This blog aims at contributing to the clarification around the concept of Regenerative Agriculture. A precise definition is not my objective, but rather to contextualize how multiple aspects fit together. In particular, I propose how normative outcomes, principles, decision making, practices, and monitoring, may fit together. This blog starts with by reviewing the challenges of the organic movement’s use of process-based standards, and the multiple considerations proposed by other authors.
Regenerative Agriculture in a historic context
Regenerative Agriculture is a term that recently added to an increasingly long list of “positive” agricultural approaches: Organic, sustainable, conservation agriculture, natural, agroecological, and indigenous methods have already created a confusing mess that few non-experts can comprehend. So why another term?
Two purposes of Regenerative Agriculture
From my perspective, the main purpose had been to overcome shortcomings of existing concepts for the long-standing goal of curbing agriculture’s negative impacts on planet and human health. Today, agricultural land use has converted vast patches of ecosystems into monocultures, degraded soils globally, undermined watershed functions (the protection from flooding and drought, the provision of clean water). In fact, soil is degraded, eroded, turning to dust – at dramatic speed. According to United Nations experts, humankind only has around 55 harvests left. “Business as usual is no longer an option” if our species is to survive this century (FAO 2017). “Sustaining” the status quo is inadequate, so experts call for the need to “regenerate” ecosystem functions, soil, watershed functions, and habitat. At the same time, human health is globally degrading due to dietary diseases ([1],[2]). High-income countries score poorly on “health-sensitive nutrient-intake” ([3]), indicating how the status quo also fails consumers/eaters.
The second aspect is that previous market distinctions for “good” agricultural production have been co-opted by those benefiting from the status quo, such that their original intent was undermined. For example, the Organic agriculture movement started as an initiative to bring holism back into agricultural production – in the same way that RegenAg does now.
Similar challenges in the organic sector
In the 1920s, Rudolf Steiner envisioned a “mixed farm” as a complex organism with feedback loops, (almost) circular nutrient cycles, in a way that allows for mutually beneficial coexistence of nature, farm animals, and human beings. The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) later pronounced the four organic principles of health, care, fairness, and ecology. However, there was no agreement who can legitimately claim to sell “organic” products. During the 80s, a plethora of competing organic standards and labels emerged that left consumers/eaters confused and opened up backdoors for meaningless claims. During the 90s, government regulations established broader organic standards – aimed to (1) establish a minimum threshold for the organic claim, and (2) allow the wide adoption of this ‘sustainable’ practice by large-scale producers. Organic standards are lists of do’s and don’ts – checklists of what practices must be implemented and what practices are prohibited. Unfortunately, these “checklist of practices” were insufficient to guarantee the originally intended outcomes, which undermined the early purpose for instigating organic agriculture: the mutually beneficial co-existence of nature and humans. Instead, agricultural companies started to minimize costs and maximize profits while meeting organic regulations and ‘checklist standards’, and the organic label morphed into consumer protection from pesticides while losing its holism. Especially the larger organic producers that supply large retail chains no longer hold any claim of holism or beneficial co-existence with nature. Industrial Organic was born from the process-based certification, and large-scale “certified organic” production continues to degenerate ecosystem functions while meeting certification requirements.
The organic movement struggles with this evolution. Today, leading organic experts are calling for Organic 3.0, a re-invention of the organic brand. This new approach should be open to large-scale producers operating within the gigantic food chains, while maintaining the deep ecological foundation of organic innovators. Unfortunately, power relationships within the sector are skewed: a few very large operations supply most the organic products in supermarkets and are subject to the mechanics of profit maximization above ecological values, while the vast majority of certified organic farmers are small, produce less volumes, and live up to the original ideal of fair labor relationships or co-existence with nature. Hence, production realities and majority perceptions within the movement have parted: the majority of organic farmers feel they are doing things right – yet the majority of organically cropped land is degrading due to excessive tillage and other goal conflicts.
In Europe, farmers have addressed the issue of large-scale organic production realities, enabled by weak government standards, by maintaining older private certification systems with more stringent process requirements (e.g. Bioland, BioSwiss, Demeter, Naturland). Similar shifts to a multi-tier certification and standard system have recently emerged in North America, partly inspired by the regenerative movement (“Real Organic”, Rodale’s “Regenerative Organic Certification”). Yet, all organic certification programs continue to be process-based and do not corroborate ecological outcomes.
