Regenerative Agriculture for Local Food and Farms

What is Regenerative Agriculture?

One of the greatest challenges to sustainable agriculture is the depletion of the natural resource base on which food production depends. Regenerative agriculture is generally defined as a set of practices that “improves soil health, primarily through the practices that increase soil organic matter. This not only aids in increasing soil biota diversity and health but [also] 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 and improving soil structure to reverse civilization-threatening human-caused soil loss.”[1]. 

The benefits of regenerative agriculture include:

  • Improved land stewardship and resource conservation by reducing synthetic inputs to maintain soil fertility, regenerating soil, sequestering carbon and reducing greenhouse gas emissions through composting of organic wastes, and husbanding water resources through direct delivery to plant roots.
  • Better quality of life by avoiding costs of synthetic fertilizer and pesticides, producing high-value crops, and increasing farm income.
  • Greater health & safety protections by reducing exposure to toxic substances, avoiding contamination of water sources by chemicals and limiting crop contamination by external sources.
  • Diversification of products through cultivation of high-value, exotic, and culturally preferred foods, hoop houses that allow multiple crops per year at higher prices during off-seasons, and extended growing seasons, employment and more stable incomes throughout the year.
  • Major regional implications and impacts by increasing the supply of nutritious organic food and competing better in markets to increase farm sales and incomes.

The primary recommended practices of regenerative agriculture are to:

  1. Minimize soil disruption with no-till or minimum tillage to preserve soil structure and conserve soil nutrients and the soil microbiome;
  2. Use cover crops, crop rotations and composting to increase soil fertility and sustain soil microbiomes and soil organic matter;
  3. Increase biological diversity through intercrop and border plantings for pollinators and beneficial insects and multispecies cover crops;
  4. Conserve resources and recycle wastes and residues as much as is feasible;
  5. Minimize inputs of synthetic materials, such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and maximize inputs of biologically-based, organic materials, such as compost and natural pest controls;
  6. Know the ecology of the farm and land.[2]

Agriculture and the circular economy

Ideally, regenerative agriculture takes place in a closed loop. Today’s production cycles are  mostly linear, relying on new or virgin inputs, and treating wastes and residues as materials to be discarded.  By contrast, a circular economy—or “closed loop”—is a system of materials recycling that treats the “waste outputs” of a production system as “resource inputs” into the very same system.  Application of principles and practices of a circular economy in agriculture seeks to maximize reuse of “waste” materials, such as crop residues and organic wastes and to minimize the loss of soil nutrients through compost [3].

Of course, there is no such thing as a fully closed loop circular economy in agriculture, if only because the food that is grown is moved off the farm to customers who use or waste it.  Moreover, farms are embedded in much larger systems of production, transportation and consumption, all of which rely on materials that may contaminate the environment within which farming takes place.  To give just one example, moving food from farm to market relies on fossil fuel powered vehicles from which come greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to the climate change that can alter the conditions under which farming takes place. 

A key question in closing the loop in agriculture is how farms can recapture the material losses that take place as a result of crops going to markets and consumers?  In theory, at least, various sources of “organic wastes” from consumers and industry can be collected, composted and returned to the farm as nutrient-rich materials that can be worked back into the soil.  California law requires that both household and industrial organic wastes be collected separately from trash and turned into compost, in order to avoid methane coming out of landfills.   A great deal of compost is being produced in California by certified facilities but much of it is contaminated and avoided by farmers who are concerned about the quality and safety of their crops.

You can find additional information and resources on regenerative farming at Readings and Resources on Sustainable and Regenerative Agriculture.

References

[1] “What is Regenerative Agriculture?” February 16, 2017, Regenerative Agriculture Initiative, California State University, Chico. https://www.csuchico.edu/regenerativeagriculture/_assets/documents/ra101-reg-ag-definition.pdf

[2] Courtney Leeper Girgis, “6-5-4-3: The Fundamental Principles of Regenerative Agriculture and Soil Health,” Noble Research Institute, https://www.noble.org/regenerative-agriculture/6-5-4-3-the-fundamental-principles-of-regenerative-agriculture-and-soil-health/

[3] Breure, A.M. J.P.A. Lijzen, L. Maring, 2018. “Soil and land management in a circular economy,” Science of The Total Environment 624: 1125-1130, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.12.137; Nogueira A, Ashton W, Teixeira C, Lyon E, Pereira J. Infrastructuring the Circular Economy. Energies. 2020; 13(7):1805. https://doi.org/10.3390/en13071805