In our last blog post we talked about how the media tends to treat all discussion of agriculture from within the conventional or industrial agricultural paradigm. Even much organic food is produced with the same basic assumptions of conventional or industrial agriculture, and so very often news articles that want to contrast industrial agriculture with organic agriculture are really just contrasting two sides of the same coin. Regenerative agriculture offers a different paradigm for thinking about agriculture. But what exactly characterizes the regenerative paradigm and how is that different from the industrial paradigm?
There are of course entire books written on the subject by people who understand soil, plant, and animal science much better than I do. My goal with this post is simply to provide a basic understanding of the regenerative agriculture approach, in part by juxtaposing it with some the assumptions of the industrial paradigm. But I also want to be clear that I am no way trying to demonize producers who use industrial farming practices. I suspect 99% of food producers try to do their best with the information they have. Even though I think regenerative practices are the better ones to be using, I can understand the many reasons why most producers still use industrial practices.
So back to the central questions:
First, what is regenerative agriculture? Put simply, it is the set of agricultural principles and practices that have shown themselves to be capable of improving (or regenerating) soil health. How do we know that soil health has been improved? There are a number of indicators that have been observed on many farms of various sizes: increased soil organic matter, increased soil aggregates, increased soil carbon, increased water infiltration ability, increased yields, reduced disease in plants, resistance to pests, and increased nutritional density, to name a few.
Second, what distinguishes the regenerative paradigm from the industrial paradigm? To capture it in a few sentences I would say the following: Regenerative agriculture’s foundational principles are that (1) soil is best understood as a biological ecosystem not reducible to physics and chemistry, (2) that the dynamic relationships between soil, plants, and animals contain within themselves all that is necessary to produce high-yielding, nutrient dense food, and (3) that crop and livestock health and performance is directly related to the health of the soil, such that very healthy soil we produce disease-free and pest resistant crops and livestock.
The industrial paradigm, on the other hand, sees agriculture primarily through a somewhat contrasting set of premises: (1) Agriculture is best understood through chemical and physical models, (2) crop and livestock production will always require the use of chemical inputs (think nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, etc) and (3) crop and livestock health and performance will always require the use of synthetic chemicals to manage diseases and pests.
(This may be somewhat of an oversimplification, but I think not so oversimplified as to the point of not being true.)
In future posts we will begin to explain in more detail the principles of regenerative agriculture and get into what the practices are. But I hope this brief explanation gives you some concrete ideas about what regenerative agriculture is.