Pathways to Regenerative Agriculture

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) invite you to watch a briefing that was held on regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture, or farming in sync with the local environment and climate, produces multiple economic, climate, and societal benefits. Examples of these practices include reducing or eliminating synthetic pesticide and fertilizer use and soil tillage. The briefing featured findings from NRDC’s new report, Regenerative Agriculture: Farm Policy for the 21st Century, which was informed by conversations with farmers and ranchers from 47 states and Washington, D.C.

As Congress begins to craft the 2023 Farm Bill, the briefing covered how federal policies can incentivize and invest in regenerative agriculture, including by making reforms to scale up regenerative agriculture stewardship, supporting the next generation of farmers and ranchers, and funding regenerative agriculture research and education programs. Panelists described how these steps can lead to a more resilient and productive agricultural system.

To learn more about NRDC’s report directly from the farmers involved, view the short video “What is Regenerative Agriculture?” and read the blog post “NRDC Report: Pathways to Regenerative Agriculture.” EESI’s current article series on climate and agriculture also dives into key sustainable agriculture practices, including cover crops, agroforestry, no-till farming, and rotational livestock grazing.

 

Highlights

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Regenerative agriculture is the land management philosophy of growing in harmony with nature. Regenerative agriculture is rooted in Indigenous wisdom. Biodiversity and regenerative agriculture go together. Regenerative agriculture supports the biodiversity of crops that are place- and regionally-based. Indigenous peoples protect 80 percent of global biodiversity on 25 percent of the planet’s land with less than five percent of the global population. Regenerative agriculture looks different across geographic locations. Many growers use common practices, including cover cropping, no-till or low-till soil practices, crop diversification, using perennial crops to build organic matter in the soil, agroforestry, crop rotations, and rotational grazing. The Natural Resources Defense Council’s report, Regenerative Agriculture: Farm Policy for the 21st Century, outlines four major pathways for policy change to support and scale up regenerative agriculture practices: leveling the federal investment playing field; investing in robust support for farmers, ranchers, and Indigenous growers; regionalizing and decentralizing the food infrastructure system; and funding regenerative agriculture research and extensions. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP) is a trusted safety net program with established acceptance and widespread use across the farming community. It covers 90 percent of U.S. cropland. However, FCIP favors farms that degrade soil health by incentivizing farmers to increase yield and revenue and unintentionally deprioritizes risk-mitigating actions (many of which are central to regenerative agriculture). Shifting farm subsidies and updating FCIP so that these programs encourage soil health and reward growers for adopting a non-extractive mindset will help encourage regenerative farming. Regenerative agriculture will be more resilient to the impacts of climate change than conventional agriculture, although there will still be challenges.

 

Senator Jon Tester (D-Mont.)

• Regenerative agriculture is a critical piece of the future of agriculture. It will help improve soil quality, increase climate resilience, and boost crop quality, which are all boons to producers.
• The effects of the climate crisis, like droughts and warming temperatures, are already affecting growers and rural communities. Although U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) disaster relief resources can alleviate some challenges for farmers, regenerative agriculture will help combat the underlying cause of farming disasters.

 

Arohi Sharma, Deputy Director of Regenerative Agriculture, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)