Selected other approaches
In parallel, agroecological methods have arisen from the need of small farmers to produce more food with less inputs. Farmers learned to mimic nature and ecosystem relationships, utilize natural predator-prey relationships to fight pests, foster plant immunity by maintaining ecological relationships between plants, fungi, and animals. Agroecology later evolved into an academic research discipline, into a global social movement – it is now a practice, a research paradigm, and a movement. Indigenous people have practiced agroecological methods for millennia, embedded in a perception of the spiritual world and a holistic understanding of ecosystems with humans as part of these. Furthermore, industrial farming has also adapted a number of “less destructive” practices like no-till GMO agriculture, sustainable agriculture, or conservation agriculture.
Defining Regenerative Agriculture
The term Regenerative Agriculture mainly emerged in industrialized Northern countries, where farmers saw the weaknesses of the regulated organic certification, and faced political/ideological resistance against terms like “sustainable”, “conservation”, and “Agroecology”. Regenerative Agriculture opened up a new pathway of engaging with farmers and consumers alike, without letting itself tie down to specific checklists or practices. This vagueness is both strength and weakness, and only the future will tell whether the term can sustain the deeper aspirations of its core proponents.
Review of academic literature
A paper published in October 2020 reviewed the use of the term “regenerative agriculture” within science and among practitioners ([4]). Academics and practitioners alike are ambiguous in their use of outcomes and prescriptive process-based lists, and “highlight the range of choices that decision-makers might consider when engaging with ideas and policies around regenerative agriculture”. This paper compares a number of process-based approaches that define specific practices, outcome-based approaches that set goals of varying complexity, as well as mixed approaches. Ultimately, the authors point out that their review cannot shed light on ”why or how those definitions have variously emerged, diverged, or gained traction”. These are normative questions that still remain unanswered.
Terra Genesis’ unifying approach
An unifying attempt to elucidate RegenAg is the Terra Genesis white paper from 2016 ([5]). Authors caution against “over-simplifying, banalizing, or fragmenting Regenerative Agriculture, instead of engaging with it as a whole and viable discipline”. They propose four principles of regeneration:
- Principle 1: Progressively improve whole agro-ecosystems (soil, water and biodiversity)
- Principle 2: Create context-specific designs and make holistic decisions that express the essence of each farm
- Principle 3: Ensure and develop just and reciprocal relationships amongst all stakeholders
- Principle 4: Continually grow and evolve individuals, farms, and communities to express their innate potential
In line with these four principles, they also propose four levels of regeneration, aimed at keeping the Regenerative movement under one umbrella:
- Level 1: Functional regeneration (Use of best practices towards a regenerative outcome)
- Level 2: Integrative regeneration (farm as a whole)
- Level 3: Systemic regeneration (including stakeholder relationships, ways of thinking)
- Level 4: Evolutionary Regenerative Agriculture (businesses as mutually supportive relationships, agriculture as part of place-based natural and cultural evolution, and a spiritual dimension of food production and landscape management)
The Terra Genesis levels leave me with significant intellectual dissonance. To me, the four levels seem interwoven, non-exclusive, overlapping. For example, the use of certain best practices (Level 1, e.g. cover cropping) can only guarantee regenerative outcomes if they are applied with a somewhat integrative perspective that they refer to Level 2. Also, farmers may only feel encouraged to apply “functional” or “integrative” regenerative methods and management (Levels 1 and 2) if they can sell products profitably. This requires them to be “systemically” embedded in an appropriate value chain (Level 3). From experiences of our own regenerative farm, we have achieved some aspects of all four levels, but none in its entirety.
Terra Genesis later defined Regenerative Agriculture as “a system of farming principles and practices that increases biodiversity, enriches soils, improves watersheds, and enhances ecosystem services. Regenerative Agriculture aims to capture carbon in soil and above-ground biomass, reversing current global trends of atmospheric accumulation. At the same time, it offers increased yields, resilience to climate instability, and higher health and vitality for farming and ranching communities” ([6]). This later definition clearly lists outcomes rather than specific practices. It remains open, however, if and how any process-based certification can guarantee the outcomes of this definition.
