• In the last decades the food system’s primary goal has become providing plentiful food at comparatively low prices. This path has largely being based on chemical agricultural inputs, monocropping and linear rather than circular models, causing an environmental disaster and fueling the climate change.

• In 2019, climate change contributed to extreme weather events causing at least $100 billion in damages. By 2050, cumulative damages from climate change may reach $8 trillion and causing a $250 billion loss to the agricultural sector.

• More extreme temperature and precipitation can prevent crops from growing. Extreme events, especially floods and droughts, can harm crops and reduce yields.

• As an example. An agroclimatological research conducted by our partner Adapta and University of California San Diego on milk supply oscillations in the semiarid region of Bahia state, Brazil, has shown a direct correlation between climate extremes and disruption of supplies. During the 1993-95 and 2010-16 droughts, milk production was reduced by 40% and livestock halved.

• The resilience of food systems is under growing threat from soil degradation, pollinator loss, water scarcity, extreme weather events and increased susceptibility to loss from pests and disease.

• Agriculture is responsible for about 25% of global GHG, 80% of freshwater consumption, 95% of deforestation and 80% of water eutrophication .

• The total GHG emissions from the agricultural sector is about 7 Gigatons CO2e.

• The largest source of GHG in agriculture is enteric fermentation and manure from livestock accounting to over 60% of total GHG.

• Because of population growth and higher protein diets in the developing world, the sector could reach 9 to 11 Gigatons by 2050 with no mitigating measures.

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• The global food sector is worth about USD$ 7 trillion/yr. If we include timber, natural products for the pharmaceutical sector and textile fibers, we get to over USD$ 10 T/year.

• The corporate world is controlling most of the supplies. Here are a few examples. Wheat, cornand soybeans are the three most important agricultural raw materials traded worldwide. According to the “Agrifood Atlas” (2017) of Heinrich Boll Foundation, four companies (Archer Daniels Midland/ADM, Bunge, Cargill and the Louis Dreyfus) account for 70% of the world market in these agricultural commodities. The 50 largest food manufactures account for 50% of global sales of processed food. In some specific sub sectors, the domination of large companies is even more striking. The top 10 soft drink companies represent about 50% of the world soft drink market. In the beer market, one company (AB ImBev) represents about 30% of global sales.

• Most of the time, farmers are held responsible for the environmental impacts caused by farming. However, the F&B sector is buying supplies based on a price set up merely by a demand-supply relation and product quality. There is no valuing mechanism to pricing products also based on  their environmental standards. The market is not including environmental externalities in the product price, passing on to future generation the economic cost of environmental degradation.

• Only 18% of GHG are emitted during food processing, packaging, transport and retail. The remaining portion is related to farming operations (72%). Many corporations have realized the need to help farmers decrease their environmental footprint to decrease also the environmental footprint of their products. They are therefore setting up ambitious sustainability targets linked to SDGs, have embraced a Science Based Target approach and/or are joining existing certification schemes to respect minimum environmental standards.

• However, the achievement of tangible and verifiable results is only possible through a market integration where corporate suppliers (i.e. the farmers) are trained to adopt practices aligned with the corporate sustainability goals and are monitored and eventually certified by third parties.

Despite the serious environmental degradation caused by current farming practices, several researches have shown that regenerative practices can sequester at lest 1 trillion tons of CO2e from the atmosphere by 2050. Agroforestry and animal integration in silvipastorial settings for example have a high carbon sequestration potential with figures indicating 10 to 30 tons/Ha/yr of CO2eremoved from the atmosphere.

Agricultural diversification and regenerative systems are also proved to protect yield whiledelivering a broad array of ecosystem benefits such as greater biodiversity, pollination, pest control, nutrient cycling, regulation of the water cycle and other key ecological functions.

Raising consumers’ demand for lower impact and healthier products, increasing credit risks and supply oscillations due to climate change and raising awareness levels to act on climate change across society are creating a very fertile environment for developing scaling up mechanisms for regenerative farming practices.

Regenerative Agriculture is a concept that includes agroecology, agroforestry, permaculture, restoration ecology, rewilding, and other approaches focused on active ecosystem improvement by leveraging ecosystem functions[

It is a set of farming and grazing practices that, among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity – resulting in both carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle.

Specific Regenerative Agriculture techniques are successful in replenishing microclimates and favoring water infiltration helping to reconstitute the local water cycle.

