What is Regenerative Agriculture?

There are more microorganisms in a single teaspoon of healthy soil than there are stars in our galaxy. Seriously! It’s awe-inspiring. It’s also heartbreaking because a lot of the food we grow is not grown in healthy soil - degraded soils have high counts of pathogens and have been manipulated such that synthetic fertilizers are the primary source of beneficial nutrients.

The term beneficial is subjective! Beneficial toward what objective is the question…

Regenerative agriculture isn't just about the soil, it's about the people working it.

Conventional agriculture is valued by weight - pounds and bushels. This means that farmers dependent on the conventional agriculture system to sustain their livelihood must strive towards fast, high-mass, and high-yield harvests.

Regenerative agriculture makes the case for pricing based on nutrient density rather than weight.

But before we get into that approach, let’s look at some shocking statistics and behind-the-scenes connections that paint a picture of how we got here, and why it’s time to head in the direction of regeneration.

Monsanto - the company behind much of America's chemical agriculture and GMO seed business - was acquired by Bayer in 2018 for roughly $63 billion*, a deal that came bundled with the massive Roundup litigation. Conventional farmers operate inside a system shaped by a handful of powerful agrochemical companies, tight profit margins, and government subsidy structures that reward scale and yield over health.

Research links pesticide exposure to higher rates of depression among farmers. One long-running NIH study found that farmers using organochlorine insecticides had roughly 80–90% higher odds of depression than those who didn't. Studies have found farmers had the highest rate of major depression of any occupation studied.

US farmers have the highest rate of major depression of any occupation studied. The people responsible for growing the raw materials we depend on for survival, and responsible for our greatest environmental impacts throughout all of history, are the most depressed. Do I need to say more to tell you the system is broken?

A known antidote to depression is a sense of purpose, yet those who are literally responsible for keeping the rest of us ALIVE, something a lot of people could liken to a sense of purpose, are killing themselves.

It’s not just stress. Its stress compounded by a chronic, prescribed, and mandated dysregulation of the micro- and macro-biome.

I could go on and on about these highly contested, anonymously funded studies that tell the story I’m looking to tell. But babe, the proof is in the pudding - literally. When’s the last time you went to a BBQ and left feeling like a million bucks?

We can heal our planet with our food. How we grow it may be the single biggest lever we have. Regenerative agriculture is growing food in a way that improves soil health as a byproduct of the growing itself.

Do we sequester carbon by keeping roots in the ground, building soil year after year? Or do we release it back into the atmosphere through tilling?

Diversity is central to this. Grazing animals and grassland ecosystems evolved together over millennia. Regenerative agriculture capitalizes on that relationship through rotational grazing and silvopasture to help restore soil structure and fertility faster than plants can on their own.

Do we grow in diverse environments, creating habitat for pollinators and grazers, creating more life than we could ever commoditize? Or do we make sure the only thing living on our land is a fragile monoculture, yielding less and less each year?

Regenerative agriculture, at its core, is about soil.

Soil is inherited. It is our responsibility to pass it on better than we received it. It isn't ours to use up - it's ours to build. It's our legacy. And the health of the soil is directly tied to the health of the people who interact with it. That puts the responsibility on everybody*.

Regenerate that shit so your great-grandkids know what food is supposed to taste like and never have to question how it makes them feel to eat it.

*Just as a sardonic aside, Bayer closed out 2018 with a $2B (USD) net profit. This was a $6B (USD) drop from 2017 and is chalked up to the costs of the merger. Median ‘on-farm household income’ for commercial farmers in 2018 was -$1,316. Yes, that is a negative number. (Farm Bureau, fb.org)

*Did I almost forget to mention that lawn is the most heavily irrigated crop in America? I also just learned it is the most heavily fertilized crop per acre in America. So, if you think this isn’t about you, think again. If you’re trying to get something to grow, soil health is your responsibility.