Abstract
Regenerative agriculture (RA) has increased in global attention and is frequently promoted as a production approach that fosters ecological care and offers a socially resilient alternative to industrial production. The initial impetus for RA has stemmed from farmer-led agency, which has driven innovation and articulated opportunities and aspirations for the social dimension. However, the prevailing producer-centric focus in research obscures RA's broader sociocultural implications and hinders inclusive value chain governance. Existing empirical research leaves stakeholder perspectives fragmented and provides only uneven understandings of RA's social meaning, cultural legitimacy, and anticipated sociocultural dimensions. Foregrounded in stakeholder theory, this systematic review synthesises sociocultural perceptions of RA across a range of actors, such as farmers, industry professionals and government, identifying five sociocultural themes: (1) Ethic of care and responsibility, (2) livelihood pathways, (3) relational infrastructures, (4) evolving mindsets, learning cultures, and advocacy, and (5) place-based legitimacy. These themes provide a baseline for assessing social sustainability-related dimensions alongside environmental and economic outcomes. Findings show that producers dominate the perceptual landscape, while policymakers, financial institutions, retailers, consumers, and intermediaries remain sparse. By advancing a sociocultural perceptions frame, we provide a foundation for future research to move beyond ‘adoption’ metrics toward the co-creation of social value and systemic legitimacy.
Keywords
Introduction
Industrial food systems contribute significantly to global environmental and social crises, accounting for one-third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, yet they fail to address persistent malnutrition, noncommunicable diseases, and food insecurity (Crippa et al., 2021; Steiner et al., 2019; Wells et al., 2021). Regenerative agriculture (RA) has emerged as a transformative approach. Transformation is understood here as one that seeks systemic change in values, practices, and relationships across the food system (e.g., Gibbons, 2020; Gordon et al., 2022; Ingram and Thornton, 2022), with emerging regenerative systems theory beginning to conceptualise what such transformation requires at a social-ecological scale (Buckton et al., 2023). RA is theorised to offer pathways to mitigate the above impacts, drawing on principles and practices from alternative farming systems, including those broadly aligned with agroecological thinking, centred on revitalising soil health and ecosystem functions (Giller et al., 2021; Kassam and Kassam, 2021; White, 2020). Beyond biophysical restoration, RA is increasingly espoused as a vehicle for social sustainability, defined by equitable access to resources, community empowerment, and the cultivation of resilient societies (Barron et al., 2021).
Regenerative socio-ecological systems frameworks emphasise deep leverage points, co-creation, worldview transformation, and the developmental processes that enable thriving living systems (Gibbons, 2020). While RA is frequently situated within sustainable and alternative agricultural discourse, regenerative frameworks are understood to extend beyond sustainability's steady-state orientation, in response to the growing recognition that maintaining existing systems is insufficient for the depth of transformation required in agri-food systems (e.g., Hubeau et al., 2017; Knickel et al., 2018). While the boundary between regenerative and sustainable frameworks remains actively debated in the literature, this review does not seek to position one above the other. Rather, it recognises that regenerative frameworks often sit alongside, and may simultaneously inform and enrich, broader, well-established discourse, rather than operating in isolation.
Despite its potential, one such discourse, social sustainability, remains underdeveloped and inconsistently incorporated into sustainability assessments (Binder et al., 2010; De Olde et al., 2016; Janker and Mann, 2020). In practice, this leaves the social meaning, cultural legitimacy, and justice-oriented expectations that underpin transition ‘success’ analytically thin despite evidence that these are negotiated through multi-actor governance and just-transition criteria rather than delivered automatically by technical change (Boström, 2012; Bui et al., 2019; Eizenberg and Jabareen, 2017; Tribaldos and Kortetmäki, 2022). While RA is portrayed as a farmer-led, place-based opportunity for social transformation that reconnects producers, consumers, and food cultures (Burns, 2020; Dominati et al., 2023; Gordon et al., 2022), academic scholarship has only begun to explore how diverse stakeholders collectively interpret these promises.
There is a need to centrally embed sociocultural dimensions in RA scholarship. Unlike purely technical agricultural approaches, RA has emerged as a values-driven social movement in which shared meanings, relational ethics, and community expectations are constitutive of its transformative potential rather than peripheral to it (e.g., Burns, 2020; Gordon et al., 2022). Sustainable technical innovations require sociocultural legitimacy to achieve systemic change. Without the shared meanings, values, and governance arrangements that enable diverse actors to align around a common vision, change is therefore constrained (e.g., Bui et al., 2019; Tribaldos and Kortetmäki, 2022). Consequently, academic RA scholarship has begun to recognise sociocultural dimensions as implicit preconditions for regenerative transitions (e.g., Burns, 2020; Gibbons, 2020; Gordon et al., 2022), yet these remain underrepresented. Therefore, rendering these dimensions visible and empirically grounded is essential to enabling meaningful representation and alignment across the value chain actors who collectively shape RA's social legitimacy and long-term viability.
Beyond academic scholarship, practitioner-led initiatives have increasingly foregrounded equity, power, and inclusive governance as central regenerative dimensions, with organisations such as Regen10 (2023) explicitly committing to equity, fairness, and rights across food system actors, EARA (2024) advocating for accountable social regeneration across agri-food ecosystems, and the SAI Platform (2023) developing multi-stakeholder industry frameworks for regenerative governance. However, these dimensions remain underarticulated in the peer-reviewed empirical literature, underscoring the importance of a systematic synthesis of sociocultural perceptions across diverse food system actors. While practitioner discourse has increasingly engaged these dimensions, the peer-reviewed empirical literature remains nascent and fragmented. Given the early stage of social RA scholarship, a systematic mapping of how academic research empirically represents actors’ perceptions provides a necessary evidence base from which a meaningful broader multi-source synthesis can be built.
Foundational academic reviews have focused on RA's definitional landscape and biophysical impacts (e.g., Jayasinghe et al., 2023; Khangura et al., 2023; Newton et al., 2020; O’Donoghue et al., 2022; Rehberger et al., 2023; Schreefel et al., 2020), with emerging social research beginning to incorporate actor perspectives across farmers, NGOs, and industry actors (e.g., Caruso et al., 2025; Gaspar et al., 2025; Gordon et al., 2022; Rai et al., 2025). Building on these works, a growing body of social research has begun to explore RA beyond biophysical outcomes such as the perceived benefits, motivations, and challenges, particularly in relation to farmers’ worldviews, well-being, land stewardship, animal welfare, and constraints to adoption (Brown et al., 2022; Hargreaves-Méndez and Hötzel, 2023; Moisés et al., 2025; Sher et al., 2024; Vejendla et al., 2025).
Recent syntheses have deepened our understanding of RA's relational and ethical foundations. Gordon et al. (2022) analysed RA as an emerging discourse, identifying six core thematic narratives and three transformative opportunities (discourse coalitions, trans local organising, and collective learning) through which regenerative thinking challenges industrial-productivity mindsets. However, this analysis primarily drew on farmer-facing texts rather than on empirical multi-actor data. More recently, Gordon et al. (2025) synthesised the ways in which relational values (e.g., care, sense of place, identity) are represented in RA literature, arguing that these orientations hold transformative potential beyond biophysical markers. While foundational, these works centre on scholarly perspectives and farmer-land relationships, offering limited insight into how meanings travel across other food-system actors.
Broad reviews have also mapped RA's sustainability claims. Rai et al. (2025) examined environmental, economic, and social benefits, such as community vitality and relational well-being, but noted that empirical evidence for these claims remains limited, and that non-empirical work was included. Caruso et al. (2025) extended this by reviewing motivations and mapping roles across farmers, policymakers, and NGOs. While this paves the way for a multi-dimensional stakeholder perspective, their synthesis remains primarily farmer-oriented, leaving less-voiced stakeholders marginalised. This body of work also highlights the need for a more comprehensive focus on the social dimension of sustainability.
Consequently, Gaspar et al. (2025) systematically reviewed the role of social capital in RA and proposed a framework for how relational dynamics support regenerative transitions within farming communities and networks. Our review builds on this by extending analysis beyond producer-centred perspectives to understand how sociocultural meanings and relational infrastructures are perceived and contested by actors in markets, governance, and legitimacy formation. While identifying the social drivers of adoption sets a crucial baseline for shaping long-term system outcomes (Arnalte-Mur et al., 2020; Béné et al., 2019; Hazell and Wood, 2008), the perceived long-term outcomes have yet to be systematically collated across diverse actors.
While bioeconomic outcomes are being established, the social dimensions of RA remain nascent and fragmented; no systematic synthesis yet captures how diverse food-system actors collectively interpret RA's social ideals. By focusing on empirical social science (e.g., surveys, interviews), this study aims to shift the analytical lens from the mechanisms of transition (why actors adopt) to the meaning frames of transformation (what sociocultural dimensions actors perceive, expect, and seek from RA). We define sociocultural themes as the dominant patterns of meaning-formation through which actors articulate what they perceive, expect, and seek from RA across the value chain. Grounded in a stakeholder lens (Freeman, 2010), this review identifies the diverse actors involved, as well as those that are seemingly underexplored or absent, in the formation of these meanings. Understanding these perspectives is critical, as the successful implementation of RA depends on the coordinated efforts of actors who collectively shape production, consumption, and policy (Codur and Watson, 2018; Dentoni et al., 2018).
The following questions guided our research:
This review makes three key contributions. First, we provide a systematic synthesis of five perceived sociocultural themes articulated by various food system stakeholders: (1) An ethic of care and responsibility, (2) livelihood pathways, (3) relational infrastructures, (4) evolving mindsets and advocacy, and (5) place-based legitimacy. By foregrounding these themes as a synthesised evidence base, previously peripheral in empirical scholarship due to limited multi-actor representation, we provide a foundation for their meaningful integration into future research, policy, certification, and governance. Second, we demonstrate that while RA scholarship is conceptually mature at the producer level, it is nascent across downstream and institutional contexts (e.g., finance, retail, and policy). Third, we identify critical empirical gaps, providing a foundation for future research on the collaborative governance required for a multi-actor transition. Overall, the review advances recognition of RA as a social phenomenon shaped by perspectives across the value chain. By positioning actor interpretations as empirical evidence of the sociocultural dimensions shaping RA, we characterise the current state of social meaning formation and highlight the necessity of a distributed model of responsibility across the food system.
Materials and methods
Sociocultural perspective and stakeholder theory
The move into the social dimensions of RA demonstrates that the regenerative food system movement is increasingly understood not only as a set of technical practices or principles, but also as a set of sociocultural ideals shaped by identities, values, relationships, and community expectations, involving a diverse ecosystem of food-system actors (e.g., Gordon et al., 2022; Gosnell, 2022; O’Keeffe et al., 2025).
Sociocultural encompasses social and cultural factors that, in the literature, are typically not treated separately and that influence actors’ behaviour (Mutsikiwa and Basera, 2012). Social, in a sustainable agriculture context, refers to societies and organisations (e.g., social structures, processes, and patterns) and means something positive, desired by society, or an aspect described as being valuable to preserve for the future (Boogaard et al., 2008; Janker and Mann, 2020; Littig and Griessler, 2005). Culture, although throughout societies is complex and multidimensional, for this review we understand it to mean a collective programming or mindsets of a specific group of people through sets of values, ideas, and meaningful symbols that help individuals communicate, interpret, and evaluate as members of a society (Blackwell et al., 2006; Lonner et al., 1980). This understanding is complemented by Wilber's (2005) Integral Theory, which positions culture as the collective inner dimension of human experience; the shared worldview, intersubjective values, and beliefs through which groups make sense of themselves and their world. In this case, the focus is on actors across the RA agri-food value chain, as empirically documented in the literature.
A food system actor (stakeholder) is an entity, human or non-human, that influences system conditions (Latour, 2007) and holds agency within societal structures, shaping power dynamics in social change contexts (Long, 1990, 2003). For the purposes of this review, food system actors are defined as human entities, reflecting the empirical nature of perceptual studies, which use methods that necessarily capture human perceptions (e.g., online and in-person survey, interviews). The perspectives of non-human actors, increasingly recognised as relevant within more-than-human and actor-network theoretical frameworks (Latour, 2007), fall outside the methodological scope of this review. Interdisciplinary food systems literature has increasingly engaged with multi-actor perspectives, both implicitly and explicitly (e.g., Cirone et al., 2023; García-Herrero et al., 2019; Sacchi et al., 2018), demonstrating a normative shift towards co-creative, cross-actor coordination in sustainability transitions. At the macro level, food system actors form a global network engaged in value-chain activities from production to disposal (Ingram and Thornton, 2022). This research follows stakeholder theory, recognising that individuals hold distinct expectations, needs, and values (Freeman, 2010; Greenley and Foxall, 1997; Ozdemir et al., 2023).
Stakeholders, whether groups or individuals, can affect or be affected by others’ actions, with salience determined by power, legitimacy, and urgency (Freeman, 2010; Freeman et al., 2018; Mahajan et al., 2023; Mitchell et al., 1997). Sociocultural, in relation to stakeholder theory, thereby refers to the shared or symbolic meanings, norms, and identity or value-based aspects through which actors make sense of their interests, responsibilities, and interdependencies within the food system. In stakeholder terms, sociocultural factors shape stakeholder salience by informing actors’ perceived legitimacy, the urgency of the issues they prioritise, and the cultural or identity-based foundations of their power (Mitchell et al., 1997). They also determine how actors negotiate meaning, trust, and recognition across the value chain, thereby strongly influencing how RA is understood, enacted, and contested within the system. Understanding a holistic stakeholder perspective on RA supports the move towards the transformative potential of regenerative systems, which seeks co-creation among diverse actors (Gibbons, 2020). Research across diverse stakeholders has been common across related food research areas such as localised foods (e.g., Feldmann and Hamm, 2015; Jensen et al., 2019; Szegedyne Fricz et al., 2020), organic production (e.g., Katt and Meixner, 2020; Sohn et al., 2022; Taghikhah et al., 2021), and alternative food networks (e.g., Escobar-López et al., 2021; Gori and Castellini, 2023; Michel-Villarreal et al., 2019).
Given the wide variation in definitions and approaches to RA noted in other reviews (e.g., Gordon et al., 2022; Newton et al., 2020; Schreefel et al., 2020), it is even more urgent to explore how different stakeholder groups interpret and engage with the perceived sociocultural dimensions of RA as it expands across global markets and agri-food sectors. Understanding these perspectives is critical, as the transformative potential of RA depends on the coordinated efforts of multiple actors, including farmers, policy and decision-makers, scientists, public institutions, and civil society, who collectively shape the production and consumption of RA products (Codur and Watson, 2018; Kenny and Castilla-Rho, 2022; Lujan Soto et al., 2021a). In turn, stakeholder perceptions influence legitimacy, adoption, market development, and policy uptake (Dentoni et al., 2018; Klerkx et al., 2010; Reimer et al., 2023).
