By Sofia Perez
[Published by Forbes, December 2, 2025]
It’s a stark fact: Growing the food we eat contributes to global climate change. About 22% of greenhouse gas emissions can be traced back to farming and its related land-use changes. But when it comes to making our food systems healthier, the focus has remained primarily on consumers and market-driven change. The theory is that if food manufacturers buy the “correct” ingredients—i.e., those that have been produced in harmony with nature—and consumers make the right shopping choices at the store, the problem will be solved. But what if that assumption is wrong? Although USDA organic certification has been around since the 1990s, organic farms still represent only about 1% of all U.S. farmland by area. If price premiums remain our principal tool for boosting regenerative farming practices, we might be in for a wait.
I first heard the above-mentioned farmland statistic from Anthony Myint, the co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit organization Zero Foodprint. As he rattled off a bunch of numbers, our discussion seemed a bit clinical at first, until I realized that the solution he was proposing represented a paradigm shift. What if neutralizing climate change might actually be more accessible than we think? To buttress his argument, Myint cites another stat: a 2% increase in the carbon content of our planet’s soils could offset 100% of all greenhouse gas emissions. While some say this figure oversimplifies things, Myint and others proponents of regenerative farming believe that it can bring about dramatic change. But in order to achieve that progress, they argue, we need to begin on the farm side. To reach our goals more quickly, the emphasis must shift from changing eating to changing farming.
Toward this end, Myint’s organization provides farmers with direct funding to help them transform the way they manage their land, through steps like compost application, rotational grazing and reduced tillage. To receive these funds, farmers apply for grants that cover the cost of specific practices. Zero Foodprint then chooses its grant recipients by evaluating each proposal’s expected climate impact, which is assessed by looking at a range of factors, particularly an applicant’s score on COMET-Planner, a tool that estimates carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions.
Funding for these grants comes from Zero Foodprint’s partnerships with restaurants, fast-food franchises, supermarkets and other enterprises. These partners support the organization’s work in various ways, but the most common method is for a business to charge its customers a small fee at the point of sale—1% of a restaurant or supermarket bill—and then donate these funds to the nonprofit. This fee translates to 10 cents for every $10 a person spends on groceries or dinner out, an amount that’s small enough to be manageable for most consumers but significant enough to make a difference in the field.
Some partners contribute 1% of sales from a given location or product on an ongoing basis, while others participate in time-bound campaigns, like the nonprofit’s Holiday Gift Guide. In 2026, Zero Foodprint is also planning to stage its second iteration of “Dirty Drinks.” During this weeklong event, bars and restaurants create their own version of a “dirty” beverage and contribute $1 for each drink sold, doing their part to turn dirt into healthy soil.
From Chef to Advocate for Regenerative Farming
Myint landed on this approach as a direct result of his own experiences in the food world. Before establishing Zero Foodprint, he was a chef—and a highly successful one at that. In 2008, he co-founded San Francisco’s legendary Mission Street Food, an early pioneer in the pop-up restaurant movement. Myint later went on to helm The Perennial. There, he was extremely careful about his sourcing decisions, spending extra time and money to buy food from producers who farmed regeneratively or organically. And then one day he had a conversation with a snarky reporter who burst his bubble.
“We were doing everything we possibly could, bending over backwards, trying to be ‘good’, when this journalist said, ‘That’s nice, but how does that help create change? How does that help the next farmer do this?’ And honestly, we didn’t know.” Myint realized that, as a chef, he didn’t understand how the agricultural industry even worked, so he began talking to farmers and ranchers, and studying their business models.
As he conducted research on food systems, he found that there were federal subsidies for things like crop insurance that help hold conventional, chemical-based approaches in place. “If you think about it in terms of buying a ‘good’ ingredient, that just means that someone else is not getting that same good ingredient. If I’m buying organic tomatoes, I’m not necessarily helping the farmer do the next thing they need to do on their land, and I’m not helping that farmer’s neighbor either.”
To his surprise, he discovered that there was little support to fund the transition from conventional farming toward more climate-smart agriculture, and most farmers’ financial margins are too tight to consider such an investment. “In order for a farmer to switch to regenerative agriculture, they would need a huge amount of money,” he says. Estimates range from $800 to $2,000 per acre of cropland, just to cover the transition, never mind the risk of losing eligibility for crop insurance.
Regenerative Ranching in the Southeast
Of course, there are climate-smart farms that have achieved market-driven success. One great example is Hickory Nut Gap Farms, near Asheville, North Carolina, run by the husband-and-wife team of Jamie and Amy Agers. (Jamie is the fourth generation in his family to farm in this community.) Hickory Nut Gap produces 100% grass-fed beef and pasture-raised pork, and the Agers are known as stewards of their land—protecting their soils, rotating pastures and sequestering carbon—but their impact goes beyond the boundaries of their own farm.
The Agers have helped to lead the regenerative ranching movement across the Southeast, establishing a regional network of family farms with whom they partner to market meat products under the Hickory Nut Gap label. The brand sources this meat from regenerative ranches in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia, and its products are available at regional retailers, in large national chains like Whole Foods and through online grocers such as FreshDirect.
But Hickory Nut Gap’s achievements have been hard won. “Building regenerative farms means operating with a completely different cost structure than commodity farms, so marketing and production have to work hand in hand. People need to understand and believe in why they’re paying more,” says Jamie Ager. Success also requires a consistent, reliable supply of product every single week. “We source from other farmers who share our values and protocols so we can scale together and bring regenerative meat to market successfully. Most importantly, we’re always looking for value-aligned customers, because those who understand the worth of regenerative agriculture make it possible for us to charge what we need to keep the system thriving.”
