Investigating Regenerative Pathways Series
By Michael Commons, Terra Genesis International
Part 1 of the “Investigating Regenerative Pathways” Series. This series looks deeper at real life examples of functional farming systems that exhibit many characteristics that Terra Genesis International identifies as being on “the regenerative agriculture pathway.”
Each and every farming situation is unique, and with every idiosyncrasy that distinguishes a farm comes a new solution — including many that we have yet to learn. Because there is no universal solution for agricultural systems, farmers should rely on the local environment, culture, cuisine, resources, knowledge, market access and demands, and much more to determine their regenerative system. Regeneration is a long-term process, determined by indicators like soil health, biodiversity, community health, and water retention, availability, and quality. While the complete transformation of regeneration lies much further ahead in the future, we can clearly identify strides in the regenerative progress through such indicators and dramatically improve the well-being of our landscape and planet.
Though regenerative practices have been implemented since the beginning of time, there is little documented information determining the full range of possibilities they provide, nor the pathway forward. That is why our team is working to help open up this spectrum and show concrete examples of how and why regenerative practices work. When one can see a system working more productively, economically, and healthily than conventional farming, it can show the potential of their own systems and the opportunities they have to shift.
We have a particular interest and concern with what we call “large scale commodity crops,” such as coffee, cacao, palm oil, coconut, rubber, and more. The strongest leverage point for regeneration is helping form collaborations (or as we call them, “value webs”) between stakeholders like farmers, consumers, distributors, and processors. Together within this value web, stakeholders can support and improve upon their regenerative processes, whether through economics (buying), knowledge sharing, relationship building, or other kinds of support.
Though early regenerative web relationships will be just a small slice of the total commodity trade for a given commodity, we expect this clear distinction and pathway to show potential for other stakeholders. We hope this will help unleash the collaborative creative process of how to build on good cases of what is working, and take it even further. Whether these new steps in regeneration come with new crop systems, locations, integrations, yields, or symbiotic human (or non-human!) relationships, we look forward to seeing what’s in store for the world of regeneration.
