One third of the global population–over 2.5 billion people–relies on small-scale farming for their livelihoods. It’s an arduous job, and every season, smallholder farmers are at the whim of market fluctuations, shifting trade policies, and increasingly severe climate shocks.
The solution to growing smallholder prosperity in the context of a changing climate lies in ramping up and sustaining massive global adoption of regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture is a holistic approach that restores environmental health, reduces carbon emissions, builds local resilience to climate shocks, and creates more stable, diversified income streams for smallholder farming families.
Introducing: Root Regen 2035
Launched in January 2026, Root Regen 2035 is our ambitious ten-year vision carried out through multiple three-year strategic plans.
Root Regen 2035 imagines a future where regenerative smallholder farming becomes a prosperous way of life for 60 million farming families in rural communities.
Our 25-year track record has demonstrated that delivering credit and capacity-building to agriculture small & medium enterprises (agri-SMEs) drives smallholder prosperity. With Root Regen 2035, we’re ensuring that we invest in those who are dedicated to using regenerative agriculture as a means of achieving prosperous and climate-resilient communities, livelihoods, and landscapes. As a part of this, we’re refining the ways we engage businesses and showcase their impact. Below are some of the ways we’ve updated our monitoring and impact methods to reflect Root Capital’s heightened dedication towards regenerative agriculture.
We’re Replacing “Climate Action Leaders” with “Regenerative Businesses”
In 2020, Root Capital launched the Climate Resilience Roadmap, an ambitious six-year strategy to support urgent climate action in rural communities by building the resilience of agri-SMEs. We focused on increasing our portfolio of “Climate Action Leaders”–Root Capital clients who go above and beyond baseline sustainable practices by making substantial contributions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and/or strengthening farmer resilience and adaptive capacity.
With Root Regen 2035, we’re replacing the Root Capital-specific Climate Action Leader designation with a Regenerative Businesses classification. This updated categorization is aligned with the growing global movement towards regenerative agriculture and modeled off of leading regenerative frameworks like Regen10. Crucially, this shift broadens our impact reporting by capturing the socioeconomic outcomes for farming communities, as well as the nature outcomes like biodiversity and soil health, both of which are equally central to building truly regenerative agricultural systems.
Root Capital defines a Regenerative Business as an agricultural enterprise that implements practices across four key outcomes: prosperous and resilient livelihoods for farmers and employees, protected and enhanced biodiversity, improved soil and water health, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. These practices may include agroforestry, soil conservation, agronomic support, and other approaches that contribute to environmental sustainability while supporting farmer livelihoods.
We’re Expanding our “Women Inclusive” Terminology
Historically, Women Inclusive businesses at Root Capital are those that meet gender-specific thresholds across agri-business ownership, leadership, and employment. Starting this year, we have amended the definition to include a requirement for a women inclusive policies or programs, in alignment with the 2X Challenge Criteria. This means that investment decisions now consider if businesses provide products or services that enhance the wellbeing of the women it reaches.
We’ re Adding “Advisory Clients Reached” in our Impact Narrative
We are enhancing our impact reporting to include key metrics about the scale of impact coming from clients who are exclusively reached by our Advisory Services. Root Capital’s impact has always spanned beyond financing, and now our external reporting reflects the significance of our technical capacity building. With this data systematically tracked and evaluated, we are able to assess the materiality of our advisory service provisioning and can show how our advisory-only clients provide benefits for their communities alongside those provided by clients receiving financing.
Now we are ready to share it externally in a more intentional way. For example, in our latest Quarterly Performance Report, you can see how we are now defining impact as lending + advisory-only, as opposed to lending only. Advisory-only figures are now part of all of our impact reporting for farmers, sales, and payments to producers.
Early Impact of Root Regen 2035
Our new strategy is off to a strong start. In Q1 of this year, we reached 157 agriculture enterprises through our financing and advisory services, 31 of whom were reached by our advisory services alone. Together, these businesses generated $739 million in income for farmers and their families, once again showing that smallholder prosperity is directly linked with agri-SMEs.
During this same period, 75% of our lending clients were Regenerative Businesses and 67% met our women-inclusive criteria. A majority of Root Capital (51%) clients prioritize both regenerative practices and women’s economic empowerment, which is particularly important given the critical intersectionality between climate, gender and agriculture. Women farmers–who are more likely to adopt regenerative practices–face disproportionate climate impacts due to structural barriers limiting their access to land, finance, training, and leadership.
By prioritizing both regenerative practices and women’s economic empowerment, and investing in Advisory Services for agri-SMEs who may not be credit-ready yet, Root Capital and our clients are demonstrating that inclusion builds stronger farms, families, communities, and landscapes.
Read more about the first quarter of Root Regen 2035 in the Quarterly Performance Report.