Simultaneously these practices drastically reduce water use and the chemical pollution impacting ground and surface water. Recent research is also investigating on the higher nutrition contentsand density of food produced through regenerative agriculture.

Furthermore, regenerative agriculture is a path toward climate resiliency and adaptation that help mitigating the production fluctuation increasing the well-being of farmers and their communities as well as securing the supplying of raw material to industries

A growing body of scientific research, as well as proven examples from financially successful regenerative agriculture farmers, is starting to bring this into light as a real solution.

FARMERS

Beyond the indispensable big-picture environmental potential, regenerative agriculture gives farmers the opportunity to produce better yields over a longer period of time. Besides, less dependence on external inputs, less use of water and other advantages related to regenerative practices, can reduce farmers’ operational costs.

INDUSTRIES

Industries are facing a huge problem: productivity is decreasing along with soil fertility and sourcing is becoming more and more difficult. Conventional farming has been and is driving production straight to a dead end. Processing companies depend on raw material. Regenerative agriculture is the solution for a more resilient production and, at the same time, for the mitigation/reduction of the problems that nowadays create the biggest problems.

Young consumers’ strong awareness of climate crisis will progressively put companies that don’t act out of business. On a marketing side, a true shift toward regenerative agriculture, can open the door to a fastly growing audience of new consumers

CONSUMERS

Final consumers can benefit from production stability and, even more important, from a better quality in terms of nutrients, organoleptic properties and health. Not to mention the climate crisisthat is going to orient more and more consumers’ choices.

GOVERNMENTS

Useless to say how a direct impact on production stability, climate mitigation and public wealth andhealth can immensely be beneficial for governments in terms of international and social peace

INVESTORS

As one of the hot-topic tools to achieve carbon sequestration is to shift farming from a large-scale industrial agriculture to a regenerative agriculture approach investors started seeing it as a solid investment and considering having it in their portfolios. In addition, Regenerative agriculture is in line with ESG and impact investments.

Our Company focus on (i) the experimentation and standardization of regenerative practices that have already proved to be extremely effective in pedo-climatic areas outside Italy and Europe, and (ii) develop business model that can expand them on a large scale in the central European and Mediterranean countries.

Our final objective is to reach a net positive impact on the environment, while increasing resilience of agroecosystems, rural societies and return on farmers’ assets.

We cooperate with the best technical partners in Europe and around the world to identify appropriate strategies and technologies to improve the resilience of supply chains. Ourcollaboration with key players like Adapta (Brazil) one of the few worldwide leaders in regenerative agriculture and climate resilience, is supporting Reversa in analyzing, adapting, customizing, and implementing methodologies and practices that have already proved to work in the field. Adapta has 20 years’ experience on the field and winner of several awards including…..

Reversa takes advantage of Adapta monitoring platform to manage the transition of entire supply chains towards regenerative agriculture, making it able to adapt the most successful scalable references and develop business models that will be a win-win for the environment and all engaged stakeholders. It will help companies to identify leading measures and track the performance to ensure delivery supporting them aligning business targets and progress with the SDGs

Our short term (1-3 yrs) aim is to design and coordinate the execution of robust and scalable references for at least 5 agro-ecosystems. In the medium term (3-5 yrs), we will scale them up at a full supply chain level. Over the long term we want to create regional references that can reverse our current climate, soil degradation and forest loss trends.

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‍OUR PROJECTS

‍PROJECT 1

Farm: Boa Vista Agroflorestal

Owner: Daniele Cesano and Mildrey Sarduy

Supply chain/product: Organic certified oranges, lemon, avocado, banana and African Mahogany; vegetables

Where: Paraiba do Sul, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil

Problem addressed: BVA is located in a area that has been highly degraded through deteriorating livestock farming.

Practices: BVA is a certified organic agroforestry farm that is using successional techniques, permaculture design and the use of micro-organism communities for soil bio activation to restore soil erosion.

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‍PROJECT 2

Farm: La Spina Santa

Owner: Antonino Autelitano

Supply chain/product: Bergamot, Olive Oil. Spirits and Cosmetic

Where: Bova Marina (RC), Calabria, Italy

Problem addressed: The main problem addressed is water management and consequent washout as well as reduction of organic matter over time. Susceptibility to pests has become an ever increasing problem due to limited biodiversity on the site. 

Practices: Redesigning the production system using regenerative practices such as permaculture and syntropic agriculture in order to restore the water retention in the soil and enhance it’s biological performance. Other plant species will be introduced, for example mango, papaya, avocado and prickly pear, in order to increase the biodiversity and productivity per hectare.

