During the UN climate conference COP27, Unilever participated in the COP27 Climate Hub, an on-site and digital broadcast hosted by We Don’t Have Time from Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt, with a live episode of the ongoing Re:Agriculture series. Hanneke Faber, President of Unilever’s Nutrition Business Group, joined We Don’t Have Time host Nick Nuttall to moderate a discussion about raising ambitions in the transition to regenerative agriculture. 
Hanneke Faber joined the COP27 Climate Hub on November 12 to talk about regenerative agriculture.
The episode featured four speakers that raised their perspectives and initiatives on regenerative agriculture. Louise Mabulo from the Cacao Project in The Philippines highlighted how a diversity of crops can make coconut farms more resilient and provide farmers with more flexibility and understanding of the food production system.
Irene Ojuok of the Global Evergreening Alliance talked about how regenerative agriculture is being utilized in Kenya, by using local trees to improve soil health through a method called FMNR. By using the local knowledge of farmers, food production in Africa can become more in line with the natural ecosystems of the surrounding lands.
Chris Buss, Director of IUCN, joined the broadcast to talk about Regen10, an initiative that aims to increase the use of regenerative agriculture through education, collaboration, and inclusion of farmers in all parts of the world. Being inclusive to farms of all sizes is crucial to making this transition happen fast enough.
Finally, the broadcast was joined by Max Berkelmans of Rabobank who presented the Acorn initiative to empower smallholder farmers to use new practices and technologies to make their land use more sustainable. The focus on this is agroforestry and connecting this to the carbon market to create more financial incentives for farmers to plant additional trees on their land while improving their soil health.
Hanneke Faber also took the opportunity to highlight Unilever’s work with regenerative agriculture: “We have an important role to play. To that point, Unilever created a €1 billion Climate and Nature Fund, which is going to regenerative agriculture in different ways: Crop insurance for farmers, financing the transition as it takes a number of years to implement, and various other ways to fund farmers.”
The episode concluded with a panel with all four speakers, highlighting the different solutions for accelerating the transition to regenerative agriculture that can be achieved by working together. Finance was highlighted as a key factor, and the panel agreed that directing subsidies towards regenerative practices so that they are competitive is crucial to making sure that the transition happens fast enough.
“I’m hopeful after COP27 that we’ve done a little bit of impressing on the governments that were here that regenerative agriculture is worth spending money on. Some big governments, the US most notably, are doing it,” said Hanneke Faber after hearing from the panelists. Watch the full keynotes and panel in the recording below.
https://youtu.be/h2-v90zqVkU?t=1041
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28 w
Yes its time now before its to late. Soon the planet Will be even hotter🤬
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48 w
May the others heed to this call
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69 w
Insightful discussions. The time to act is now.
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69 w
This is good news, I hope the Regan10 initiative can reach us here in NZ to help address the intensive dairy industry.
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69 w
We can do it.
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72 w
That sounds right!
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72 w
That's a given
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Really encouraging
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72 w
When companies like Unilever speak out to world leaders, they have no excuse to not listen. We need to improve how we do agriculture and we need governmental support to do so. Why are we not acting?