Understanding regenerative agriculture via normative outcomes, principles, decision making, tools & practices
For me, the core challenge of any attempt to define regenerative agriculture is whether it addresses the original purposes of establishing a new concept – overcoming the current limitations of other approaches. “Organic certification” defines a set of practices but fails to guarantee outcomes, and is perceived by many farmers as overly prescriptive. “Agroecological” enhances ecosystem relationships to overcome reliance on industrial inputs. With its strong social justice and equity component, the movement is perceived as politically charged. “Regenerative Agriculture” attempts to maintain its focus on beneficial outcomes and avoid political pidgin holing, or imposing undue regulations on farmers, such that it is broadly attractive to small and large farmers, farmers who accept government regulations and libertarians, and corporate entities alike.
Whether this unifying attempt can be successful or not is not yet certain. However, I find it beneficial to delineate and agree on basic terminology: Regenerative outcomes, regenerative principles, regenerative practices, and regenerative management.
Regenerative outcomes as normative goal setting
Agriculture is regenerative if it has regenerative outcomes. These outcomes are defined broadly and in ecosystem functions ([7],[8],[9]), a term used to describe “stocks” or “assets”. These stocks or functions are in distinction from “flows” of ecosystem services that these stocks provide. To be considered regenerative, farming must at a minimum achieve to improve ecosystem functions: soil health, on-farm biodiversity, watershed functions.
Defining what outcomes are “sufficient” to deserve the regenerative claim is normative. Outcomes must be contextualized with reference to a baseline (how much regeneration?), and timing aspects (how fast should regeneration take place?). If a highly biodiverse ecosystem had been totally degraded, it is easy to slightly improve some ecosystem functions – any improvement is preferable to the status quo. However, is any incremental improvement enough to justify the marketable claim of “successful regeneration”? Hence, outcome-based approaches require a normative aspect necessarily requires a social consensus. The scientific approach is unable to provide this normative element.
Savory Institute experts normatively require that ecosystem functions must improve “continuously” towards the goal of achieving a “contextually desirable” state of ecosystem functions, biodiversity and soil health ([10]). Participating groups normatively define this contextually desirable state differently for each ecoregion, following the best regenerative agricultural outcomes that are in existence within a region. This “desirable state” may evolve in time, as contextual factors or our understanding of these change, and as new technologies and skills become available.
Furthermore, regenerative outcomes must be observable, measurable, and verifiable. Savory Institute developed and tested the EOV indicator, a methodology for measuring outcomes in pastureland, which is now applied in practice and marketed through Savory’s “Land to Market” label and product distinction. However, outcome-based methodologies that quantify regeneration for annual field crops, market gardens, orchards, and other systems are still lacking or remain at pilot stages.
With this strong emphasis on outcomes, I am not arguing against process-based regenerative certification. However, I argue that process-based certification is only reasonable if it can guarantee a contextually desirable outcome. Process-based and outcome-based certifications cannot avoid this essential normative decision, which academia and the scientific method is unable to provide.
Regenerative principles
Principles are guides to behaviour or action that direct our way of thinking our practical decisions ([11],[12]). Principles are not prescriptive and stand next to each other, requiring the decision maker to ponder trade-offs and consider risks. Principles must be vague in nature to provide flexibility in decision making, and also to inspire new ways of meeting objectives (innovation). Principles are cannot be “met”, “achieved’, or “followed” – principles are “taken into account” in a balanced manner.
For example, Gabe Brown promotes five principles for the regeneration of soil health: No or minimal disturbance of soil with tillage or disruptive chemicals, boosting biodiversity for resilience, protecting soil with cover, keeping living roots in the ground as long as possible, and the integration of animals and insects with plants. These soil health principles focus on the production process itself. Terra Genesis’ above-cited principles for regenerative agriculture go further, addressing decision making (“holistic”), value chain relationships (“just and reciprocal”), and systemic spirituality (“continuous growth to express an innate potential”).
In all cases, principles are decision guides rather than specific or prescriptive actions. Principles inform managers in their decision process, and the usefulness and power of principles is always intertwined with this decision context. The adherence to principles cannot be measured, quantified or verified, unless they are totally ignored or absolutely followed. Strict adherence to principles is not their purpose, and is a poor basis for certification or other forms of market distinction.
