Regeneration International defines Regenerative Agriculture as
... a holistic land management practice that leverages the power of photosynthesis in plants to close the carbon cycle and build soil health, crop resilience, and nutrient density.According to the organization, soil health is improved through practices that increase soil organic matter. These practices:
- Contribute to generating/building soils and soil fertility and health
- Increase water percolation, water retention, and clean and safe water runoff
- Increase biodiversity and ecosystem health and resiliency
- Invert the carbon emissions of our current agriculture to one of remarkably significant carbon sequestration thereby cleansing the atmosphere of legacy levels of carbon dioxide.
In contrast to the foregoing, the Regenerative Agriculture Initiative relies on "outcomes-based criteria," rather than prescriptive practices, to bound its system. The outcomes that it seeks are Healthy Soils, Healthy Ecosystems, Healthy Communities, and a Healthy Climate.
The practices that comprise Regenerative Agriculture are drawn from a number of parallel disciplines, as shown in the figure below.
The soil health practices, and their associated objectives, are shown in the table below. I will explore a number of these in greater detail in future posts.
Objective | Practice | Outcomes |
Increase soil fertility biologically | Restores plant/soil microbiome; promotes liberation, transfer, and cycling of essential soil nutrients | |
Cover crops | ||
Crop rotations | ||
Compost | ||
Animal manure | ||
Build biological diversity | Restore sol microbial community, population, structure, and functionality, restoring soil system energy | |
Inoculation of soil with compost/extracts | ||
Full-line plantings of multiple crops | ||
Inter-crop planting | ||
Multi=species cover crops | ||
Borders planted for bee habitats/other beneficial insects | ||
Soil conservation | No till | Enhance soil aggregation; enhance water infiltration and retention; enhance carbon sequestration |
Animal welfare | Well managed grazing practices | Improved plant growth; increased soils deposits; overall pasture and grazing land productivity |
The first area of coverage will be soil carbon and its role in climate change versus focusing on soil health.
©Wine -- Mise en abyme
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