Farming for the future
How regenerative agriculture could boost biodiversity, combat climate change and support farmers while reshaping our food system for the better
Any one of these [regenerative practices] alone is beneficial. Individually, they make impacts but, tied together, the benefits start multiplying significantly.
Tim and Robin Ralston
The regenerative movement is gaining momentum.
In December 2022, more than 190 countries signed the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), a historic “deal for nature” to protect and restore 30 per cent of the planet’s land and seas by 2030. To achieve this ambitious target – and to keep global warming within safe limits by the end of the century while feeding a growing population – society will need to move away from resource-intensive farming and radically rethink how it cultivates crops and grows food.
Regenerative agriculture, or “regen ag” as it is also known, is a suite of holistic, circular and location-specific farming methods rooted in many traditional and indigenous practices which could be a powerful weapon in humanity’s fight against climate change and nature loss. While there is no universal definition of regen ag, these practices aim to close nutrient cycles (aka critical mineral elements like nitrogen and potassium) that are often disturbed by farming, and to feed, rather than deplete, the soil. If practised with local context, conditions and community in mind, regenerative agriculture has great potential to help restore the planet’s life-supporting ecosystems while providing economic and social benefits.
So how could that happen? Read on to explore the possibilities, as well as potential pitfalls, of regenerative farming.
“Any one of these [regenerative practices] alone is beneficial,” says Tim Ralston, co-owner with his wife Robin of Ralston Family Farms in Arkansas, a 4,800-acre enterprise specialising in rice cultivation. “Individually, they make impacts but, tied together, the benefits start multiplying significantly.”
No one-size-fits-all solution
The key principles of regenerative agriculture
Common regenerative agriculture practices include*
* Some of these practices are more appropriate for specific locations – again, regenerative agriculture means figuring out what works best within local contexts.
Note: While there is no universal definition of regenerative agriculture, a 2020 meta-analysis found that most descriptions only focus on environmental objectives and outputs. The paper proposes a broader definition that includes social and economic considerations such as farmer prosperity, rural livelihoods, animal welfare and human health, which arguably are conditions that are fundamental for regenerative agriculture to function.
It all starts with the soil
Soil is the unsung hero of our planet.
The soil microbiome holds a universe containing trillions of microorganisms that deliver nutrients and other essential inputs to the crops we plant. When soil erodes, because of weather or human activities including agriculture, its ability to produce nutrient-rich food, to absorb and cycle water, and to store carbon is reduced. According to the UN, around one-third of global soils are considered “eroded”. However, with regenerative farming, feeding the soil – rather than depleting it – is often the first consideration when developing a healthy agricultural system.
Ralston Family Farms in Arkansas, which is currently moving over to a fully regenerative rice-farming system, has been employing soil-improvement practices such as no-till planting for more than 15 years. “We’re doing it more from a standpoint of trying to control erosion, but also from an economic standpoint, because no-till planting does save fuel, time and labour,” explains Robin Ralston.
With healthier soil comes healthier (and likely more abundant and reliable) crops and ecosystems. For McCain, a global provider of potato-based goods, understanding the soil microbiome is an important aspect of its “Farms of the Future” test sites and of its goal of implementing regenerative practices across 100 per cent of its potato acreage by 2030.
“The functionality of soil [in farming] is really the next frontier”
Yves Leclerc, Director of Global Agriculture Sustainability at McCain Foods
“And through our research we're at the cusp of something quite big: to be able to understand not just the biodiversity of soils, but the functionality of soils – how they work and how we can use biology to build soil that’s suppressive of pests and diseases, for example.”
Water is life
Irrigation in conventional agriculture accounts for close to three-quarters (70 per cent) of water use worldwide
and when irrigation or more erratic heavy rainfall meets degraded soil, water can start slipping through the cracks. By improving soil you also improve its ability to absorb, store and cycle water. Research shows that when organic matter in multiple soil types increased from 0.5 to 3 per cent, the available water capacity of the soil more than doubled.
One way to look at saving water, or improving water quality as part of regenerative agriculture, is to consider local water sources as well as how water is taken up by crops. As part of its transition to regenerative agriculture, Ralston Family Farms uses water from the nearby Arkansas river to take pressure off dwindling local aquifers. It also deploys electronic water monitors to better understand how water is impacting its system.
One meta-analysis lays out five main idealised “promises” of the role of water in regen ag:
McCain is also exploring how regenerative potato farming could potentially improve the quality of local water sources.
“When we talk about regen ag, we're also thinking about the entire ecosystem services and what the benefit is for the farmer and for society in general”
Yves Leclerc
“There is also a cost to clean water, and we need to provide support at the grower level to be able to make sure that they’re following the right practices to prevent contamination of groundwater or surface water. It's always cheaper to prevent contamination at the source than having to treat it after.”
Boosting biodiversity
Biodiversity is at the heart of regenerative agriculture.
Intercropping (planting different crops next to or near each other) and integrating trees and other non-food plants can attract pollinators, deter pests and help feed and replenish local bird populations. All of this in turn can re-establish entire living ecosystems that are under threat.
The benefits of agricultural diversification
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Pollinators such as bees and other insects underpin our global food system, affecting 35 per cent of agricultural land and supporting almost 90 of the most valuable leading food crops. Economically (and ecologically) we need bees. Between $235bn and $577bn of annual global food production depends directly on contributions by pollinators. To that end, Rabobank, a multinational cooperative bank focused on food and agriculture, invested in BeeHero, a company working to boost on-farm pollination. BeeHero supports beekeepers by giving them access to smart hive sensors and other technologies; it also connects beekeepers with farmers who are seeking strong and healthy hives to maximise pollination.
