A new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, based on interviews with more than 100 farmers and ranchers from 47 states, details how regenerative agriculture can make the food system more resilient and also protect biodiversity.
By Arohi Sharma, Lara Bryant and Ellen Lee
Our food and farming system is facing a reckoning — a global pandemic that upended supply chains and unearthed the horrific consequences of a consolidated meatpacking industry, climate change threatening food production across the country, fertilizer shortages, rising prices at the grocery store and a sector that accounts for 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
Our current agricultural system is failing us. It’s high time we build toward a stronger, healthier, more equitable and more resilient one.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) report “Regenerative Agriculture: Farm Policy for the 21st Century” details an alternative vision of what agriculture can be — one that can respond better to external shocks (such as a pandemic), combat climate change by embracing Indigenous growing principles, protect biodiversity by managing farms and ranches as ecosystems, and support competition while putting decision-making power back into the hands of independent farmers and ranchers.
NRDC interviewed more than 100 farmers and ranchers from 47 states and Washington, D.C., to learn more about regenerative agriculture and the barriers to and opportunities for practicing it on more acres.
The team used qualitative analysis software to analyze interviews for themes and developed policy solutions to address the themes that emerged. Overwhelmingly, interviewees shared the ways federal agricultural policy disproportionately serves industrial agriculture over regenerative agriculture.
Presented in two parts, the report first summarizes what we learned from our interviewees about the philosophy of regenerative agriculture and its principles, practices and benefits. The second part dives into policy recommendations and shares how different parts of the food system can support more regenerative stewardship.
At its core, regenerative agriculture (see video below) is a land management philosophy rooted in Indigenous wisdom, where farmers and ranchers grow in harmony with nature and their communities.
Regenerative agriculture’s principles and practices equip farmers and ranchers with the tools they need to build soil health, sequester carbon, increase biodiversity, reduce emissions, steward the land, manage natural resources, protect public health and grow nutritious food.
The growers we spoke with paid close attention to their soil, communities and climate, and they made management decisions based on those contexts. Instead of growing water-thirsty crops in a desert, for example, regenerative growers in Arizona and New Mexico plant crops that can be dry-farmed (e.g., pumpkins and beans) because of the region’s drier climates and water scarcity.
Unlike industrial agriculture, the regenerative framework encourages growers to build resilience into their farming and ranching systems, which also helps them better weather the impacts of climate change.
In February 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its “Sixth Assessment Report,” which, in part, details the far-reaching consequences of climate change.
According to the report, climate change’s impacts on agriculture will vary: from more frequent extreme weather events to less water for irrigation to changing temperatures that affect crop growth. Farmers and ranchers will be required to adapt to new growing conditions.
The report also acknowledges that it’s possible to buffer against these drastic changes by embracing farming systems that are regenerative.
Regenerative agriculture emphasizes building soil health, which helps fight climate change while providing a myriad of other environmental, public health and economic benefits.
Regenerative agriculture’s focus on improving soil health provides a direct contrast to today’s dominant industrial model. Industrial agricultural practices like tillage, monocropping, fallowing and the heavy use of chemical- and fossil fuel-produced fertilizers destroy soil and lead to erosion.
Carbon is naturally stored in the soil, so damaging the soil and losing it to erosion prevents agricultural lands from sequestering carbon and fighting climate.
Many of regenerative agriculture’s principles and practices focus on building soil health, which restores and protects that carbon sink, and it is one way regenerative growers help fight climate change.
The National Academy of Sciences estimates that soils can sequester 250 million metric tons of carbon — equivalent to the annual emissions of 64 coal-fired power plants. Regenerative growers are helping to realize that potential.
Our interviewees were clear that building soil health resulted in a myriad of other benefits. By improving their soil, growers also noticed healthier plants and animals, more soil microbial activity and above-ground biodiversity and more water stored on their land for future plant growth.
They also noticed they were saving money in the long term — money they were able to reinvest into their business and land. For example, by planting cover crops, applying compost and integrating animals back into cropping systems, regenerative growers were able to provide nutrients to the soil without applying synthetic fertilizer.
These practices further protect surrounding communities from exposure to toxic chemicals and drinking water supplies from contamination.
Regenerative agriculture is achievable — and needs support throughout the food system to reach its full potential.
Each of our interviewees is a bright light — an example of how the U.S. can change course and transition agriculture into a solution to fight our climate crisis. But they can’t do it alone. The larger food system needs reforming so we can enable more regenerative management and support existing regenerative growers.
The report’s policy recommendations cover how different parts of the system can help get more acres under regenerative management and more growers practicing regeneratively.
- We need federal policy to incentivize regenerative stewardship, and that starts with reforms to the Federal Crop Insurance program, which currently spends billions subsidizing industrial agriculture.
- We need to build more agricultural infrastructure so that regenerative growers can access markets and offer consumers — individuals, businesses and governments — the chance to purchase regeneratively grown food, fiber and other products.
- With an aging farming population, we must cultivate the next generation of farmers and ranchers and empower them to be examples of success in their communities. Black, Indigenous and other growers of color have historically known how to farm regeneratively, and it will be important to uphold, support (including financially) and learn from them to spur the regenerative movement.
