REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE. THE FARMERS HOPE TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate is the problem that weighs heavily on our society, but a promising solution could be lying right beneath our feet — in the soil.

Regenerative agriculture is a system of farming principles and practices that seek to rehabilitate and enhance the entire ecosystem of the farm by placing a heavy premium on soil health with attention also paid to fertilizer use among others. It describes farming and grazing practices that, among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity – resulting in both carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle.  It is a method of farming that “improves the resources it uses, rather than destroying or depleting them,” according to the Rodale Institute.

In addition to rising temperatures that are themselves changing where and how things can be grown, the climate crisis has fundamentally altered the water cycle around the world. The result is shifting precipitation patterns and increased evaporation that causes more-frequent powerful rainfall events and more severe droughts. In many areas, rainfall has become either increasingly abundant or in desperately short supply, relative to longtime averages. It’s a classic case of feast or famine. Regenerative agriculture therefore increase soil biodiversity and organic matter, leading to more resilient soils that can better withstand climate change impacts like flooding and drought. Healthy soils cause strong yields and nutrient-rich crops. It also diminishes erosion and runoff, leading to improved water quality on and off the farm.

Regenerative agriculture practices help farmers deal with current climate change impacts by making their farms more resilient and adaptive to what is happening around them as well as allowing them to take action to fight it long-term by being part of a larger solution to the crisis, through carbon sequestration.

The loss of the world’s fertile soil and biodiversity, along with the loss of indigenous seeds and knowledge, pose a mortal threat to our future survival. According to soil scientists, at current rates of soil destruction (i.e. decarbonization, erosion, desertification, chemical pollution), within 50 years we will not only suffer serious damage to public health due to a qualitatively degraded food supply characterized by diminished nutrition and loss of important trace minerals, but we will literally no longer have enough arable topsoil to feed ourselves. Without protecting and regenerating the soil on our 4 billion acres of cultivated farmland, 8 billion acres of pastureland, and 10 billion acres of forest land, it will be impossible to feed the world, keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, or halt the loss of biodiversity.

Global adoption of these agricultural methods will not come easy, but that shouldn’t be a surprise.  Success will require active participation from farmers, consumers, governments and organizations. Solving climate change (the greatest environmental threat of our time) isn’t a simple mission. Even with all of the technological ingenuity we’ve seen since the first IPCC land use report, from electric vehicles to renewable energy innovations, progress has focused only on reducing our emissions, when actually, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is the biggest remedy against climate crisis.

To be clear, I don’t suggest a singular focus on agricultural soil as the solution to climate change, no one method, technology, or mode of research is. We still need to drastically cut emissions. But as studies and reports warn, reductions alone are not going to be enough. If we pair capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide with reducing our emissions, we have cause for real hope of bending the arc of climate change.

We now are not waiting on any technological breakthroughs or major discoveries, we know that regenerative growing practices pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the soil. What we now need is to create the financial incentives for enough farmers to change their practices. A sustainable funding system that pays farmers to change their practices at scale is necessary to make a difference fast enough for us to back away from the climate cliff. If farmers provide the societal benefit of removing atmospheric carbon dioxide by adopting regenerative practices, it seems reasonable that they should be compensated for their effort by the rest of us who benefit, whether we are consumers, corporations, nonprofits or governments. By devising an effective funding system to make it well worth farmers’ efforts, regenerative growing practices can be the most immediate, affordable, and scalable way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

LET'S GET TO WORK