What is Regenerative Organic Agriculture?
Regenerative organic farming goes beyond sustainable. It steadily improves the health of the earth and everything that lives on it, including us.
James Bowden works the Kernza® field at The Land Institute, Salina, KS. Photo by Amy Kumler.
The Way Forward
We can turn agriculture from a problem into a solution.
Conventional Agriculture
Depends on synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides to boost food yields. Often follows a factory model, with vast swaths of land producing single crops and animals raised in cages and feedlots. Conventional Big Ag contributes a third of the world’s total greenhouse gases, erodes topsoils, generates toxic runoff and damages human and animal health.
Industrial wheat planting. Photo by RM Brown/Alamy.
Organic Farming
Bans synthetic inputs, GMOs, antibiotics and growth hormones. To nourish their crops and care for their livestock, organic farmers often use centuries-old techniques like composting, crop rotations, intercropping and managed grazing on pasture. This kind of organic farming works with nature rather than against it.
Hoop house at Raw Roots Farm. Catheys Valley, CA. Photo by Eric Bissell.
Regenerative Organic
Builds on the best practices of organic farming and then raises the bar, prioritizing building soil health as a way to fight climate change. A holistic system, regenerative organic sees the well-being of earth, humans and animals as interconnected. A truly regenerative farm, one that restores health on multiple levels, avoids toxic chemicals. By definition, it is regenerative organic.
Celebrating a crop of regenerative organic Kernza®. Madison, MN. Photo by Amy Kumler.
The Rewards of Regenerative Organic
When an agricultural system is healthy, many benefits flow. These are some of them.
Restored Top Soil
If we keep farming conventionally, the world’s topsoil, which produces nearly all our food, could disappear within 60 years, according to the United Nations. Regenerative organic farming creates thriving populations of microbes, which break down organic matter (dead plants) into topsoil. Also, regenerative organic systems like agroforests and no-till farms planted with perennials have well-developed roots that keep topsoil from eroding.
The deep root systems of Kernza®, a wheatlike perennial grain, at The Land Institute. Salina, KS. Photo by Amy Kumler.
A Climate We Can Handle
Regenerative organic systems are rich in trees, perennials and living, microbe-rich soil. Trees and perennials (such as certain cover crops) excel at drawing down carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas causing the climate crisis. They drip it through their roots into the soil, where microbes ingest the carbon and store it in the ground. Regenerative organic systems are also better at coping with effects of climate change like drought and flooding.
Sunflowers, one of many soil-restoring perennial crops at The Land Institute. Salina, KS. Photo by Amy Kumler.
More Nutritious Food
Evidence suggests what common sense has always told us: that fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains regeneratively grown in rich, organic soil contain more nutrients. Eating a tomato grown with these practices, for example, can deliver more cancer-fighting flavanoids than one raised conventionally.
A farmer's market bounty. Photo: Amy Kumler
Regenerative Organic Farming Practices
Relying on ancient traditions—many of them indigenous—and layering in modern science, we can restore balance and health to our home planet and ourselves.
Cover Cropping
Farmers grow crops like lentils (above), alfalfa and clover instead of letting land lie fallow between the main cash-crop seasons. Cover crops increase soil organic matter, produce natural fertilizer, draw down carbon and reduce erosion.
Photo by Amy Kumler.
Composting
Waste from the farm gets converted into compost, teeming with soil-building microbes. Compost acts both as a natural fertilizer and mulch—helping soil retain moisture and suppressing weeds.
Photo Courtesy of Rodale
Rotating Crops
Crop varieties are rotated each year to avoid depleting specific nutrients in the soil and stop disease and pests from proliferating. Nitrogen-fixing crops like legumes actually add nutrients to farmland.
Photo Courtesy of Rodale
Intercropping
Multiple types of crops are planted closely together to increase yields and soil health over time. This system imitates natural polycultures, where plants of different species benefit one another.
Photo by Stephen R Ausmus USDA-ARS
Low- to No-Tilling
Tilling involves breaking up soil to plant seeds or control weeds. Unfortunately it increases erosion, disturbs the soil microbiome and releases carbon into the atmosphere. Less tilling (or none at all) protects the life of the soil and helps carbon stay underground. It also helps soil retain water.
Photo by Amy Kumler.
Agroforestry
Like wild forests, agroforests have multiple tiers of plants—trees, bushes and vines. They’re far more biodiverse than monocrop systems, draw down carbon and improve water retention.
Photo by Amy Kumler.
Restorative Grazing
Grazing animals, if managed properly and regularly moved over the land, can bring pastures back to life. Their nutrient-rich manure increases biodiversity below and above ground, and the restored pasture draws down carbon, too.
Photo Courtesy of Rodale
Planting Perennials
Unlike annual crops, perennials live for many years in one spot. Their well-developed root systems draw down carbon and deliver it deep into the soil. Those extensive roots also help prevent erosion.
Photo by Amy Kumler
Regenerative Organic Certification
In 2017, we partnered with several other brands, including Dr. Bronner’s and the Rodale Institute, to establish Regenerative Organic Certified®, the world’s highest-bar organic designation for food and fiber. To be Regenerative Organic Certified, farms must meet stringent standards for soil health, animal welfare and worker fairness. Well over 5 million acres of farmland are now certified around the world.
A field of Kernza® perennial grain. Madison, MN. Photo by Amy Kumler.
