What is Regenerative Agriculture and How Can We Engage With It As Individuals?

What is Regenerative Agriculture?

Regenerative agriculture is one of our greatest hopes for human and planetary health, and the wonderful thing about it is that it honors so many climate solutions at the same time – indigenous wisdom, community, physical well-being and carbon capture. All from the notion that healthy, less disturbed soil can do its job feeding us while keeping carbon out of the atmosphere and in the ground where it can benefit rather than harm us. 

This version of agriculture takes a systems-based, holistic look at the land being farmed. It applies various, simple techniques with the goal of making the land more productive and more biodiverse over time. In most situations, improving soil health and function is also key to improving productivity.  You can grow more with less without needing  chemical input as we continue to discover the toxicity of pesticides in our food systems. One of the key components of healthy soil within the regenerative methodology is organic matter, which is anything that is alive or was once living:such as a plant root, an earthworm, or a microbe. You can think of this more holistically as compost, which we all need to get much better at creating from our food and garden waste! 

Why do we need to make the switch to regenerative agriculture? Well, due to the majority of human land management practices and our growing population, we are experiencing soil degradation and desertification at an alarming rate. Rich living soil has been turned into dysfunctional dirt. Drylands now cover about 46% of the earth’s surface, 9% of which are facing severe desertification. In the last 40 years, we have lost about 1/3 of our arable land (Kiss The Ground).

Conventional agriculture is defined by the USDA as the use of seeds that have been genetically altered using a variety of traditional breeding methods, excluding biotechnology, and are not organic certified. In reality, it’s much more destructive than this simple definition. 

Regenerative Agriculture looks to not only stop damaging our ecosystem but improve it, all while continuing to produce our food, fibers and other soil grown necessities. It focuses on improving soil health by moving carbon from our atmosphere back into our soils using a variety of agricultural management practices. These practices work in alignment with natural systems instead of against them. It’s a beautiful way of farming that’s also an incredible climate solution.

Our top 5 tips for engaging with regenerative agriculture:

Find your local organic farmer’s market.

This is always step one as shopping with your local farmers directly and as often as you can is one of the best ways you can support them. Many small scale farmers are engaging with regenerative methods and understand intrinsically that soil health is imperative for the most delicious, nutritious and beautiful produce. They may not all be able to afford certification so feel free to chat with them as they would likely love to tell you about their processes anyway. We know that shopping this way can be a bit more expensive, but we find if you switch a few meals to meat free / plant based it can compensate for the extra spend!

Start a small garden.

The amazing thing about gardening regeneratively is it can actually be less work than you might think. The principles of it are so rooted in  minimal intervention it stands to reason you may find this an easier way to grow full stop! With this sort of gardening, you should look into no till practices where you disturb the soil minimally, companion planting to help with natural pest management, and home-made compost which is an added layer of sustainable living we love! Our favorite resources for getting started this way are Charles Dowding, Poppy Okotcha, and Farmer’s Footprint’s Garden Club!

Try and discover stores near you that are selling organic, local and seasonal produce.

It’s wonderful to see that there seem to be more organic food stores opening.  Many of these places love to talk about what they are selling as they tend to work a lot more closely with their farmers / suppliers than huge super markets. Stores like LA Home Farm and Paradise Farms in Miami are amazing examples of small-scale retail that love working with regenerative practices.

(Below image source: Gardenista)

Plant a fruit tree.

Fruit trees are amazing sources of a regenerative cycle because they can grow food, improve soil health, and biodiversity . We suggest thinking about the zone you are planting in first, then to consider the fruit that you are consuming the most of when choosing a tree to select. For many people in hotter climates, citrus is amazing to start with as so many of us use it in our cooking! Our personal choice is a lemon tree as lemons are such a great source of interesting acid in plant based cooking. Check out our Lemon Cake recipe by Anna Jones!

Look for online platforms and brands that are selling regenerative products digitally.

If sourcing fresh produce or growing your own is difficult for you, don’t worry – there area lot of online shops that sell pantry staples, oils, preserved goods, etc. so you can start to work with these in your cooking and daily consumption. We love Flamingo Estate and Westbourne, for some great places to start exploring regenerative products!

Want to learn more? Here are some of our favorite documentaries to bring this all to life a bit more for you: Kiss the Ground, Common Ground, Feeding Tomorrow.

Listen to our podcast episode below with Camilla Marcus of west~bourne!