• The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is an international environmental nonprofit that works to preserve natural resources, people, and communities. NRDC recently released a report on regenerative agriculture, Regenerative Agriculture: Farm Policy for the 21st Century, in which they compiled information from interviews conducted with 113 farmers and ranchers in 47 states and Washington, D.C.
• Regenerative agriculture is rooted in Indigenous wisdom. Tribal communities have managed lands regeneratively for millennia, and a growing number of farmers and ranchers are leaning on Indigenous knowledge to learn how to grow healthy food, fight climate change, and build resilience.
• Regenerative agriculture is the land management philosophy of growing in harmony with nature. There are five goals of regenerative agriculture: nurturing on-farm relationships; understanding local, social, and environmental contexts; prioritizing soil health; reducing reliance on synthetic inputs; and nurturing off-farm relationships. These goals build on and connect to one another.
• Nurturing relationships within and around the land includes nurturing relationships between humans, land, water, pollinators, predators, pests, microbes, and other components of the local microenvironment. This is the crux of regenerative agriculture: growers foster and protect relationships wherever and however they can.
• Regenerative agriculture relies on farmers and ranchers understanding their local social and environmental context. Growers must learn about their unique farm landscape, any naturally available resources, and their neighboring ecosystem to inform their on-farm practices. For example, farmers next to a river might plant trees or hedgerows near the river to provide shade and prevent soil erosion. Meanwhile, farmers who notice a coming drought will transition to planting crops that are not as water-intensive.
• Prioritizing soil health is at the heart of a healthy food system. Keeping soil healthy protects biological structures, bacteria, and fungi in the soil to boost plant health and food nutrition levels. Farmers practicing regenerative agriculture limit mechanical soil disturbances on their land.
• Regenerative agriculture farmers work to reduce reliance on synthetic inputs, like herbicides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers, to protect ecosystems. After farmers prioritize soil health, many of them find that they require less chemical use. A decrease in synthetic inputs also increases beneficial insect populations and natural predators of pest insects.
• Relationships in regenerative agriculture include relationships with coworkers, history, consumers, and farmers themselves with their communities. Consumers visit farms, growers engage in community days, and growers pay their workers a living wage.
• Because regenerative agriculture is a management philosophy, it looks different across the country. There are dozens of different practices used by farmers, and the most successful growers used a multitude of practices simultaneously to continuously improve the land.
• Regenerative agriculture improves the mental health of growers. Growers feel empowered to work with the land and their animals, and they are happy to make management decisions based on what they see and feel on the land rather than what they are told to do.
• There are four major pathways for policy to support and scale up regenerative agriculture practices as described in NRDC’s one-page summary of Farm Bill recommendations:
  • Level the federal investment playing field and invest in regenerative solutions;
  • Invest in decentralized food systems infrastructure;
  • Support farmers and ranchers; and
  • Fund regenerative agriculture research and extension.
• Research and extension resources—including land grant colleges, extension services, conservation districts, and other USDA programs—provide technical resources to growers across the country. These resources are necessary for disseminating information to growers about grant programs or changes to guidelines. The resources also connect scientists with growers, support trials and experiments of management techniques, and organize field days for growers to connect with each other.
• These resources need to better support regenerative agriculture. At present, a lack of information poses challenges for growers aiming to practice regenerative agriculture, especially in specific microclimates and environments. It is essential to provide consistent, stable, and adequate funding for technical resources and meet growers where they are.
• Regenerative growers are innovative and curious. On-farm research and experimentation is a key part of regenerative agriculture. The USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program and the Soil Health Demonstration Trials established in the 2018 Farm Bill (P.L. 115-334) are two programs that encourage farm research.

 

Dr. Michael Kotutwa Johnson, Assistant Specialist, Indigenous Resilience Center, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona; Member of the Hopi Nation

• Regenerative agriculture is not new to Indigenous peoples. The practice goes back 3,000 years. Indigenous regenerative agriculture is the process of incorporating place-based ways of knowing supported by culture, belief systems, and environmentally-derived survival schemes over millennia.
• Indigenous peoples protect 80 percent of global biodiversity on 25 percent of the planet’s land with less than five percent of the global population. Biodiversity and regenerative agriculture go together. Regenerative agriculture supports the biodiversity of crops that are place- and regionally-based. This biodiversity allows the crops to survive. Indigenous farming is not a monocrop practice, but one that fits the environment. Many Indigenous crops are also adapted to drought.
• Regenerative agriculture supports human well-being. Having the opportunity for growers to work with their hands and with the environment improves mental health outcomes.
• Legislative and financial recommendations to support regenerative agriculture include:
  • Enforce existing legislation. Although the American Indian Agricultural Resource Management Act and the alternative funding arrangements section in the 2018 Farm Bill provide practical and financial resources to Indigenous farmers on paper, neither has been put into practice. These pieces of legislation would allow Indigenous farmers to incorporate traditional knowledge into their farming practices and make their own decisions about their land.
  • Support locally-led small farms and regenerative agriculture initiatives. Currently, farmers face a three- to five-year window to switch to regenerative farming practices, which presents a financial burden.
  • Fund initiatives geared towards agriculture-related infrastructure, as outlined in the Native American Agriculture Fund’s Reimagining Native Food Economies report.
  • Support funding for the Federally-Recognized Tribes Extension Program.
  • Aid the development of permanently funded regionally- or nationally- based Indigenous policy and technical centers.
  • Use the word ‘tribes’ in federal natural resource legislation so that tribes explicitly receive funding.
• The Native Farm Bill Coalition also has several recommendations for the 2023 Farm Bill.

