Banpro | BCIE building regenerative transition capacity across an agricultural lending portfolio.
A multi-crop training, soil-diagnostic, and transition-roadmap engagement for Banpro, Nicaragua’s largest commercial bank, designed to strengthen producer capacity, establish soil baselines, and show how agricultural finance could support regenerative transition.
Working under the BCIE-funded MIPYMES Verdes initiative, Regenerates delivered participatory regenerative agriculture training and soil diagnostics across five strategic crops in Banpro’s agricultural portfolio: sugarcane, coffee, rice, peanut, and cassava. Each representative farm received a soil baseline and phased transition roadmap, while the bank received strategic recommendations for how regenerative transition could be supported through credit design, incentives, demonstration sites, and blended finance.
One bank, five crops, five very different realities.
Banpro, Nicaragua’s largest commercial bank, finances agricultural producers across the country. Through the MIPYMES Verdes initiative, funded by BCIE with support from KfW and the European Union, the bank set out to strengthen regenerative agriculture capacity among producers and establish soil baselines across five strategic crops in its portfolio.
The challenge was breadth. Sugarcane, coffee, rice, peanut, and cassava represent very different production systems, landscapes, scales, and farmer realities. The engagement needed to be practical enough for producers, specific enough for each crop, and coherent enough for a bank trying to understand regenerative transition across a wider agricultural portfolio.
Behind the farm-level work sat a larger question: what would it take for a financial institution to support regenerative transition not only through training, but through the way it assesses risk, structures credit, rewards progress, and invests in producer capacity?
From training to soil baselines and transition roadmaps.
Regenerates designed and delivered a multi-crop engagement that combined participatory training, farm assessment, soil diagnostics, and strategic recommendations for how a bank could support regenerative transition across its agricultural portfolio.
Work planning and methodology design
Developed a detailed work plan and participatory training methodology adaptable across crops, farm scales, and audience profiles, with crop-specific content and pre- and post-workshop evaluation.
Five participatory workshops
Delivered five one-day workshops, one per crop, combining regenerative agriculture concepts, case examples, and hands-on demonstrations such as compost tea preparation, mycorrhizal inoculation, and practical soil assessment.
Farm assessment and field visits
Visited one representative farm per crop using a structured protocol covering production system, soil and landscape, water, biodiversity, economics, and strategic transition potential.
Soil diagnostics
Collected composite soil samples from each representative farm and interpreted certified laboratory results against crop-specific reference ranges.
Transition roadmaps
Developed a phased regenerative transition roadmap for each farm, translating soil diagnostics and field assessment into priority interventions and short-, medium-, and long-term steps.
Regenerative finance recommendations
Set out strategic recommendations for how Banpro could support regenerative transition through credit redesign, performance incentives, green credit lines, demonstration sites, and blended finance.
Five crops, five farms, and the diagnostics behind the roadmaps.
Selected material from the workshops and practical demonstrations, the farm field visits across the five production systems, the soil sampling and laboratory diagnostics, and the per-crop transition roadmaps.
Training, soil baselines, roadmaps, and a path for regenerative finance.
Outputs that gave producers practical capacity, gave representative farms data-grounded transition paths, and gave Banpro a clearer view of how agricultural finance could support regenerative transition.
Training program and methodology
A participatory five-workshop program with crop-specific content, practical demonstrations, and pre- and post-evaluation surveys.
Workshop results report
A results-and-lessons report across all five workshops, covering participation, learning outcomes, interest, confidence, and practical feedback.
Soil diagnostics report
Certified laboratory analysis for each representative farm, interpreted against crop-specific reference ranges and translated into regenerative management recommendations.
Per-farm transition roadmaps
Five crop-specific transition roadmaps, each with a current-system assessment, limitations-and-opportunities matrix, priority interventions, and phased timeline.
Cross-crop insights
A synthesis of patterns across the five crops, identifying shared constraints, crop-specific differences, and opportunities for broader portfolio learning.
Regenerative finance recommendations
Strategic recommendations for supporting transition through credit redesign, performance incentives, green credit lines, demonstration sites, and blended finance.
From producer training to a clearer regenerative finance pathway.
Practical capacity across five production systems.
The workshops reached producers and Banpro staff across crops as different as cassava, coffee, rice, peanut, and sugarcane, with hands-on demonstrations helping translate regenerative principles into practical skills.
Soil baselines that made transition measurable.
Certified diagnostics turned broad regenerative goals into concrete starting points for each representative farm.
A phased path for each farm.
Each farm received a roadmap sequencing priority interventions across short, medium, and long term.
A portfolio-level view for the bank.
The engagement helped Banpro see regenerative transition not only as a farm-practice question, but as something that could inform credit, incentives, technical assistance, and risk assessment.
A reusable methodology beyond coffee.
The work showed how regenerative assessment and transition planning could be adapted across very different crops and producer profiles.
Banks shape what gets grown, and how. That makes them a leverage point.
Most regenerative agriculture work happens one farm, one crop, or one supply chain at a time. A bank sits upstream of many of those decisions: the terms on which it lends influence what producers can afford to do, what risks they can take, and whether soil-building practices are treated as costs or investments.
Producer training and soil diagnostics are necessary groundwork. The larger opportunity is helping financial institutions connect regenerative transition to credit design, risk assessment, technical assistance, and incentives, so that farmers are supported in building soil and resilience rather than locked into extractive production cycles. This engagement delivered the groundwork and mapped the larger path. The path itself is where the deepest leverage lies.
This engagement began with training and soil diagnostics, but its deeper relevance sits at the intersection of agriculture and finance.
By working across five crops and producer profiles, the project showed how a bank can start to see regenerative transition as a portfolio question: where producers need capacity, where soil baselines are missing, where transition pathways differ by crop, and where financial products could begin to reward measurable progress.
Start with a portfolio, a crop, or a region you need to move.
Start with one crop, one producer network, or one question about how finance and regenerative transition fit together. We help build capacity, read the soil, and map the path from farm-level change to the institutions that shape it.
Start a conversation: hello@regenerates.co