Baking behemoth King Arthur Baking Co, regional flour producer Cairnspring Mills and better-for-you baked goods brand Simple Mills are boosting their business by broadening adoption of regenerative agriculture – showing the practices aren’t just better for the planet, but also companies’ bottom lines.
Regenerative agriculture is often described as a set of farming practices, including cover cropping, reduced tillage, crop rotation and soil restoration. But for the brands trying to scale adoption, regeneration is less a checklist of methods and more a business framework rooted in stewardship, long‑term planning and ethical relationships between land, farmers and food systems.
The real challenge isn’t whether regenerative agriculture works on farms – the practice has been used for centuries around the world prior to industrialization. Modern regenerative agriculture is what happens when that ethos of sustainability must function inside business systems through contracts, procurement models, supply chains, financing structures, verification systems and consumer goods markets.
The three brands are approaching regenerative practices in structurally different ways. Together, they show that scaling regeneration isn’t just an agricultural project. It’s an institutional one.
From philosophy to system design
At King Arthur Baking Co., regenerative agriculture starts as a natural extension of the company’s values and consumer messaging – and is strengthened through formal structures and partnerships.
“Because flour is at the heart of everything we do, we have a responsibility to think critically about wheat: how it’s grown, harvested and milled, and how those decisions shape the long-term health of soil and farming communities,” said Suzanne McDowell, vice president of impact at King Arthur Baking Co. “Regenerative agriculture is a natural extension of our values.”
Regenerative agriculture isn’t a one size fits all approach, it must be adapted to regional realities, cropping systems and farmer readiness levels."
Suzanne McDowell, VP of impact, King Arthur Baking Co.
King Arthur’s approach mirrors a process that translates regenerative ideals into standardized systems that can function at scale. The company is working with the Sustainable Food Lab and Kansas State University to develop a regional framework rooted in applied research, and is a founding member of the Northern Plains Trusted Advisor Partnership – a coalition of member companies, including General Mills, PepsiCo and Hershey, that develop soil health training programs for independent crop agronomists to support regenerative agriculture practice adoption.
“In just three years, the partnership expanded from 19,000 acres to more than 300,000 acres, with advisors collectively consulting on over 2 million acres in North Dakota,” McDowell said. “This demonstrates how strengthening advisory networks can meaningfully scale regenerative adoption.”
Rather than treating regeneration as an isolated sourcing claim for specific product lines, King Arthur embedded it into its long-term supply strategy, committing to source “100% of King Arthur flour from regeneratively grown wheat by 2030,” McDowell noted.
The emphasis is not only on environmental outcomes, but on building durable systems that support farmer adoption over time.
“One of the biggest challenges is translating leading soil health research into real world application at farm scale,” McDowell said. “Regenerative agriculture isn’t a one size fits all approach, it must be adapted to regional realities, cropping systems and farmer readiness levels.”
Regeneration at farmer scale
At Cairnspring Mills, regeneration means building a system where soil health, farmer income and financing reinforce one another.
“We started with a very practical problem: Wheat farmers were doing everything in their power to do the right thing and make a living but were still losing money,” said Kevin Morse, co-founder and CEO of Cairnspring Mills. “The chemical intensive commodity system they are stuck in extracts value from the soil, the farmer and our farm communities. The farmer bears all the risk. It’s a race to the bottom that is bad for people and the planet.”
For Cairnspring, regenerative agriculture becomes viable only when backed by new pricing models and market structures.
“Regenerative agriculture offered a different path, but only if it was paired with infrastructure and a new higher value market that could support it,” Morse said.
The company’s model centers on long-term contracts, transparent ingredient sourcing from field to shelf and direct farmer relationships.
Once you stop debating whether something should exist and focus on building it properly, regenerative systems can move from theory into real execution.
Kevin Morse, co-founder, CEO, Cairnspring Mills
“Our model changes the economics by locking in contracts at prices that are profitable to the grower, mostly above commodity benchmarks,” Morse said. “That stability allows farmers to finance their operations, invest in soil health and rely less on high-cost inputs over time.”