 

Kris Reynolds, Midwest Regional Director, American Farmland Trust (AFT); Farmer

• AFT is a national nonprofit that aims to protect farm and ranch land, promote sound farming practices, and keep farmers on the land.
• Using cover crops and no-till field practices can reduce soil erosion and chemical agents. The drought resilience of soil also improves with these practices, and given the increase in extreme weather and drought with the climate crisis, it is more important than ever to invest in soil health practices.
• Co-benefits of cover crops and no-till practices include soil temperature and moisture regulation, winter and early-season weed suppression, improved soil structure, reduced soil loss, increased biodiversity, and an increase in nutrient capture and availability.
• An example of a state program that drives additional conservation practice adoption across the landscape is the Fall Covers for Spring Savings program, in which Illinois farmers can receive a five dollar per acre discount for planting cover crops. This program is intended to provide support while more access to regenerative agriculture is created.
• The Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP) is managed by the USDA’s Risk Management Agency and is a trusted safety net program with established acceptance and widespread use across the farming community. FCIP provides market-based risk management tools to strengthen the economic stability of agricultural producers and rural communities. FCIP helps stabilize farms by paying off short-term operating loans, and it maintains the agriculture financial services industry. Farms enrolled in crop insurance survive seven years longer than farms not enrolled in crop insurance, and FCIP reduced the probability of farm exit by 70 percent.
• However, FCIP incentivizes farmers to increase yield and revenue, as the value of the insured crop is a major factor in determining insurance costs and benefits. This unintentionally deprioritizes risk-mitigating actions, and farmers are encouraged to mitigate short-term financial risk at the expense of long-term production risk.
• Active risk management understands how human management systems interact with natural systems and aims to reduce potential for disasters. In the context of regenerative agriculture, prolonged heavy tillage results in soil erosion, limits water-holding capacity, and reduces biodiversity and nutrient availability, which results in flooding and low soil fertility.
• Climate change will make crops harder to manage without mitigating actions. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) predicts a 24 percent yield reduction in the next 10 years for corn, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) predicts lower yields for all major commodities as well as increases in commodity prices and federal crop insurance costs.
• Increasing temperatures could have been responsible for 19 percent of all crop insurance losses from 1997 to 2017.
• The FCIP needs to have stronger pathways towards regenerative agriculture within the program. Climate-smart practices can protect farm incomes and increase on-farm resilience. Promoting intra-agency cooperation within the USDA, utilizing existing regenerative tools, and adding additional premium discounts towards cover cropping can help incentivize farmers to use regenerative practices.
• The Pandemic Cover Crop Program was offered by USDA in 2021 and 2022. This program, which provided a five dollar per acre discount on crop insurance for farmers using cover crops, enrolled 12.2 million acres across the mainland United States, and government spending totaled $59.4 million.
• The Conservation Opportunity and Voluntary Environment Resilience Program Act (COVER Act), which is pending introduction, would create the Good Stewards Cover Crop Program, extend the $5 per acre premium subsidy established by the Pandemic Cover Crop Program to provide a cover crop financial safety net, extend technical assistance for outreach efforts, and create a soil health pilot program.

 

Brittany Masters, Founder, Roam Free Ranch

• The food systems industry can and must do better than what it currently offers. Growers should strive towards animal agriculture that prioritizes animal welfare, restores human health through nutrient-dense products, and repairs U.S. grasslands through regenerative management.
• Currently, the food system and infrastructure are built to benefit large, multinational corporations that control the industry. Four large corporations control 80 percent of the industry. Livestock animals are often shipped to the corn belt for finishing and processing, regardless of where in the country they were born. This centralized hub of processing transfers power to corporations rather than rural communities.
• Roam Free operates outside the larger animal agriculture system. The ranch processes animals only once per year, and they have to drive 16 hours to bring the animals to a small-scale processing plant. Slaughter costs are four times more than what larger competitors pay. Meat is frozen and used throughout the year.
• At the value-added stage, local processing places are pushing out smaller brands to make space for large corporation orders.
• Investments are needed in regional infrastructure to decentralize the food system and give value back to producers who stay on the land. Roam Free is in the process of developing a mobile processing unit to be efficient, sustainable, and safe.
• Investments are also needed in affordable financing for small ranchers. Providing consultations about regulatory processes and paperwork will help overcome barriers that prevent small ranchers from becoming more decentralized.
• Extractive industrial agriculture is responsible for depleting 24 billion metric tonnes of topsoil each year. The American grasslands used to be the most diverse agricultural space, but extractive agriculture has depleted their biodiversity and soil fertility. If agricultural practices do not change, we will eventually run out of topsoil. Regenerative agriculture is the solution: it builds topsoil, increases biodiversity, adds resilience, strengthens rural America, and offers an abundant, rich ecosystem that nourishes the community.

