Organic and natural sourcing led to a push for healthier soil. 

General Mills became a food giant by pioneering ideas to get people in and out of the kitchen more quickly. Now, it has moved to the front lines of an agricultural movement it didn’t start.

A series of investments in recent months for its growing portfolio of natural and organic products has been aimed at fortifying the land where its food is grown.

And those moves, which roped General Mills into a growing movement called regenerative agriculture, show the influence a small startup can have on its larger parent company. General Mills awakened to the movement when it purchased Epic Provisions, a meat-snack producer, in 2016.

“This area of regenerative agriculture has really gotten a lot of attention and we’ve been on our own journey over the last three years,” said Jerry Lynch, the company’s chief sustainability officer. “We’ve done a lot of work both understanding it and also in trying to help measure it.”