Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENs) brings organisations together to co-fund regenerative agriculture and nature-based solutions to drive landscape resilience. Our aim is to regenerate the landscapes we all depend on.
In each region, we bring together organisations to identify shared land management needs that would be difficult to tackle within their own supply chain in isolation. These needs include mitigating flood risk; improving the resilience of crop production; meeting greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets; protecting nature & increasing biodiversity; improving water quality; and protecting rivers and other bodies of water.
Once we have identified these needs, businesses then co-fund the practices, which reduces costs and risk, as well as maximising outcomes. In 2024, 11 organisations co-funding practices led to one tonne of carbon being 1/3 cheaper than when an organisation funds this alone. You can read more about this in our Impact Report.
What partners need in a particular geography will go beyond individually-owned boundaries, so implementing measures in isolation from others in the area is unlikely to achieve the required impact. Therefore, farmers and land managers bid together for the funding to implement the solutions across multiple farms/land enterprises that will improve the resilience and health of a local landscape.
Our funders come from many sectors including food and agriculture, utilities, water, insurance and local governments – collaborating on diverse challenges and outcomes. We have been working for six years in our longest-standing region, East of England, building relationships with 20 partners and more than 100 farms.
Diageo, Nestlé, and PepsiCo are among the global brands investing in LENs. Utility companies include Affinity Water, Anglian Water, SSEN and Yorkshire Water. In addition, local councils and public bodies fund farmers and support our operations – for example, Perth & Kinross Council, The Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland, West Northamptonshire Council, and York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority.
We start with a systematic process for understanding which sectors in a region have most at stake from the health and productivity of the landscape, looking at what underpins that performance, and where different business or sector interests overlap. We start with using data, intelligence and insight to identify the most promising place to start building a network. The plan builds from there.
Our next step focuses on building a first ‘anchor’ value chain. We work with organisations to identify shared commercial land management needs, such as resilient crop production, mitigating flood risk, improving water quality and conservation, mitigating climate change and reducing GHG emissions, and increased biodiversity.
Landowners, managers and farmers propose and bid for funding for practices to implement to meet those needs. Businesses co-fund, sharing the cost and maximising impact.
We then commission independent experts to measure, report and verify the impact. We are the first multi-stakeholder landscape initiative to produce reports that:
We work on an annual cycle, so that farmers can implement funded practices by the start of autumn. Once the first ‘trade’ is underway, we create momentum and build interest, so that we can attract more customers and suppliers. Overall, we have expanded from 25 farms in 2021 to 289 farms in 2024.
A good example of how we scale is our Yorkshire LENs. Our first trade took place in 2023 with two funders – Purina and Diageo – investing in 700 hectares across four farms. PepsiCo joined as a funder in 2024 and the trade covered 3,205 hectares across 13 farms. You can see a more detailed picture of regional progress by looking at our annual factsheets.
In 2024 alone, LENs farmers reduced and removed 49,370 tonnes of CO₂e (carbon dioxide equivalent) through the regenerative agriculture practices they implemented – this was measured across five active regions in the UK and Europe. In addition, soils saw an average increase of 1.83 tonnes of organic carbon per hectare in just one year, proof that combining multiple practices is an effective way to capture more carbon. We also saw an average reduction of 14kg per hectare of nitrogen on LENs farms.
Since LENs began, 73 hectares of biodiverse habitats have been created or restored, bolstering pollinator populations and wildlife.
More than €800,000 was invested in machinery and on-farm innovation in 2024, supporting trials of soil bio-stimulants, mechanical weeding, and novel nitrogen-fixation methods.
Find out more about benefits to farmers.
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