiome science. Their goal is to improve nitrogen efficiency through more efficient use of fertilizer inputs and enhance soil health, while maintaining grain quality for baking. [link]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized its Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) “Set 2” final rule. In the 20th year of the RFS program, “Set 2” establishes the renewable fuel volume requirements for 2026 and 2027 at the highest levels in program history. To meet the historic 2026 and 2027 volume levels, EPA estimates that biodiesel and renewable diesel production and use will need to increase by over 60 percent compared to 2025 volumes, the last year of the Biden-Harris administration’s “Set 1”. This in particular will drive renewed demand for American soybean producers. To provide continued certainty for American corn growers and ethanol producers, EPA will maintain the 15 billion conventional biofuel level for 2026 and 2027. [link]

In Case You Missed It…

In late February, Niman Ranch announced the launch of its Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) beef program sourced entirely from U.S. family ranches and brought to market at meaningful scale. See more, here.