European Carbon Farming Summit 2025: A Turning Point
The European Carbon Farming Summit 2025 brought together over 500 stakeholders from across the agrifood sector in Dublin to explore solutions for scaling regenerative agriculture. The summit served as a platform to share best practices, discuss innovative financial models, and highlight strategies to make sustainable farming profitable, accessible, and mainstream.
Livelihoods at the Summit
As an organization committed to supporting farmers and businesses in their transition to nature-positive agriculture, Livelihoods was proud to take part in these discussions.
On March 4th, our CEO Eric Soubeiran joined the Opening Ceremony & Plenary Session, alongside representatives from the Government of Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine.
On March 5th, we co-hosted a plenary session on Scaling Up Resilient & Inclusive Agricultural Value Chains, sharing insights from public-private partnerships and landscape coalitions in collaboration with Social Carbon and Treevaluation.
Bridging the Gap Between Vision and Reality
The conversation at the summit focused on turning ambition into action. While the benefits of regenerative agriculture are widely recognized, scaling these practices remains challenging. Farmers face financial risks, limited technical support, and unclear market incentives. At the same time, agrifood companies struggle to integrate sustainability into their supply chains in a way that delivers measurable value.
To address these barriers, a panel discussion brought together industry leaders, including Mike Davies, CEO of the Social Carbon Foundation; Nikol Ostianova, Co-Founder of Oneness: Nature+ Value Chains & Markets and Chair of the Technical Committee at the International Platform for Insetting; Mark Pybus, UK Project Manager at Livelihoods; and Eric Soubeiran, CEO of Livelihoods. Together, they explored the challenges and opportunities in regenerative agriculture and the need for collaboration across the value chain.
The key takeaway was clear: partnerships between farmers, businesses, policymakers, and financial institutions are essential to create practical, scalable solutions that make regenerative agriculture both viable and profitable.
Scaling Regenerative Agriculture: The Path Forward
To move beyond pilot projects and isolated success stories, we must create an enabling environment where farmers, businesses, and policymakers can align their efforts. The summit discussions highlighted several key areas for action:
1. Policy: Creating a Supportive Framework
Regenerative agriculture needs clear, long-term policy commitments that provide stability and encourage investment. Agricultural subsidies and payment structures must shift towards an outcome-based reward system, where financial incentives are tied to measurable environmental impact. Aligning EU Environmental Protection Law, the Nature Restoration Law, and the Carbon Farming Certification Framework will help reduce risks and create a unified approach for climate-positive farming.
2. Supporting Farmers: Removing Barriers to Adoption
Farmers are at the heart of this transition, but they cannot do it alone. Stronger representation in policy discussions, practical knowledge-sharing platforms, and technical support tailored to local conditions will accelerate adoption. Demonstrating successful business models will also help shift perceptions and prove that regenerative farming is both viable and profitable.
3. Finance & Investment: Unlocking Capital for Regeneration
Investors and financial institutions must recognize land and nature as long-term infrastructure assets, making regenerative agriculture a priority investment. Supporting nature-positive inputs and sustainable land-use practices will help reduce climate and crop-related risks while strengthening agrifood supply chains. Risk-sharing mechanisms will also be key in ensuring that financial responsibility is distributed fairly across stakeholders.
4. Agrifood Companies: Making Regeneration Core Business
For regenerative agriculture to scale, it needs to create real business value beyond sustainability labels. Lower input costs, reduced labour and time, and improved revenue per hectare show that regenerative practices can be both environmentally and economically beneficial. But making this shift requires coordination—aligning farmers, suppliers, and businesses around shared goals. This is where Livelihoods has played a key role, acting as a bridge to bring stakeholders together, design practical solutions, and ensure that regenerative practices are embedded into supply chains for lasting impact.
5. Monitoring, Reporting & Verification (MRV): Aligning for Impact
Rather than multiplying data collection efforts, the priority is to align MRV frameworks across the value chain to ensure consistency, efficiency, and relevance. Data collection must be fit-for-purpose, designed to serve both sustainability goals and farmers’ operational needs—without creating unnecessary burdens. Leveraging digital tools and technologies will be key to minimizing manual input, improving data accuracy, and saving farmers valuable time, while enabling transparent reporting and better-informed decision-making at every level.
Collaboration for a Regenerative Future
The European Carbon Farming Summit 2025 reinforced a critical message: regenerative agriculture is not just an environmental necessity—it is an economic opportunity. By restoring soil, improving biodiversity, and increasing farmers’ resilience, we can create a food system that benefits both people and the planet.
Scaling solutions requires breaking silos. Policymakers need to establish clear incentives, investors must see the long-term value in land stewardship, agrifood companies must embed regeneration into their business strategy, and farmers must be empowered with financial and technical support.
At Livelihoods, we remain deeply committed to advancing nature-positive agriculture. Our 15 years of experience have shown that meaningful transition is possible—when it begins with what matters most to farmers. By focusing on tangible benefits like soil health, productivity, and economic resilience, sustainable change can truly take root. The choices we make today will shape the future of farming—one where agriculture and nature thrive side by side.