Regenerative Agriculture
Agriculture is central to Hershey’s business and to the products people enjoy every day. Our ability to source safe, high-quality, affordable ingredients to make our iconic treats at the scale our consumers and customers expect depends on reliable agricultural supply chains — and on the people and places that make them possible.
Many of the regions where our ingredients are grown are experiencing intersecting and intensifying challenges, including climate variability, water stress, deforestation and biodiversity loss. At the same time, decades of conventional, extractive agricultural practices in many production systems have contributed to soil degradation and reduced the capacity of farmland to retain water, support nature and biodiversity and stay productive under increasingly extreme conditions.
Hershey is advancing a more integrated approach to sourcing that manages risk, strengthens supply reliability and supports long-term growth in a changing world. Our goal to cover one million hectares with regenerative, restorative or protective practices by 2035 is one way we translate that approach into action.
Supply chain resilience starts with farms and farmers, and it also depends on the health of the broader ecosystems in which they operate. Regenerative agriculture helps strengthen both by improving soil health, supporting healthier watersheds and promoting biodiversity — while helping farming communities build resilience and sustain livelihoods over time. It can also contribute to our climate goals by reducing emissions and, where appropriate, increasing carbon stored in soils and biomass.
In accordance with the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform Regenerating Together Framework (RTF), Hershey defines regenerative agriculture as an outcome-based farming approach that protects and improves soil health, biodiversity, climate and water resources while supporting farmer livelihoods. This means seeking to holistically manage multiple environmental impacts from farming alongside yield and economic profitability.
For Hershey, regenerative agriculture programs should therefore be:
- Outcome-based, not practice-only. The RTF prioritizes outcomes and requires monitoring performance over time.
- Context-specific, grounded in environmental and production risk assessment. The RTF requires programs to begin with context analysis / risk screening to identify the most material risks and then selects outcomes accordingly.
- Farmer-centered, with attention to farmer livelihoods, profitability, and practicality. The RTF recognizes that farmer profitability and crop yield are foundational considerations in regenerative agriculture transition planning.
- Continuous improvement based, rather than a one-time certification threshold. The RTF frames regenerative agriculture as a continuous improvement journey. Programs should strive to continually increase the magnitude of positive impacts and the resilience of communities, farmers, ecosystems and agricultural lands over time.
Hershey leverages the RTF to guide program design and implementation. Programs must target measurable improvement against at least two of the following outcomes: increased soil health and fertility; increased nutrient use efficiency; optimized crop protection; enhanced water resource stewardship; enhanced farmland ecological integrity; increased cultivated crop and pasture diversity; improved on-farm nutrient cycling; and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. This reflects our view that reducing reliance on synthetic inputs is an important component of regenerative agriculture when pursued alongside broader environmental and economic outcomes.
Regenerative agriculture programs are required to implement specific practices demonstrated to drive improvement on their targeted outcomes. Depending on regional context, these include reduced and no-till cultivation, cover cropping and diversified multi-species crop rotations, agroforestry, integrated nutrient and pest management to reduce synthetic inputs, irrigation efficiency, integrated livestock grazing and on-farm habitat enhancement. We consider a hectare to be engaged in regenerative agriculture when its farmers have adopted practices that support improved outcomes for at least two of the following environmental impact areas: soil health, water, climate and biodiversity.
Each program sets specific, measurable targets for their selected outcome indicators, such as reductions in greenhouse gas emissions or synthetic input use, or improvements in water-use efficiency, and reports on progress annually. This includes hectares implementing targeted practices and outcome indicator results measured against an established baseline, using recognized tools and methodologies (e.g., soil testing, greenhouse gas footprint calculators, water-use tools). We include aggregated results in our public reporting on regenerative agriculture progress.
Practically, we recognize that it is not always possible to optimize for all outcomes simultaneously, and trade-offs must sometimes be managed between objectives. Transitioning to some common regenerative agriculture practices--such as reduced tillage and cover cropping--can increase herbicide and pesticide reliance in the near term to manage weeds and terminate cover crops. Similarly, interventions that reduce nutrient runoff in one system may introduce trade-offs in others, such as increased greenhouse gas emissions – we have seen this in the case of expanding liquid manure storage pits on dairies and reducing spread to fields. These dynamics reinforce the importance of taking a systems-based, outcome-oriented approach that considers both short- and long-term impacts across multiple environmental and economic dimensions.
Through our regenerative agriculture programs, we aim to support farmers in holistically managing their impacts and exposure across soil health, water, climate and biodiversity outcomes, alongside yield and economic profitability, in ways tailored to their local context.
Within this approach, we are expanding our efforts in regenerative agriculture with the intention of reducing reliance on and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides over time, while improving soil health, protecting air and water quality, preserving biodiversity, and strengthening on-farm resilience.
We recognize that these outcomes are interconnected and that pathways to achieving them will vary by system. In many cases, improving underlying ecosystem functions—such as soil health, nutrient cycling, and natural pest regulation—can help reduce dependency on external inputs over time. However, transitions must be managed carefully to maintain productivity and farmer livelihoods, and may involve trade-offs or phased adoption depending on local conditions.
We design programs so that transitioning to regenerative practices does not create material negative impacts on farmer profitability. Depending on program and region, support can include cost-sharing for practice implementation, payments for verified environmental outcomes and yield protection to help offset near-term risk during transition. Programs also typically include structured training and ongoing agronomic support, for example, through certified crop advisors or farmer groups that enable peer-to-peer learning.
Our initiatives in Regenerative Agriculture span our priority ingredients and materials (PIM) supply chains. Learn more about projects specific to each PIM on their respective page:
