Which foods are certified as regenerative?

Where can you find regenerative foods and other products made with regenerative practices?

That was a repeated audience question at a recent PCC member event featuring national regenerative experts Elizabeth Whitlow and Joe Dickson. The co-op is focused on this issue because “regenerative” is becoming a food and agriculture buzzword, but there’s no formal consensus on what it means or how to prove producers’ claims.

A handful of emerging certifications are meant to address that problem. But it’s surprisingly difficult for consumers to get a straight answer on which foods are certified, even when they know what the certification is supposed to mean. (Informally, at the PCC event, participants agreed regenerative practices are those that leave the land and community better than they found it.)

We provided a partial product list and links below, with some caveats.

In many cases, certain products from a given manufacturer list one of the current regenerative labels, but other products from the same manufacturer are not certified. Shoppers searching online might find that a brand has earned a regenerative certification, but its products might not be listed separately online as certified. Or, a product might be listed online as certified, but the packaging in the store doesn’t include that label. Websites aren’t always up to date.

Continuing the maddening details, some regenerative labels have different tiers of certification. That requires shoppers to dig into the details of, for instance, whether the cattle raised for their regenerative-certified beef ate feed that was non-regenerative, 40-60% regenerative, 60-80% or 80-100% — and what that even means.

The situation will likely improve over time, especially as government agencies step in to start defining what regenerative means. (California has started that process, though with the goal of helping the state direct money to support regenerative practices, not to enforce label claims.)

Meanwhile, it helps to keep a careful eye out for labels and to do some research before shopping.

The Regenerative Organic Certified label

A good starting point is the Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) label, which begins with organic certification from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and then adds on specific requirements on soil health and land management, animal welfare, and farmer and worker fairness. (See here for specifics on ROC requirements.)

That organic baseline is important because the USDA Organic seal remains the only government-backed organic guarantee, with extensive, specific legal standards and enforcement for violations.

While organic and regenerative practices overlap, a growing movement of people say the government seal must be a starting point rather than an end point for regenerative products, given some of the practices organics allows (e.g. hydroponics), the areas where its protections are weak (e.g. worker health and animal welfare) and the roadblocks to substantive change.

The ROC label is gathering steam: More than 1,000 foods, health products and textiles now carry it, with many more on the way. Often only specific products from a given brand are certified, so it’s good to check for labels on individual products. Brands carried by PCC that have ROC-certified products include:

• Alec ice cream
• Alexandre Family Farm (including A2/A2 whole milk, 100% grass-fed milk and whole milk yogurt.)
• Ancient Nutrition (including Super Greens and Women’s Once-Daily Probiotics)
• Big Tree Farms
• Bonterra
• Bronner (including Coconut Oil and Dr. Bronner’s Salted Dark Chocolate)
• Florida Crystals
• Forecast Coffee Company
• Frontier Co-op
• Ground Up
• Groundwork Coffee
• Guayaki
• Harmless Harvest
• Herb Pharm
• La Tourangelle
• Living Intentions
• Lotus Foods
• Lundberg Family Farms (see the full list here), including organic White Long Grain Rice and Brown Long Grain Rice, Sushi Rice, and several types of rice cakes.)
• Maggie’s Organics
• Manitoba Harvest
• Navitas
• New Barn Organics
• New Chapter
• Patagonia Provisions
• Pocono Organics
• Simpli
• Troon vineyard
• Wholesome (including cane sugar, turbinado sugar and blue agave nectar)

Many Northwest producers are also certified ROC, including Hedlin Farms, one supplier for Cairnspring Mills flour, which is sold at PCC and also used in PCC’s commissary kitchen and many other PCC products. Certified farms whose produce is carried by PCC include seasonal stone fruit from Peterson Family Fruit in California and yellow and red onions from Brian Anderson Farm in Othello, Wash.

