Are You Wrong About Regenerative Farming?
I was. I believed the old narrative that conventional farming is more productive than organic or regenerative farming. Here’s the argument I bought: regenerative agriculture is better for the environment, but the world has 7.8 billion people and counting. Feeding the world’s population is not optional. Sure saving the environment is important, but Earth’s land is limited and most agriculture needs to remain conventional to feed the planet.
That argument is flawed. It may be correct for some forms of organic farming, but organic and regenerative agriculture are different standards — with some overlap. I didn’t really understand how regen ag was different. Regenerative agriculture (also called sustainable or traditional) is a broad and adaptable set of practices aimed at improving soil quality and crop resilience. It’s not new — indigenous communities have used these practices for millennia. It includes no-till farming, cover crops, perennial crops, and animal grazing to add manure to fields.
Ok, so what’s the big deal? As Dr. Chip Fletcher, Chairperson of the Honolulu Climate Change Commission, puts it:
If every agricultural field on the planet converted from industrial agriculture to regenerative practices, we could pull enough carbon out of the air by 2050 to limit global warming to 1.5C. Our food system alone is capable of solving this problem.
That caught my attention. After all, the global food system is responsible for 34% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Converting to regenerative agriculture would greatly reduce those emissions and transform the world’s agricultural lands into a carbon sink while simultaneously increasing profit for farmers, maintaining yield, and providing many other benefits.
The Case for Regenerative Agriculture
Regenerative agriculture is better for the planet, for farmers, for ecosystems, for the economy, and for human health. Let’s see why.
It’s Actually Sustainable
In undisturbed soil there are beneficial microbes, fungi, and insects that work together to break down organic matter and incorporate it. Conventional agriculture involves tilling. This kills the beneficial life, exposes the soil to the air, and causes loss of carbon to the atmosphere in the form of CO2. As an example, Dawn and Grant Breitkreutz are Minnesota farmers who report that the original Minnesota prairie soil had a carbon content of 12% versus under 2% in their soil after decades of conventional farming. Tilled topsoil also blows away. Losing carbon and topsoil means that over the course of many decades, conventional agriculture becomes less productive and simply isn’t sustainable.
Regenerative agriculture keeps that beneficial soil life healthy by not tilling. It also uses cover crops to keep topsoil in place, to fix nitrogen and other nutrients, and ensure farming stays productive and sustainable far into the future.
It Generates Higher Profit and Similar Yields
Studies, such as the Rodale Institute 30-year Farming Systems Trial (FST) and this one in PeerJ, agree that regenerative farmers earn higher profits. Their costs are lower — less is spent on seeds, fertilizer, herbicide, and irrigation — while crops can be sold at a premium under an organic label.
There’s disagreement, however, over yield — the amount of food produced per acre. The PeerJ study found a 29% decrease, while the FST reported a small increase in yields. Digging deeper, the PeerJ article has a loose definition of regenerative farms: they label a farm in the top 50% of using a few regenerative practices as regenerative. The Rodale Institute on the other hand has decades of experience and is employing regenerative practices in a more complete way. So which result should we believe?
Regenerative farming is a collection of many practices that must be tailored to any particular environment to achieve optimal yields. For example, Alirio Martinez, a regenerative farmer in Guatemala, shares his discovery that a rare native bean boost yields as a cover crop. Farmers are still in the early days of learning how to convert conventional farms to regenerative practices. A fuller realization of regenerative practices like Rodale Institute’s will give the best estimate of regenerative agriculture’s potential. So my conclusion is that both can realize similar yields. As farmers progress along the learning curve — adding innovations to the regen ag toolkit — I expect yields to climb further.
It Sequesters Carbon and Slashes CO2 Emissions
The stakes here are high. Soil globally contains three times as much carbon as the atmosphere, and yet cultivated soils have lost 50–70% of their carbon due to unsustainable agricultural practices. By moving the world to regenerative agriculture, agricultural soil would go from being a CO2 emitter to sequestering 2–5 gigatons of CO2 per year, roughly 10% of total human CO2 emissions according to one estimate. Remember the Minnesota farmer with the 2% carbon soil? After a decade of regenerative farming, he’s up to 5%. That’s a remarkable 250% increase, and there’s plenty more room for him to sequester more carbon as the quality of his soil continues to improve.
Soil carbon sequestration isn’t the only climate benefit. Running a regenerative farm simply takes less energy and fewer carbon-intensive inputs like fertilizer and herbicide. Estimates range from 30% to 70% lower emissions from regenerative agriculture.
It’s Drought Tolerant
Soil that’s been managed with regenerative practices has more organic matter and holds on to more water for longer, increasing drought tolerance of crops. The evidence bears this out — the Rodale study found 31% higher corn yields in years with moderate drought. This is important for farmers — it lowers their financial risk and cost of crop insurance.
