Agribusiness Supply Chains: From Green to Regenerative

Abstract

Supply chain management has traditionally prioritized maximizing profits, creating persistent tensions with social‐ecological systems (SES) despite sustainability efforts. Regeneration offers an alternative, ecocentric approach, yet it remains unclear how supply chains can operate within SES boundaries. This research examines how focal firms promote regenerative supply chains (RgSCs) through a multicase analysis of three Latin American agribusinesses. Findings show that these firms leverage their coordination roles to develop two distinctive capabilities: mobilizing deep ecological knowledge and reconfiguring market engagement. Through routines of acquiring, applying, codifying, and exchanging ecological knowledge, firms transform it into a strategic asset. In parallel, by reframing value, shaping biodiverse offerings, and calibrating supply and demand, firms reconfigure their engagement with consumers. The recursive alignment between these two capabilities enables firms to reconnect production and consumption with the dynamics of living systems through continuous adaptation. The study contributes to theory by empirically unpacking the shift from harm reduction to regeneration, developing a model of RgSC capability formation, and introducing the concept of recursive alignment. Building on this contribution, we also reinterpret the Triple‐A framework of agility, adaptability, and alignment through a regenerative lens. In RgSCs, agility reflects synchronicity with ecological processes, rather than speed; adaptability emerges as a shared relational capability; and alignment becomes a recursive process integrating ecological and market feedback loops to sustain regeneration. For practitioners, advancing RgSCs requires redefining success beyond financial metrics to include ecosystem health and community wellbeing and shaping demand around ecological boundaries through new forms of collaboration, incentives, and education.