How Can Regenerative Agriculture Help Save Us, and the Environment?

Wayra A. Klocker Gregori

We live in a modern world where all our food is grown and processed by huge companies, on huge amounts of land. “Most urban shoppers would tell you that food is produced on farms. But most of them do not know what farms, or what kinds of farms, or where the farms are, or what knowledge of skills are involved in farming” (Wendell Berry, 1). It’s convenient-huge amounts of food are grown in short spans of time due to toxic chemical fertilizers. Not only is this food toxic and poisonous, causing a lot of modern health problems, but it’s poisoning our land, our mother earth, and our home. We need to start being more conscientious of where our food comes from, and just how it’s made. “They think of food as an agricultural product, perhaps, but they do not think of themselves as participants in agriculture” (Wendell Berry, 1). Throughout history, we have made incredible strides toward modern society. However, we have allowed ourselves to forget where we came from. We mustn't separate ourselves from the earth. We need to work together with our environment to thrive. Regenerative agriculture can help save us and our environment because, unlike modern agriculture, it works harmoniously with our environment.

So, what is it? Regenerative agriculture is characterized by its harmonious give and take. You learn to work with the land and its natural strengths and resources, instead of combating it with heavy machines. Nature isn’t something to fight and subdue, it’s something to work together with. Only by doing that will you get the best and healthiest results. There are no strict specific rules regenerative agriculturists follow, but the principles are meant to be regenerative and restorative. Working together with the environment to help leave it in better conditions for future people. In a nutshell, it's the practice of any kind of agriculture that works in harmony with the land and its natural cycles (CSANR).

To write this essay, I interviewed Season George from Five Sisters Farm. A woman who studied horticulture when she was 16 at a community college and has worked in it ever since. She learned about microbial houses while studying in Florida, and taught people how to compost. That’s when she got interested in regenerative farming on a small scale and has been teaching people about it whenever she can, by sneaking into the cannabis tours she does at her farm, to try and educate people on the subject. Overall, she has been farming for 24 years and practicing regenerative agriculture for about 14. One question I asked her was if the information on regenerative agriculture has been lost over time. This was her response: “Our ancestors were much wiser than we are. They learned how to work with the natural systems and not combat them with heavy machinery. They had a lot more time to observe and had a lot more traditional oral knowledge being passed down. I have had to do unschooling to go back to the traditional and heritage farming practices and slow practices of soil layering. I really only use hand tools in my gardening, besides a battery-operated weed eater. It’s pretty primitive work. I think that gives me a deeper connection with the space when you’re working with hand tools rather than a tractor.”

What’s the difference between regenerative agriculture and what we are doing today? Monoculture. What is that? Monoculture is when you grow one thing in vast amounts over huge amounts of land. What this does is put a significant amount of stress on the land, which weakens the soil and ecosystem. If you look at the wild, you won’t see a ton of any one specific thing- there will be a variety of different animals, plants, and trees. Regenerative agriculture takes this into account. If you take a piece of land and grow a variety of different crops like vegetables, fruit, and chickens all while doing it in a way that helps the land regenerate; you won’t have a ton of any one thing, but you will have higher quality food and a plot of land that is rich in nutrients. Unlike modern agriculture, which is slowly killing our topsoil, and phosphorus. “If you expect to monocrop in one place year after year, you’d have to replenish that crop with a lot. Corn and soybeans are the big monocrops we have in America. Most of it goes to feed animals and ethanol production. A lot of monocrops we grow in the United States aren’t even for human consumption. When you monocrop and aren’t keeping your land diversified and are dependent on these outside sources, it can be easily compromised. That’s how famine happens” (Season George).

Phosphorus is an essential nutrient for plant growth. Topsoil is formed by the slow aging and decaying of organic matter over thousands of years and is the top layer of soil that’s rich in nutrients. Without phosphorus, it is impossible to grow food. Not only is phosphorus essential for plants and vegetation to grow, but it is also in all living matter. Animals and humans also need phosphorus, which we get from the food we eat. However, phosphorus is being depleted at an alarming rate, due to the huge monocrops we have. If we keep mining phosphorus at the rate we have been, we will run out in about 80 years. However, as more people arrive, more phosphorus is needed for the growth of food, so that number could go down (Research Institute).

I decided to ask Season why phosphorus was so important, and why it was running out. “The most important macronutrients of plants are the MPK, those are the basic three numbers you see on any fertilizer. Nitrogen is really easy to apply because it’s the organic matter, it comes through manure, and it’s easy. Most people are adding rock phosphorus, it has to be mined. We are stripping those mines because we are not retaining and building our soil profiles enough that we are having to add more phosphorus that we have left to mine. But if we were managing our soils better and not needing such huge ratios we could have lower numbers because we have more biology in the soil. We wouldn’t have to mine it. The way I get phosphorus is I charr bones. If I have chicken, or my dog brings me some from road kill or something, I save those bones, roast them, then extract the phosphorus using vinegar. It’s soluble. Which means it’s readily available for the plants” (Season George).

So, how can we help keep phosphorus alive and thriving through regenerative agriculture? One way is to use cover crops. Modern monocrops just grow one thing in huge quantities, and when they harvest it that’s it. The land is left bare until the next time. This stresses the land tremendously and weakens the ecosystem. The result is that you need to use more pesticides and fertilizers. It needs diversity, and it needs something there. So what using cover crops means, is that after harvesting, you plant something in the soil, to not leave it bare. They help control pests and diseases, increase available water, slow erosion, combat weeds, and more. It could show results within the first year, or take a few. But overall, it helps strengthen the soil and the ecosystem around it. They’ve also been shown to attract pollinators (SARE).

If you are a farmer that can and wants to have animals, it can greatly benefit you and the ecosystem. Grazing animals chow down on the grass and areas they are placed in. With rotational grazing, you divide the grass and farm into sections. Moving the animals to different areas of the pasture throughout the year to allow the grass being grazed on to replenish and put down deeper and sturdier roots. This can help prevent erosion, increase fertility, and help segregate carbon from the atmosphere. This method has immense benefits to it if you can put the time and effort into making it work.

I was curious about one thing, so I told Season that a lot of people might be worried that because regenerative agriculture is more hand labor, it won’t grow enough food, and asked what she had to say about that. “I think we’re overproducing, and throwing away a lot of food. I think if we were growing more nutrient-dense food we might be able to grow less of it. If you take the same plot of land and grow 100 acres of corn, you’d get so many tons of corn. If you take the same 50 acres and plant a fruit orchard and have a chicken coop, a vegetable plot, and a blueberry patch, you won’t get tons of any one thing, but you will have a diversity that will keep you better fed. If you measure it with tonnage you will never compare it to massive monocropping. If you diversify you are gonna get a higher quality of nutrients, which means you need to eat less when you’re eating better foods. It would help combat diabetes and the obesity problem we have in America” (Season George). I think it’s also important to mention that by increasing the health of the land and soil, crops could yield more, and healthier, foods.

As a conclusion, I’d like to once again mention that there is no one way to do regenerative agriculture. There are no set-in-stone rules, besides the most important one: To increase the health of the lan and work together with nature instead of combating it. I think regenerative agriculture is an improvement because of that same reason.