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‍PROJECT 3

Farm: Permarancia

Owner: Angelo Branca, Giuseppe Branca

Supply chain/product: Orange, Almonds, Prickly Pears, Cosmetic, Olive Oil

Where: Centuripe (EN), Sicily, Italy

Problem addressed: One area in particular had been abandoned after decades of land degradation. The trees were in a fragile state, with close to non-existent foliage and extreme susceptibility to pest attacks. In a second area, in addition to the fragile state of the trees, there was significant damage from grazing animals. In a third area, also abandoned, there were very few trees. The soil was devoid of organic matter, showed signs of widespread washout and showed a poor microflora and fauna count. 

Practices: The area has been restored using a number of techniques such as permaculture, cover crops, integrated biological pest management, regulated access for grazing animals. The future focus will be on integrating natural and syntropic agriculture techniques in order to further restore the land and growth productivity.

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PROJECT 4

Farm: Coinga o milk producer

Owner: _

Supply chain/product: Milk and Cheese

Where: Menorca, Islas Balerares, Spain

Problem addressed: Due to increasing intensity of climate extremes, the semiarid regions of Southern Europe are more likely to suffer from prolonged and extreme droughts. This will affect agriculture production. Semiarid regions have a natural propensity for livestock farming because this type of production is more adaptable to these climates. However, with the increase in extreme climate shifts, it seems very likely that livestock farming will suffer from enlarged production fluctuations due to higher mean temperatures and heat waves that affect milk production and animal weight gain, reduce feedstock production and increase production costs due to greater dependency on animal feed produced off-site of the farm.

Practices: The use Opuntia Ficus Indica, commonly known as the prickly pear and silvopastoral systems represent a powerful tool in the face of climate change adaption and mitigation. Opuntia Ficus has several benefits: it substitutes feed that depend highly on water availability, such as corn and other energetic concentrates; it thrives in areas with little precipitation and high evapotranspiration, it requires little fertilization; it has a low implantation and maintenance cost; it produces large quantities of green matter (up to 350/ha/year) and it reduces animal water intake by 50%. Silvipastorial systems provide shade for the animals; creating a microclimate, enriching the soil and nearby pastureland with beneficial microorganisms, promoting the cycle of nutrients and water infiltration, building organic soil matter and improving the farmer's cash flow.

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PROJECT 5

Farm: Reversa Grains

Owner: _

Supply chain/product: Grains

Where: Gers Region, France

Problem addressed: Grain monocultures have dominated agricultural landscapes for centuries. Their production has been based on practices that have heavily disturbed the soil without considering that a healthy and balanced soil is the basic component for sustaining ecosystem functions. This has resulted in an exponential increase in chemical fertilizers and heavy loss of topsoil, unbalancing the soil ecosystem and fostering a multiplication of plagues and diseases that have been treated with an increasing use of hazardous pesticides, herbicides and insecticides. 

Practices: The solution for today's grain monoculture is the restoration of soil health through a combination of regenerative practices: no tillage machineries, use of cover crops, multiplication of community of micro organisms to enrich and rebalance soil biota, use of remineralizers, biological integrated pest and disease management and any other additional practice that enables the soil to feed the plant, reducing the presence of pathogens and the direct use of chemical fertilizers.

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PROJECT 6

Farm: Reversa Vineyard

Owner: _

Supply chain/product: Dolcetto and Moscato Grape

Where: Strevi (AL), Piedmont, Italy

Problem addressed: Conventional viticulture based on tillage, herbicides, chemical fertilizers and agrochemical products has, over decades, impoverished the soil. Increased drought periods and extreme rain episodes have contributed to the worsening of the problem.

Practices: A set of techniques, from permaculture design, to including animals, to no tillage, to using integrated pest management, planting to encourage beneficial insects and, in general, making the vineyard species rich, resilient and self-sustaining. Including other plant species and cover crops creates a soil structure that allows any rain to infiltrate the ground and contribute ro fostering the microbial life, as well as soil microfauna and flora. 

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PROJECT 7

Farm: Tenuta De Luca

Owner: _

Supply chain/product: Olive, Evoo

Where: San Nicandro Garganico (FG), Apulia, Italy

Problem addressed: _

Practices:_

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‍CONTACTS

info@reversa.eu‍

Via E. de Sonnaz 19

10121 Torino - Italy

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