What Is Regenerative Farming?
Bringing our food system back to life
New terms for food and growing systems crop up on a fairly regular basis (pun intended). It can get to the point where we just shrug and carry on, doing the same things we have always done with little change in our consumer behaviors.
But it is getting harder and harder to ignore the planetary changes impacting all of us now.
just recently wrote about the crazy weather in Western New York. Texas is burning. The predictions for an early and super-charged hurricane season are rolling in. Our planet is in crisis and there will be few places to hide in 2024.Getting ourselves out of this mess requires change. And one of those changes involves how we grow our food.
Industrial agriculture over the past 75 years has prioritized yield and profits.
The result of this money-first approach has been farms specialized into monocultures, animal production separated from plant production, mass-tilling which has lead to soil erosion, ever-increasing use of synthetic chemicals to boost yields, suppress weeds and kill pests, and the contamination of all the air and most of the water on the planet.
Our food systems are in a global crisis that combines these detrimental growing practices with the chaos of climate change.
Our best strategy is to reverse course. And that means putting ecosystem health at the top of the priority list.
Regenerative agriculture is about creating and renewing agricultural ecosystems, so that the production of food returns to its rightful place as part of the natural nutrient cycles on the planet.
What is regenerative agriculture?
Regenerative agriculture, at its roots, is simply returning agriculture to its pre-industrialization principles that work with nature instead of against nature.
The foundational pillars on which regenerative agriculture is built are those of healthy and function ecosystems:
Healthy soil
+ Biodiversity
+ Healthy water
+ Healthy air
= Healthy food for us
Is regenerative agriculture the same as organic agriculture?
Maybe.
The challenging in asking whether regenerative agriculture is the same as organic agriculture comes down to a matter of definitions. When I was in my early 20’s and my Dad bought me a subscription to Rodale’s Organic Gardening magazine (all of which I still have!) – the ideals of organic agriculture are 100% in line with regenerative agriculture.
But now the lines that are drawn around many organic certifications are more tightly attuned to the “no chemicals used” framework, rather than the deeper organic principles relating to ecosystems and biodiversity.
I think this is why, in part, yet another new term like “regenerative agriculture” became necessary. Each time someone creates the framework of healing the land, economic forces try to bastardize it for profit and to make it easy for commercial enterprises to claim it as a brand identity while not improving what they do on the land.
So to my way of thinking – yes organic and regenerative are very closely aligned. But in the real world, the answer is no they are no longer the same thing because of the watered down principles that now pass for organic labels.
Don’t get me wrong! If you don’t want to be eating pesticides, herbicides and GMO foods, then the only label out there giving you that confidently is “certified organic” and that is good to know.
But regenerative farming is more than just avoiding the use of synthetics. And it is much closer to the old-school definitions and principles of organic farming.
Regenerative farming is striving to restore the production of food within natural systems. That means BUILDING soil instead of destroying it, and leaving it bare and susceptible to erosion and leaching.
It means producing animals and plants together again. Cows (or sheep, pigs, goats, poultry) eating the grass and vegetation, while leaving their urine and manure on the fields to feed the soil naturally. This is the same natural cycle (and nutrient recycling) that happens in the mountains and on the plains all around the world.
There isn’t a natural system in which only plants grow or only animals grow. That isolation is a broken paradigm of industrialization.
It’s the same broken paradigm that says growing garlic in China and shipping to stores around the world is “cheaper” than growing garlic in your own backyard. Huh? It is only cheaper when the shipping and environmental costs are excluded from the economic accounting.
We have been fed (and swallowed whole) the lie that industrial farming is “cheap and effective”. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Industrial farming has destroyed the soil, water and air and it is increasingly producing toxic foods that we eat daily.
Industrialized farming and the drive to create a uniform product for sale, has also generated a system of massive food waste – so massive that simply correcting food waste in the system could potentially end world hunger.
According to the UN World Food Program:
“If we stopped wasting food, we could cut global emissions by 8 percent, free up valuable land and resources, and save enough food to feed 2 billion hungry people .” (ref)
As of September 2023, the Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC 2023) states that there are over 258 million people across 58 countries in the world experiencing acute food insecurity (ref2).
Industrial farming is part of this food crisis – not the tool to solve it.
Industrial farming drives our picture-perfect ideology that throws out entire harvests of melons because they don’t meet a pre-set size standard for the store shelf (and bless the local farmers who defied the system and gave the food away in the instance shown in the photo!)
But insane examples of waste driven by profits and ideology happen in our food system all the time. And it is another layer added onto the reasons why this system is failing us all and purposefully driving up food costs.
Regenerative agriculture is a modern response to the crisis in food production.
It moves farmers out of industrialized frameworks and back into food production tied to natural cycles. It begins on the foundational principle that healthy foods can only come from healthy soils. It reduces pests and weeds through biodiversity principles that prevent massive outbreaks. It nourishes the soil using plant and animal relationships. It protects the air and water from the over-use of synthetic fertilizers and sprays.
And in theory at least, it will help consumers to remember that not every apple comes off the tree without a spot on it. Or that ugly food is great for the soup pot instead of the garbage can.
Regenerative agriculture is how we start addressing climate change
Regenerative farms have soils that capture carbon as well as forests can. A paper from January 2024 in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems has shown that all 7 regenerative farm practices increased soil carbon sequestration, and that no single practice came out ahead of the rest.
What are the 7 regenerative farming practices?
1. Agroforestry
2. Cover cropping
3. Legume cover cropping
4. Animal integration
5. Non-chemical fertilizer
6. Non-chemical pest management
7. No tillage
How do you know if a product is from a regenerative farm?
You might have to ask the farmer. Creating healthy food needs to happen close to where you live. Talk to and support local food growers.
For urbanites, that may mean going to the Farmer’s Market instead of the big-chain grocery store. It may mean finding a community garden or roof-top grower. It may mean using a community-supported agriculture box program.
Whatever the method of finding the food, you can be sure that the growers behind the regenerative farm movement are proud to explain how their food is helping to retore the planet.
The simple fact is no food for us on the planet without healthy soil. And soils cannot be healthy when they are constantly being torn up and doused in toxic chemicals.
The paradigm shift in growing food is happening because the industrialized system is leading us deeper and deeper into a global food crisis.
You can protect yourself by learning more about growing healthy food and creating strong mind-body-food connections for wellness and long life.
For an action list on how to take control of your food supply, check out this post:
