Regenerative Coffee Farming: Beyond Sustainability to Restoration

*Collaborative Post

How Adams + Russell Showcases Regenerative Practices

As the climate crisis intensifies and agricultural lands degrade, many in the coffee world are moving past the idea of “sustainability” as simply maintaining the status quo. Instead, regenerative agriculture promises not just to sustain, but to restore ecosystems, enrich soil, increase biodiversity, and improve both farmer livelihoods and coffee quality. Adams + Russell, a speciality coffee roasters based in Birkenhead, UK, partners with farms and projects that put regenerative agriculture into action. Their sourcing stories provide concrete examples of what restoration looks like in practice.

Below, we explore what regenerative coffee farming entails, look at real-world examples of these practices, and consider why this approach matters now more than ever.

What Is Regenerative Agriculture in Coffee Farming?

Regenerative agriculture is a holistic set of farming practices aimed at restoring degraded soils, increasing biodiversity, improving water cycles, and building resilient agroecosystems.

Key practices often include agroforestry or shade trees, cover cropping, composting, reducing chemical inputs, conserving water, and sequestering carbon in soil and vegetation.

These practices not only restore ecosystems but also improve resilience to climate change and often lead to richer, more flavourful coffee.

Why Regeneration Matters

Regenerative coffee farming matters because it offers solutions that go far beyond simply maintaining the status quo of sustainability.

By restoring ecosystems and building climate resilience, these practices ensure long-term agricultural health. Healthy soils, shade trees, and diverse agroforestry systems buffer against droughts, reduce erosion, cool local microclimates, and increase resistance to pests and diseases.

Farms like Fazenda Tres Meninas, highlighted by Adams & Russell Coffee Roasters, have shown how regenerative agriculture can even become carbon-negative, capturing more carbon than they emit and contributing directly to global climate mitigation.

For farmers, regeneration improves livelihoods by enhancing soil fertility, reducing reliance on costly chemical inputs, diversifying income sources through shade trees, and increasing both yields and crop quality. This higher quality often translates into premium prices, further supporting farmer stability.

On the consumer side, regenerative practices also elevate coffee flavour, with healthy soils, shade, and careful fermentation producing more complex and distinctive profiles, as seen in examples like Tres Meninas in Brazil or El Embrujo in Colombia.

Ultimately, regeneration shifts the goal from simply sustaining resources to actively restoring them, transforming degraded land into fertile, resilient ecosystems and securing the long-term viability of coffee production for generations to come.

Examples of Regenerative Practices

Fazenda Tres Meninas, Brazil
Adams + Russell highlights Fazenda Tres Meninas, which is part of their ever-popular freshly roasted coffee beans range, as a prime example of regenerative coffee farming. Since acquiring the farm in 2016, the owners have worked with ReNature to transform its production system.

They have planted over 3,000 trees to increase shade, biodiversity, and carbon capture. Cover crops protect the soil, moderate temperature, reduce wind, and save water. The farm has even become carbon-negative, sequestering more carbon than it emits. This shows how regenerative practices can restore the environment while still producing high-quality, commercially viable coffee.

Rwanda – Kinini Rulindo AA Microlot
According to Adams + Russell, replanting programs at Kinini have introduced younger seedlings of the Bourbon Mayaguez 139 variety, while infrastructure improvements such as new roads and upgraded washing stations support farmers.

Raised drying beds and careful processing methods improve quality, while worm beds turn coffee pulp into organic fertiliser. Satellite technology is also used to monitor plant health and detect diseases early, reducing losses and building resilience.

Colombia – Finca El Embrujo
Adams + Russell also showcase Finca El Embrujo in Colombia, where regenerative practices focus on soil fertility and reduced chemical inputs. The farm has increased tree density and planted native shade trees.

Coffee pulp and other organic waste are used as compost, supported by microorganisms that balance nutrients and speed decomposition. The farmer has even built an on-site microbiology lab to test fermentation methods and apply findings back into soil health and composting.

Why Regeneration Matters to Coffee Roasters

Ecosystem restoration and climate resilience are key outcomes. Healthy soils, shade trees, and diverse agroforestry systems buffer against droughts, reduce erosion, cool microclimates, and increase resistance to pests and disease. Regenerative farms also contribute to carbon sequestration, with farms like Fazenda Tres Meninas already capturing more carbon than they emit.

For farmers, regenerative approaches improve livelihoods by reducing input costs, increasing yields, diversifying income through shade trees, and producing higher quality coffee that commands better prices.

Consumers benefit too, as these practices often lead to more complex and distinctive flavour profiles. Most importantly, regeneration goes beyond “not making things worse.” It is about actively restoring ecosystems and ensuring the long-term future of coffee itself.

Challenges to Scaling

Transitioning to regenerative practices requires investment in replanting, infrastructure, and training. Knowledge-sharing, technical support, and research are essential to help farmers adopt these methods.

Soil restoration and tree growth also take time, which means farmers need stable markets and fair pricing to support them during the transition. Clear standards and certification systems are needed to measure and verify regenerative practices.

What Consumers and the Industry Can Do

Consumers can choose coffees traceable to farms practicing regenerative techniques, such as those sourced by Adams + Russell.

Supporting brands that pay fairly and invest in farmer training and infrastructure is another way to strengthen regenerative systems. Demanding transparency about farming practices and supporting certifications that include regenerative criteria also helps create a stronger market for truly restorative coffee.

Conclusion

Regenerative coffee farming offers a hopeful path forward — one where producing great coffee and restoring ecosystems go hand in hand. Examples from Adams + Russell’s partnerships in Brazil, Rwanda, and Colombia show that regeneration is not just a lofty concept but a practical, measurable reality. If more farmers, roasters, and consumers embrace regenerative practices, the future of coffee could be one rooted in restoration, ecological health, and fairness — not just for the earth, but for the people who make every cup possible.

*This is a collaborative post. For further information please refer to my disclosure page.