Rather than pursuing scale for its own sake, Cairnspring defines its growth model through what Morse calls the “missing middle.”
He explained: “You need enough scale to compete economically, but not so much that relationships, transparency and accountability disappear. That’s the lane we’re intentionally building in.”
Tackling the missing middle allows for Cairnspring to operate from an economically grounded stance with the ethos of regenerative practices still in place.
“Once you stop debating whether something should exist and focus on building it properly, regenerative systems can move from theory into real execution,” he said.
Building demand for regenerative ingredients
At Simple Mills, regenerative agriculture shapes how products are designed, ingredients are selected and new products are developed, according to Leah Wolfe, senior manager of sustainability and mission at the company.
“We’re committed to crafting 100% of new product lines with human and planetary health in mind,” Wolfe said. “We do this by using underrepresented crops like buckwheat to promote agricultural biodiversity and dietary diversity, incorporating ingredients with inherent environmental benefits such as nitrogen-fixing beans, and sourcing from farmers who are leading the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices.”
Instead of starting with farms and building up, Simple Mills starts with products and consumers and pushes change backward through the supply chain.
“Regenerative agriculture strengthens our relationships with farmers, which expands what’s possible for product development,” Wolfe said. “Working more closely with growers gives us earlier visibility into emerging crops, opportunities to help diversify growers’ crop rotations, soil health benefits and ingredients that can support long-term supply chain resilience.”
Wolfe described Simple Mills’ strategy as principle-driven rather than prescriptive, focusing on foundational regenerative goals like soil health and biodiversity, while allowing programs to be shaped by regional farming systems and economic constraints.
Simple Mills also takes what it describes as a “contribution over attribution” approach. “Contributing to the global adoption of regenerative principles is ultimately more important to us than the ability to make consumer-facing claims,” Wolfe said.
When regeneration becomes infrastructure
Across all three brand’s models, regenerative agriculture moves beyond farm-level practices to become a core business strategy that guides sourcing, product development and supply chain decisions.
King Arthur helps farmers adopt regenerative practices through advisory networks, metrics, research collaborations and multi-year sourcing commitments.
“We developed a Soil Health Scorecard to assess progress consistently across farms at different stages of adoption,” McDowell said.
Cairnspring’s strategy is to create the economic conditions that make it possible for farmers to affordably practice regenerative farming through contracts, financing structures and regional markets.
“Healthy soil doesn’t matter if farmers can’t make money and stay in business,” Morse said.
Regenerative agriculture strengthens our relationships with farmers, which expands what’s possible for product development.
Leah Wolfe, senior manager of sustainability and mission, Simple Mills
At Simple Mills, rather than starting with the farmers or fields, the company begins with the products they want to sell and the consumers they want to reach, and that demand influences their sourcing decisions. “We see these partnerships as strategic investments that strengthen both our ingredient supply and our relationships with the people growing our food,” Wolfe said.
What emerges is not a single regenerative model, but three distinct pathways for formalizing regenerative agriculture inside modern food systems. Regeneration scales not through farming practices alone, but through a layered system design rooted in contracts, financing, governance, data, relationships and markets.
From values to governance
As regenerative agriculture moves beyond ideals and into operations, it increasingly shapes how supply chains are built, how risk is shared and how value is created across the system.
At King Arthur, that structure shows up in formal reporting, partnerships and long-term commitments. “We track field-level progress through structured reporting, soil health indicators and ongoing input from farmers and technical advisors,” McDowell said.
At Cairnspring, it takes the form of economic design. “We built demand first, proved unit economics at our Skagit [Wash.] mill, and then designed a capital stack that matched the realities of food infrastructure,” Morse said.
At Simple Mills, regenerative practices show up in decision-making frameworks and long-term investment rationale. “Traditional metrics like cost per unit or short-term margins only tell part of the story,” Wolfe said. “Our approach includes creative, people- and ecosystem-centered metrics that reflect long-term value, business resilience and real-world impact.”
