We work with farmers and partners across key sourcing regions (or supply sheds) to build healthy soil, improve water quality and resilience, and strengthen the ecosystems that make agriculture possible.
Healthy farmland and farming communities are more resilient.
To continue making food for generations to come, we depend on the health of the land and farmers that grow it. Regenerative agriculture is how we work to strengthen it.
In 2019, we invested in this farmer-led movement and committed to advance regenerative agriculture on 1 million acres of farmland by 2030.
Regenerative agriculture is a principles-based approach to farming and ranching that focuses on improving soil, water and long-term resilience. It's relevant to all types of farms, large and small, conventional and organic, and its principles have roots in Indigenous agricultural traditions that have sustained land for generations.
Our approach is centered on farmers and shaped by geography. We focus on key sourcing regions, what we call supply sheds, rather than narrowing our work to only the ingredients we source. Change at the landscape level benefits everyone who depends on that land, not just General Mills.
Within those regions, we provide farmers with practical support: one-on-one coaching, customized implementation plans, soil health testing and farmer networks. Transitioning to a new farming system carries real agronomic, economic and social challenges. Our programs are built around helping farmers work through all three.
We also partner with local organizations that understand their communities from the inside. The programming they run is designed and led locally, because a solution developed in Minneapolis rarely fits the realities of a farm in the Northern Plains or Southern Oklahoma.
Regenerative agriculture isn't a single prescription. It's a set of principles applied in context:
As these principles are implemented, the outcomes compound over time: healthier soil, greater biodiversity, stronger farm economics and more resilient ecosystems.
Water runs through all of it. As soil health improves through regenerative practices, so does the land's ability to absorb and hold water, making farms more resilient to both drought and flood.
Better soil structure also means less runoff and reduced synthetic input application, which protects and helps restore clean water in the streams, rivers and lakes near farmland.
Restoring local water cycles is a targeted outcome of our regenerative agriculture work, not a secondary benefit.
We are advancing scientific understanding of outcomes and adoption of regenerative agriculture. Because measuring regenerative agriculture outcomes at scale often requires a prohibitive amount of time, manual field sampling, and expensive data analysis, we invest in research and provide thought leadership to enable better protocols and technology for measuring impact. In addition to farm and plot-level research, we deploy technologies like satellite imagery and modelling that allow us to quantify trends in regenerative agriculture adoption and environmental impacts across entire regions.
Our research partners include Colorado State University, the University of Manitoba, the Soil Health Institute and the Ecdysis Foundation, among others.
This work takes time, but it’s essential to build a food system that can feed people for generations to come.
Explore our regenerative agriculture initiatives, measurable progress, and detailed reports.
Over 250 million pounds of plastic film — like grocery bags and shipping mailers — are recycled each year through store drop-off recycling. Many everyday items aren’t eligible for local curbside pickup; however, they can be recycled. That includes the cereal bag liner found in your favorite box of General Mills cereal, Nature Valley Crunchy bar wrappers, and more.
As LÄRABAR celebrates its 20th anniversary, the brand is investing in the next 20 by supporting regenerative almond farming to help create a more sustainable future.
General Mills launched its first regenerative agriculture pilot in Europe to support farmers who supply milk for Häagen-Dazs ice cream.
Introducing version 2.0 of the General Mills Regenerative Agriculture Self-Assessment, a user-friendly tool for farmers to self-assess their agriculture practices.
