What is Regenerative
Agriculture?
While Regenerative Agriculture does not currently have a single, agreed-upon approach, it encompasses farming and grazing techniques that replenish degraded soils and enhance soil organic matter. While the practices largely depend on the land that is being worked with, they typically include use of cover crops, no synthetic chemicals, planned livestock grazing, no-till planting, crop diversity and maintaining living roots to restore soil biodiversity.
Regenerative Agriculture stems from indigenous wisdom that humans and nature are not separate forces, but rather interdependent parts of a whole that need one another to thrive. While it does not currently have a single, agreed-upon approach, Regenerative Agriculture encompasses farming and grazing techniques that replenish degraded soils and enhance soil organic matter. While the practices largely depend on the land that is being worked with, they typically include use of cover crops, no synthetic chemicals, planned livestock grazing, no-till planting, crop diversity and maintaining living roots to restore soil biodiversity.
Soil plays a critical role in climate change. When healthy, our soil has the capacity to hold 2,500 gigatons of carbon dioxide - more than three times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and four times the amount stored in living vegetation. However, our current conventional farming practices are degrading our soil systems, resulting in toxic levels of carbon being released back into the atmosphere and oceans - leading to global warming and ocean acidification (algae blooms, destruction of coral reefs, etc.).
Regenerative Agriculture has the ability to reverse these phenomena through increasing soil organic matter, which sequesters carbon and stores it back into our soil - enhancing the powerful, biodiverse ecosystem underground.
Why it Matters:
For our Earth
Soil plays a critical role in climate change. When healthy, our soil has the capacity to hold 2,500 gigatons of carbon dioxide - more than three times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and four times the amount stored in living vegetation. However, our current conventional farming practices are degrading our soil systems, resulting in toxic levels of carbon being released back into the atmosphere and oceans - leading to global warming and ocean acidification (algae blooms, destruction of coral reefs, etc.).
Regenerative Agriculture has the ability to reverse these phenomena through increasing soil organic matter, which sequesters carbon and stores it back into our soil - enhancing the powerful, biodiverse ecosystem underground.
Why it Matters:
For our Health
Unlike the case with increased carbon levels in our atmosphere and oceans, more carbon in our soil is actually beneficial to the ecosystem underground and, in turn, beneficial to the health of plants, animals and humans alike.
Reported decline of nutrient-dense crops is typically attributed to breeders focused on increasing yields through destructive conventional farming practices like intensive tilling and synthetic pesticide application.
By building soil organic matter, Regenerative Agriculture practices feed the microorganisms in our soil that are responsible for releasing nutrients that plants need to flourish. When plants are able to access the nutrients necessary to grow and thrive, it results in crops with higher levels of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients, or healing plant compounds beneficial to human health and disease prevention. This increase in nutrient uptake also leads to improved flavor and taste.
Essentially, soil health = plant health = animal health = human health = planetary health. Pretty miraculous, isn’t it?