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In recent years, there has been a growing interest in regenerative agriculture, a holistic approach to farming that seeks to restore and revitalize the land while improving crop yields and overall farm profitability. This means increased crop yields and reduced inputs like fertilizers and pesticides. What’s in It for Farmers?
Initially, farmers and corporations alike wade into the shallow end, implementing relatively simple and inexpensive techniques such as cover cropping and minimal tillage to optimize for soil health and carbon sequestration. In the deep end, outcomes are sought to benefit the farmers and stewards of whole landscapes themselves.
Poor soils can cut crop yields by up to 50 percent—which, if we’re not careful, could result in more soil being tilled to grow more crops, which degrades more soil, which pushes us closer to climate catastrophe. And that has direct impacts on our food supply and climate. We’re seeing the power of storytelling, too.
Who manages land determines which scientific perspectives, crop choices, traditions, and skills shape the landscape, with profound implications for its ecological sustainability. In cropping systems, it may include increasing structural diversity of the crops themselves, as by having cut and uncut strips of alfalfa.
In our farming systems, they play a key role in regenerative croprotations: breaking pest and weed cycles, fixing nitrogen in the soil and creating fertile ground for the crops that follow them. The most widely grown bean crop in the UK is the fava bean, with 188,000 hectares used for their cultivation in 2021.
Biointensive no-till farming systems endeavor to maximize on-farm biodiversity, minimize disturbance, maximize crop density, and sequester soil carbon. In the field, these principles can be implemented through practices such as intensive croprotations, polycultures, maintaining continuous ground cover, and applying compost.
Located in Rogersville, New Brunswick, her farm Ferme Terre Partagee currently operates as a coop based on common values and objectives including peasant agroecology and food sovereignty. Fifth generation farmer, Rébeka Frazer-Chiasson believes strongly in the practices of regenerative agriculture.
Collaborating with farmers, CIEL promotes natural agroecological practices such as croprotation, legume cultivation, and the use of beneficial insects, fungi, and organic manure instead of chemical additives.
Regenerative Agriculture and Nature-Based Solutions Coffee crops grow alongside other plants in what is known as an Agroforestry approach to farming. More than just an explicit set of production practices, this way of farming is known as “agroecology”, and refers to working with, rather than against, nature.
From losing seed crops as wildfires rage for weeks, losing entire crops due to erratic freezes, to losing farms as drought dries up available water, farmers’ risks are rising. Currently, CSP only offers SAPs for Resource Conserving CropRotations , Improved Resource Conserving CropRotations , and Advanced Grazing Management.
Regenerative agriculture can cover a vast array of approaches and systems but it is based around five principles: don’t disturb the soil; keep the soil surface covered; keep living roots in the soil; grow a diverse range of crops; and bring grazing animals back to the land. “If
Farmers need to have annual inspections to demonstrate delivery against those standards, ranging from controlled pesticide usage to croprotations and natural fertiliser usage. For products to be certified as organic, they must meet a series of standards that are set and audited by certification bodies (CBs).
xvi] Regenerative agriculture is key to flood resilience and prevention of the decimation of crop yields. xxxix] [xl] [xli] Including temporary leys in croprotations across the UK’s arable area could sequester c.2.2 Simulated country-scale adoption of reduced tillage, cover cropping, and ley-arable integration using RothC.
” Broadly speaking, regenerative agriculture improves soil health and carbon sequestration through diverse croprotations, animal grazing, limited tillage, and reduced (or eliminated) external inputs like fertilizer and pesticides. You should back away from this definition and call it agroecological or holistic.
As always, there was much to explore at the Conference with an array of workshops and deep dive sessions arguably dominating the more academic talks on topics like Trauma and the Land and The Interbeing of Agroecology not to dismiss those deeper discussions which are important to have, but perhaps practice is having a moment?
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