Nestlé x BirdLife regenerative agriculture partnership: Overview
- Nestlé and BirdLife will assess regenerative farming’s biodiversity impacts
- Project measures wildlife outcomes across European agricultural landscapes
- European farmland bird populations declined 58% between 1980-2024
- Birds provide trusted indicators of wider ecosystem health changes
- Findings could reshape regenerative agriculture and sustainable sourcing strategies
Nestlé’s making moves beyond traditional regenerative agriculture, with its latest collaboration.
The world’s biggest CPG has teamed up with BirdLife Europe to better understand how regenerative practices can support biodiversity.
Nestlé and BirdLife join forces
The three-and-a-half-year project will measure the impact of selected regenerative practices on biodiversity across agricultural landscapes and supply chains, assessing whether they deliver meaningful benefits to wildlife and identifying how they can be strengthened.
And this matters because, as Nestlé and BirdLife say, Europe’s fields have “grown quieter”. In fact, the Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme found that European farmland bird populations declined by 58% between 1980 and 2024, with agricultural intensification cited as the primary reason for this.
“Current intensive farming is wiping out biodiversity, depleting soils and rapidly increasing farmers’ vulnerability to climate change,” says Ariel Brunner, director of BirdLife Europe and Central Asia. “A profound transformation is urgently needed, and fortunately, many farmers are already experimenting with new approaches. As a key player on the food market, Nestlé can support this transition, but it needs sound science to know which practices to back.”
Why birds?
Birds are considered one of the most reliable indicators of ecosystem health as changes in bird populations often reflect broader shifts in habitat quality, insect abundance and overall biodiversity.
As a result, monitoring bird species can provide valuable insights into whether regenerative farming practices are delivering meaningful environmental gains beyond the farm gate.
Nestlé’s regenerative vision
The science-based programme, says the Swiss multinational, is essential not only to understanding how this farming transition can help restore natural resources, but also to supporting agricultural supply-chain resilience and securing the long-term availability of key ingredients.
“We want to back farmers with the science, the tools and the long-term commitment to help them farm in ways that aim to support nature and their businesses,” says Anita Wälz, head of sustainability and corporate communications at Nestlé Zone Europe. “This is about learning honestly what works. Birds are one of the most trusted signals nature can give us. Together with BirdLife, we are measuring selected bird populations in participating European farming areas to help assess changes in on-farm biodiversity.”
The initiative builds on Nestlé’s wider regenerative strategy, which has increasingly focused on improving soil health, strengthening farm resilience and reducing the environmental impact of agricultural production.
By expanding its attention to biodiversity outcomes, the company’s taking a broader approach to measuring the success of regenerative farming.
Regenerative agriculture evolves
The project marks a significant change in the way food and beverage is approaching supply chain management.
For years, regenerative agriculture conversations largely focused on soil health, carbon sequestration and farm resilience. And, while those remain central goals, Nestlé’s collaboration with BirdLife shows the industry’s starting to pay attention to how regenerative practices impact entire ecosystems, instead of only looking at the land being farmed.
For farmers, this could help identify which regenerative practices deliver the greatest environmental benefits while remaining commercially viable.
The findings may also provide food and beverage manufacturers with stronger evidence to guide future sourcing strategies and sustainability programmes.
If successful, the collaboration is likely to transform regenerative agriculture from a framework centred on soil and climate outcomes to one that incorporates measurable biodiversity gains, offering a more comprehensive picture of agricultural sustainability and long-term supply-chain resilience.