Systematic literature search
A systematic literature search was conducted to explore perceptions across the RA literature. This method ensures a holistic, inclusive understanding of actors’ perceptions by synthesising fragmented research across different bodies of work. Systematic reviews inform policy and practice by providing a comprehensive overview of emerging topics, such as RA (Petticrew and Roberts, 2008). The decision to restrict the search to peer-reviewed empirical literature was deliberate, reflecting the nascent state of social RA scholarship and the need to establish a rigorous, reproducible academic evidence base as a foundation for future broader synthesis. This scope positions the review as a first systematic step toward understanding how academic research represents sociocultural perceptions among food system actors, rather than a direct assessment of actors’ perspectives across the full RA landscape.
The study follows the Scientific Procedures and Rationales for Systematic Literature Reviews (SPAR-4-SLR) protocol (Paul et al., 2021), chosen for its structured approach (Snyder, 2019). SPAR-4-SLR was selected in preference to more general reporting frameworks such as PRISMA, on the basis that it was developed specifically for systematic literature reviews in social science contexts, offering both structured procedures and explicit justifications for each stage of the review process, making it well suited to qualitative, domain-based thematic syntheses in emerging fields (Bennani and Helmi, 2025; Paul et al., 2021). Consistent with SPAR-4-SLR guidelines, Scopus was selected as the primary database given its broader subject-area coverage and particular suitability for emerging domains where the literature is still developing, supplemented by Web of Science to ensure comprehensive retrieval across the interdisciplinary literature (Paul et al., 2021). The review is domain-based, focusing on identifying and organising key themes across empirical studies to provide a broader qualitative understanding of perceptions of RA.
The first stage, ‘identification and acquisition’, involved defining relevant search terms based on RA literature and discussions among actors within the social sciences and related disciplines. We began by exploring different terminology, including ‘regenerative agriculture’, as well as perceptions, perspectives, and the titles of various actors. We adopted a longer string to capture the many fragmented areas of stakeholder involvement and the possibilities that actors, more implicitly mentioned in certain studies, might emerge, as perspective/perception was not explicitly used in most cases and is inherent in the empirical data. Many searches provided that different perception terminology was used (e.g., attitudes, barriers, drivers). The final search string is shown in Figure 1, along with the protocol.
Outlines the data collection process, following the Scientific Procedures and Rationales for Systematic Literature Reviews (SPAR-4-SLR) protocol, for the identification, assessment, and selection of relevant studies.
To further expand the set of groupings and to refine and focus on agriculture, ‘regenerative’ agriculture and associated terms were grouped to exclude unrelated topics (e.g., medicine, design, architecture). Actor terminology included key actors frequently mentioned in preliminary searches (e.g., farmers, policymakers, and researchers), as well as less prominent actors (e.g., certifiers, social finance actors, and value chain intermediaries; Djekic and Tomasevic, 2020; Toussaint et al., 2022; Van Den Akker et al., 2024). Actor terminology in the search string reflects actor-type labels as they appear in the empirical literature, such as farmers, policymakers, and retailers, rather than systemic role descriptors, which typically reflect how actors are named in RA studies. These types of labels were subsequently standardised into four meta-categories based on actors’ primary role in the food system during the coding process. Full details of the search query components, including the conceptual rationale for each terminology block and Boolean logic, are provided in Table S1. A detailed breakdown of each stage of the review process, including inclusion and exclusion criteria applied at each screening stage, is provided in Table S2.
Two peer-reviewed databases were selected: Web of Science and Scopus (see Figure 1) for their broad subject coverage and accessibility (Hunter, 1998; Soykan and Uzunboylu, 2015; Visser et al., 2021). To ensure the review captures the most recent developments in RA, the search was limited to empirical, peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2014 and 2025. This approach aligns with literature review guidelines, emphasising the importance of recent research in rapidly evolving fields to maintain relevance and rigour (Snyder, 2019), as well as the increased emergence of RA, which is estimated to have commenced across research around 2014 (Bless et al., 2025; O’Donoghue et al., 2022). Reviews and conceptual papers were excluded. The search provided 642 articles: 421 from Scopus and 221 from Web of Science.
The second stage, ‘screening, organisation, and purification,’ involved removing duplicates, leaving 465 articles. Titles and abstracts were screened for relevance, followed by a full-text review, resulting in a dataset of 39 articles (see Table S3 in the Supplemental Materials). The articles needed to (a) be on RA, (b) be empirical research, and (c) discuss perceptions or knowledge of RA through a sociocultural lens.
The final stage, ‘evaluation and reporting’, involved coding articles in NVivo qualitative data analysis software and extracting bibliometric data in Microsoft® Excel®, and categorising studies by country, methods used, actor type, scale of practice, and relevant aims and findings (see Table S3 in the Supplemental Materials). Codes were grouped into overarching themes for thematic analysis, summarised in Table S3 in the Supplemental Materials. To ensure analytical consistency across studies, actor terminology was standardised into 11 groupings, further classified into four meta-categories: (1) Producer-level actors, (2) knowledge and intermediary actors, (3) institutional and governance actors, and (4) downstream/public actors. This process accounted for the heterogeneity of actor terminology across the retained studies, where labels such as ‘grazers’, ‘ranchers’, and ‘producers’ frequently overlap, and terms such as ‘non-farmer’ or ‘agricultural professional’ remain ambiguous or bundled.
A thematic analysis was conducted to systematically identify, organise, and analyse classifications, presenting themes or patterns of shared meaning (Braun and Clarke, 2012; Braun and Clarke, 2019; Terry et al., 2017). This qualitative approach offers a broad understanding of the issue (Marks and Yardley, 2004) through a reflexive process that emphasises the researchers’ role in knowledge production (Braun and Clarke, 2019).
The thematic process began by familiarising the researchers with the data (Terry et al., 2017) to establish a foundation for analysis. This was followed by coding, categorisation, and pattern identification to delineate thematic levels (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Braun and Clarke, 2019; Terry et al., 2017). Codes were combined into overarching themes, establishing relationships between variables and factors to build a logical chain of evidence (Creswell, 2009; Braun and Clarke, 2006; Miles and Huberman, 1994). Themes were refined through iterative engagement with the dataset, where codes were examined, merged, and redefined (Terry et al., 2017). Perceptions were inferred from qualitative accounts, survey items, and interpretive framing. Coding was inductive, allowing themes to emerge from the data rather than being imposed from a predetermined framework. Analysis operated at both semantic and latent levels; semantic coding captured the explicit meanings expressed by actors across the retained studies, while latent coding engaged with the underlying assumptions, tensions, and interpretive frames embedded within those accounts (e.g., Wæraas, 2022; Williams and Moser, 2019). Coding focused on expected or attributed outcomes. The final themes represent key sociocultural dimensions related to perceptions of RA within the scope of this study. The five sociocultural themes that emerged from this process were not predetermined but reflect the dominant patterns of meaning-formation identified inductively across the 39 retained studies, capturing what food-system actors perceive, expect, and seek from RA across the value chain, consistent with the sociocultural lens established in the ‘Sociocultural perspective and stakeholder theory’ section.
Results
Research characteristics
The 39 studies retained in this review are concentrated in the most recent period of RA scholarship (most published between 2022 and 2025), reflecting the topic's rapid increase as a result of the search process rather than an intentional date restriction (see Table S3 in Supplemental Materials for literature overview). Geographically, the evidence base spans 14 countries (Table 1), with a predominant focus on Global North contexts (e.g., the US, Australia) and emerging contributions from the Global South (e.g., Pakistan, Kenya, Iran). Methodological designs are diverse; the most commonly applied were qualitative interviews (n = 23), surveys (n = 13), and participatory approaches (n = 6). Farm scales vary significantly, from smallholdings (<40 ha) to large-scale operations (≥900 ha), covering mixed cropping and integrated livestock systems (see Table S3 in Supplemental Materials for a full list of methods and sample sizes).
Geographical Data Representation Across Empirical Studies.
