What is Regenerative Agriculture?

Regenerative Agriculture Promotes Soil Organic Matter and Biodiversity.

Increasing organic matter in the soil is a major benefit. Organic matter is the decomposed life that helps grow more life — the forages, crops and livestock that become a farmer’s income.

Increasing biodiversity adds to organic matter, but it also helps the ecosystem perform at its best. Different plants and animals (including macro-organisms and microbes, like bacteria and fungi) play different — and important — roles. Taking out one player leaves a function undone.

Regenerative Agriculture Encourages Healthier and More Productive Soil that is Drought and Flood Resilient.

Regenerative agriculture helps farmers and ranchers be more resilient in both times of drought and flood.

The more rainfall soil is able to hold, the less runoff and erosion will occur — and the more water that plants can use during drought. Less runoff also means that less soil is eroding and fewer synthetic chemicals are being washed into our lakes and rivers.

Regenerative Agriculture Advocates Decreased Use of Chemical Inputs and Subsequent Pollution.

By boosting the soil’s natural fertility, farmers can reduce their need for additional fertilizer.

By increasing diversity, both in terms of plants and animals, farmers and ranchers can build some resilience against — and a new mindset toward — pests. With regenerative ranching, “weeds” aren’t necessarily seen as a bad thing, because livestock can eat them. If cattle, sheep or goats are eating “weeds,” the farmer doesn’t need to spray as much herbicide.

In addition, increasing the soil’s water holding capacity reduces runoff.

All of this taken together means cost savings for the farmer or rancher and a cleaner environment — which benefits them and their neighbors.

Regenerative Agriculture Boosts Cleaner Air and Water.

Improving soil health leads to benefits that extend beyond the soil.

Soil acts as a natural water filter when it is fully covered by plants and plant residues. The healthier the soil, the better it can do its job. Ranchers can improve water quality with regenerative agriculture by keeping the land fully covered at all times and limiting the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

Plants are, in a way, air filters. They take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into sugar and oxygen. The healthier the soil, the healthier the plant, and the better this process works.

In addition, regenerative-agriculture practitioners reduce their input use. This typically means they also reduce the number of passes across a field in the tractor (and the amount of air pollutants).

Regenerative Agriculture Stimulates Enhanced Wildlife Habitat.

Nowhere in nature do you see only a single variety of plant growing. Diversity is inherent in nature, so we seek to imitate that pattern.

Moving away from monocultures benefits wildlife (large and small, above ground and below), which in turn benefits the ecosystem and ultimately the operation. Again, nature likes diversity.

Many farmers and ranchers who adopt regenerative agriculture report seeing an increase in the number and variety of species on the land, including native grasses and forbs, birds, insects, earthworms, deer and other wildlife.

Regenerative Agriculture Assists Capturing Carbon in the Soil to Combat Climate Variability.

There is a lot of talk about removing animal agriculture to reduce greenhouse gases, but the truth is: The land needs animals.

Proper integration of livestock on grazing lands — which make up 655 million acres of U.S. land (the single-largest land use) — can actually rejuvenate the land’s health.

Part of this rejuvenation is through carbon sequestration. Plants have the ability to take in carbon from the air and store it in the soil with the help of soil microbes. Cattle and other livestock play roles in stimulating this carbon sequestration process through properly managed grazing.

This makes regenerative ranching a solution in today’s climate conversations.

Know your context.

Farmers and ranchers must know their individual situation, including their climate, geography, resources, skills and goals. They need to understand how the ecosystem processes function on their land so they can work with those processes. What works for one farmer or rancher may not work for another, because their contexts are different. They are willing to learn, grow and adapt with their context.

Cover the soil.

While they may not have always called it “regenerative agriculture,” people have been practicing this type of management for centuries. In fact, regenerative agriculture asks agricultural producers to manage the land in a way that more closely mimics nature.

Why? Nature already provides the foundations for the farm (soil, water and sunshine). We just need to understand how to work with nature to maximize the ecosystem processes.

Minimize soil disturbance.

Mechanical soil disturbance, such as tillage, alters the structure of the soil, reduces organic matter and limits biological activity.

To build healthy, functional soil systems in grazing lands, ranchers must ensure that the timing, frequency, intensity and duration of management activities is appropriate. Anything which disturbs the soil — grazing, fire, pesticide applications, etc — should be conducted intentionally, mimicking what would occur naturally, in the absence of man.

Increase plant diversity.

In nature, grasses, legumes, and forbs all work together in a native, diverse rangeland setting. Regenerative grazing lands are alive with micro- and macro-flora and fauna both above- and below-ground.

The complex interactions of roots and other living organisms within the soil define the soil’s water holding capacity, affect carbon sequestration and enable nutrient availability for plant productivity.

Maintain continuous living plants/roots.

Maintaining continuous living plant roots is required to keep the soil biology processes working, no matter the season. Soil microbes use active carbon first, which comes from living roots. These roots provide food for beneficial microbes and spark beneficial relationships between these microbes and the plant.

Integrate livestock.

Research, practical application and common sense tell us the same thing: Livestock are a necessity for healthy soils and ecosystems. The Great Plains evolved under the presence of animals and grazing pressure.

Soil and plant health is improved by proper grazing, which recycles nutrients, reduces plant selectivity and increases plant diversity.