This Article Was Originally Published on December 18, 2025
Two years ago, I wrote a blog about what I had learned in my first four months working with Collective Impact. https://collectiveimpactag.ca/whativelearned/ At the time, everything felt new. I was learning at a pace that honestly felt like drinking from a fire hose.
Recently, I went back and re-read that post to see what’s changed. The funny thing is, one of the biggest things hasn’t changed at all. I’m still loving how much there is to learn. The pace hasn’t slowed, the curiosity hasn’t faded, and that feeling of being challenged every day is still very much there.
What has changed is the conversation around carbon. Two years ago, the word “carbon” was everywhere. Today, it’s used a lot less. Is that political? Maybe. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. I think producers and the broader industry have started looking past the word itself and refocusing on what actually matters: soil health, and increasingly, water usage and water quality. The industry has always known that soil and water are life. If you take care of those two things, a lot of the other pieces tend to fall into place. It’s not a new idea, it just feels like it’s come back to the forefront again, where it belongs. Another thing that hasn’t changed is the sheer number of regenerative practices producers can try. There are still countless options, and many of them can be implemented on a small scale. Yet, there’s often a sense that regenerative agriculture is an all-or-nothing decision. That mindset usually only works for New Year’s resolutions and we all know how those tend to go.
This is one of the reasons the Collective Impact Proof of Concept field resonated so strongly this past year. It showed what’s possible when multiple practices are happening in one field, but more importantly, it gave producers something tangible to look at. Instead of feeling like you need to adopt everything at once, you can look at that field, think about your own land base, and ask: Which one of these practices actually fits my farm? Which field makes sense to start with? That’s a much more realistic and sustainable way to approach change.
Sustainability programs have also continued to move into the mainstream. I previously wrote that “the horse has left the barn,” and that’s still true. It actually reminds me a lot of precision ag and ag data platforms back around 2016–2018. In 2016, the conversations were about what these tools were and whether they were worth paying attention to. By 2018, the conversation had shifted to how the platforms compared to each other. We’re seeing the same thing now. In 2025, and looking into 2026, many of the conversations around sustainability programs are no longer what are they, but rather how do they compare, and how can they be stacked? One of our goals at Collective Impact is to help producers navigate that landscape, finding the options that actually make sense for their operation and providing the knowledge and resources needed to give those programs the highest likelihood of success.
Another major shift I’ve noticed over the past two years is that regenerative agriculture is no longer just a conversation for smaller farms. Whether it’s increased education, tighter margins, or both, larger farms are paying attention and asking what’s possible on their own operations. We’re seeing continued adoption of new technologies, more thoughtful financial decisions, and in some cases, marginal acres being taken out of grain production and moved into forage. These are changes that, two years ago, simply wouldn’t have happened on many of these farms. Again, it’s not a light switch. It’s not on or off. It’s a dial, and it moves one click at a time.
Looking ahead, I’m genuinely excited to see where we are as an industry two years from now. As producers continue to focus on profit, not just production, alongside soil health and water stewardship, I think we’re only at the beginning of what’s possible. If the last two years are any indication, there’s still plenty left to learn.
Kris Babbings