What is Regenerative Agriculture?

"There can be no life without soil and no soil without life; they have evolved together"

--Charles E. Kellogg, USDA Yearbook of Agriculture, 1938

Regenerative agriculture is a method of farming that “improves the resources it uses, rather than destroying or depleting them”-- According to the Rodale institute

Regenerative Agriculture is a holistic land management practice that leverages the power of photosynthesis in plants to close the carbon cycle, and build soil health, crop resilience and nutrient density. Regenerative agriculture improves soil health, primarily through the practices that increase soil organic matter. This not only aids in increasing soil biota diversity and health, but increases biodiversity both above and below the soil surface, while increasing both water holding capacity and sequestering carbon at greater depths, thus drawing down climate-damaging levels of atmospheric CO2.

Degenerative farming practices destroy the soil while regenerative practices create a healthier soil structure. Regenerative Agriculture is the paradigm to build for all life on earth including human.

"If you take care of your soil, it will take care of you"

Why Regenerative Agriculture?

For a Healthier Future "Restoring nutrient density to food"

Soil dysfunction impacts on human and animal health. Over the last 70 years, the level of every nutrient in almost every kind of food has fallen between 10 and 100 percent. This is an incredibly sobering fact. An individual today would need to consume twice as much meat, three times as much fruit, and four to five times as many vegetables to obtain the same amount of minerals and trace elements available in those same foods in 1940.

Dr. David Thomas has provided a comprehensive analysis of historical changes in food composition from tables published by the Australian Medical Research Council, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Fisheries and Foods, and the Food Standards Agency. By comparing data available in 1940 with that in 1991, Thomas demonstrated a substantial loss in mineral and trace element content in every group of food he investigated.

Publication Title: The Power of The Plate: the case for regenerative organic agriculture in improving human health. Issued by: RODALE Institute, Year of publication: 2020

Publication Title: Why would a sane society support ecologically destructive food production when it isn't necessary? Issued by: New Foundations Farms, Year of publication: June 2020

Fight Climate Crisis "The soil carbon sink"

Soil can function as a carbon ‘source’ - adding carbon to the atmosphere - or a carbon ‘sink’ - removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The dynamics of the source-sink equation are largely determined by land management.

Over millennia a highly effective carbon cycle has evolved, in which the capture, storage, transfer, release and recapture of biochemical energy in the form of carbon compounds repeats over and over. The health of the soil - and the vitality of plants, animals and people - depends on the effective functioning of this cycle.

Technological developments since the Industrial Revolution have produced machinery capable of extracting vast quantities of fossil fuels from beneath the Earth’s surface - as well as machinery capable of laying bare large tracts of grasslands and forests. Taken together, these factors have resulted in the release of increasing quantities of CO2 to the atmosphere while simultaneously destroying the largest natural sink over which we have control. The decline in natural sink capacity has amplified the effects of anthropogenic emissions.

Over the last 150 years, many of the world’s prime agricultural soils have lost between 30% and 75% of their carbon, adding billions of tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere. Losses of soil carbon significantly reduce the productive potential of the land and the profitability of farming. Soil degradation has intensified in recent decades, with around 30% of the world’s cropland abandoned in the last 40 years due to soil decline. With the global population predicted to peak close to 10 billion by 2050, the need for soil restoration has never been more pressing.

Publication Title: Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change.: A Down-to-Earth Solution to Global Warming, Issued by: RODALE Institute, Year of publication: 2020

Five Principles for Soil Restoration

Publication Title: Five Principles for Soil Restoration: Light Farming: Restoring carbon, organic nitrogen and biodiversity to agricultural soils, Issued by Christine Jones, PhD

1. Green is good - and yearlong green is even better

Every year, photosynthesis draws down hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere. Green plants are the most powerful tool we have at our disposal for the restoration of soil function and reduction in atmospheric levels of CO2. While every green plant is a solar-powered carbon pump, it is the photosynthetic capacity and photosynthetic rate of living plants that drive the biosequestration of stable soil carbon.

2. Microbes matter!!

One of the most important groups of plant-dependent soil-building microbes are mycorrhizal fungi. These extraordinary ecosystem engineers access water, protect their hosts from pests and diseases - and transport nutrients such as organic nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron and trace elements including copper, cobalt, zinc, molybdenum, manganese and boron - in exchange for liquid carbon. Many of these elements are essential for resistance to pests and diseases and resilience to climatic extremes such as drought, waterlogging and frost.

3. Diversity is not dispensable!!!

Every plant exudes its own unique blend of sugars, enzymes, phenols, amino acids, nucleic acids, auxins, gibberellins and other biological compounds, many of which act as signals to soil microbes. The greater the diversity of plants, the greater the diversity of microbes and the more robust the soil ecosystem.

The belief that monocultures and intensively managed systems are more profitable than diverse biologically-based systems does not hold up in practice. Monocultures need to be supported by high and often increasing levels of fertilizer, fungicide, insecticide and other chemicals that inhibit soil biological activity. The result is even greater expenditure on agrochemicals in an attempt to control the pest, weed, disease and fertility ‘problems’ that ensue.
It doesn’t need to be complicated. Something as simple as including one or two companions with a cash crop can make a world of difference.

4. Limit chemical use

The mineral cycle improves significantly when soils are alive. It has been shown, for example, that mycorrhizal fungi can supply up to 90% of plants N and P requirements. In addition to including companions and multi-species covers in crop rotations, maintaining a living soil often requires that rates of high-analysis synthetic fertiliser and other chemicals be reduced, to enable microbes to do what microbes do best.

Profit is the difference between expenditure and income. In years to come we will perhaps wonder why it took so long to realize the futility of attempting to grow crops in dysfunctional soils, relying solely on increasingly expensive synthetic inputs. No amount of NPK fertilizer can compensate for compacted, lifeless soil with low wettability and low water-holding capacity. Indeed, adding more chemical fertilizer often makes things worse. This is particularly so for inorganic nitrogen (N) and inorganic phosphorus (P). An often overlooked consequence of the application of high rates of N and P is that plants no longer need to channel liquid carbon to soil microbial communities in order to obtain these essential elements. Reduced carbon flow has a negative impact on soil aggregation - as well as limiting the energy available to the microbes involved in the acquisition of important minerals and trace elements. Lack of trace elements increases the susceptibility of plants and animals to pests and diseases.

5. Animal integration

A multitude of animal species were in contact with soils prior to agricultural intensification. There is no doubt that soil function is improved by their presence. The re-integration of animals into cropland can be extremely beneficial - for both the soils and the animals. The way livestock are managed has a significant impact on soil function. In actively growing perennial pastures, it is vitally important that less than 50% of the available green leaf be grazed at any one time. Retaining adequate leaf area reduces the impact of grazing on photosynthetic capacity and enables the rapid restoration of biomass to pre-grazed levels. Significantly more forage will be produced during the growing season - and more carbon sequestered in soil - if pastures are grazed ‘tall’ rather than ‘short’. In addition to maintaining photosynthetic capacity though management of leaf area, the height of pasture has a significant effect on moisture retention, nutrient cycling and water quality.

Documentaries

Why Regenerative Organic? Part 1: Big Agriculture is Broken

Episode 1 of a series of videos produced by Patagonia

Why Regenerative Organic? Part 2: Soil is the Solution

Episode 2 of a series of videos produced by Patagonia

Kiss the Ground : Trailer