 

Q&A

 

Q: What steps are needed to “mainstream” regenerative agriculture?

Sharma

• NRDC’s report delves into policies that can make regenerative agriculture the norm. There are four buckets of reform: leveling the federal investment playing field; investing in robust support for farmers, ranchers, and Indigenous growers; regionalizing and decentralizing the food infrastructure system; and funding regenerative agriculture research and extensions. Infrastructure and policy decisions can help bring more acres under regenerative management.
• Regenerative agriculture is not hypothetical. Growers across the country are using regenerative management processes already. Highlighting the leaders of the regenerative movement in every state, sourcing their ideas on engaging with consumers and policymakers, and bringing in Indigenous and other underserved communities will help mainstream regenerative agriculture.

Johnson

• The food system economy, as it currently stands, incentivizes efficiency and quantity of crops, which means growers use inputs that are cheap but not environmentally friendly. Quality over quantity improves both environmental health and human health––the nutrient value of crops increases with soil health, and grass-fed cattle are more nutrient-dense than lot-fed cattle. Decentralizing food processing systems would help mainstream regenerative agriculture as well, and several tribes are working to develop mobile processing and train people to be USDA inspectors.

Reynolds

• Every farmer grows in a different place, following different practices. There are many improvements that individuals need to make, even those who are already following regenerative practices. For regenerative agriculture to become mainstream, policymakers must recognize that farmers want to do better but often do not have the local technical or financial resources to adopt those practices.

Masters

• Regenerative products are more expensive, and consumers are not paid more to buy regenerative agriculture products. Products need to be price competitive if they want to be mainstream, and when local processing costs four times more than extractive processing, that becomes difficult.
• The Farm Bill focuses largely on calories rather than nutrient density. However, if food is full of calories but devoid of nutrients because of a lack of biodiversity and microorganisms, people’s health will still not improve.

 

Q: Which regenerative agriculture practices are commonly used? Do we have an estimate of how many farmers are following regenerative farming practices?

Sharma

• Regenerative agriculture looks different across geographic locations. However, many growers use common practices that address all five goals of regenerative agriculture at once. These include cover cropping, no-till or low-till soil practices, crop diversification, using perennial crops to build organic matter in the soil, agroforestry, and crop rotations.

Masters

• In animal agriculture, the most common practice in Montana is rotational grazing, which is the practice of grazing animals down a pasture and then letting the pasture rest for at least twelve months. Before ranchers engage in other regenerative practices, they must solidify their pasture arrangements, because pasture practices will dictate water resources and planting schedules.

Reynolds

• Having plants growing on the soil for the majority of the year is essential for soil, crop, and livestock help. Another important consideration is planting diverse crop rotations on the land.

Johnson

• Hopi farming and regenerative agriculture is place- and faith-based; Hopi cornfields do not translate to Iowa cornfields in terms of aiming to make a profit.
• For Indigenous peoples, regenerative agriculture fundamentally relates to cultural survival, which has allowed traditional farming to survive for thousands of years.

Sharma

• The USDA does a Census of Agriculture every five years, which captures some data on cover crops, conservation, and no-till. However, there is improvement to be made on what kinds of questions are asked to determine how many growers are using regenerative practices.

 

Q: In what ways does federal farm policy currently encourage regenerative agriculture and in what ways does it discourage regenerative agriculture?

Reynolds

• Something that could be improved is to prioritize soil health and regenerative planning. There is a lot of focus on regenerative practices themselves, but providing farmers with technical and financial assistance and incentives to start a regenerative agriculture or soil health journey will encourage large-scale regenerative farming.
• Local-led approaches are essential. Every watershed, county, and community is different and needs to be approached within its local social and environmental context. This makes local, individualized support crucial to the success of regenerative farmers.

