KIND Snacks, the brand known for its delicious and nutritious snacks with the legacy of creating a kinder and healthier world, has officially announced a string of industry-leading sustainable sourcing milestones. This it did just one year after releasing its most ambitious sustainability commitment yet i.e. to source 100% of its almonds from farms leveraging regenerative agriculture practices on a mass-balance basis by 2030.
KIND also took this opportunity to announce a partnership with Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment (Wolfe’s Neck Center) to join its Regenerative Services Match Program. In essence, Wolfe’s Neck Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating change in food systems through regenerative farming, innovative research, and collaborations.
Anyway, more on the given partnership would reveal how it happens to be largest one focused on almonds, a partnership which will unlock more than $300,000 in funding for regenerative practice adoption and resource deployment within KIND’s almond supply network.
Furthermore, it will provide KIND the means to ensure over 30% of its almond supply chain leverage regenerative practices on a mass-balance basis by 2025. This will be the first step towards company’s commitment to source 100% of almonds from farms leveraging regenerative agriculture on a mass-balance basis by 2030.
Moving on, it will also bring forth financial incentives and technical assistance to reduce the risk for KIND’s growers to adopt regenerative agricultural practices, including cover cropping and soil amendments, for the purpose of cutting down on the environmental impacts attached to farming. Beyond that, the promised help packs together assistance in the form of measurement, reporting, and verification tools that are multi-purpose and used by growers across the industry.
“Our shift to a more regenerative food system relies on strong, cross-sector partnerships. We are thrilled to partner with KIND and support their goals for scaling regenerative practices for almonds. Their commitment to supporting growers and sustainable farming truly exemplifies how collaborative efforts can drive meaningful change in our food systems. It’s through partnerships like these that we can all accelerate change to create a more sustainable and resilient agricultural future,” said Dave Herring, Executive Director of Wolfe’s Neck Center.
Another detail worth a mention is rooted in how the partnership between KIND and Wolfe’s Neck Center was secured in part due to the industry-leading work done by the KIND Almond Acres Initiative, a regenerative agriculture pilot project conceived in collaboration with one of KIND’s suppliers, ofi (Olam Food Ingredients), which launched in 2023.
Talk about the initiative on a slightly deeper, we must dig into its aim to test a combination of five regenerative practices and modern technologies over three years and on 500+ acres of land in California – one of the largest pilot projects dedicated to regenerative agriculture for almonds in California.
In fact, during year 2 of the pilot, KIND is close to doubling the acreage of the KIND Almond Acres Initiative to close to 1,000 acres, working with ofi to add a pilot farm outside of Bakersfield, California. Furthermore, it will test the same five stacked practices, but in a region that received half as much water in 2024 as the original pilot farm in Madera County. The idea behind doing so is to allow for critical testing of the impact of regenerative practices in more water-stressed areas.
On top of that, year 2 of the KIND Almond Acres Initiative is likely to involve continued collaboration with new and existing partners across the public and private sectors. This includes linking up with LandScan AI to enable more real-time amendments to the regenerative agriculture pilot for greater sustainability impacts. Regrow Ag will also chip in to discover how to best measure and model on-farm carbon outputs for the broader almond industry.
Beyond that, there is a bid in play to support regional partners using research and investment dispatched through the California Water Action Collaborative and KIND’s longstanding partnership with the Williams Lab at UC Davis.