A significant analytical challenge encountered in conducting this review is the heterogeneity of actor terminology across the retained studies, which informed the standardisation process described in the Methods. Labels such as ‘grazers’, ‘ranchers’, and ‘producers’ often overlap. The term ‘producer’ is used as an umbrella category throughout the findings for clarity. Where actor roles overlapped or were ambiguous, for instance, where participants were described as farmer-advisors, producer-managers, or agricultural professionals, actors were classified according to their primary role as described by the study authors. Distinctions between adjacent categories, such as farmers and farm managers, were drawn based on the degree of operational ownership and decision-making authority held by participants in each study. Farmers were classified as producer-level actors based on primary land-management responsibility, whereas farm managers, though similarly situated within the producer-level meta-category, were distinguished by their supervisory or advisory capacity, as described by the study authors. As studies frequently included multiple actor groups, actors could appear in more than one meta-category, as reflected in Figure 2, where the totals exceed the number of studies reviewed. The four meta-categories are intentionally broad, designed to accommodate the inherent role fluidity characteristic of agri-food systems rather than to impose rigid boundaries.
Actor representation across empirical studies (n = 39).
As illustrated in Figure 2, producer-level actors dominate the evidence base as the most consistently represented individual actor type across retained studies. While non-producer meta-categories of knowledge and intermediary, institutional and governance, and downstream and public actors do appear across the literature, their representation remains sparse, fragmented, and uneven, with institutional and governance actors in particular showing only limited representation across the search window. The pattern is therefore less one of absolute producer dominance and more one of systematically underrepresented non-producer voices, a gap occasionally reinforced by study designs that explicitly exclude non-farmer respondents (e.g., Alexanderson et al., 2024). This is particularly notable given that institutional and governance actors hold disproportionate power to shape RA narratives in practice, despite their limited empirical representation in academic research (Schreefel et al., 2025). Notably, we observe a surge in non-farmer perspectives, including policymakers, educators, and agronomists, specifically within the 2024–2025 period, suggesting promising movement toward broader actor representation, yet a significant empirical gap remains regarding the perceptions of actors beyond the farm gate.
Bars represent the number of studies in which each actor group appeared, organised by meta-category. Studies frequently included multiple actor groups; therefore, totals exceed the number of studies reviewed.
Building on these characteristics, the following sections synthesise how food system actors across 14 countries and 39 empirical studies (qualitative [n = 23]; quantitative [n = 11]; mixed-methods [n = 5]) describe the socio-cultural dimensions currently represented in the literature associated with RA. Moving beyond previous research focused on practice adoption and behavioural determinants (e.g., Coon et al., 2025; Wilson et al., 2022), this review centres on the meaning-frames through which actors interpret RA's social and relational accomplishments. We identified five recurrent themes: (1) An ethic of care and responsibility; (2) livelihood pathways; (3) relational infrastructures; (4) evolving mindsets, learning cultures, and advocacy; and (5) place-based legitimacy. These themes represent the experienced and contested social effects of RA, not what the system ‘should’ deliver according to theory, but as understood by the actors themselves (summarised in Table 2). Citations throughout the following section correspond to the empirical studies retained in this review and identify specific studies from which actor perceptions and sociocultural meanings are drawn. The broader theoretical and contextual literature is engaged with in the Discussion.
Sociocultural Themes and Associated Actor Groups Represented, Percentage Representation by Meta-category (Calculated as the Proportion of Studies Within Each Theme in which each Meta-category Appeared; Percentages do not sum to 100% as Studies Frequently Included Multiple Actor Groups), and Geographical Contexts, Along With Actor Groups Identified as Underrepresented or Absent From the Empirical Literature.
Theme 1: Ethic of care and responsibility
Across empirical actor perceptions, actors perceive a multi-scalar ethic of care and responsibility as central to RA. This theme connects environmental stewardship, ecosystem restoration, human and non-human health, and intergenerational responsibility. As a sociocultural theme, it reflects shared values of care, reciprocity, and accountability and defines how actors understand what should be protected in farming and who benefits from regeneration. This ethic is among the most consistent factors shaping perceptions of RA's success and legitimacy.
RA is interpreted primarily through care and responsibility for the environment. Producers, NGOs, researchers, private-sector representatives, and policymakers characterise RA as an ecologically attuned approach that restores biodiversity and soil function while reducing chemical dependence (Alexanderson et al., 2024; Coon et al., 2025; Johannessen et al., 2024; Keshavarz and Sharafi, 2023; Lujan Soto et al., 2021b; Wilson et al., 2022). RA producers and organic growers describe RA as ‘environmentally conscious farming’ or view this care as integral to their role (Dipu et al., 2022; Kallio, 2023; Kallio and LaFleur, 2023; Lemke et al., 2024; Page and Witt, 2022), while producers and educators emphasise stewardship and future-oriented responsibility (Alexanderson et al., 2023; Brown et al., 2021; Gosnell et al., 2019; Kallio, 2023; Seymour and Connelly, 2023) and desire to harmonise food production with land (Frankel-Goldwater et al., 2024; Kallio and LaFleur, 2023; Lemke et al., 2024). These values are echoed by researchers, non-profits, and private companies (Wilson et al., 2022). Furthermore, producers perceived environmental stewardship as a shared value with consumers, and producers, government, industry, retail, finance, and scientists emphasised promoting animal welfare, reducing the use of synthetic chemicals, and raising awareness of climate change for future generations (Dipu et al., 2022).
For RA producers, this care is seen as a collaborative relationship with the land (Miller-Klugesherz and Sanderson, 2023; Page and Witt, 2022; Seymour and Connelly, 2023), often extending to ‘more-than-human’ care for entities like soil microorganisms (Aare et al., 2025; Seymour and Connelly, 2023). Soil health remains the anchor of this theme; producers, educators, consultants, NGOs, researchers, managers, policymakers, and agriculture professionals describe it as the foundation for climate resilience and farm viability (Alexanderson et al., 2023; Frankel-Goldwater et al., 2024; Gosnell et al., 2019; Kallio, 2023; Keshavarz and Sharafi, 2023; Lemke et al., 2024; Seymour and Connelly, 2023; Wilson et al., 2022, 2024). Additionally, producers, government, industry, retail, finance, and scientists link soil health to the production of health-oriented foods, satisfying perceived consumer expectations for nutrition and provenance (Beacham et al., 2023; Bless et al., 2025; Coon et al., 2025; Dipu et al., 2022; Kallio, 2023; Mpanga et al., 2021). Producers also respond to demands from retailers and chefs for transparency regarding local, fresh food (Dipu et al., 2022). Some RA producers frame RA as a form of ‘healthcare’ (Dipu et al., 2022; Leitheiser et al., 2022).
However, actors also identify conditions that shape the perceived viability of this ethic. Producers have expressed uncertainty regarding whether ecological care can meet global food challenges amidst production-focused norms (Gosnell, 2022; Page and Witt, 2022; Snorek et al., 2024), while some producers and agronomists highlight friction between ecological variability and performance expectations (Beacham et al., 2023; Krzywoszynska, 2024). Ambiguity surrounding environmental claims raises concerns of ‘greenwashing’ among producers, researchers, non-profits, and private companies concerned about consumer responses (Lemke et al., 2024; Wilson et al., 2022, 2024). Furthermore, producers, government officials, agri-food businesses, consultants, and educators report emotional strain and isolation on producers when care is undertaken without institutional support (Aare et al., 2025; Coon et al., 2025; Mambo et al., 2025).
Across studies, this theme is articulated largely through producer-level and knowledge/intermediary actors (NGOs and researchers). Downstream/public actors (e.g., consumers) and institutional/governance actors (financial institutions, certifiers) remain significantly underrepresented. In many instances, their perceptions are merely assumed by other actors, making it difficult to determine how widely this ethic of care is recognised across the broader system.
