Food-system leadership is entering a period in which productivity, resilience, soil health, water use, biodiversity, climate adaptation, farmer economics, and human nutrition have to be managed as one connected operating model. At the Global Health and Purpose Summit, as part of People and Planet United, presented by FINN Partners in collaboration with HITLAB, The Galien Foundation, and 1BusinessWorld during NYC Health Innovation Week, Monica McBride, Director, Global Partnerships for Environment and Landscapes at Bayer, joins host Tom Jones, Managing Partner at FINN Partners, for a leadership session on Regenerative Agriculture: Restoring Ecosystems While Increasing Productivity.

The session places regenerative agriculture inside the practical reality of global food demand. Jones introduces the conversation by connecting population growth, the need for 50 percent more food production, climate change, water scarcity, and soil degradation. McBride then builds the case from the field. Food systems are under pressure from volatile weather, declining natural resources, biodiversity loss, and the need to help farmers produce more on land that is becoming harder to manage.

McBride’s central point is that regenerative agriculture cannot succeed as a slogan or a narrow environmental program. It has to work for farmers. It has to protect productivity, strengthen profitability, improve soil and water performance, support adaptation to weather extremes, and create pathways for restoration that can be scaled across different crops, regions, and production systems.

A New Operating Model for Food Systems

Regenerative agriculture is often discussed through the language of sustainability, but McBride presents it as a productivity and resilience strategy. The challenge is not simply to reduce harm. Agriculture has to produce more food while facing climate volatility, water uncertainty, soil degradation, biodiversity pressure, and constraints on arable land. McBride cites a projected increase of 2.2 billion people by 2050, the need for 50 percent more food, a projected 20 percent loss in arable land per capita, and estimates that 90 percent of soils could be degraded by 2050.

These pressures turn regenerative agriculture into a business operating issue. Farmers are already experiencing the consequences. McBride notes that 61 percent of farmers have experienced revenue losses from adverse weather, 91 percent have tried at least one regenerative practice, and 75 percent are worried about the effect of changing weather patterns on the future sustainability and profitability of their operations.

Regenerative agriculture is not separate from productivity. It is a way to protect productivity in a more volatile world. It links food security, climate resilience, farmer economics, environmental performance, and supply-chain stability.

Why Productivity Comes First

McBride defines Bayer’s approach around outcomes rather than a fixed checklist of practices. The first outcome is yield and productivity. That order is important. If regenerative agriculture does not improve or preserve the farmer’s ability to produce, the environmental and social benefits become difficult to sustain at scale.

From that starting point, McBride places farmer and community wellbeing next to environmental outcomes. Prosperous farmers and strong rural communities are not downstream benefits. They are conditions for durable adoption. A food system that asks growers to change practices without protecting their economics will struggle to scale. A food system that makes restoration part of productivity has a stronger chance of changing how land is managed over time.

This framing matters for executives, investors, agribusiness leaders, food companies, policymakers, and sustainability teams. Regenerative agriculture becomes investable when it produces measurable value for farmers, supports supply reliability, and creates credible environmental benefits that can be recognized by markets and partners.

Soil Health as the Foundation

The environmental agenda McBride describes begins with soil. Healthy soil supports healthy plants, improves moisture retention, strengthens resilience to weather extremes, supports microbial and nutrient activity, and creates the foundation for long-term production. Soil also connects productivity to climate because improved soil can increase sequestration potential and help farms adapt to changing conditions.

The same systems view extends to biodiversity and water. McBride is careful to recognize that farms are designed to produce crops, not to become untouched ecosystems. The practical question is which rotations, plantings, landscape features, and production decisions can enhance biodiversity in ways that also support the crop system. Water conservation is equally central because climate change is making water availability less predictable, with heavy rain events followed by drought in many production regions.

Regenerative agriculture therefore becomes a management discipline. It asks leaders to measure the health of the underlying system that makes production possible, not only the output harvested at the end of a season.

Turning Regeneration into Operations

McBride identifies several practices commonly associated with regenerative agriculture, including cover cropping, minimal or no tillage, natural fertilization, and improved planting methods. These practices are not presented as ideology. They are tools for achieving the outcomes of healthier soil, better water retention, improved structure, stronger microbial activity, climate resilience, and productivity.

Cover cropping keeps the soil covered and maintains a living root through more of the year. Reduced tillage protects soil structure and moisture. Natural fertilization can bring circular nutrient flows back into production systems. Planting depth, density, and crop sequencing can help optimize how multiple crops use the same land over time.

The practical force of McBride’s model is its emphasis on adaptation. Regenerative agriculture has to fit the acre, the crop, the region, the climate, the grower’s economics, and the available market. The strongest systems will not be universal templates. They will be locally relevant operating models built around measurable outcomes.

Innovation Across the Acre

Bayer’s role in the discussion is framed through the combination of seeds and traits, crop protection, and digital tools. McBride describes these as building blocks that can help farmers achieve regenerative outcomes while protecting productivity. The transition is from individual products to systems that help growers manage an acre more effectively.

One example is the short-stature corn system McBride describes. Its value is not only that the crop is shorter. It gives growers access to the field later in the season, allowing more precise application of crop protection or fertilizer when needed, rather than applying everything early because the crop later becomes too tall to access. It can also enable cover cropping later in the season, extending the period when soil remains covered and active.

McBride also points to yield preservation during high-wind events. In regions where stronger winds can cause crop lodging, short-stature corn can reduce harvest losses by helping the crop remain standing. That is a clear example of climate adaptation tied directly to farm economics. The innovation is valuable because it helps growers withstand volatility while enabling more regenerative management.

