Author: University of California Davis | Published: April 2017
Skyelark Ranch uses rotational grazing while raising sheep in Northern Calif. This can benefit plant growth, drought resistance, and the climate.
Skyelark Ranch is a pasture-based livestock ranch in Yolo County’s beautiful Capay Valley. In 2010, after several years of working in environmental conservation, Alexis and Gillies followed their passion for combining local, high-quality food production with sound environmental stewardship practices to a begin a life in sustainable livestock production.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/lake-constance-sheep-pasture-sheep-blue-158179-1170x780.jpeg7801170Regeneration Internationalhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngRegeneration International2017-05-26 12:56:182017-05-26 12:56:36Ranching’s Role in Building Healthier Soils, Video by UC Davis
The Bionutrient Food Association is working with producers to establish growing practices that yield more nutritious crops, while developing a standard for nutrient-dense foods and a handheld tool to measure those nutrient levels. The idea behind the tool is to use existing technology, like the camera in a Smartphone, to scan produce right in the grocery store, measuring the nutrient-density of the consumer’s food options.
The Association’s mission is to empower consumers to choose the most nutrient-dense foods, ultimately rewarding farmers for their improved growing practices.
Food Tank spoke with Dan Kittredge, founder of the Bionutrient Food Association and an organic farmer himself, to discuss why he thinks we need a definition of nutrient density, and the power he sees in this standard to transform the food system.
Food Tank (FT): What first inspired you to start working on nutrient density in food?
Dan Kittredge (DK): It started when I, as somebody who grew up on an organic farm, when I got married I had no other viable skillsets besides farming. And I came to terms with the fact that my crops were not healthy. They were succumbing to infestation and disease, and I was not economically viable. And I knew I needed to do a better job.
FT: What does the Bionutrient Food Association do to promote nutrient density in our food supply?
DK: Our core work is training growers. We work with growers of all sizes across the country, across North America, in what we call principles of biological systems. And we walk them through the growing season, walk them through the year, and talk about how plants grow in relation to the soil and microbiology, and help farmers identify what the main factors are so they can address them. That’s been our core work.
Our overt mission is to increase quality in the food supply. And by quality, I’m referring to flavor, aroma, and nutritive value, which is often times virtuous to nutrient density. So we’re now at a point where we have, I think, sixteen chapters across the country.
And we’re actually working on a definition of what quality means to density in the amount of nutrients. You know, what is the variation in nutrient levels in crops and trying to give consumers the ability to test that at point of purchase. Something along the lines of a handheld spectrometer, something that would be essentially, if a Smartphone had the right sensors, something that could be in your phone. You know, give the consumer the ability to test quality at point of purchase and then make your decisions accordingly, as an incentive to inspire the supply chain to change its practices.
FT: What does soil have to do with nutrient density?
DK: Well for the general public, I think we need to understand what nutrient density is first, because it’s a term that is thrown around a lot without a clear understanding of what it means. So for us, nutrient density is, you have greater levels of nutrients per unit calorie in a crop, better flavor, better aroma, and better nutritive value.
Basically, those compounds that correlate with nutrition, with flavor, and aroma in crops, are built from the soil and through a well-functioning microbial ecosystem. So plants evolved with a gut flora, in the same way that we have a gut flora, that digests their food for them. The bacteria and the fungi in the soil are fed by the plants. When the plant makes sugar in the leaves, it injects that sugar into the soil to feed the soil life, who then digest the soil and feed the nutrients up to the plant.
So it’s only when you have a well-functioning soil life, when the soil is actually flourishing, with vitality, with life, that’s the only time when you’re going to get the plants having access to the nutrients necessary to have nutrient dense crops.
So in many cases, farmers engage in management practices that are counterproductive. Tillage, bare soil, adding fertilizers, fungicides, insecticides, a lot of the basic practices of agriculture are systemically counterproductive to nutrient density in crops. Which is why we have pretty categorical data from USDA and other sources about the decreasing levels of nutrition in food over time.
The Industrial Food Chain uses 70% of the world’s agricultural resources to produce just 30% of our global food supply. Conversely, the Peasant Food Web provides 70% of the global food supply while using only 30% of agricultural resources.
The Peasant Food Web encourages diversity through breeding millions of varieties of thousands of crops, nurturing thousands of livestock breeds and aquatic species, while the Industrial Food Chain has narrowed this vast cornucopia down to a dozen crops, a handful of livestock species and collapsing fish stocks.
The Industrial Food Chain wastes two-thirds of its food production, devastates ecosystems, causes over $4 trillion in damages, and either under-nourishes or over-feeds 3.4 billion people. The Peasant Food Web is environmentally and nutritionally constructive.