Drought can be life or death in developing countries, and it’s at the root of the recent wave of migration from Guatemala to the US. This podcast discusses regen ag work that Catholic Relief Services is doing in Guatemala. Farmers there who adopted regenerative agriculture practices were able to make it through recent droughts — and weren’t forced to migrate.
It’s Healthier For Everyone
Let’s start with farmers. They can reduce or eliminate spraying toxic pesticides and herbicides on their fields and near their homes. This is especially important because recommended safety equipment is often not worn in real world settings, exposing workers to high concentrations of chemicals with proven cancer risks and other negative health effects.
Consumers benefit because produce grown with regenerative agriculture is higher in nutrients like vitamins, minerals, and protein. Rodale’s FST found that oats grown with a legume cover crop contain significantly more total protein. Another PeerJ study found that regeneratively farmed food contained more of 9 vitamins and minerals like calcium and B12, as well as more phytochemicals. It was also lower in harmful minerals, including sodium, cadmium, and nickel.
Regenerative farming reduces or eliminates herbicides and pesticides present in the food. The human health impacts of these chemicals are hotly debated in the scientific literature, but what’s clear is that there’s not enough evidence to be confident that all pesticides and herbicides in use are safe for long-term consumption.
It Cleans Up Our Waterways
Soil from regenerative agriculture has more organic matter, acts like a sponge soaking up rainfall, and is more erosion resistant. When it rains, this soil and the cover crops on top of it stay in place, absorbing water and producing less runoff. Instead, 15–20% more water percolates underground and recharges groundwater reserves. The runoff it does produce isn’t tainted by fertilizer, particulate matter, herbicides, or pesticides. The net effect is a reduction in the intensity of flooding, fewer chemicals in waterways, and fewer fish-killing algal blooms that feed off of fertilizer runoff.
It Restores the Ecosystem
Regenerative farms more closely approximate a natural grassland habitat with higher biodiversity in fungi, bacteria, insects and birds. Cover crops can include dozens of species that support all kinds of pollinators that would have no habitat in a conventional agricultural setting. You might think that so much biodiversity would spell disaster for the crops. So many hungry mouths to eat what’s growing!
It’s not the case. The greater biodiversity means that pest populations are kept in check by their predators. And diverse rotating crops mean that pests have more difficulty finding a foothold in the fields.
Avoiding the use of herbicides and pesticides allows native insect and plant populations to recover on the farm and its surroundings. The impacts of insecticides extend beyond the field borders because of drift during application and agricultural runoff bringing herbicides to waterways. Native insects are incredibly valuable. They include pollinators and give life up the food chain for birds, bats, amphibians, reptiles, and other mammals. Dawn and Grant describe huge flocks of birds returning to their fields and eating insects once they converted to regenerative practices.
The Barriers to Adoption
With so many clear benefits, I was shocked to learn that only 1.5% of agricultural land in the US is farmed regeneratively. Why?
Financial Risk
Bain & Co estimates that regenerative farms take four years to reach breakeven with conventional farming. It takes time for soil health to improve and for farmers to finetune their approach. It also requires upfront investment, and taking out more loans is the last thing you want when you’re already living on the edge.
Chart showing higher profit per hectare for regenerative farmers after four years from the Bain & Co report
Cultural Barriers
Farming communities often highly value tradition, and understandably so. If you switch to regenerative agriculture and find it’s better, it gets pretty close to admitting that you’ve been doing your job wrong your whole life. Very few people are open to that. Parents want their children to practice farming the way they did, and communities can look critically at a farmer trying new approaches.
Grant, our Minnesota farmer, explained that when he stopped tilling his soil, neighbors branded him the “lazy farmer” because his farm now longer had neat rows of bare soil in the winter. He explained his practices and the improved profit to his neighbors in his church congregation, but after 20 years only one person decided to try it out. Alirio reported similar cultural resistance to change in Guatemala.
Political Barriers
US agriculture is heavily subsidized by the Farm Bill, a recurring piece of legislation that is updated every 5 years. Currently it prioritizes conventional agriculture, with only 1% of its budget allocated to education and regenerative practices. Support from the USDA could do so much to accelerate the adoption of regen ag, but it’s visibly missing.
Take Action
Let’s take action! We can accelerate the transition to regenerative agriculture even as we make progress in other areas. Humanity must act across the board to avert tens of trillions of dollars of economic damage from climate change by the end of the century. Here’s you can do:
- Learn more with great resources available online and in-person, watch the Kiss the Ground movie, or read Farming While Black.
- Donate to a regen ag charitable organization.
- Invest — check out RFSI or browse regen ag investment funds.
- Support Regenerate America, a movement to include regenerative agriculture in the 2023 Farm Bill.
