The use of heavy machinery, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides in intensive farming have all contributed to the deterioration of the soil's health, which is the primary focus of regenerative agriculture. Within the next half-century, there may not be enough soil left to grow food on to feed the entire world.

There is no way around the fact that regenerative agriculture requires a significant amount of labor. It is inspiring to see people working the land and the community that grows up around it. Yes, it is inspiring. The majority of the time, these individuals receive pay that is well below what would be considered a "livable wage," and their pay almost never includes benefits such as medical insurance, dental insurance, or retirement savings.

The process of constructing (or rebuilding) healthy soil is what's meant to be referred to when using the term "soil regeneration." The good news is that there are ways to reanimate dead soil and to sustainably nourish the ecosystem that lives beneath the surface, which may include plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, and other organisms.

Diversified farming systems are the practice of producing a variety of crops or animals, or both, on one farm, as opposed to specializing in a single commodity (monoculture). This refers to a set of methods and tools developed to produce food in a sustainable manner by leveraging ecological diversity at plot, field, and landscape scales. Monoculture refers to the practice of specializing in a single commodity. These locally customized management systems are supported by a variety of different cultures, customs, and governance structures all over the world. DFS depends on these factors. The benefits include a constant or increasing farm revenue, more efficient use of land; machinery, buildings, or labor, less need for work outside of the farm, and the production of a broader range of healthy crops that can be used for subsistence.

The world needs a paradigm shift in agriculture from a “green revolution to an ecological intensification approach. This implies a rapid and significant shift from conventional, monoculture-based, and high external input- dependent industrial production towards a mosaics of sustainably, regenerative production systems that also considerably improve the productivity of the small-scale farmers. We need to see a move from linear to holistic management, which recognizes that a farmer is not only a producer of food but also a manager of an agro-ecological system that provides quite several public goods and services”. Wake up before it's too late, UNCTAD report (2013b)

The primary sector – agriculture- is the basis of a thriving regenerative culture. Organic farming, biodynamic farming, sustainable agriculture, agroforestry, agro-ecology, permaculture, and regenerative agriculture are just some of the names describing related and complementary methodologies. Current industrial farming practices are uneconomical (if energy and fertilizer inputs are fully costed), they are destroying the quality and quantity of the earth's topsoil on which life depends. Despite a vast amount of disinformation – in large part based on research funded by chemical agribusiness- the misconception that local organic agriculture cannot feed the world is being eradicated (Halweil, 2006; FAO, 2015) From the start of agriculture until recently, humanity has fed itself via local, small-scale farms that employ organic techniques to maintain and improve soil health and agricultural yields. Even with the global population in rapid expansion over the last century, most of the food that feeds the world still comes from small-scale local farms and is grown by women (FAO, 2011).

The global slow food movement, founded by Carlo Petrini, aims to promote the production of good clean and fair food and to nurture healthy connections between local food and culture, politics, agriculture, and the environment Slow food catalyzed the creation of Terra Madre in which networks of producer cooperatives and food communities in 160 countries. This organization encourages youth to return to farming and helps people to stay in the countryside and works toward reducing food waste- a direct result of industrial farming that turns food into a commodity. Slow Food engages in education as a means of culture change promoting and supporting the small scale and the protection of common good. Many organizations have been promoting regenerative re- design of agriculture, the protection of heirloom seeds against corporate monocultures, and the creation of local food economies based on food including The International Society for Ecology and Culture, founded by Helena Norberg-Hodge and the Naydanya Network founded by Vandana Shiva.

