Regenerative agriculture: merging farming and natural resource conservation profitably

Abstract

Most cropland in the United States is characterized by large monocultures, whose productivity is maintained through a strong reliance on costly tillage, external fertilizers, and pesticides (Schipanski et al., 2016). Despite this, farmers have developed a regenerative model of farm production that promotes soil health and biodiversity, while producing nutrient-dense farm products profitably. Little work has focused on the relative costs and benefits of novel regenerative farming operations, which necessitates studying in situ, farmer-defined best management practices. Here, we evaluate the relative effects of regenerative and conventional corn production systems on pest management services, soil conservation, and farmer profitability and productivity throughout the Northern Plains of the United States. Regenerative farming systems provided greater ecosystem services and profitability for farmers than an input-intensive model of corn production. Pests were 10-fold more abundant in insecticide-treated corn fields than on insecticide-free regenerative farms, indicating that farmers who proactively design pest-resilient food systems outperform farmers that react to pests chemically. Regenerative fields had 29% lower grain production but 78% higher profits over traditional corn production systems. Profit was positively correlated with the particulate organic matter of the soil, not yield. These results provide the basis for dialogue on ecologically based farming systems that could be used to simultaneously produce food while conserving our natural resource base: two factors that are pitted against one another in simplified food production systems. To attain this requires a systems-level shift on the farm; simply applying individual regenerative practices within the current production model will not likely produce the documented results.

Ecological illiteracy can deepen farmers’ pesticide dependency

“…Psychological, socio-economic and environmental factors all affect farmers' pest management behavior (Mills et al 2017. Habitually, decisions to apply pesticides are not based on economic rationale, but instead guided by 'worst case' scenarios, molded by loss aversion, shaped by peer pressure or triggered through marketing campaigns by agrochemical suppliers Escalada 1999, LaCanne andLundgren 2018). Farmers' continued reliance upon pesticides may seem irrational in light of secondary pest outbreaks, declining returns, questionable productivity gains, food safety concerns or increasing pest resistance (Jørgensen et al 2018).…”

“…Yet, in the face of a surging use of pesticides (Bernhardt et al 2017, Jørgensen et al 2018, pest-related yield losses in global agriculture continue to be substantial and farm-level profitability has not increased (Oerke 2005, Lechenet et al 2017, Deutsch et al 2018. To remediate farmers' dependency upon agro-chemicals and to alleviate their associated burden on biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and human health, a solid understanding is required of potential pest species and their antagonists, which is the foundation for Integrated Pest Management or IPM (Ehler 2006), in combination with a holistic, interdisciplinary perspective and due inclusion of social science (Winarto 2004, Cui et al 2018, Flandroy et al 2018, LaCanne and Lundgren 2018, Pretty et al 2018.…”

Delta Life Cycle Assessment of Regenerative Agriculture in a Sheep Farming System

“…Regenerative agriculture is a relatively new term, and there are a number of similar terms, such as carbon farming, agroecology, conservation agriculture, holistic farm management, holistic planning grazing, adaptive multipaddock grazing and integrated ecological farming (Strong 2008;Cross 2013;Rhodes 2013Rhodes , 2017Rodale Institute 2014;Duncan and Falloon 2016;Hodbod et al 2016;Shelef et al 2017;Teague and Barnes 2017;Elevitch et al 2018;LaCanne and Lundgren 2018;Teague 2018;California State University 2019;Claughton and Ralph 2019;Hawkin 2019;Thorbecke and Dettling 2019). In this paper, regenerative agriculture is defined using a practice-based approach, that is, extensive agriculture that uses no-till farming; reduces or eliminates pesticide and herbicide use (e.g., spot spraying rather than broadacre spraying); reduces or eliminates fertilizer use; uses high-intensity, short-duration timecontrolled grazing with frequent rotation of livestock between small paddocks with perennial native grasses (i.e., cell grazing) and long rest periods; increases and subsequently maintains the proportion of land with native vegetation; and reduces or eliminates the use of supplementary feeding by destocking during periods of low vegetative primary productivity rather than operating at a fixed stocking rate.…”

Assessment of Ecosystem Services and Capabilities of Communities from different Scales and Niches - Implications on Sustainability Goals

“…Besides, fertilizers and pesticides also end up in the food-chain due to systemic bioaccumulation in the produce and runoffs into the water-bodies (Carvalho, 2017). Meanwhile, regenerative agriculture and its various forms (LaCanne & Lundgren, 2018) have been shown to impart beneficial impacts on the soil microbiota by enriching its diversity (Hendgen et al, 2018) and thereby enhancing plant health and nutrition (Tsvetkov et al, 2018). a.…”