Regenerative decision making and management
Regenerative decision making requires that a defined entity, which Savory Institute calls “whole under management”, is managed with the objective of obtaining regenerative outcomes. Decision making must consider all aspects of regeneration, including the ecosystem functions of biodiversity, soil health, and watershed functions.
Management that balances these multiple objectives is fundamentally different from management that maximizes a single objective – whether that is total crop yields, crop yields per acre, gross revenue, or net profit. To achieve these multiple objectives, regenerative management must balance systemic aspects:
- path dependencies (e.g. an extinct species cannot be regenerated)
- short-term as well as long-term goals (e.g. short-term profits vs. long-term profitability),
- stocks as well as flows (e.g. soil carbon content as a stock, vs. the soil’s nutrient and water retention capacity as a service/flow; or standing forest as a stock with habitat function, and wood extraction as a flow)
- internal and external relationships (e.g. the relationships within the whole under management, and the relationship with outside actors including food value chain actors, other ecosystems, and other family and community members)
Decision making for regeneration cannot maximize a single goal; without pidgin holing regenerative decision making to Savory’s Holistic Management© method, management for regeneration must be wholesome and consider a multitude of goals and relationships simultaneously.
Regenerative practices and tools
What tools are available to the holistic manager and decision maker?
The short answer is: any tool that achieves regenerative outcomes. For example, a chainsaw is a useful tool for removing a non-native tree, if the broader management objective is restoring native vegetation. In the Siberian Pleistocene Park ([13]), Sergei Zimov uses a bulldozer to mimic the ecological impact of extinct mammoths: the removal of native shrubs. Zimov intends to regenerate the steppe ecosystem that characterized the region historically and stabilized its permafrost. Within these particular decision contexts, chainsaws and bulldozers are regenerative tools, and cutting and bulldozing trees are regenerative practices. On the other hand, cover crops can be used in non-regenerative manners. For example, if the desired state of a region is biodiverse steppe or woodland, then GMO monocultures of any cover crop are practices that will not regenerate biodiversity or the historic watershed functions of the landscape. Rather, cover crops only slightly improve the degenerated state of the soil by adding roots and some soil organic matter, and enable the continuation of a degenerative production system. Another example: the organic regulation has listed a number of practices that may or may not build soil – again, restricting farmers to a set of practices was unsuccessful to guarantee desirable outcomes. Timing also matters: a subsoiler can aerate and regenerate the soil if timing and water conditions are right ([14]), or they can simply compact and destroy a field if conditions are wet or otherwise inappropriate.
All of these examples highlight that almost every tool or practice may have its place in managing for regeneration, while every tool or practice may also be used in a non-regenerative manner. It is the ecoregion context, the timing, the role a tool plays within a larger strategy, and the decision framework that defines whether a tool or practice is used for regenerative outcomes.
For this reason, I believe that the term “regenerative practice” is a misnomer and should be eliminated from our language. The proliferation of this term goes back to our current agricultural institutions’ preference for “Best Practices” and other checklist of practices that are considered unequivocally desirable and good. Approving lists of “Best Practices” are an easy way how funders can allocate grants and governments can hand out subsidies. However, the dire current state of the world’s agricultural ecosystems, the challenges faced by the organic sector, and the continuing degradation of ecosystem functions despite decades of funding “Best Practices” indicates that this approach of funding is misguided.
Yet, practices nevertheless matter. From own farming experience, I can affirm that “knowledge about” practices is insufficient, and we had considerable adoption barriers before we gained experience with a new tool. These barriers increase for those farmers with paradigmatic or perception barriers! In order to equip farmers with a strong “toolbox for regenerative management”, we need to continue to build skills, capacities, knowledge, and experiences such that farmers can better address their contextual regeneration challenges. Without feeling confident to draw appropriate tools out of their toolbox, farmers cannot achieve regenerative outcomes efficiently.
Synthesis: Outcomes, principles, decision making, practices & monitoring
Regenerative agriculture is a production approach with the goal of achieving regenerative outcomes, without falling into the shortcomings of other “positive” production approaches.
In essence, regenerative outcomes are normative decisions for a given context. The regenerative movement may settle on a single normative outcome level, or chose a staggered system that defines multiple levels (e.g. bronze/silver/gold). Regardless of the exact approach, our movement will need to provide a normative social decision that the scientific system cannot contribute.
