Caught in the Climate Loop: Backing the Farmers Who Back the Planet
Why Regenerative Growers Deserve Our Support in a Changing Climate
A Warning Sign from the Wool Industry
At Blue Earth’s opening day during London Climate Action Week (#LCAW), a quiet but powerful insight emerged during the Circular by Nature: Rethinking Innovation in Natural Fibres panel hosted by The Woolmark Company, including Amy Powney.
An Australian wool grower, who has spent years restoring her land using regenerative practices, shared that this year has brought the lowest national wool production in almost 100 years. According to the Australian Wool Production Forecasting Committee, wool production for the 2024–25 season is projected at 279 million kilograms of greasy wool—its lowest level since the early 1920s.
The reason? A mix of drought, floods, and increasing seasonal unpredictability.
And this is not just an anomaly. It’s a wider warning.
The Irony of Climate Impact on Climate-Conscious Farmers
Farmers like her, those using methods designed to heal the land, are being hit hard by the very disruptions regenerative agriculture is intended to help mitigate.
We’re seeing similar struggles in cocoa, coffee, and cotton sectors. These climate-sensitive crops, often grown by smallholders using organic or regenerative practices, are increasingly vulnerable to heatwaves, shifting seasons, extreme rainfall, and new pests.
Faced with declining yields and rising economic pressure, some farmers are making the difficult decision to return to more intensive, input-heavy methods in an attempt to maintain productivity and income. That might offer short-term stability, but it undermines the long-term sustainability we urgently need.
The Vicious Circle We Must Avoid
What’s unfolding is a dangerous feedback loop, one we must act quickly to interrupt:
Climate change disrupts regenerative farms, reducing output and income.
Farmers revert to intensive methods — fertilisers, pesticides, monocultures — to survive.
These methods degrade soil, emit more carbon, and reduce biodiversity.
This accelerates climate change, worsening the conditions that caused the problem.
It’s a cycle that risks pushing agriculture backwards — just when we need it to go forward.
And at the centre of it are people: farmers working with nature, not against it. These are the individuals stewarding healthy soils, protecting pollinators, restoring carbon sinks, and managing land in ways that benefit us all.
Why Regenerative Agriculture Matters
Regenerative farming isn’t just a buzzword, it’s a science-backed approach that delivers real ecological and climate value. It can:
Increase carbon storage in soil and vegetation
Enhance soil fertility and water retention, buffering against drought
Foster biodiversity, from microbes to pollinators
Reduce reliance on synthetic inputs, cutting pollution and emissions
Build long-term productivity, even under stress
But like all good things, these benefits take time. They require investment, consistency, and resilience. And that’s why support is so crucial, especially during hard years.
Backing the People Who Back the Planet
As the Woolmark representative rightly said during the panel: “This is when we need to support the regenerative heroes.”
That support can take many forms:
Risk-sharing and safety nets: Insurance, climate disaster funds, and income stabilisation tools for regenerative growers.
Better pricing and incentives: Premiums and procurement contracts that reward environmental stewardship, not just quantity.
Technical training and certification support: Helping farmers measure, improve, and verify their impact through accessible tools.
Market and policy alignment: Ensuring trade, subsidies, and standards align with regeneration, not intensification.
These are not just moral imperatives, they’re strategic climate solutions. Without them, we risk losing the very systems that make regenerative farming viable.
A Shared Investment in Our Future
When regenerative farmers thrive, so do our ecosystems. Their work stores carbon, rebuilds biodiversity, and enhances our collective resilience to climate shocks. They are doing the difficult, transformative work we talk about in policy meetings and climate summits.
But they need allies.
If we let climate-related setbacks push them out of regenerative methods, we’re not just losing good farmers, we’re undermining progress itself.