For the Ralstons, shade from a new set of on-farm solar panels could be the perfect placement for hives and pollinator-attracting crops, as well as providing a potential place of respite for different breeds of local sheep. “As part of our partnership with Rabobank we are in the process of installing a solar farm adjacent to our rice mill,” says Robin Ralston. “We’re excited to experiment with planting strips of lavender between the arrays while adding beehives for pollinators."
Mapping and measuring
Measuring the impact of regenerative farming is an emerging science,
but guidance such as the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI)’s global framework for regenerative agriculture, as well as smart tools and technologies, are emerging to help farmers implement regenerative practices and better understand the existing level of biodiversity on their farm, and also how improving biodiversity can also help improve yields. In collaboration with the WWF and partners across the dairy value chain, Rabobank has developed the Biodiversity Monitor, which helps farmers in the Netherlands better understand how their activities affect on-farm biodiversity. Originally created for dairy farmers, the Biodiversity Monitor can now be applied to arable farming as well.
McCain is digging deep to better understand the impact of regenerative agriculture on biodiversity, especially soil biodiversity, and vice versa. “We're looking at biodiversity from a landscape level and trying to quantify the benefit,” says Leclerc. “But we’re also working with the University of Guelph with a technology called DNA barcoding that allows us to quantify the full biodiversity of soil – the bacteria, fungi, insects and mammals in the soil. It's a very strong technology that allows you to have a full understanding of what is present in terms of biodiversity.”
Through its Food and Agriculture Innovation Fund, Rabobank invested in EarthOptics, a soil measurement and mapping company that uses a combination of sensors and machine learning technology to help farmers – and their value-chain partners – make data-driven decisions via high-quality soil testing at dramatically reduced costs. The goal is to help farmers improve soil health while also allowing carbon-credit project developers to accurately baseline the carbon storage potential of millions of acres.
Explore other new technologies and approaches helping farmers become more sustainable and regenerative
Sowing the seeds for carbon farming
Improving soil quality has the potential to change our current climate trajectory.
Jacqueline McGlade, former Chief Scientist at the UN Environment Programme and former Executive Director of the European Environment Agency, suggests that farming practices which help store 1 per cent more carbon in about half of agricultural soils globally could capture 31 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide a year, almost enough to keep the world within the 1.5C heating target. These findings are supported by the Rodale Institute, a non-profit that has been examining organic agriculture since the 1940s. Its analysis indicates that more than 100 per cent of current annual CO2 emissions could be sequestered with a switch to regenerative organic agriculture.
Improving the carbon uptake of soil can also deliver an added economic bonus for farmers in the form of selling carbon credits. “Carbon farming” could be a triple win: for the planet, and for farmers and organisations seeking to offset their own emissions by purchasing high-quality carbon credits. However, questions over the efficacy of some nature-based carbon solutions – including carbon farming – have yet to be settled, particularly regarding how long carbon stays in the soil over long periods of time.
Becoming a regenerative carbon farmer in ways that are verifiable – and potentially attractive to investors – requires a certain level of technical and scientific expertise. For the Ralstons and their rice, carbon farming is on their radar, but they are first aiming to implement GHG and carbon measuring tools and set a baseline in partnership with the carbon verification organisation Regenified.
The age of abundance? Forming a future-proof food system
“We're in the process right now of trying to quantify the economic benefit of regen ag”
Yves Leclerc
Regenerative agriculture has huge potential in helping to solve deeply connected global challenges,
but achieving that will require partnership and collaboration between farmers, policymakers, businesses, scientists and financiers as well as proof that it is economically more favourable than conventional methods. Possibilities to scale regen ag already exist; the World Economic Forum estimates that business opportunities in “productive and regenerative agriculture” could reach $1.14tn by 2030. “We're in the process right now of trying to quantify the economic benefit of regen ag” says Leclerc. “It’s a work in progress, but as we implement those practices, we're actually seeing a positive impact on yield.”
“We're in the process right now of trying to quantify the economic benefit of regen ag”
Yves Leclerc
“Regenerative agriculture is very different from what we initially thought,” explains Robin Ralston. “Farmers have a basic knowledge of sustainability, but there's so much more to it. And the more you dive into it, the more confident you are and the more excited you get, and the more you can see that that long-term plan will come to fruition and know that the outcome will be better than what you're doing right now – ecologically and financially.”
But regenerative agriculture is not a silver bullet solution and still remains poorly defined, lacking a universally agreed impact measurement system.
Companies with regenerative agriculture initiatives and related financials
This can lead to unsubstantiated claims or greenwashing by agriculturally linked companies, which, according to a Rabobank report, are increasingly considering regenerative farming as a means to help meet global targets on the climate (Paris Agreement), nature (Global Biodiversity Framework) and sustainability (UN Sustainable Development Goals). Regen ag can also be expensive to implement, potentially requiring a new set of agricultural skills and knowledge; it takes time and may call for a new range of inputs and equipment.
Multiple studies show that among the biggest barriers to adopting new farming practices are finance and technical support. This is where banks can step in as partners and support farmers in their transition to regenerative agriculture. “We’re excited about our partnership with Rabobank,” adds Robin Ralston. “Especially as we take this new and beneficial journey to becoming an officially certified regenerative farm."
