#117 - Stacy Cushenbery @ Oatly - Driving Regen Impact With Miller Partnerships & Per Acre Payments
Description
On this episode, we sit down with Stacy Cushenbery, Senior Manager for Global Regenerative Agriculture at Oatly, to unpack how one of the world’s most recognizable plant-based brands is tackling regeneration at scale.
We explore why Oatly chose an “equivalent acres” approach instead of chasing identity-preserved sourcing, and how that decision balances procurement flexibility with landscape-level impact. We dive into why mill partners are the hidden backbone of their program — organizing farmers, shaping agronomy plans, and making regen real on the ground.
Stacy shares the nuts and bolts of what practices Oatly is paying farmers to adopt, how much support they receive, and what the company has learned about building trust and iteration into the process. And finally, we go inside the business model — how Oatly calculated program costs down to a cost-per-liter of oat milk and embedded those expenses directly into procurement budgets.
It’s a conversation about pragmatism meeting ambition, about turning lofty sustainability goals into operational reality, and about how brands can work across systems to create genuine impact.
Episode Highlights:
🌍 Working towards system-level change in their regional supply sheds
🌾 Incentivizing regen practices in their two main sourcing regions
💡 Choosing mass balance impact over a segregated sourcing approach
🤝 Partnering with mills as the backbone of farmer engagement
🧑🌾 Supporting farmers with flexible, farmer-choice practice menus
🌱 Incentivizing farmers with per-acre payments for practice adoption
📈 Mapping sustainability costs down to cost per liter of oat milk
🛠 Embedding regen incentive costs into the procurement budget
📺 Educating consumers through authentic farmer storytelling
🎯 Calling for recognition of the true cost of food to drive change
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