Economics often outweigh environmental concerns for consumers when it comes to regenerative agriculture, and food companies must take this into account when creating messaging strategies around products.
According to new research published in the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, food labels and messaging that lead with environmental claims only resonate with about 30% of US consumers.
“Different consumers prioritize fundamentally different aspects of regenerative agriculture, and strategies that ignore this heterogeneity risk missing the mark entirely,” notes the report, which was authored by a group of professors from Purdue University’s Agricultural Economics department.
The numbers do not mean that the remaining 70% of consumers are against environmental claims, or even complacent about them, suggests Lourival Monaco, one of the main authors of the report.
“You’d struggle to find anyone who says regenerative agriculture is a bad idea,” he tells AgFunderNews.
Rather, consumers “have a finite amount of resources, and they have to allocate those resources according to what they care most about.”
70% of US consumers ‘will buy according to price’
To determine these consumer priorities, Monaco and team leveraged data from a survey conducted by the Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability at Purdue that is “statistically meant to represent everyone in the US.”
The survey asked consumers to prioritize seven core attributes of regenerative agriculture: soil health, biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, water use, food prices, crop yield, and farmer profitability.
Three consumer profiles emerged from the research.
Practical Supporters accounted for 43% of respondents, the largest segment. Food prices and farmer profitability are this group’s top priorities, while greenhouse gas emissions is its lowest. The group tends to be older, more politically conservative, in or near the lower-middle income bracket, and has the strongest direct connection to agriculture. They are geographically concentrated in the American South and have the least familiarity with regenerative agriculture.
Principled Supporters made up 30% of respondents, and the “most environmentally motivated” segment. Soil health, GHG emissions, and biodiversity are this group’s top priorities, while food prices and farmer profitability are its lowest. Demographically, the segment is the most educated, liberal, and affluent of the three, and has “the weakest connection to agriculture,” according to the report. Familiarity with regenerative agriculture is high and the group is concentrated in the West.
Another 27% of respondents make up the youngest, most economically constrained group, the Balanced Supporters segment. Located primarily in the Northeast, this segment has the highest concentration of low-income consumers, moderate politics, and less education compared to the other segments.
The Balanced Supporters group ranks food prices and GHG emissions highest, which the research says “suggests this group may be receptive to integrated narratives.” (Monaco notes that this is a hypothesis, and that ranking alone cannot confirm this.)
After aggregating all of these factors, “you have about 70% of our population [the US] that will buy according to price,” says Monaco.
Building ‘segment-aware strategies’
According to the report, the study’s findings “directly challenge the assumption that environmental framing will reliably match downstream value priorities.”
“Every time you try to do one size fits all, you’re probably going to miss the mark,” says Monaco.
Instead, food companies must adopt “segment-aware strategies” when it comes to how they communicate regenerative agriculture benefits to their consumers.
For example, Practical Supporters need concrete evidence of economic value for both consumer and farmer, not vague environmental claims. A label stating “supports farmer livelihoods” will resonate more than a regenerative-organic certification stamp.
The opposite is true for Principled Supporters, which are most receptive to third-party environmental verifications and claims about soil health, carbon emissions, and biodiversity. Third-party verified claims around these things should be emphasized on food labeling.
For Balanced Supporters, engagement is more important that persuasion, according to the report. The research suggests that communication strategies framing regenerative agriculture as “simultaneously beneficial for farmers, affordable for consumers, and environmentally positive” are most likely to resonate with Balanced Supporters. At the same time, “affordability must be genuine, not aspirational.”
“There isn’t anyone out there saying regen ag is not a good thing, but when they actually go out and buy, behaviors are very different,” notes Monaco. “There are market forces around that, and as a consumer, you’re always faced with a bunch of choices. You have to put your resources somewhere.”