Theme 2: Livelihood pathways
In the literature reviewed, actors perceive resilient, values-aligned, and future-oriented livelihood pathways as a central sociocultural dimension of RA. This theme connects economic autonomy, personal well-being, and the reconfiguration of farm business models to navigate systemic uncertainty. As a sociocultural theme, it reflects a shift in how actors define professional identity and success, moving from conventional production-maximisation toward self-reliance and community belonging. These pathways are central to how actors determine the long-term viability and transformative potential of the regenerative movement.
Producers describe RA as a proactive tool for navigating climatic and economic uncertainty, utilising practices such as seed saving and diversification (Kallio, 2023; Kallio and LaFleur, 2023). Producers who feel disconnected from conventional regulatory structures report that RA enables greater independence, autonomy, and value alignment (Bless et al., 2025; Coon et al., 2025; Gosnell, 2022; Leitheiser et al., 2022; Snorek et al., 2024; Wojtynia et al., 2023). Producers view external pressures, such as rising input costs, degraded land, and business crises, as catalysts that push them toward mixed livelihood strategies (Beacham et al., 2023; Gosnell et al., 2019; Miller-Klugesherz and Sanderson, 2023; Snorek et al., 2024).
These livelihood pathways are enabled, in part, by RA's flexible, outcome-focused framing. Producers view the ‘lower barrier to entry’ relative to formal certification as attractive, and some see the opportunity to tailor practices to local conditions and transition away from conventional methods (Bless et al., 2025; Lemke et al., 2024; Snorek et al., 2024; Wilson et al., 2022, 2024). In studies involving producers, researchers, NGOs, and food companies, regenerative certification frameworks are seen as more adaptive when they emphasise ongoing improvement rather than standardised benchmarks (Wilson et al., 2022, 2024). This flexibility is perceived as supporting autonomy and experimentation, even as it raises questions about verification.
Livelihood perceptions are also reconfigured through emotion and identity. Producers describe RA as reconnecting work with personal values, generating fulfilment and a sense of purpose (Brown et al., 2022; Page and Witt, 2022; Vivas and Hodbod, 2024). Some producers express renewed joy and mindfulness in contrast to experiences in conventional systems (Beacham et al., 2023; Miller-Klugesherz and Sanderson, 2023). These affective shifts extend to family and community, where some producers link RA to healthier families and intergenerational legacy to the greater good (Coon et al., 2025; Frankel-Goldwater et al., 2024; Gosnell, 2022; Miller-Klugesherz and Sanderson, 2023). Producers also describe RA as a means of escaping isolation and burnout, fostering a sense of belonging within a broader shared purpose (Kallio, 2023; Leitheiser et al., 2022; Page and Witt, 2022; Wojtynia et al., 2023).
Economic restructuring is central to these perceptions. While producers turn to RA to mitigate debt and price volatility, researchers, industry actors, retailers, financiers, government agencies, and NGOs similarly perceive RA as a viable pathway when it reduces dependence on external inputs (Alexanderson et al., 2024; Beacham et al., 2023; Dipu et al., 2022; Gosnell et al., 2019; Miller-Klugesherz and Sanderson, 2023; Snorek et al., 2024). Some producers, policymakers, executive managers, researchers, and agricultural professionals have framed RA as a system that promotes equitable economic models and strengthens socio-ecological connections (Keshavarz and Sharafi, 2023; Leitheiser et al., 2022; Miller-Klugesherz and Sanderson, 2023; Page and Witt, 2022). Furthermore, producers and policymakers describe RA as supporting economic recovery and financial independence through closed-loop systems and reduced reliance on large-scale agribusiness (Bless et al., 2025; Coon et al., 2025; Frankel-Goldwater et al., 2024; Kallio, 2023; Miller-Klugesherz and Sanderson, 2023; Snorek et al., 2024; Wojtynia et al., 2023).
However, producers emphasise the fragility of these pathways, reporting financial precarity and the psychological burden of managing uncertainty with limited institutional support (Alexanderson et al., 2024; Beacham et al., 2023; Frankel-Goldwater et al., 2024; Leitheiser et al., 2022; Miller-Klugesherz and Sanderson, 2023; Rozanski and Gavin, 2023; Snorek et al., 2024). Financing challenges, including high start-up costs, small margins, selective social finance, and misaligned banking systems, and landlord constraints, are documented by producers, researchers, policymakers, agri-business professionals, consultants, educators, and social financial actors (Aare et al., 2025; Alexanderson et al., 2024; Coon et al., 2025; Keshavarz and Sharafi, 2023; Mambo et al., 2025; Snorek et al., 2024; Stephens, 2021).
These conditions highlight a tension: While RA livelihoods are imagined as autonomous by producers, the institutional and governance actors (banks, policymakers) required to stabilise these paths remain empirically absent. Consequently, the sociocultural meanings of RA livelihoods are predominantly constructed from a producer standpoint, obscuring how downstream and institutional actors influence or constrain these emergent futures.
Theme 3: Relational infrastructures
Across perceptions, actors perceive the development of resilient relational infrastructures as a central sociocultural dimension of RA. This theme connects producer peer-to-peer networks, multi-actor partnerships, and the strengthening of ties between producers, consumers, and more-than-human entities. As a sociocultural theme, it addresses social degradation by fostering shared knowledge, trust, and reciprocity. These infrastructures are viewed as essential for mobilising the collective agency required to stabilise RA within broader social and institutional systems.
Across the reviewed literature, policymakers, managers, agricultural professionals, and researchers deem social cohesion essential to RA's development (Keshavarz and Sharafi, 2023), with producer networks viewed as vital for knowledge exchange. Producers frame RA as a means to address social isolation and strengthen connections among people, land, and communities (Seymour and Connelly, 2023). Furthermore, producers, researchers, food companies, and NGOs emphasise ‘regenerative communities’ that develop local solutions and promote healthy food systems and local economies (Coon et al., 2025; Wilson et al., 2024).
Relational infrastructures extend across producer, institutional, and consumer interfaces. Collaboration between producers and resource managers is perceived by some producers, government, industry, retail, finance, and scientists as supporting ecosystem protection and shared priorities (Dipu et al., 2022). Partnerships among research centres, stakeholders, and producers are seen to help address institutional barriers (Keshavarz and Sharafi, 2023). Consumer relationships also shape decision-making for small-scale growers, with producers reporting that local engagement and on-farm visits influence RA adoption (Mpanga et al., 2021). Producers report strengthened ties and positive interactions with consumers supportive of nature-friendly practices and conscious consumption (Beacham et al., 2023; Johannessen et al., 2024), while producers and policymakers view RA as a means to secure social license and reputational legitimacy (Bless et al., 2025). For some RA producers, these relationships often extend to more-than-human beings, expressed as a form of social responsibility and reciprocity (Aare et al., 2025; Frankel-Goldwater et al., 2024; Seymour and Connelly, 2023).
RA is also perceived to foster outward-facing relational aspects. RA producers report a desire to inspire others and to demonstrate the viability of RA-aligned farming (Johannessen et al., 2024; Kallio, 2023), sharing enthusiasm for the ‘beauty and virtue’ of regenerative work (Beacham et al., 2023; Wilson et al., 2022; Wojtynia et al., 2023). Relationships between ranchers and NGOs highlight networks of human and non-human actors, underscoring the importance of understanding relational processes for policymakers and stakeholders (Pape et al., 2025).
