Key Takeaways
- Lloyds Banking Group and Wildfarmed have launched the Food & Nature Resilience Fund to scale investment in regenerative farming across the UK.
- The fund pools money from banks, utility companies and insurers to pay farmers for measurable gains in biodiversity, soil health, water quality and carbon reduction.
- Early backers include water utilities Severn Trent and Affinity Water, along with insurer AXA XL, with more investors expected to join later.
- A 12% hit to GDP over the next decade is the projected cost of unaddressed ecosystem decline, according to research cited by Lloyds.
- Nine in ten farmers surveyed pointed to funding shortfalls, not lack of interest, as the main reason they haven't switched to regenerative methods.
Lloyds Banking Group Pools Cross-Sector Capital for Regenerative Farming
Lloyds Banking Group has teamed up with regenerative agriculture company Wildfarmed to launch the Food & Nature Resilience Fund, a vehicle meant to speed up the shift of UK farmland toward regenerative practices that boost biodiversity, restore soil health, protect water quality and cut carbon output. Khadija Ali, Group Director of Sustainability and Responsible Business at Lloyds Banking Group, unveiled the fund in a LinkedIn post, framing it as a mechanism for pooling capital from banks, utilities and insurers so farmers can be paid for verified environmental gains without giving up food production on their land.
Wildfarmed's Farmer Network Anchors the Partnership
Ben Makowiecki, Agriculture Sustainability Director at Lloyds Banking Group, said the fund brings together organizations with a shared stake in healthier land and water systems.
“By bringing together businesses with a stake in resilient farming, healthy soils, clean water and thriving natural ecosystems, this fund can help set in motion the pace of change needed to scale regenerative agriculture across the UK while creating a more reliable financial model for farmers,” said Ben Makowiecki, Agriculture Sustainability Director at Lloyds Banking Group, as quoted by ESG Today.
Wildfarmed, founded in 2018 by Andy Cato, George Lamb and Edd Lees, works with a network of British farmers on core regenerative techniques such as limiting soil disturbance, keeping soil covered year-round, and growing a wider mix of crops. The company says these methods raise biodiversity and soil quality while cutting water pollution and emissions, and the new fund is structured so farmers can adopt them without pulling land out of food production.