1. Who feeds us today?
The Industrial Chain: Provides 30% of all food consumed (crops, fish, etc.) but uses about 70-80% of world’s arable land to grow 30-40% of crop-derived food; 1 accounts for >80% of fossil fuels 2 and 70% of water 3 used in agriculture; causes 44-57% of emitted GHGs annually 4; deforests 13 million ha 5 and destroys 75 billion tons of topsoil 6 each year; controls almost all of the 15% of food that is traded internationally 7 (i.e., 15% of all the food produced in the world) and dominates the $7 trillion commercial grocery market,8 while leaving almost 3.4 billion either undernourished or overweight.9 6
The Peasant Web:
Provides >70% of total food eaten by people:10 15-20% via urban agriculture; 11 10-15% from hunting and gathering; 12 5-10% from fishing; 13 and 35-50% from farms (harvests 60-70% of food crops from 20-30% of arable land); 14 accounts for <20% of fossil fuel 15 and 30% of water used in agriculture; 16 nurtures and sustainably uses diversity and dominates the 85% of the world’s food grown and consumed within national borders; 17 is the major (often sole) provider of the food that reaches the 2 billion hungry and undernourished.18
The Industrial Chain:
Provides 30% of all food consumed (crops, fish, etc.) but uses about 70-80% of world’s arable land to grow 30-40% of crop-derived food; 1 accounts for >80% of fossil fuels 2 and 70% of water 3 used in agriculture; causes 44-57% of emitted GHGs annually 4; deforests 13 million ha 5 and destroys 75 billion tons of topsoil 6 each year; controls almost all of the 15% of food that is traded internationally 7 (i.e., 15% of all the food produced in the world) and dominates the $7 trillion commercial grocery market,8 while leaving almost 3.4 billion either undernourished or overweight.9 6 The Peasant Web: Provides >70% of total food eaten by people:10 15-20% via urban agriculture; 11 10-15% from hunting and gathering; 12 5-10% from fishing; 13 and 35-50% from farms (harvests 60-70% of food crops from 20-30% of arable land); 14 accounts for <20% of fossil fuel 15 and 30% of water used in agriculture; 16 nurtures and sustainably uses diversity and dominates the 85% of the world’s food grown and consumed within national borders; 17 is the major (often sole) provider of the food that reaches the 2 billion hungry and undernourished.18
Author: Richard Schiffman | Published: May 3, 2017
The soil health movement has been in the news lately, and among its leading proponents is U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) researcher Rick Haney. In a world where government agencies and agribusiness have long pursued the holy grail of maximum crop yield, Haney preaches a different message: The quest for ever-greater productivity — using fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and whatever other chemicals are at hand — is killing our soil and threatening our farms.
Haney, who works with the USDA’s Agriculture Research Service in Texas, conducts online seminars and travels the country teaching farmers how to create healthy soil. His message is simple: Although the United States has some of the richest soils in the world, decades of agricultural abuse have taken their toll, depleting the dirt of essential nutrients and killing off bacteria and fungi that create organic material essential to plants. “Our mindset nowadays is that if you don’t put down fertilizer, nothing grows,” says Haney, who has developed a well-known method for testing soil health. “But that’s just not true, and it never has been.”
In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Haney describes how research is validating the value of natural methods such as plowing less, growing cover crops, and using biological controls to keep pests in check. In the face of a proposed 21 percent cut in the USDA’s budget by the Trump administration, Haney also stressed the importance of unbiased, government studies in a field where research is often dominated by the very corporations that benefit from overuse of fertilizers and chemicals. “We need more independent research,” Haney maintains. “We are only at the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we understand about how soil functions and its biology.”
Yale Environment 360: You’ve been working with farmers to improve their soil?
Rick Haney: That’s right. We know that over the past 50 years the levels of organic matter — it is kind of a standard test for soil in terms of its health and fertility — have been going way down. That’s alarming. We see organic matter levels in some fields of 1 percent or less. Whereas you can go to a pasture sitting right next to it where organics levels are 5 percent or 6 percent. So that is how drastically we have altered these systems. We are destroying the organic matter in the soil, and we’ve got to bring that back to sustain life on this planet.
The good news is that soil will come back if you give it a chance. It is very robust and resilient. It’s not like we have destroyed it to the point where it can’t be fixed. The soil health movement is trying to bring those organic levels back up and get soil to a higher functioning state.
e360: What has caused this decline in soil quality?
Haney: We see that when there is a lot of tillage, no cover crops, a system of high intensity [chemical-dependent] farming, that the soil just doesn’t function properly. The biology is not doing much. It’s not performing as we need it to. We are essentially destroying the functionality of soil, so that you have to feed it more and more synthetic fertilizers just to keep growing this crop.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/pexels-photo-321945-1170x780.jpeg7801170Regeneration Internationalhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngRegeneration International2017-05-12 00:48:392017-05-12 00:48:55Why It’s Time to Stop Punishing Our Soils With Fertilizers
“Regenerative food, farming and land use can provide a solution to the health crisis, the water crisis, environmental degradation, climate change, rural poverty, hunger and war.” ~ Ronnie Cummins, Founding Meeting of Regeneration International, June 9, 2015, Finca Luna Nueva, Costa Rica
If you’d walked up to a farmer 100 years ago and told him farming would one day threaten life on Earth, he probably would have laughed in your face, saying such a thing simply isn’t possible.