The Real Organic Project

Leaders of the Real Organic Project (ROP), another prominent certifier, see themselves as fighting for the original ideals of organics, with a particular emphasis on requiring that plants be grown in soil rather than hydroponically, and that livestock be raised on pasture rather than confined. Like ROC, the ROP label requires USDA Organic certification as a baseline and builds from there, but ROP certifies individual farms rather than packaged foods. (See here for a look at the origins of both labels and check out ROP’s educational podcasts.)

ROP has certified more than 1,000 farms, including more than 100 in Washington state.

ROP certified businesses include Grace Harbor Farms, whose dairy products are carried at PCC, Rent’s Due Ranch, a PCC supplier since 1982 currently providing many of PCC’s vegetable starts, and Sauk Farm, which produces Honeycrisp apple cider and other products carried at PCC.

Regenified

Regenified says its “Certified Regenerative” label relies on “six principles, three rules, and four processes, reflecting years of on-farm and in-lab research on regenerative agricultural practices. It guides farmers, ranchers, and companies towards practices that rejuvenate the Earth.” Specifics are here. The site lists key regenerative practices as including “keeping soil covered with cover crops, integrating livestock, promoting diversity, avoiding synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, and using no-till farming techniques.”

One line of Vital Farms eggs, “Vital Farms Restorative,” is certified Regenified, but its other lines are not. The King Arthur Baking Company offers one product certified by Regenified, its “Climate Blend Flour.” The company’s goal is that all its flours will be made from regeneratively grown wheat by 2030. California-based Diestel Family Ranch recently received Regenified certification for its “Pasture-Raised Whole Turkey.”

Certified Regenerative by A Greener World

A Greener World (AGW) oversees several labels, and says its Certified Regenerative label “is the only label to require audited, high-welfare production, transport and slaughter practices.” For AGW regenerative certification, farmers develop individual plans with regenerative experts which are audited over time, allowing for regional flexibility. None of its Certified Regenerative products are currently available in the Puget Sound area, according to its online map, but some can be purchased online.

Why regenerative labels matter

Regenerative practices generally reduce the impacts of climate change, minimize soil disturbance and ensure animal welfare and social fairness, as PCC put it in a recent push to establish industrywide standards.

These concepts have broad support — but without firm definitions and oversight, it’s buyer beware.

Dickson, once dubbed “the absolute authority on quality in the natural foods industry,” noted at the PCC event that no federal or state requirements currently require a regenerative claim to meet any standard.

“My big worry here is that if we don’t do something now, whether it’s a regulation, whether it’s retailers like PCC taking a stand on what the word means, it’ll end up like “natural” or “sustainable” or “green,” all of those terms that are out there that mean absolutely nothing.”

What can shoppers do to encourage meaningful standards and oversight? The following recommendations came from PCC’s event speakers — Dickson; Whitlow, executive director of the Regenerative Organic Alliance, which oversees the ROC label; and Mike Wenrick, PCC’s Director of Purpose:

• Carefully read labels. Let brands you love and stores you love know that you expect more.
• Follow California’s efforts to define regenerative agriculture (Whitlow serves on the state committee that will draft an initial recommendation.) The California Department of Food and Agriculture notes that “While the term ’regenerative’ is relatively new, the principles behind the concept reflect practices that some farmers and Native American Tribes have embraced for generations.”
• Encourage Washington state and federal lawmakers to support organic and regenerative agriculture. (One route is the Coalition for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture, founded with support from PCC).
• Learn more with resources like the Common Ground film and local authors Anne Biklé and David Montgomery.
• Get involved with the USDA Farm Bill.

“We know that where we put our food dollars really matters…,” Whitlow said. “But we have about $450 billion that goes to our USDA Farm Bill. What did we get for organic last time? Around $300 million.

‘How about we carve off a couple billion and put a percentage towards helping these farmers transition? Because that’s what we need, is massive deployment of resources to help get us off the chemical treadmill, and get off the influence of Monsanto and all the big agrochemical corporations that are the ones who dictate that farm policy…

‘It’s kind of astounding that we don’t have more activism in D.C. on that level.”