The Synthesis Report of the UN ``Millennium Ecosystem Assessment” (2005) called agriculture the largest threat to biodiversity and ecosystem function of any single human activity. This stems from the “green revolution: large scale industrial agriculture with its addiction to fossil resources and its systematic degradation of local farming communities and biocultural diversity in favor of predatory multinational corporations has been a failure with disastrous effects.  Alternatives exist, The Soil Association in the UK started in 1946 and the Rodale Institute in 1947 both promote organic farming approaches. In 2014 Rodale published a report outlining how agricultural techniques available today could sequester atmospheric carbon to slow down climate change and reduce greenhouse gas in the long term by fixing carbon in agricultural soil.  Robert Rodale coined the term “regenerative organic agriculture” to indicate that these practices are more than simply sustainable, taking advantage of the natural tendencies of ecosystems to regenerate when disturbed. Regenerative organic agriculture is a “holistic systems approach that encourages continual on-farm innovation for environmental, social, economic, and spiritual well being marked by tendencies towards closed nutrient loops, greater diversity in the biological community and greater reliance on internal rather than external resources.  (Rodale Institute 2014)

The world bank has released a report which reviews the different abatement rates of different land management practices and how effective they are in different regions of the world which states, in addition to storing soil carbon sustainable land management techniques can be beneficial to farmers because they can increase yields and reduce production costs. One of these methods includes the use of biochar. (World Bank, 2012: xxi) Biochar can be obtained by pyrolysis or gasification. The International Biochar Initiative maintains- “the carbon in biochar resists degradation and can hold carbon in soils for hundreds to thousands of years”.  It needs to be applied in combination with organic nutrients (such as compost, vermicompost, liquids or teas). Biochar and bioenergy co-production can help combat global climate change by displacing fossil fuel used by sequestering carbon in stable carbon pools (Biochar International 2015). These techniques help restore soils, revitalize communities, build food, water, and energy sovereignty, and support the process of re-localizing production and consumption- thereby building systemic resilience as the basis of thriving regenerative cultures. In the 1960’s biologist Allen Savoy developed holistic planned grazing and holistic management which is a whole farm/ranch planning system. In the last 40 years more than 10,000 people have received training in holistic management and globally over 40 million acres are managed using this system (Savory Institute, 2014). In a 2013 white paper the institute suggested that that holistic planned grazing could be applied to 5 billion hectares of the worlds degraded grassland soils in order to restore them and sequester more than 10 gigatons of atmospheric carbon annually into the soil’s organic matter, lowering greenhouse gas concentrations to pre-industrial levels in a few decades. Holistic management is an example of biomimicry at the ecosystems level because it influences natural ecosystem processes to support the conversion of solar energy by plants, improve the interception and retention of rain by the soil, optimize nutrient cycles and promote biodiversity otherwise known as community dynamics.

Regeneration means promoting diversity and resilience above and below ground, restoring watersheds and replenishing aquifers. Regenerative agriculture nurtures symbiotic inter and intra relationships to support systemic health. It is an example of salutogenic (health- generating design). The dynamics of healthy ecosystems are the measure, model and mentor of regenerative agriculture, which promises to feed humanity while restoring ecosystems, regulating climate and growing the resource base of regional bio-economies.

“Making soil health a central goal of agriculture policies worldwide will be essential for achieving global food and water security and mitigating climate change”. (Center for Food Safety 2014:19)

Since the very beginnings of large-scale industrial agriculture there have been wise voices of warning and dissent, along with innovators and pioneers seeking healthy alternatives. The petrochemical industry promoted the use of pesticides and large-scale monocultures farmed with heavy machinery after the second world war. During the “green revolution” in the 1960’s a few multinational corporations took over most of the global grain production. Soil became nothing but a substrate and the rapid degradation of the world’s farms and grasslands resulted. Wes Jackson co-founded The Land Institute in 1976 to work on the problem of agriculture and to help to develop a system with the ecological stability of prairie grains comparable to that from annual crops taking a biomimetic approach. The Land Institutes mission states “When People, land and community are as one, all three members prosper; when they relate not as members but as competing interests, all three are exploited”. The institute seeks to develop an agriculture that will save soil from being lost or poisoned, while promoting a community life at once prosperous and enduring (Land Institute; 2015a). The institute's extensive plant breeding programs vision is to create grasses and legumes and sunflowers. A quote from the land institute is “If your life’s work can be accomplished in a lifetime, you are not thinking big enough”. A regenerative culture needs such long-term thinking.

