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What Is Regenerative Agriculture?
The Business of Dairy
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What Is Regenerative Agriculture?
BY ALAN MARTINEZ
Over the last decade, regenerative agriculture has been gaining popularity in farming and sustainability circles. Some of the world’s largest consumer packaged goods companies have announced their commitment to regenerative agriculture as a key pillar of their sustainability goals. So, just what is regenerative agriculture? Depending on who you ask, you’re likely to get a different answer.
Through the support of the Great Lakes Protection Fund, our team at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability has been working to better understand regenerative agriculture and its potential to support sustainability goals. This multi-year project focuses on the financial mechanisms that allow for the adoption of regenerative practices that support and maintain the water integrity of the Great Lakes. We have talked to over 300 farmers, funders, producers and advocates, and it quickly became evident that the term is applied differently across regions and agriculture sector.
In our research, we discovered that regenerative agriculture encompasses on-farm practices and environmental outcomes that may look familiar to farmers and producers in the Northeast. General Mills’ definition of regenerative agriculture lays important groundwork for understanding the breadth of regenerative agriculture: It’s a holistic, principles-based approach to farming and ranching that delivers positive environmental, social and economic outcomes. Let’s take a closer look at the practices and benefits that are often associated with regenerative agriculture:
REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE PRACTICES
• No-till farming: Tilling before planting can damage nutrient-rich topsoil, break down fungal networks and harm beneficial microorganisms essential to a thriving
soil biome. Reducing or eliminating tilling improves the health of the soil, the resiliency of crops against pests and cuts down on erosion. • Integrating Livestock: Grazing animals help manage weeds and pruning, add fertilizer to the soil and speed up nutrient cycling by crushing plant material. • Cover Crops: Cover crops are plants grown during the off-season. They keep the soil covered, reduce runoff and keep a living root in the soil year-round. • Crop Rotation: Planting a monocrop in the same field year-after-year can deplete the soil of necessary nutrients.
Rotating fields with the proper set of crops will ensure that soil is healthier and that the plants get the nutrients they need. • Reducing Chemical Inputs and Maximizing Organic
Inputs: Simply put, this means using compost, biochar and other organic matter to feed the soil instead of using chemical fertilizers.
REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE BENEFITS
• Soil Health: The most commonly agreed-upon outcome of regenerative agriculture practices is improved soil health. Healthy soil is teeming with microbes, beneficial bacteria and fungal networks. • Carbon Sequestration: Cover crops that provide a yearround living root mean plants have more opportunity to draw down CO2. During photosynthesis, plants turn CO2 into sugars. Plants exchange these sugars for micronutrients provided by beneficial bacteria and fungi living in the soil. This process stores carbon in the soil that, if left undisturbed, will remain stable for decades to come.
• Biodiversity: Increased biodiversity happens both in the fields by increasing the number of crops rotated and in the broader ecosystem. In addition, reducing chemical inputs means less damage to the watershed and wildlife population in the local ecosystem. • Water Quality: Improved water quality is another critical benefit of regenerative agriculture. Healthy soil is porous and allows water to filtrate through it rather than just runoff into nearby lakes and streams. This reduces the prevalence of algae blooms and pollution in drinking water and helps replenish groundwater.
The above practices and benefits are not exhaustive. They highlight that, indeed, regenerative agriculture allows for flexibility and an entry point for most any farmer. A more expansive approach to defining regenerative agriculture provides the flexibility that varying geography, climate and cropping systems require. Rather than a prescriptive and immediate solution, regenerative agriculture begins with farmers and considers the transition needed to incorporate these practices. Proponents of regenerative agriculture aim to build a healthier and more resilient ecosystem, one step at a time.
The overarching aim of our project is not to establish a final definition for regenerative agriculture or any other label that holds promise for sustainability. Our aim is to deliver on that promise with farmers by designing financial solutions that accelerate the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices, and, ultimately, contribute to carbon, water quality and biodiversity goals. To learn more about our project and how working with us can support farmers and producers in your supply chain, please visit us at https://www.atkinson.cornell.edu/projects/ transition-finance-for-regenerative-agriculture-systems/.
Alan Martinez is a senior manager at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, where he leads projects and partnerships to create scale and impact. He has extensive international experience in finance, strategy and entrepreneurship.
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