- We must fund more regenerative agriculture research and extension services so that growers wanting to experiment with making the transition to regenerative agriculture have the support they need.
This report’s policy recommendations are only the beginning of what’s needed to transition to regenerative agriculture. The farmers and ranchers we interviewed made it very clear that every person has a role to play in advocating for a regenerative vision.
From visiting a farm or a ranch and getting to know the people who grow your food and fiber, to asking your local supermarket to buy from local farmers, to calling elected leaders and advocating for policy changes, we can all champion regenerative agriculture and make it the norm.
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grow more grass for the cows. Beef its whats for dinner
Regenerative farming is the only long term solution, however it is labor intensive.
Unless a significant portion of the population returns to an agrarian/pastoral lifestyle it will fail.
The percentage of Americans directly involved in agriculture is just a bit more than 1%
Expecting 1 person to be responsible for the feeding of 100 is a ridiculous idea, but that is the result of 50 years of deliberate Government intervention.
My best guess is that people are going to start getting used to paying as much as 1/3 of their income on food. Or decide to go back to an agrarian way of life. Or eat garbage.
“Unless a significant portion of the population returns to an agrarian/pastoral lifestyle it will fail.”
Guess what is more likely.
It’s actually not necessarily more labor intensive. If you read Fukuoka’s first work (One Straw Revolution), his changes were implemented originally to save time and effort, and the regenerative aspect was actually a side benefit of that. Only later did he realize that he could get better yields with less external inputs.
The better yields have a ratio with the time and effort. It’s been known forever that small farms get better yields per acre. The problem is that economies of scale, mass synthetic fertilizer/herbicide/pesticide application, and a willingness to basically clear-cut/strip-mine the soil give better yields per dollar of input (esp labor) and provide the end product at lower cost. That the end product is of inferior quality is not something that has yet registered with most consumers.
In short, as long as people are unconcerned with both quality and the destruction of soils and are only or primarily concerned with price — small farms cannot compete with agribusiness.
The manner in which government subsidies and regulations are set up to screw the little guy doesn’t help, either.
“as long as people are unconcerned with both quality and the destruction of soils”
This about sums it up.
It actually is more labor intensive in a way. It is not a huge amount of labor (if his system works, it’s very interesting but reproducing it has been a problem) but it requires most people to be involved in that labor. That was why his vision was most of the populace having a relatively small farm. I think it also works better with rice partly because flooding can replace cultivating for weeds. I’ve seen people trying similar systems with wheat and doing interesting things, but I’m not sure of the results overall.
I’m only speaking from experience. You need human labor to practice regenerative style farming, you can’t do it with big ag equipment. I wasn’t speaking about inputs, but in the daily attention required to maintain a proper balance.
People seem to only look at the actual harvesting of a single crop as the labor part. The whole process is continuous labor, it never ends, even the mental aspects.
Never is it the Memorial or Labor Day or Thanksgiving “holiday” because people expect you to be selling at the Farmer’s Market.
That is why nobody really wants to be a real farmer unless one really loves it. Most people are incapable of acquiring the skill levels.
I don’t think they are incapable of it so much as having been trained to avoid and revile it.
There is nothing in life as stimulating, invigorating and enlightening as working a piece of land that you love and everything that lives on it. Nature takes care of all the rest.
The thing is that we are all going back to it one way or another. This epoch was transitory and never meant to last.
Now that is true.
“The thing is that we are all going back to it one way or another. This epoch was transitory and never meant to last.”
‘And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.’ Genesis 2:15
What we have now was never meant to be. It being Sunday here is a good verse from the NIV translation. Isaiah 51:6
‘Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
look at the earth beneath;
the heavens will vanish like smoke,
the earth will wear out like a garment
and its inhabitants die like flies.
But my salvation will last forever,
my righteousness will never fail.’
My faith grows stronger every day from seeing what is going on. My hope is in the eternal.
Garbage eating is already with us.
Sometimes farmers are the worst eaters of processed foods there are, which is pretty sad to me.
Poetic justice.
“combat climate change…” as far as I got.
Right. The whole first paragraph shows that, once again, they co-opting the movement.
Just saw the first hummingbird on our feeder. Dirty little flu spreader.
Sixty-million buffalo can’t be wrong. That’s the estimate for the population before the white man came with his mono crops. The twelve-feet of topsoil became zero feet and can grow nothing, or close to it, without petroleum products added.
Beef diets are the best. Been the best for a million years and longer. Cows eat grass and convert it to that which is nutritious to mankind. Mankind should not be eating grass, nor all those veggies. See The Carnivore Code by Saladino.
Zero irrigation on the Great Plains before all that good grass was plowed up to plant European grains; now the Oglala aquifer is just about dry. Grass fed bison meat is far healthier than pretty much anything we’re getting these days. The dust from the dust bowl completely covered New York City at times. As you said, most of that topsoil is in the Gulf of Mexico now.