Regenerative agriculture pays attention to improving soil quality. The diversity of microorganisms and fungal mycelia in the soil is the basis for a regenerative farming system. Plants need the microorganisms and fungi in the soil to take up nutrients effectively. Nitrogen fixing plants used as green manure are not fixing the nitrogen themselves but do so in a symbiosis with bacteria (e.g., Rhizobium) living on their roots. Industrial farming seems to reduce the diversity of nutrients that support healthy and resilient plants to only macro nutrients which supports fast growth and high yields, but without a wide variety of complimentary nutrients they leave the plants more vulnerable to disease and parasites. With modern industrial agriculture plowing and turning the soil with heavy equipment can compact the soil leaving it bare and with massive die off of beneficial microorganisms in the soil and can also lead to top-soil loss through wind or water erosion. Compacting the soil destroys the soil’s retention capacity and makes crops vulnerable to droughts. There are techniques such as key line plowing developed by Percival Yeomans in the 1950” where plowing is done just off the topographic contour lines with a gradual slope to create a surface profile that slows water run-off and gives water time to sink into the soil. Thin grooves can be cut at different depths and are used to inoculate the soil with liquid teas and biochar for soil building. Maintaining a healthy bacteria and fungal flora and fauna in the soil increases the soil’s carbon content which in turn increases water retention. Regenerative agriculture aims to optimize the local water cycle, including recharging underground aquifers and watersheds. This becomes a means to restore degraded dry lands and even desserts. In 1992 Australian farmers Colin and Nicholas Seis used a technique they call pasture farming on their 2,000-acre farm. Cereal crops are sown directly into the native perennial pastures, combining grazing, and cropping into a single land-use method with synergistic and environmental benefits. Today over 1,500 Australian farmers use this technique. Another important technique is the use of biofertilizers which can even be made on the farm to avoid expensive artificial fertilizers. This technique uses compost and mineral rock dusts for re- mineralization. Bill Mollison and David Holmgren developed permaculture in the 1970”. This systemic, design-based method was originally aimed at creating a permanent agriculture but since has been expanded into a multi-faceted approach to creating a permanent culture with applications in social dynamics, community planning and economics. Worldwide there are tens of thousands of people trained in permaculture and thousands of established permaculture farms. Forest gardening is a prehistoric method of food production in many tropical areas. Patrick Whitefield and Martin Crawford, who run the Agroforestry Research Trust. This whole-systems approach to silviculture minimizes external inputs, such as agrochemical and fossil fuels instead fostering ecological function for resilience and productivity. Agroecology, as promoted by Miguel Altieri (1995) in Latin America, is also very much aligned with the shift towards regenerative agriculture. Another aspect of regenerative agriculture is the creation of mycorrhizal symbiosis and soil remediation from pollutants. “Soil is ecological currency, If we overspend it , the environment goes bankrupt”. (Paul Stemets (2005:55) John Liu is a filmmaker and research fellow at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and has documented several successful large scale regeneration projects in China, Ethiopia, Uganda and Latin America and he concludes “From what I have seen, the determining factors for survival and sustainability on the Earth are biodiversity, biomass and accumulation of organic matter”.

Regenerative agriculture is a growing practice of ecological intensification based on integrated food production systems that mimic natural ecosystems and maintain diversity and resilience by weaving the raising of animals, the growing of grains, horticulture, orchards turned into forest gardens, aquaculture ponds, and mushroom cultivation into highly productive agro-ecosystems that not only feed humanity, but maintain the health and diversity of the biotic community of Earth. In Urban environments we are seeing the evolution of edible parks and sidewalks, green walls, vertical farming (Despommier, 2011), urban forestry (Clark et al., 1997) and urban community gardens among other urban agriculture initiatives. Wild lands, cities and farmland ecosystems can be both repositories and sanctuaries for the world’s diversity of fauna and flora. In the challenge to redesign our entire material culture and wean ourselves off our current dependencies on fossil fuels and resources from the earth's crust, regenerative agriculture will provide regenerative resource streams that will be the basis of vibrant circular bio-economies locally, regionally, and globally. By regenerating ecosystems functions at a local and planetary scale we are aiming to co-evolve with life as our larger community- recognizing both the utilitarian and intrinsic value of all life. Humanity is coming of age and becoming a conscious and responsible member of the community of life.

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