Regenerative agriculture is a type of agriculture that includes farming and grazing practices focused on regenerating topsoil, allowing farmers to maintain and improve crop yields, improving retention and plant uptake of water, increasing farm profits, and accelerating biosequestration.
It all starts with the soil
Regenerative agriculture's main focus is on strengthening the health of farm soil. The key is that regenerative agriculture doesn't harm the soil or land like conventional farming does. Instead, it improves the land using techniques like composting, recycling waste, limiting tilling, and avoiding chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides — among many other practices.
There are many great videos and speakers online that tout the benefits of regenerative agriculture — TEDx talks from Gabe Brown and Thomas Rippel are great starting points if you want to go deeper.
1. Regenerative agriculture rebuilds soil health
Regenerative agriculture's main focus is on improving soil quality. If you have healthy, bio-diverse soil, you get healthy crops. If your crops are healthy and nutrient-dense, they become healthier food products for humans — or for the animals we feed them to. Animals eating high-quality nutrient-dense food produce nutrient-dense animal foods for humans.
“Regenerative agriculture describes farming and organic practices that, among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity.”
2. Increasing crop yields
Switching from conventional farming practices to regenerative ones may cause worry for farmers that crop yields would diminish. This isn't true.
“Regenerative practices reduce the risk of yield loss due to stressors, and can bring about a material increase in crop yields and quality.”
3. Crop resilience
The more bio-diverse soil can become, the more that soil can naturally suppress disease for crop species.
“Crops under organic systems are likely to be more resilient to extreme weather. In the long-running Farming System Trial, in drought years, yields were consistently higher in the organic system. For instance, organic corn yields were 28–34% higher than conventional.”
4. More profit for farmers
Moving to regenerative agriculture can actually increase a farm's profitability. Larger product yields mean more product to market. But the main saver for regenerative farmers is the cost of chemical inputs like fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.
“Regenerative agricultural practices can reduce the need for expensive chemical inputs.”
5. Regenerative farms are saving the planet
When farms sequester more carbon than they emit, they become part of the climate solution rather than part of the problem.
“We could sequester more than 100% of current annual CO2 emissions with a switch to widely available and inexpensive organic management practices, which we term 'regenerative organic agriculture.'”
Regenerative agriculture is slowly taking over the farming industry, for the better. As farmers, we should be implementing regenerative agriculture practices to benefit the land, the products produced, and to increase yield and profits. As consumers, we should vote with our forks and our dollars by purchasing food from regenerative sources. Better food quality, better for the planet. It's a win-win.