Johnson

• Government subsidies reach large farms more than small farms. Smaller farmers wanting to switch to regenerative agriculture face a three- to five-year funding gap, which serves as a large financial barrier.
• Being active consumers and buying regenerative products when possible will provide an economic incentive for farmers to switch to regenerative practices.
• Understanding the basic principles underpinning regenerative agriculture is necessary to shift food systems and view plants beyond their commodity value. This education can also reach young people and encourage them to engage in the farming process and incentivize holistic agriculture management.

Masters

• Engaging youth in regenerative agriculture is important: the average rancher is sixty-five years old with no intention of passing their land on to the next generation.
• Another barrier is access to secure land. Farmers may hesitate to invest in their land because they are unsure whether that land will stay in their possession. Transferring retired lands in government possession or incentivizing wealthy landowners to give subsidized leases to beginning farmers or ranchers could help reduce the financial barriers they face as they look to acquire land.

Sharma

• The Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP) subsidy regime favors farms that degrade soil health. FCIP covers 90 percent of U.S. cropland, and it has enormous potential and influence over agricultural landscape and policy. Shifting farm subsidies and FCIP so that these programs encourage soil health and reward growers for adopting a non-extractive mindset will help encourage regenerative farming.

 

Q: How will climate impacts impact regenerative agriculture differently than industrial agriculture?

Johnson

• The climate crisis will affect regenerative agriculture less if—and only if—its crops are biodiverse. Farming practices and food systems in the past 50 years have encouraged monocrops. Meanwhile, Hopi agriculture is inherently biodiverse, with different varieties of corn that come up at different times each year. High biodiversity and Hopi cultural knowledge can help inform farmers of coming droughts.

Reynolds

• Regenerative agriculture will be more resilient than conventional agriculture, although there will still be challenges. The weather extremes from the climate crisis have already led to fewer favorable planting days and changes in the season, which makes it challenging to plant multiple rounds of crops in a year. Farmers will continue to have to adapt to these challenges, and crop diversification will be an important solution. Markets for biodiverse large-scale crops must be incentivized.

Masters

• There have been terrible droughts in the West in the past few years, and although Roam Free is building more forage every year, there have been downstream impacts. As ranchers sought to slaughter animals they would otherwise have lost to drought, slaughterhouses and processing plants faced high demand for their services, raising costs. And, because ranchers had to slaughter replacement livestock, there is now a shortage of livestock on the market, which also raises costs. Although Roam Free is regenerative, the ripple effects of climate change still affect the farm.

Sharma

• Healthy soil is an insurance policy against risk and climate change; it holds onto more water than unhealthy soil, and water retention is a direct measure of resilience for extreme weather and drought events.
• Crop diversification is also important to mitigate the risk from climate change. By adopting crop diversity and stacking enterprises, farms are better able to withstand market volatility.

 

Q: How can we develop markets for products that come out of regenerative agriculture?

Masters

• Roam Free’s product works together with the ranch. When the ranch has a customer-facing product and a brand, ranchers have more ability to support the ranch itself. Entities that are closest to the customer are those that receive the most value from the value stream. Traditionally, it has been branded products or multinational corporations that hold shelf space, but now technologies have given small farmers access to the market. Ranchers are able to extract more value from the animals they raise.

Johnson

• Stories about how products are developed will help add value to regenerative products and increase publicity. An example of this is buffalo products that tell stories about how the animal was raised, what it looked like, and how the animal lived.
• Small markets with non-extractive choices also need to be made accessible to marginalized communities, otherwise the limitations of the supply chain still retain control over regenerative product availability and viability.

Reynolds

• There are millions of acres of commodity crops being grown. While farmers are trying to build on consumer demand, there are many acres available that could undergo crop diversification.

Sharma

• Eating is fundamentally an agricultural act, and consumer food choices can help change the agricultural systems. There must be a call to action from the grass-tops level and grassroots level. Policymakers need to implement changes in procurement policies and guidelines, and producers can tell stories to connect consumers to their food. Consumers can also vote loudly with their dollars based on what they purchase.

 

Compiled by Nathan Lee and edited for clarity and length. This is not a transcript.