At the same time, these relational dimensions appear uneven and fragile. Peer stigma and social pressure from conventional communities emerge, with some RA producers reporting ridicule or reputational risk in response to cultural or social stigma surrounding the approach (Gosnell et al., 2019; Johannessen et al., 2024; Page and Witt, 2022). Some producers avoid the RA label due to contested meanings (Alexanderson et al., 2023; Snorek et al., 2024). While female RA producers have reported experiencing exhaustion and vulnerability, as well as judgment from other producers (Aare et al., 2025). These dynamics indicate that while RA can build social capital, it can also expose producers to new forms of vulnerability.
The reviewed studies provide rich documentation of producer-level networks and their interfaces with knowledge actors (NGOs). However, voices from institutional and governance actors (local government) and downstream intermediaries/public actors (large-scale retailers, civil society) remain absent. It is not yet clear how these structural actors perceive or support emerging relational infrastructures, limiting the potential for collaborative governance.
Theme 4: Evolving mindsets, learning cultures, and advocacy
Across empirical actor perceptions, actors perceive a profound cognitive, ethical, and epistemic shift as a central sociocultural dimension of RA. This theme connects the redefinition of professional identity with the development of new learning cultures. As a sociocultural theme, it reflects a systemic reframing of the producer identity, anchored in heightened ecological awareness, place attachment, and the integration of scientific and local knowledge. These evolving mindsets are seen as the internal drivers necessary for the long-term advocacy and cultural transformation of the agri-food system.
Transitioning to RA has been associated with redefining what it means to be a ‘good farmer’, ‘learning to see again’, and moving from chemical-centred thinking to ecological understandings (Gosnell et al., 2019; Miller-Klugesherz and Sanderson, 2023). Many producers report adopting holistic frameworks and actively seeking knowledge on soil health (Alexanderson et al., 2024; Seymour and Connelly, 2023). This shift is reflected in producers questioning their roles within broader healthcare and institutional systems (Leitheiser et al., 2022). Practitioners further emphasise awareness of ecological cycles and intergenerational thinking, cultivating humility by reframing human-centred control and heightened senses of humanity's insignificance (Bless et al., 2025; Coon et al., 2025; Frankel-Goldwater et al., 2024; Kallio and LaFleur, 2023; Leitheiser et al., 2022; Miller-Klugesherz and Sanderson, 2023; Seymour and Connelly, 2023; Vivas and Hodbod, 2024). Some producers describe ‘reinstalling’ new mental programming to follow intuitive judgments (Beacham et al., 2023; Gosnell et al., 2019; Sadeharju, 2025).
Education and social learning are central to these evolving mindsets. Producers, educators, and consultants report supporting RA transitions by emphasising ecosystem processes and experiential learning (Gosnell, 2022; Otara et al., 2023; Page and Witt, 2022). Learning about RA processes is perceived by producers as intellectually stimulating, helping them reframe on-farm challenges as natural ecosystem fluctuations (Coon et al., 2025; Frankel-Goldwater et al., 2024; Johannessen et al., 2024; Miller-Klugesherz and Sanderson, 2023; Snorek et al., 2024). Female producers specifically describe intensive processes of learning and unlearning, as well as the role of women in farm management (Aare et al., 2025; Bless et al., 2025). Producers, government actors, business owners, consultants, and educators perceive education as a crucial factor for building the public awareness needed to support regenerative transitions (Mambo et al., 2025).
Generational shifts also shape these learning cultures, with younger people drawn to RA to reduce environmental impacts (Dipu et al., 2022; Otara et al., 2023). Some universities in Australia are perceived by producers as supporting this shift by integrating RA into curricula (Gosnell et al., 2019), while public advocates and policymakers encourage engagement by raising awareness (Bless et al., 2025). Peer-to-peer networks and mentorship remain vital; producers describe fellow producers as colleagues rather than competitors, sometimes engaging in resource sharing (Bless et al., 2025; Brown et al., 2021; Gosnell, 2022; Keshavarz and Sharafi, 2023; Leitheiser et al., 2022; Lujan Soto et al., 2021a, 2021b; Miller-Klugesherz and Sanderson, 2023; Seymour and Connelly, 2023; Snorek et al., 2024). Mentors report providing site-specific guidance and motivation, which is seen by this actor as foundational to the diffusion of RA (McWherter et al., 2025). Furthermore, informal platforms, including social media, podcasts, YouTube, workshops, and local gatherings, are perceived to support belonging and knowledge sharing among producers (Alexanderson et al., 2023; Dipu et al., 2022; Johannessen et al., 2024; Lujan Soto et al., 2021a, 2021b).
Despite evidence of transformation among producers and their knowledge/intermediary partners (mentors, consultants), there is limited insight into whether similar shifts occur among downstream actors or institutional/governance advisors. This gap suggests that mindset transformation may remain confined to producer-level communities rather than fostering a shared food-system worldview.
Theme 5: Place-based legitimacy
Across the literature, actors perceive the negotiation of place-based legitimacy as a central sociocultural dimension of RA. This theme connects the credibility of regenerative practices and claims with their appropriateness within specific social, political, and cultural contexts. As a sociocultural theme, it reflects how actors judge trustworthiness and navigate RA within existing markets and regulatory systems. This legitimacy is an adaptive social process which is essential to the systemic acceptance and social license of the movement.
For some producers, RA is linked to preserving regional natural heritage and pursuing both small-scale and large-scale future-oriented goals (Coon et al., 2025; Frankel-Goldwater et al., 2024). However, producers and agronomists emphasise that RA remains a niche practice characterised by uncertainty, which complicates its legitimacy relative to conventional models (Alexanderson et al., 2024; Beacham et al., 2023; Frankel-Goldwater et al., 2024; Krzywoszynska, 2024; Leitheiser et al., 2022; Miller-Klugesherz and Sanderson, 2023; Rozanski and Gavin, 2023). Definitions and narratives are central to this struggle. While organic growers may find the term ill-defined (Lemke et al., 2024), producers, researchers, non-profits, NGOs, and food companies often view RA as interchangeable with agroecology or sustainable agriculture (Wilson et al., 2022, 2024). This variability causes hesitancy among some producers, particularly due to fears that ambiguity enables ‘greenwashing’, threatening consumer trust and limiting benefits, as perceived by researchers, non-profits, NGOs, and food companies (Beacham et al., 2023; Lemke et al., 2024; Wilson et al., 2022, 2024).
Legitimacy is also shaped by public discourse and familiarity. Some producers report resistance from non-RA groups, who may dismiss RA as a ‘buzzword’ or an ideological pursuit (Gosnell et al., 2019; Johannessen et al., 2024; Kallio and LaFleur, 2023; Page and Witt, 2022; Wojtynia et al., 2023). However, evidence suggests that greater familiarity can reduce defensiveness among non-producers, whereas producers are often less affected by messaging alone (Bullock and Ouellette, 2025). Targeted communication can reduce functional resistance, but its effect is mediated by cultural and institutional conditions (Jin et al., 2022).
Personal and political ideologies further intersect with these struggles. Producers, government actors, business owners, consultants, and educators report that conservative political cultures or a reliance on conventional machinery can inhibit the transition, often prioritising economic returns over conservation (Alexanderson et al., 2024; Dipu et al., 2022; Gosnell, 2022; Mambo et al., 2025; Miller-Klugesherz and Sanderson, 2023; Snorek et al., 2024). While some producers and agronomists value sensory engagement with the land, they frequently favour quantifiable evidence to legitimate RA (Krzywoszynska, 2024). Factors such as age, ownership status, and gendered expectations shape whether producers feel confident using the term RA (Aare et al., 2025; Coon et al., 2025; Wojtynia et al., 2023). In collectivist contexts, traditional social norms can suppress adoption unless communication aligns with local cultural frames (Jin et al., 2022).
