Given the damage already inflicted on our natural environment, merely sustaining our ecosystems may no longer be enough to offset climate change and ensure long-term productivity of farmland. With this in mind, regenerative farmers seek to actively change the way they farm by increasing biodiversity, enriching soil health, improving watersheds, and enhancing the health of livestock and wildlife. With this approach of thinking more holistically, they are able to increase the resilience of their farms against extreme weather events and climate change, whilst boosting the sustainability and vitality of their rural communities in the process.

Principles of Regenerative Agriculture

Here are the 5 principles of regenerative agriculture:

1. Minimise soil disturbance
2. Minimise the use of chemical inputs
3. Maximise biodiversity, both animals and plants
4. Keeping the soil covered with crops as long as possible
5. Adapting to the local environment

In today’s conventional farming approach, crops and livestock production are typically kept separate. Regenerative agriculture combines them in circular ecosystems; essentially, the animals feed the plants, and the plants feed the animals. The regulated grazing of sheep or cows, for example, encourages plant growth, and distributes natural nutrients back over the land in the form of dung. Poultry also fertilises land, as well as eats unwelcome bugs and weeds.

Some regenerative farmers also look to build stronger links with workers and local communities, adding a social dimension to their vision.

Does regenerative agriculture reduce yields?

In the latter half of the 20th century, global crop yields increased on an unprecedented scale. The world’s average cereal yield, for example, has increased by 175% since 1961. In 1950, one hectare of apple trees in the Netherlands yielded six tonnes of apples, yet by 2015 that yield was 44 tonnes. However, those gains have mainly been achieved using fossil-fuel-based inputs that are not sustainable for the long term.

Perhaps the greatest of all challenges facing farming in the 21st century is to maintain production levels that will ensure affordable food for the world and it’s ever growing population, while keeping methods and inputs sustainable. Research shows that while regenerative methods, which minimise or avoid tilling and chemical inputs entirely, can lower yields, this varies greatly depending on the crop and local conditions.

In some cases, regenerative and organic methods can lead to similar yields, and even yield increases.

“The Rodale Institute has been running side-by-side field studies for the last 30 years, comparing organic and conventional agriculture. Results show that after a 1 to 2-year transition period, when yields tend to decline, there is no difference between conventional and regenerative farming in terms of yields. In stressful conditions, particularly during droughts, the regenerative fields perform better because they are more resilient the soil can absorb more water because it contains more biomass, and certainly farmers we work with say the yields are the same, while their input costs go down.”

– Philip Fernandez, Agriculture Project Manager at EIT Food

Even where yields are lower, the price premium on regenerative and organic food can make the crops much more profitable than their conventionally-grown counterparts.

The focus of regenerative farming is most commonly to be the quality and performance of the soil, and for good reason. In 2017 the United Nations Global Land Outlook report found that a third of the planet’s land was severely degraded through erosion, salinization, compaction, acidification, and chemical pollution, and fertile soil was being lost at the rate of 24bn tonnes a year. This confirmed the risk alluded to two years earlier in 2015 by UN Director-General Jos Graziano da Silva when he warned at the time that further loss of productive soils would severely damage food production and food security, amplify food-price volatility, and potentially plunge millions of people into hunger and poverty.

Regenerative farmers use growing practices that improve the health of their land. The more common regenerative farming methods include:

• No-till systems,heavily reduce the digging and ploughing that can lead to loosened topsoil being blown away by wind or carried away by water
• Cover cropsare grown in the soil when the main commercial crop has been harvested and can be grazed by livestock or harvested themselves, thus never leaving the soil bare
• Increasing biodiversityincreases the variety of nutrients going into the soil through roots and natural decomposition, if well-managed attracts insects which are the natural predators of pests
• Rotating crops,so that what is being taken out and put into the soil naturally by plants is balanced
• Integrating livestock,so as to combine animals and plants in a single ecosystem
• Minimising chemical inputs,to minimise the negative impact on biodiversity and pollution of waterways due to runoff.

There is evidence that this approach can enrich the soil and improve watersheds, which reduces topsoil runoff.
With the mission to make food healthier and more sustainable, EIT Food is looking to investigate and help scale up regenerative initiatives. The EIT Food network connects artisan farmers with the biggest agri-food companies in the world and makes the learnings both scalable and accessible.