[Disclosure: AgFunderNews’ parent company AgFunder is an investor in Klim.]
Up to now, discussions around soil degradation largely focus on environmental consequences: biodiversity loss, erosion, and water contamination, for example.
But for agrifood companies, these and other things are also a major P&L problem, impacting pricing, supply chains, and yield volatility, says Robert Gerlach, founder and CEO of Klim. For banks and insurers, soil degradation can lead to higher credit and underwriting risks.
Klim, a carbon insetting company helping corporates decarbonize farms in their supply chains, unveiled a financial modeling tool in 2025 to address the above concerns.
“Decision-makers needed a credible way to quantify how regenerative [agriculture] transitions affect P&L, risk, and enterprise value,” explains Gerlach. “Our goal is to make regenerative transition decisions as financially legible as traditional capex.”
Below, he discuss why viewing regen ag through a P&L lens is so vital, and how Klim’s digital infrastructure can help companies do that to secure their supply chains for the future.
Gerlach spoke to AgFunder recently as part of the latter’s 2026 Global AgriFoodTech Investment report.
AgFunderNews (AFN): What challenge is Klim addressing in 2026?
Robert Gerlach (RG): The degradation of agricultural soils is one of the most important challenges of our time, and a direct P&L and risk issue for the agrifood system and its financial backers.
Globally, soils have lost around 50% of their soil organic carbon, reducing resilience to droughts, heavy rainfall, and extreme weather. For farmers and agrifood companies, this results in yield volatility, rising costs, unstable prices, and growing supply-chain risk; for banks and insurers, it translates into higher credit and underwriting risk.
In parallel, soil carbon loss has already released an estimated 500 billion tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere, while agriculture remains the primary driver of global biodiversity loss.
Klim provides the digital infrastructure to regenerate soils at scale and speed, thereby ensuring the economic viability of the agrifood system. We enable food companies (e.g., Nestlé, ADM, Aldi), financial institutions (e.g., Rabobank, BNP), and farmers to stabilize supply, reduce volatility, and improve long-term resilience, while delivering certified climate and biodiversity outcomes.
At the core is Klim’s supply-chain offering and farmer platform, including a digital regenerative agronomist that allows farmers and supply-chain partners to assess soil health, model transition pathways, and implement regenerative practices based on profitability and risk outcomes. In addition, Klim connects farmers and food companies to favorable transition finance through partnerships with leading banks and insurers.
AFN: Tell us more about your new approach that models the impact of the regenerative transition on P&L. Why did you choose this focus?
RG: Most large agrifood companies invest in regenerative agriculture primarily to secure stable supply and prices and reduce supply-chain risk. Yet, until recently, impact measurement focused almost exclusively on environmental metrics, such as Scope 3 emissions reductions. While important, this created a disconnect: environmental metrics alone are not sufficient to guide capital allocation.
Through extensive conversations with agrifood customers, CFO teams, and financial institutions, we identified a clear gap: decision-makers needed a credible way to quantify how regenerative transitions affect P&L, risk, and enterprise value.
In response, Klim developed a modelling tool, in close partnership with customers and leading banks, that translates regenerative transition scenarios into financial outcomes. It allows agrifood companies to model impacts on revenue, costs, multiple risk dimensions, regulatory exposure, access to capital, and ultimately enterprise value under different transition pathways.
Our goal is to make regenerative transition decisions as financially legible as traditional capex.
The model is now used in board-level discussions and strategic decision-making, helping companies justify long-term investments in regenerative supply chains by showing how these investments can lead to material enterprise value deltas. It has become a core part of internal scenario planning and is continuously refined as more data flows through the platform.
AFN: What were Klim’s highlights of 2025?
RG: 2025 was a transformative year for Klim. We significantly strengthened our digital regenerative agronomist, enabling more cost-effective and scalable supply-chain conversion. We launched our agri-food P&L and enterprise valuation model, as well as loan offerings for farmers and agri-food companies in partnership with leading banks. We entered new markets, including the UK, strengthened the Klim management team, and further expanded our leadership position in regenerative supply-chain conversion.
A symbolic highlight was seeing Klim featured at Times Square in New York as one of the leading global impact companies, reflecting the growing international relevance of our work.
AFN: What were some challenges?
RG: 2025 was a difficult year for the agri-food sector overall. Delayed regulation, margin pressure, and restructuring across the industry led many companies to tighten budgets and slow decision-making. While this affected the pace of some projects, it also reinforced the need for solutions that clearly connect sustainability investments to financial resilience and risk reduction.
AFN: Plans for 2026?
RG: In 2026, Klim will continue to deepen its farmer value proposition and accelerate the rollout of its financial value layer. You will see new partnerships across the agrifood and finance sectors, broader deployment of our P&L and risk modelling capabilities, and faster scaling of regenerative supply-chain programmes.
AFN: One line of advice for other startups:
RG: Understand your industry better than anyone else, especially where the real economic decision-making power sits.
The post How to make regenerative agriculture ‘financially legible’ for agrifood corporates appeared first on AgFunderNews.