Structural and regulatory conditions anchor this theme. Land constraints, carbon policies, and degraded soils are perceived as significant barriers by producers, government actors, and agri-business professionals (Coon et al., 2025; Mambo et al., 2025). Institutional misalignments, such as untrained staff, limited localised knowledge, and unclear government positions, discourage adoption for some producers (Dipu et al., 2022; Keshavarz and Sharafi, 2023; Leitheiser et al., 2022). RA producers, government actors, business owners, consultants, producer organisations, and educators also report a distrust in political programmes and a perceived lack of compensation for RA (Mambo et al., 2025). Furthermore, some producers report that structural misalignments constrain agency and signal that RA does not yet fully fit within existing policy and investment regimes (Stephens, 2021; Wojtynia et al., 2023).
Currently, perceptions of legitimacy are filtered through those seeking it: producers and knowledge actors. The downstream and institutional actors (retailers, financiers, certifiers) who confer legitimacy through standards and market access are notably sparse. Addressing this is essential to determine if RA's legitimacy will be co-produced across the value chain or remain a producer-side narrative.
Discussion
Foregrounding a multi-actor perspective, this review investigated how RA is conceptualised as a sociocultural phenomenon across the food system. The findings demonstrate that while RA is widely understood as a socio-ecological shift, these understandings are unevenly distributed across the literature. Consequently, the sociocultural frame we offer represents a novel shift in RA scholarship toward a food system governance perspective that accounts for meaning co-creation beyond the site of production. This discussion advances three mutually reinforcing contributions to RA scholarship.
The foundational contribution of this paper is the explicit foregrounding of five perceived sociocultural themes, previously peripheral and fragmented in empirical scholarship due to limited multi-actor representation, as a distinct, synthesised evidence base to inform future research, policy, certification, and governance. While social sustainability is recognised as foundational to intergenerational equity and fair resource allocation (Eizenberg and Jabareen, 2017), it remains weakly operationalised in agri-food systems research (Boström, 2012; Janker and Mann, 2020). Treating social value and impact as empirical evidence of sociocultural dimensions is critical to value-chain resilience; without shared expectations, a legitimacy gap emerges between on-farm production and broader food-system values (Tribaldos and Kortetmäki, 2022). Our findings extend recent social research (e.g., Caruso et al., 2025; Gaspar et al., 2025; Rai et al., 2025) by shifting the evaluative focus from social mechanisms of adoption to the legitimacy of the social ideals that are created. By foregrounding these meanings as empirical evidence from food system actors, this review calls for sociocultural dimensions to be explored with the same rigour and depth applied to biophysical markers in RA scholarship, recognising that while these dimensions may not lend themselves to the same forms of measurement, they are no less fundamental to understanding how regenerative transitions are perceived, negotiated, and sustained across the value chain.
The identified themes signal where social sustainability is beginning to coalesce in RA's transformative potential. These themes provide a collective view of the social ideals stakeholders expect from a regenerative system, capturing these sociocultural dimensions that actors perceive as central to RA's social sustainability potential and link to broader social sustainability scholarship. This is reflected in an Ethic of Care and Responsibility, where actors align production with the moral orientations of the UN SDGs (e.g., Bexell and Jönsson, 2017; Keitsch, 2018; Nicholson and Kurucz, 2019), and Livelihood Pathways, which represent expectations for autonomy and increased well-being (e.g., Hentihu and Umanailo, 2021; Vallance et al., 2011; You and Zhang, 2017). These ideals are anchored by Relational Infrastructures, reflecting a distinct role in commons governing for societal transformations (e.g., Brandtner et al., 2023; Gilbert et al., 2022; Rahman et al., 2014). Evolving Mindsets and Learning Cultures signal a shift toward knowledge co-production (e.g., Cronin et al., 2024; Schiller-Merkens and Machin, 2023; Shaw et al., 2024), while the emphasis on Place-based Legitimacy ensures context-dependency and locally negotiated meaning (e.g., Brunori et al., 2013; Feagan, 2007; Klassen and Wittman, 2017). By positioning these perceptions as an empirical foundation, this review addresses the need for a distributed model of responsibility across the value chain for RA research (Breier et al., 2023). Viewed through a regenerative systems theory lens (Buckton et al., 2023), the sociocultural themes identified here resonate with the qualities of ecological worldview, mutualism, agency, reflexivity, and diversity that the lens identifies as foundational to regenerative social-ecological systems. Yet our findings reveal these qualities remain predominantly producer-held in the empirical literature, pointing to a critical gap in the multi-actor representation needed for such dynamics to be realised systemically.
Our second contribution lies in the use of a stakeholder lens to provide a structured, multi-actor analysis of RA. Although prior research invokes stakeholder perspectives (Caruso et al., 2025; Gaspar et al., 2025), existing scholarship has not operationalised a stakeholder framework. Inclusive governance has been posited as a key prerequisite for sustainability transitions in agri-food systems (Bui et al., 2019), and stakeholder theory emphasises alignment across interdependent actor groups (Freeman, 2010). This lens allows us to surface heterogeneous interpretations and illuminate how certain actors exert disproportionate influence over dominant RA narratives, an insight largely absent from existing research despite the central role of multi-actor coordination in sustainability transitions.
Building on the need for multi-actor representation, the third contribution highlights disparities in conceptual and empirical depth across actor groups, underscoring the need to continue extending the discursive and relational bodies of social foundations within RA scholarship (e.g., Gordon et al., 2022, 2025). While producer-level and knowledge/intermediary research exhibit strong conceptual standing, research addressing downstream/public and institutional/governance actors lacks equivalent depth. Our findings show that actors shaping market access and governance, such as financial institutions and retailers, remain largely absent. This unevenness in representation has direct implications for social sustainability. This unevenness also carries implications for power dynamics within the RA landscape. Schreefel et al. (2025) demonstrate that, while RA originated as a grassroots, farmer-led approach, it has increasingly been shaped by multinational, non-farming actors in practice. Our findings extend this observation into the academic literature, suggesting that the underrepresentation of institutional and downstream actors in empirical research may further reinforce these asymmetries, leaving the sociocultural meanings of RA predominantly constructed from producer-level standpoints, while the actors with the greatest structural power to shape its trajectory remain largely unexamined.
Within the themes, several underrepresented voices are illustrated. The Ethic of Care and Responsibility is accompanied by implicit assumptions about shared consumer values, despite limited empirical engagement with consumer perspectives. Livelihood Pathways remain fragile due to misalignment with banking and policy regimes, yet the institutions that structure these conditions are rarely examined empirically, despite the notion that they can play enabling roles (Caruso et al., 2025). Similarly, Relational Infrastructures remain concentrated among early adopters, leaving unresolved whether producer-level social capital can stabilise within broader market arrangements; further emphasising the underexplored acknowledged across scholarship (Brown et al., 2021; Gaspar et al., 2025; Rai et al., 2025). Evolving Mindsets challenge top-down knowledge transfer, yet conventional mental models persist among intermediaries whose epistemic orientations may not align with regenerative shifts, aligning with calls for participatory and reflexive extension (Antwi-Agyei and Stringer, 2021; Sahu et al., 2023). Furthermore, regarding Learning Cultures, education and literacy are recognised as levers for informed consumer demand and multi-level value chain systemic change (Kapelari et al., 2020; Meijer et al., 2023; Pereira Querol and Vänninen, 2026) and are well established in organic food systems (Annunziata et al., 2019; Bryla, 2018; Melovic et al., 2020), yet they remain largely underexplored in RA. Finally, Place-Based Legitimacy reveals a critical asymmetry: Legitimacy is articulated primarily by those seeking recognition rather than by the actors who confer it (e.g., certifiers and financiers), thereby constraining RA's capacity to build social license and market differentiation. Overall, key actors shaping public narratives and market expectations, such as consumers, retailers, certification bodies, financiers, media organisations, and civil society institutions, remain largely absent from empirical studies of RA legitimacy.
