Integrating Climate Resilience and Digital Traceability in Regenerative Agri-Food Systems: A Scenario-Based Framework for Verifiable Sustainability Claims

Regenerative agricultural systems are increasingly promoted as a pathway to climate resilience, yet their sustainability claims often lack verifiable, systemic evidence, exposing them to greenwashing risks in transnational agri-food supply chains. This study addresses two interconnected gaps: the limited integration between climate-resilience assessment frameworks and digital-verification technologies, and the disconnect between consumer trust in sustainability claims and the traceability infrastructure supporting them. To address these gaps, this paper develops an integrated systemic framework combining scenario-based analysis, a SWOT evaluation, and a documented case study drawn from an emerging EU agri-food market. Three prospective scenarios—optimistic, business-as-usual, and pessimistic—are constructed based on existing climate-resilience and policy literature to project plausible trajectories for regenerative agricultural systems under varying environmental and technological adoption conditions. The SWOT analysis synthesizes internal and external factors influencing the adoption of blockchain-, IoT-, and AI-enabled traceability mechanisms within these systems. The case study grounds the framework in empirical evidence from a previously documented regenerative agri-food initiative, illustrating how climate-resilience narratives, digital-verification tools, and consumer-trust cues interact in practice. Results indicate that regenerative claims are frequently disconnected from verifiable data streams, that digital traceability adoption faces structural and cost-related barriers, and that consumer trust relies more heavily on emotional and localism-based cues than on formal certification. Material and infrastructural limitations further restrict the practical translation of regenerative claims into measurable environmental outcomes. The proposed tri-methodological framework offers a replicable, low-resource approach for policymakers, certifying bodies, and agri-food producers to align climate-resilience strategies with digitally verifiable sustainability claims, thereby reducing greenwashing risk and strengthening consumer trust. The framework is presented as a proposed diagnostic tool at this stage, pending the empirical validation steps required before broader application.