Regenerative farmers must make decisions in a wholesome manner, balancing a multitude of objectives, and prioritizing actions that often have immediate or long-term goal conflicts. A number of approaches may achieve this “wholesome” management: Savory Institute’s Holistic Management©, indigenous people’s stories that reflect traditional wisdom, agroecological practices of ecosystem interaction, a process-based certification system such as Rodale’s Regenerative Organic Certification, rational thinking based on scientific data, or some heuristic contextualized “recipe lists” may all be methods that can achieve this balancing act.
Principles guide farmers in their decision making of which actions (tools, practices) are appropriate at which point in time. Farmers may differ vastly in how they realize relevance that informs their decisions. Farmers vary in their objectives (their financial, social, religious and intrinsic incentives, their personal, cultural and political values), and in their perception of reality (their information from informal observation, formal monitoring, or data, and their knowledge that can be experiential, traditional or scientific). Regardless of these differences in relevance realization, agreed-upon sets of principles remind farmers of relevant decision aspects in order to achieve regenerative outcomes.
Practices are regenerative if they help farmers to achieve regenerative outcomes. Whether a particular practice is applied in a regenerative manner is contextual, depends on timing and on how it is applied. No practice shall be called “regenerative” without clearly linking to the decision process and the individual context and time. However, it is useful to support farmers in extending the number of tools and practices that is available to them, as it will make regenerative management decisions more efficient and effective.
Outcome monitoring and observation is essential to assess whether decision making was successful, and is a basis for learning how we can better manage living complex systems. Monitoring and observation has multiple objectives:
- it can provide a financial incentive by giving access to a restricted markets (e.g. a label and price premium);
- it can create social incentives or appeal to the farmer’s value system;
- it can induce learning and improve the wholesome decision making process;
- it can reveal new aspects of reality and change the farmer’s objectives and perceptions itself- his decision paradigm.
Smart monitoring and observation protocols will achieve more than one of these objectives.
To conclude, I would like to stress that the regenerative movement faces the need for a normative decision of which outcomes are sufficient for a “regenerative” claim. I see a danger that self-interested marketers from the corporate world co-opt the “regeneration” claim. So the Regenerative Ag movement would be well-advised to reaffirm the purpose of adding “Regenerative Agriculture” as yet another concept: meaningful beneficial outcomes. I wonder what governance structure(s) can help us define this normatively in a legitimate and meaningful manner, in ways that address shortcomings of organic certification?
References
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[4] Newton P, Civita N, Frankel-Goldwater L, Bartel K, Johns C. What Is Regenerative Agriculture? A Review of Scholar and Practitioner Definitions Based on Processes and Outcomes. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. 2020 Oct 26;4:194.
[5] Soloviev ER, Landua G. Levels of Regenerative Agriculture. Terra Genesis Whitepaper. Online at http://www.terra-genesis.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Levels-of-Regenerative-Agriculture-1.pdf, downloaded on Nov 18, 2020.
[6] Terra Genesis International. (2020). Regenerative Agriculture. Available online at: http://www.regenerativeagriculturedefinition.com/ (accessed October 7, 2020).
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[8] Liu JD, Hiller BT. A continuing inquiry into ecosystem restoration: Examples from China’s Loess Plateau and locations worldwide and their emerging implications. In: Land Restoration 2016 Jan 1 (pp. 361-379). Academic Press.
[9] Sun S, Sun G, Caldwell P, McNulty S, Cohen E, Xiao J, Zhang Y. Drought impacts on ecosystem functions of the US National Forests and Grasslands: Part II assessment results and management implications. Forest Ecology and Management. 2015 Oct 1;353:269-79.
[10] Ecological outcome verification (EOV) Version 1.0, August 15, 2018. Savory Institute, downloaded from https://savory.global/land-to-market/eov/ on Nov 18, 2020
[11] Sanford, C. 2014. The Responsible Entrepreneur: Four Game-Changing Archetypes for Founders, Leaders, and Impact Investors. New York: Jossey-Bass
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[13] Zimov SA, Zimov NS, Tikhonov AN, Chapin Iii FS. Mammoth steppe: a high-productivity phenomenon. Quaternary Science Reviews. 2012 Dec 4;57:26-45.
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