Moreover, the continued underrepresentation of marginalised and Indigenous communities further limits the social robustness of regenerative transitions (Sands et al., 2023; Wilson et al., 2024). This pattern is particularly notable given that practitioner-led frameworks have increasingly positioned equity and power as explicit regenerative dimensions, with organisations such as Regen10 (2023) explicitly committing to equity, fairness, and rights, and EARA (2024) advocating for accountable social regeneration across agri-food ecosystems. Notably, power dynamics and social justice dimensions are present across the themes, evident in the asymmetric conferral of legitimacy by institutionally powerful actors in Place-Based Legitimacy, gendered vulnerabilities and peer stigma within Relational Infrastructures, financial precarity and inequitable access to institutional support in Livelihood Pathways, and intergenerational and more-than-human accountability in the Ethic of Care and Responsibility. These dimensions surface implicitly rather than explicitly in the empirical literature, which suggests a meaningful gap between practitioner discourse and academic representation, one that attending to more directly in future research may prove particularly valuable for advancing inclusive governance and equitable value-chain participation within regenerative transitions.
Without sustained empirical attention to how sociocultural meanings are negotiated across the value chain, RA risks remaining socially transformative yet structurally contained. This shift is analytically vital as social sustainability cannot be meaningfully assessed without attention to whose voices shape the narrative, whose values are legitimised, and how agency is distributed across production and consumption (Gutiérrez and Macken-Walsh, 2022; Marsden et al., 2018; van Bers et al., 2019). From a stakeholder perspective, socially sustainable regeneration depends on the continued alignment of multiple actors whose expectations and resources shape viability.
Limitations and future research
Despite its systematic rigour, several limitations of this review provide a basis for future research. First, by focusing exclusively on peer-reviewed academic literature, this review deliberately prioritises methodological rigour over breadth of source type. While this excludes practitioner discourse, NGO publications, and industry-led frameworks, which increasingly foreground sociocultural dimensions, from the scope of this synthesis, this boundary is intentional, responding to a notable gap in the peer-reviewed empirical literature and establishing a rigorous academic evidence base from which broader multi-source synthesis can be meaningfully built. Future research building on this academic evidence base would benefit from systematic integration of grey literature to provide a fuller picture of how sociocultural meanings are negotiated across the RA landscape. Methods such as media reviews (e.g., netnography, web content analysis, or social media analysis) could be used to capture stakeholder perspectives beyond academic research. Second, our timeframe prioritised the recent surge in RA scholarship to reflect current policy and industry shifts; however, we recognise that earlier foundational work may offer complementary insights. Furthermore, given the typical delay between research activity and peer-reviewed publication, the empirical landscape of RA may be more developed in practice than the academic literature in this review fully captures. While we identified core sociocultural themes, other thematic areas across the RA literature (e.g., social justice, cultural re-appreciation, and interspecies equity) remain insightful for a holistic understanding of agri-food transitions.
A further limitation is reliance on English-language sources, which may bias findings toward a Western perspective. As a Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) research team, our positionality may unconsciously prioritise Western-centric interpretations of RA that do not fully reflect its meaning across diverse global contexts. Future research is encouraged to integrate non-English studies and perspectives from the Global South to better capture the cross-cultural dimensions of RA practice.
Next, while this review captures a broad range of views, the use of Scopus and Web of Science may have constrained the diversity of actor representation. Our identification of ‘missing’ or ‘underspecified’ actors (e.g., consumers, financial institutions, and retailers) is an interpretive judgement informed by our analytical lens and may not encompass all groups that influence RA systems. Additional actors not visible through our dataset may therefore warrant attention in future research. Furthermore, although comparing geographical contexts was beyond our scope, analysing geopolitical representation is a critical consideration. Participatory research may offer valuable pathways for exploring how actors across different regions co-develop and negotiate credibility and standards, supporting the development of place-based frameworks that respect RA's context-dependent ethos. Considerations for exploring how place-specific histories, power dynamics, and cultural norms shape RA's legitimacy, including engagement with producers, consumers, certifiers, retailers, financiers, NGOs, and policymakers, may be useful.
Furthermore, while this study prioritises sociocultural meaning and value formation, we recognise that social sustainability also encompasses established quantitative indicators and formal ‘outcomes’. Our analysis focuses on the qualitative social reality of RA rather than functionalist performance markers. The five sociocultural themes identified in this review may inform future research that integrates these perceived meanings with measurable value-chain metrics, such as labour welfare data (e.g., sick leave and healthcare access) and economic equity markers (e.g., fair wage distribution and contract stability). Future research might explore how each sociocultural theme could inform the development of actor-specific indicators and assessment tools, for instance, in areas such as certification criteria, livelihood and financial resilience metrics, and social capital measurement. Practitioner-led frameworks such as Regen10 (2023), which explicitly incorporate community, governance, and farmer and worker dimensions, may offer promising platforms for exploring these empirically grounded themes in actionable evaluation contexts. Linking subjective values with objective metrics would strengthen the formal accounting of regenerative supply chains and represent an important direction for future research. Furthermore, to address a recurrent methodological limitation in the literature, future studies should ensure explicit actor attribution and clearly distinguish among professional roles to enable more nuanced multi-actor analysis.
Finally, this review is bounded by human-actor perspectives, reflecting the empirical methods used in the retained studies. The more-than-human turn in social science scholarship, including multispecies ethnography and actor-network theory, increasingly calls for the inclusion of non-human entities as active participants in food system governance (Latour, 2007). Capturing such perspectives would require fundamentally different methodological approaches and represents a meaningful direction for future research.
Conclusion
This review set out to systematically synthesise how food-system actors perceive the sociocultural dimensions of RA, and to identify whose voices shape these meanings and whose remain absent. Five sociocultural themes emerge from this review as the primary meanings through which food-system actors interpret RA's social and relational goals. These are: an ethic of care and responsibility, livelihood pathways, relational infrastructures, evolving mindsets, learning cultures and advocacy, and place-based legitimacy. Across all five, a consistent pattern emerges in which producer-level actors dominate the perceptual landscape, while knowledge and intermediary, institutional and governance, and downstream and public actors, including policymakers, financial institutions, retailers, and consumers, remain comparatively sparse. This unevenness constrains the formation of legitimacy, limits value chain alignment, and risks confining RA's transformative potential to the farm gate.
This review foregrounds five sociocultural themes as a synthesised empirical evidence base, previously peripheral and fragmented in scholarship due to limited multi-actor representation. It does so through a stakeholder lens, surfacing whose voices shape these meanings and whose remain absent. Together, these contributions advance the sociocultural dimensions of RA as a foundation for future research, policy, certification, and governance. The implications extend beyond representation and suggest that without broader and more inclusive multi-actor engagement in research and practice, RA risks remaining socially transformative yet structurally contained, unable to fulfil its potential as a distributed, co-created model of responsibility across the agri-food system.
Supplemental Material
sj-docx-1-oag-10.1177_00307270261446290 - Supplemental material for A systematic review of multi-actor sociocultural perceptions of regenerative agriculture
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-oag-10.1177_00307270261446290 for A systematic review of multi-actor sociocultural perceptions of regenerative agriculture by Haley E Jones, Joya A Kemper, Denise M Conroy, Ekant Veer and Samantha White in Outlook on Agriculture
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
The first author acknowledges support from the Food Transitions 2050 Joint Postgraduate Scholarship, which provides tuition fees and a stipend but did not influence the research design, analysis, or findings.
Ethical considerations
There are no human participants in this article and informed consent is not required.
Consent to participate
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Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interest
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on request.
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References
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