Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) is a farm and food certification that builds on top of USDA organic standards, adding strict requirements in three areas: soil health, animal welfare, and fair treatment of workers. It uses USDA Certified Organic as its baseline, meaning every ROC product is already organic, but then goes further with practices designed to actively improve the land, protect animals, and ensure farmers and laborers earn a living wage.
The certification is managed by the Regenerative Organic Alliance and comes in three tiers: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Each level raises the bar on how much a farm must do across all three pillars.
How ROC Differs From USDA Organic
USDA organic certification prohibits synthetic pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and GMOs. It sets rules about what you can’t put on your crops or feed your animals. ROC keeps all of those rules in place but adds requirements for what you actively must do to build healthier soil, treat animals better, and pay workers fairly. Standard organic certification, for example, has no requirements around cover cropping percentages, no mandate for a living wage, and relatively limited animal welfare standards compared to what ROC demands.
Think of it this way: organic tells a farm what to avoid, while ROC also tells a farm what to build. A farm cannot apply for ROC without first holding USDA organic certification (or an internationally recognized equivalent).
The Three Pillars
Soil Health and Land Management
This pillar focuses on keeping soil covered, rotating crops, and minimizing physical disruption to the ground. At the Bronze level, farms must maintain year-round vegetative cover on 25 to 50% of cultivated land and rotate a minimum of three crops through the same area. Silver pushes that to 50 to 75% cover and four crop rotations. Gold requires 75 to 100% vegetative cover, at least seven crops in each rotation (including a nitrogen-fixing cover crop like legumes), and a no-till system where the soil is only disturbed at planting time.
All certified farms must conduct lab-based soil health tests at their initial application and every three years after that. They also perform in-field soil tests at every audit. This ongoing monitoring ensures that the farming practices are actually improving soil conditions over time, not just checking boxes on paper.
Animal Welfare
ROC’s animal welfare standards are among the most detailed of any food certification. The framework bans a long list of physical modifications that are common in conventional agriculture: beak trimming, dehorning, tail docking of cattle, forced molting, hot and cold branding, mulesing, ear notching, and tooth clipping, among others.
Feed requirements scale with the certification level. For animals like pigs and chickens, Bronze requires 100% organic feed. Silver requires that more than half the feed comes from regenerative organic sources, and Gold requires 100% regenerative organic feed. For cattle and other ruminants, Bronze requires more than 50% grass-fed diets, Silver pushes that above 75%, and Gold mandates 100% grass-fed through finishing. Slaughter must use methods that cause immediate insensitivity.
Farmer and Worker Fairness
This pillar is what separates ROC from nearly every other agricultural certification. All operations must demonstrate a commitment to paying a living wage when they enter the program. By their third year of certification, they must show that every worker’s wages meet or exceed a living wage threshold. This applies across the entire operation, covering farmworkers, processing staff, and other laborers involved in production.
Bronze, Silver, and Gold Levels
The three tiers aren’t separate certifications. They represent a progression, and many farms enter at Bronze with the intention of working toward Gold over time. The requirements across all three pillars tighten at each level:
- Bronze: Meets all baseline ROC requirements. Three-crop rotation, 25 to 50% vegetative cover, 100% organic animal feed, living wage commitment.
- Silver: Four-crop rotation, 50 to 75% vegetative cover, more than half of animal feed from regenerative organic sources, continued progress on wages.
- Gold: Seven-crop rotation with nitrogen-fixing cover crops, 75 to 100% vegetative cover, no-till planting, 100% regenerative organic feed (or 100% grass-fed for ruminants), full living wage compliance.
Gold-level certification represents one of the highest standards available in commercial agriculture. The no-till requirement alone is a significant commitment, since most farms rely on some degree of plowing or tilling as part of their routine.
How Farms Get Certified
The process has six steps and typically involves an annual audit cycle. First, a farm submits an online application with a fee. The Regenerative Organic Alliance then sends a customized Regenerative Organic System Plan tailored to the farm’s product types, location, existing certifications, and the ROC level they’re pursuing.
Next, the farm is paired with an approved organic certifying body, which reviews the plan, provides cost estimates, and assigns a point of contact. An auditor then visits the farm to observe operations, interview relevant people, and review records against the system plan. In some cases, farms can bundle this audit with their existing organic audit, which saves time and cost. After a final review, the certifying body makes the certification decision and the Alliance issues the certificate.
Audits are annual. Farms must maintain their practices and demonstrate continued improvement to keep their certification, and soil testing on a regular cycle ensures that land management practices are producing measurable results rather than just following a checklist.
What It Means on a Product Label
When you see the ROC seal on a product, it tells you that every ingredient sourced from a certified operation met standards across all three pillars. The seal includes the certification level (Bronze, Silver, or Gold), so you can gauge how far along the supply chain is in meeting the program’s highest benchmarks. Products carrying the label span a range of categories, including grains, produce, dairy, meat, fiber, and personal care ingredients like coconut oil or shea butter.
Because ROC requires organic certification as a prerequisite, an ROC product is always also organic. But the reverse isn’t true. Organic products have not necessarily met any of the additional soil health, animal welfare, or worker fairness standards that ROC requires.