From Soil Health to Business Resilience: Key Takeaways from the World Living Soils Forum 2026

The World Living Soils Forum 2026, held in Arles on 3–4 June, brought together business leaders, financial institutions, policymakers, scientists and agricultural stakeholders to explore one of the defining challenges of our time: how to restore soil health while ensuring economic resilience.

With more than 500 participants and international participation from São Paulo, Shanghai and New York, the forum highlighted the growing recognition that soil health is not only an environmental issue but also a strategic business and financial concern.

Natixis CIB, Groupe BPCE and Mirova were proud to be key sponsors of this event, and to share perspectives on the role of finance in supporting agricultural transitions.

One message resonated throughout the discussions: restoring soil health is not only an environmental imperative, it is increasingly an economic and financial one.

Speaking at the forum, Orith Azoulay highlighted the growing link between soil health, food security, water resilience and long-term business value. As climate change and biodiversity loss continue to reshape agricultural systems, organisations across the value chain are being challenged to rethink how they assess risk, build resilience and finance transition.

This conviction underpinned a broader reflection on the future of agricultural value chains. The question is no longer whether environmental degradation affects economic performance, but how businesses can remain resilient if natural capital continues to deteriorate.

According to Groupe BPCE’s latest Agriculture-Viticulture survey, conducted among more than 1,000 farm managers and winegrowers, 66% of respondents expect climate change to affect their production, while 33% plan to invest in equipment supporting agroecological practices.

These findings reflect a wider shift already underway across the agricultural sector. Regenerative practices are increasingly recognised not only for their environmental benefits, but also for their contribution to resource efficiency, cost management and long-term productivity. In sectors such as viticulture, practices including organic fertilisation, reduced fuel consumption and circular approaches to resource use are becoming important levers of resilience.

Nature loss can no longer be viewed as a standalone environmental issue. It is becoming a business continuity challenge, a supply-chain concern and, increasingly, a financial risk.

As environmental pressures intensify, financial institutions must adapt the way they evaluate risk and allocate capital.

During her panel, Orith highlighted the growing importance of nature-related risk assessment tools, including portfolio-level stress testing, geospatial analysis and climate risk scorecards. These approaches help provide a more comprehensive understanding of exposure to climate hazards, water stress, productivity losses and market volatility.

The objective is not to measure only exposure, but to understand how mitigation measures, investments and insurance solutions can reduce vulnerabilities and strengthen resilience over time.

A central theme of the discussion was the need to support farmers and agricultural businesses through the transition. The scale of the challenge means that no single stakeholder can act alone.

Banks, insurers, corporates, public institutions and investors all have a role to play in mobilising capital and creating the conditions for long-term change. Examples shared during the forum illustrated how blended finance, targeted lending solutions and public-private partnerships can help accelerate investments in climate action, efficient water use, biodiversity protection and soil restoration.

Beyond traditional banking solutions, long-term investment vehicles also have an important role to play. By aligning financing horizons with agricultural and biological cycles, they can support regenerative agriculture, sustainable land-use projects and emerging ecosystem-service models.

One of the strongest messages from the discussion was the need to move beyond isolated initiatives and adopt a more ecosystemic approach. Agricultural transition requires collaboration across entire ecosystems, bringing together producers, corporates, financial institutions, policymakers and investors around shared objectives.

Groupe BPCE, through all of its businesses, from Investment banking to retail networks and asset management, is able to propose various products adapted to their clients and contexts (short to long term, risk tolerance, scale and geographies, blended finance mechanism, with EIB for example) and is working in innovative schemes to develop that necessary ecosystemic approach with a strong territorial anchorage.

For Natixis CIB, the challenge is therefore not only to finance individual projects, but also to help develop scalable models capable of supporting landscape-level transformation and strengthening the resilience of agricultural value chains.

As the transition accelerates, soil health is increasingly emerging as a strategic indicator of long-term economic resilience. Understanding its value – and financing its restoration – will be essential to securing both environmental outcomes and sustainable growth in the decades ahead.