Myint applauds these efforts—“As a chef and a parent, I buy regenerative and organic, when possible”—but he does not believe that price premiums are the most efficient way to scale up regenerative farming nationwide. “As we spoke with the farmers and ranchers we were showcasing, it became clear that buying great products wasn’t leading to new practices on new acres by other farms,” he says. According to the USDA, U.S. farmers receive an average of only 16 cents out of every dollar that’s spent on domestically produced food; the rest goes to what’s known as the marketing share, to cover post-farm costs such as transporting, processing and selling food to consumers, so even a price premium may not be enough to move the needle for some farmers.
What Is Regenerative Farming?
There are varying definitions of the term “regenerative farming,” and several certification programs have emerged to assess farms according to their own specific criteria for the term, but Myint takes a big-picture view, describing it as farming with nature, increasing soil biology and boosting soil health in a process of continual improvement. That last point is key. “It’s sort of like how you transition to being healthy. I’m going to start eating more real food. I’m going to go for a walk. It’s not like, at some specific point, I’m suddenly ‘healthy’.” It’s not a zero-sum game.
“Let’s say there’s a rancher who’s raising cattle on grass in year one of the cow’s life, and then in year two, the cow goes to a conventional feedlot. As food-systems’ advocates, we may not like what’s going on in year two, but year one is low-hanging fruit—an easy opportunity to improve land management,” which allows farmers to make progress without getting hung up on ingredient purity. Put a different way: Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
That’s where Zero Foodprint comes in, providing farmers with grants to implement specific regenerative practices on their land, regardless of how they manage the rest of it. “Imagine a farmer with 100 acres who is farming conventionally but wants to use less fertilizer and plant some cover crops on 20 acres. We’re here to meet that request and help them fund the project without judging the other 80 acres. It’s about trying to make progress on those 20 acres, and then maybe the following year they’ll do another 20.”
The Impacts of Regenerative Farming
To date, Zero Foodprint has awarded more than $8.4 million in grants, invested in more than 700 farm projects and sequestered more than 230,000 tons of CO2 across 100,000 acres. Each recipient of the organization’s “Restore Grants” can only receive up to $25,000, but farmers can be awarded a second and third grant in the future, if those subsequent proposals are selected by the organization.
On the funding side, the lineup of contributors is varied. In Boulder, Colorado, for example, Zero Foodprint receives donations from James Beard Award–winning chefs, like Kelly Whitaker of Dry Storage and Caroline Glover of Annette, as well as from every single Subway franchise, all owned by Timothy Schiel. In Portland, Oregon, a grocery chain called New Seasons Market has collaborated with Zero Foodprint on a couple of month-long campaigns, sending 1% of earnings from the sale of items in their house line and also convincing 50 external brands to participate in the promotion.
Donations like these have helped to support farms like Minoru in Colorado. After six years of working for other growers, Jade Sato was looking to start her own farm, so she launched a Kickstarter and was well on her way when the pandemic hit. Although she contemplated throwing in the towel and returning the money, she established Minoru Farm (which is named after her grandfather) and began producing a wide variety of Asian vegetables that she sells to restaurants and at a farmers market. In 2024, Sato earned a Restore Grant from Zero Foodprint that allowed her to pay for compost application, windbreak establishment, mulching and cover cropping.
It’s a similar story in Southern California, where Ofelia and Eric Lichtenheld were working as agronomists in the biotech industry while nursing the dream of owning their own farm. In 2019, they purchased land that was literally being used as a dump, about 10 miles north of the Mexican border in San Diego County. After a year of clearing out a huge amount of debris—everything from tires to toilets—they worked to restore their eroded and lifeless soils by applying natural mulch. Eventually, their farm, which they dubbed Hummingbird Agrotek, was planted with olive orchards, a vineyard and fruit trees.
To continue nourishing their land, the couple applied for government grants on two occasions only to be turned down both times. Finally, in 2022, they received a Restore Grant from Zero Foodprint to apply compost and plant cover crops, helping to reduce erosion and retain water in their soils. The money was a lifeline. “Many farms are located far from sources of compost and mulch, making transportation costs prohibitively high,” says Ofelia Lichtenheld. The following year, they earned another Restore Grant from the nonprofit. “Without support from organizations like Zero Foodprint, it would be impossible for us to cover the expenses of mulch, compost and cover-crop seed.”
A few years into the life of Hummingbird Agrotek, the Lichtenhelds also began growing agave while still cultivating their other crops, maintaining a commitment to crop diversity. Soon, they began to hear from other farmers in the area who were also keen to grow agave, thanks to the plant’s ability to thrive in arid regions, so the couple established their Agave Farm Nursery in support of these efforts. “We believe that working closely with experts, scientists, environmental researchers, partner organizations and other farmers is essential to advancing sustainable and regenerative practices,” says Ofelia Lichtenheld.
Their implementation of regenerative farming practices has gone beyond restoring soils. Hummingbird Agrotek now has seven pollinator habitats, songbird boxes, hedgerows, raptor perches, drinking fixtures for wildlife, owl boxes and bat boxes, and the couple is eager to do more. For starters, Ofelia says that they plan to add at least one new pollinator habitat or hedgerow each year. “[Zero Foodprint’s funding] was my first grant. Through the support of its wonderful team, I learned that my farm truly can make a difference.”