Winter Oilseeds and the Climate Business Case

Winter oilseeds provide one of the session’s strongest examples of regenerative agriculture as a business model. Traditional cover crops may improve soil but often need to be terminated at the end of the season. McBride describes the potential to turn winter cover crops into cash crops that can be harvested for outputs such as renewable diesel or sustainable aviation fuel.

The logic is compelling. If a grower can keep land covered, support soil health, add another crop within a rotation, and create an additional revenue opportunity, regenerative agriculture moves closer to scale. McBride notes that growers are already beginning to grow some of these crops and that early harvests are starting to move toward renewable fuel production.

In the conversation with Jones, McBride expands the climate case. Sustainable aviation fuel made from oilseeds can help reduce the carbon intensity of air transport, a sector with limited near-term mitigation options. Intermediate oilseeds can increase oilseed supply without bringing additional natural habitat into production because they are incorporated into land already being farmed. The result is a potential win for climate adaptation, farmer economics, soil health, and mitigation.

Regional Systems and Local Conditions

McBride’s examples show why regenerative agriculture must be designed regionally. In North America, short-stature corn, winter camelina or Covercress, and soybean rotations can help move a two-crop system toward a three-crop rotational model that keeps soil covered for more of the year. In Latin America, longer seasons and tropical production conditions change the problem. The focus becomes optimizing systems, improving soil health, reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with grain production, and creating potential recognition or premiums for environmental benefits.

In India and the wider Asia-Pacific region, direct-seeded rice offers a different kind of productivity and sustainability story. McBride describes traditional transplanted rice production as labor-intensive and water-intensive because fields are flooded and seedlings are moved from nursery to field. Hybrid seeds that perform in a drier seeded environment can reduce labor intensity, support mechanization, and produce sustainability benefits.

The direct-seeded rice example is especially important because it connects environmental performance with human and operational needs. McBride cites 22 to 30 percent water savings, higher soil organic carbon and nitrogen, and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions linked to reduced methane from flooded fields. In her description, the reduction is 4 to 8 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per hectare.

The Economics of Farmer Adoption

The session becomes most practical when Jones asks what growers need in order to adopt and sustain regenerative practices. McBride’s answer is direct. The first years matter. Farmers may face a 3- or 4-year learning curve as they change practices and the soil adjusts to a new production system. During that period, financial support and peer-to-peer support are essential.

Financial support can come from governments, the value chain, input providers, insurance providers, and other actors with a stake in resilient production. Peer networks are just as important because growers learn from people who understand their region, constraints, risks, and operating realities. Adoption is more likely to last when farmers can see proof from nearby growers who have already made the transition.

McBride notes that once growers move through the transition, many stay with the practices because they see changes in soil health, yield, and yield stability. That last point is critical. Yield stability may become one of the most important business benefits of regenerative agriculture in a climate-stressed environment.

Smallholder Access and Partnership Infrastructure

Regenerative agriculture will not scale globally without smallholder farmers. McBride notes Bayer’s goal to empower 100 million smallholder farmers by 2030 and describes smallholders as the backbone of agriculture worldwide. The challenge is not only access to products. It is access to tools, resources, technical support, financial support, and locally relevant business models.

McBride highlights Better Life Farming as one initiative designed to make innovation accessible in smallholder communities. The model gives local individuals an entrepreneurial opportunity to run a small kiosk offering better seeds and inputs, not limited only to Bayer products, along with technical and financial support. In that structure, the distribution point becomes more than a sales channel. It becomes a local support platform for adoption.

The partnership lesson is broader than agriculture. Scalable innovation needs trusted local access points, technical capability, financing, and entrepreneurship. Global systems become more resilient when the communities closest to production are not treated as end users only, but as participants in the operating model.

Productivity and Restoration as One System

The session makes regenerative agriculture practical by keeping the focus on the farm system itself. Soil health, water performance, biodiversity, crop resilience, farmer economics, and new revenue opportunities are not separate themes. They are the conditions that determine whether agriculture can keep producing at the level the world will require.

McBride’s examples show how restoration becomes more scalable when it is built into the production model. Short-stature corn can support more precise in-season management and expand cover-crop opportunities. Winter oilseeds can turn a soil-covering practice into a cash crop connected to renewable fuels. Direct-seeded rice can reduce water use and labor intensity while lowering methane-related emissions. Each example points to the same operating principle: regenerative agriculture gains force when it improves the economics and resilience of the field.

The path forward is not a choice between producing more and restoring more. The stronger model is a food system in which productivity, restoration, farmer value, and climate resilience reinforce one another. Regenerative agriculture becomes meaningful when it moves from aspiration to practice, from isolated practices to integrated systems, and from environmental intent to measurable performance on the land.

Session Intelligence

Regenerative agriculture is moving from sustainability language to food-system operating strategy. The leadership question is how to help farmers produce more while strengthening the soil, water, biodiversity, and climate resilience that make production durable.

Core Leadership Insight

Regenerative agriculture scales when productivity and restoration are designed as the same farm operating system, not competing goals.

Strategic Relevance

Demand growth, arable-land pressure, weather volatility, and soil degradation are turning soil, water, and resilience into business priorities.

Execution Model

Adoption depends on crop-system design, digital tools, cover crops, rotations, financing, and peer support through the transition period.

Business Impact

The value case is stronger yield stability, healthier soil, better water performance, and new revenue paths such as winter oilseeds.

Regenerative Agriculture Food-System Productivity Soil Health Water Conservation Biodiversity Climate Adaptation Climate Mitigation Smallholder Farmers Cover Cropping Reduced Tillage Winter Oilseeds Direct-Seeded Rice Farmer Economics