Evaluating Regenerative Performance with FAO TAPE

Regenerative farming is a science, a practice, and a social movement, designed as a ‘pathway for transition towards sustainable food systems’[1].

The systemic shift from mono-crop industrial farming that no longer serves us will require collective action across the value chain. To engage stakeholders, we must demonstrate how regenerative agriculture addresses the world’s most pressing environmental, social, and economic concerns.

Positive impacts of regenerative projects are abundant, and many can be witnessed simply through our senses – verdant, glossy leaves, earthy soil aromas, and busy insects and birds' symphonies indicating more productive crops, healthier food, and ecological resilience. But, current data is fragmented and lacking in some impact areas. To gain social trust and grab the government's attention, we need harmonised evidence across the value chain[2].

Sweet Harmony

In answer to our prayers, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has developed a Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation (TAPE) - a globally applicable framework for assessing the performance of regenerative systems that moves beyond the standard measures of productivity to encompass a project’s environmental, social and cultural, economic, nutrition, and governance dimensions.

While applying a standardised framework to a set of practices rooted in flexibility may seem counterintuitive, the tool can be adapted to different locations, scales, and timeframes. Not only is a standardised evaluation tool critical to informing policymaking, it will also help close knowledge gaps to drive performance and create greater value.

Key features of TAPE

Holistic evaluation – Assesses food production systems across all environmental, social, economic, and agricultural impact areas.
Collective empowerment – Inclusive design that engages all stakeholders in the value chain, building knowledge through the process to empower producers.
Robust but flexible – Scalable across diverse markets and applicable to different scenarios.
Alignment with global goals – Directly supports the Sustainable Development Goals and aligns with the 10 Elements of Agroecology.
Evidence-based insights – Provides clear and transparent data to measure performance and inform strategy and policy making.
Long-term tracking – Monitors progress over time to support ongoing improvement and investment decisions.

TAPE and ZFPA

Our aim is for the projects we fund to generate maximum impact on the environment and communities they are in.

As those familiar with systems transformation will know, you can only manage what you can measure, so we are thrilled that together with reNature, we have designed the evaluation tool for our Philippines project using a combination of approaches that includes the FAO TAPE methodology. Robust data will be critical to delivering the project’s objectives of improving sustainability, economic income, gender equity, soil health, biodiversity, and overall farmer well-being, and we can’t wait to see what insights we gather using the framework.