I’m not a farmer and barely get anything out of my pathetic vegetable garden, so can’t claim any expertise, but I think it’s safe to assume anything done with the “guidance” of the USDA probably isn’t the most efficient, cost-effective, or productive way of doing things.
I agree that those of us at the top of the food chain are much better off with meat. The government says that’s not true, so I know I’m right.
“We need federal policy to incentivize regenerative stewardship, and that starts with reforms to the Federal Crop Insurance program…” “We must fund more regenerative agriculture research and extension services…” “…calling elected leaders and advocating for policy changes…” Quotes from the article.
Ah yes, more government meddling…the kiss of death. I did not waste my time looking into all their highly credentialed and coiffed staff, but here are a few of their more famous Board of Directors members:
Leonardo DiCaprio, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Robert Redford, Laurance Rockefeller…need I say more?
All I want from government for my farm is to be left alone.
I wish you and other farmers could just do what you do best without interference. The market would weed out the not-so-good ones and reward the successful ones. That’s what markets do. Then we wouldn’t be seeing articles like this and food would be abundant and affordable, not getting scarcer and more expensive like now.
Government bureaucracy is what got us where we are it all needs to go away
The article was written like a government proposal including dog whistles to diversity and inclusion.
Not worried about climate change so much as I am concerned that I’ll have to compost my family’s “night soil.”
Any article with “equitable” and other WEF buzz words strikes extreme caution in me. The IPCC was created by Maurice Strong, a Rockefeller lackey. It creates BS science.
Climate Change- a program to extort $ trillions via purchasing carbon offsets.
The author did manage to use every leftist buzz word in the entire leftest dictionary of buzz words.
It is called mixed farming idiots. And spread the animal fertilizer on the fields.
I suppose algae-based oil production for biodiesel (closing the carbon loop in the process), using sewage for the nutrient feedstock, as part of a system to salvage phosphate from the waste stream isn’t in the cards?
When I see an article about ‘regenerative farming,’ and there is no mention of the phosphate issue – but it has paragraphs of garbage about stuff that *doesn’t* matter – I wonder about the authors.
So, I went and looked.
Arohi Sharma – BA in political science, MA in ‘public policy.’ https://www.nrdc.org/experts/arohi-sharma
Lara Bryant – bachelor’s degree in plant and soil science, master’s degree in public administration in environmental science and policy. https://www.nrdc.org/experts/lara-bryant
Ellen Lee – bachelor’s degree in biology and international business with a focus in environmental systems. https://www.nrdc.org/experts/ellen-lee
We have Destructive Government and we need Regenerative Government , but it starts with the Right people. These Good Ideas are being used by communist to double-speak us into more government tyranny if they have their way; communist always propagandize the Urban Useful Idiots first. The leftist Governments have been using Public tax money to buy and remove land from the Public market and create dead conservation areas that no-one may farm. The privately owned ZOG Rothschild Federal Reserve Central Bank is funding the Oligarch’s takeover of America; cancel it’s Charter and break up their Big Ag Corporate Farms, and sell the corporate land back to Americans to create family farms again and they will use Regenerative farming practices naturally since they work best on the family size scale. The government makes it impossible for small slaughter houses, butcher shops, food processors, and markets to comply with all the regulations. The wild life “service” has made it impossible to kill the kings deer eating farmers vegetables and fruit; and even introduce wolves to eat ranchers livestock. Everyone knows TPTB are going after food control and can’t be trusted; apples are good but when the government is offering the apples, I’ll pass.
Small scale local regenerative farming is the way to go. To escape the totalitarian matrix we must fend more and more for ourselves. This is not only honorable it is immensely practical. We can provide for ourselves. We no longer need the curse of government intervention in our lives.
The modern governments of the world will never allow groups of people, or individuals, to fend for themselves. They know better how you should live and will make you live their way unto your death.
People do whatever they want without even thinking about what other people will or will not allow. That’s probably 75% of how life on Earth functions.
Once more, too many people, too much land to ever have a snowball’s chance in hell of controlling anything outside of the Beltway.
Lost me at equitable .
Back to the future.
According to them
“The climate dread was quickly replaced with hope and joy as we learned from Indigenous stewards, Black and Brown farmers, and growers of all shapes, sizes, and in all geographies about how agriculture, and the soil under our feet, can help us combat climate change.”
“This rebranded movement is an agricultural philosophy birthed by our Indigenous ancestors for over a millennium.”
” …and ensure a level playing field for independent farmers and ranchers, especially Black, Indigenous, and other socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers. ”
Crock of shit, plain and simple. So the people who ran bison over cliffs or never left the stone age are going to teach us… what exactly? This is just a subsidy scheme for POCs. And if somehow they do influence funding of industrial ag (which I agree is terrible) it will just be to better starve people for the Great Reset.
“Black, Indigenous and other growers of color have historically known how to farm regeneratively [PROOF REQUIRED], and it will be important to uphold, support (including financially) and learn from them to spur the regenerative movement.”
I guess this explains the barren wasteland of Haiti, and the slash and burn agriculture where the wonderful shitskins move every few years after ruining their last patch of ground.