Agriculture is necessary for food production, and therefore for life, the farmer would have said with firm conviction — and farming the land or raising cattle is not going to unduly harm anything or anyone.
Today, however, such an impossible scenario is precisely what we’re facing. Virtually every growing environmental and health problem can be traced back to modern food production. This includes but is not limited to:
Food insecurity and malnutrition amid mounting food waste
Rising obesity and chronic disease rates despite growing health care outlays
Diminishing fresh water supplies
Toxic agricultural chemicals polluting air, soil and waterways, thereby threatening the entire food chain from top to bottom
Disruption of normal climate and rainfall patterns
The good news is there are viable answers to all of these problems that do not merely scratch at the surface, and the answers hinge on the widespread implementation of regenerative agriculture and decentralized food distribution.
It’s easy to forget that at one point, not so long ago, all food was organically grown in a way that supported the ecosystem and environment as a whole. This all changed in the 1940s when the Green Revolution took hold and industrial, chemical-dependent farming techniques quickly spread to become the norm.
Industrial Farming Has Proven Itself a Failed Experiment
Farming has sustained mankind for millennia. Industrial farming, on the other hand, has managed to create a series of unsustainable situations in less than 70 years, and evidence suggests we will not make it until the end of the century if we continue along the path of degenerative food and farming.
Topsoil destruction, erosion and desertification are exacerbated by tilling, monocropping and not using cover crops. Maria-Helena Semedo of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has warned that at the current rate of topsoil degradation, all the world’s topsoil will be gone in less than 60 years.1
At that point, it’ll be “game over” because without topsoil you cannot grow food no matter how many chemicals you add to it. Closely related problems are the loss of soil fertility and biodiversity, which is directly related to the loss of natural carbon in the soil.
An estimated 80 percent of soil carbon in heavily farmed areas has already been lost,2 due to destructive plowing, overgrazing and the use of soil-destructive, carbon-depleting chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Industrial monocropping has also led to the loss of diversity. Seventy-five percent of the world’s crop varieties have gone the way of the dinosaurs in the last 100 years, and another 20 percent of all plants worldwide are threatened with extinction.3
Toxic contamination adds to the problem. According to studies by the Chinese government, 20 percent of arable land in China is now unusable due to pesticide contamination,4 and important crop pollinators such as butterfly and bee populations have collapsed, thanks to widespread pesticide application.5
Modern agriculture also promotes water waste through use of flood irrigation, destruction of soil quality and poor crop choices.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 80 percent of U.S. consumptive water (and more than 90 percent in many Western states) is used for agricultural purposes6 and, worldwide, groundwater is being used up at a faster rate than it can be replenished.
According to James Famiglietti, a senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the majority of our global groundwaters “are past sustainability tipping points,”7 which means it’s only a matter of time until we run out of fresh water.
Without food or drinkable water, the end of civilization as we know it is pretty well-assured. The question is will enough people have the foresight to change course?
Industrial Food System Promotes Both Obesity and Malnourishment
The industrialization and centralization of food production was done to increase farmers’ capacity to grow more food at a lower cost. Unfortunately, a core principle was lost in this efficiency equation — that of food quality and nutrient density.
Today, we have ample amounts of “good-looking” foods, thanks to genetic engineering and agricultural chemicals. What you don’t see is the loss of nutrients. Tests reveal that the nutrient content of foods has dramatically declined since the introduction of mechanized farming in 1925.8
As just one example, to receive the same amount of iron you used to get from one apple in 1950, by 1998 you had to eat 26 apples; today you have to eat 36, and this is a direct consequence of industrial farming techniques and use of chemicals that destroy soil quality by killing essential microbes.
We now know that, just as the human gut microbiome plays integral roles in human health, so the soil microbiome influences nutrient uptake and plant health. Soil microbes even help regulate the invasion of pests.
It’s not surprising then that as nutrient density declined and toxic exposures via food increased, obesity and chronic disease rates have dramatically risen — so much so that obesity now threatens to overtake hunger as the No. 1 global health concern.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/farmer-880567_1280-1170x835.jpg8351170Regeneration Internationalhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngRegeneration International2017-04-25 15:47:012017-04-25 15:47:01Modern Agriculture Drives Hunger, Obesity and Disease While Simultaneously Threatening Food Chain and Worsening Water Crisis
Ninety miles south of San Francisco, the farm town of Watsonville looks like it may have been the inspiration for the Beatles hit “Strawberry Fields Forever.” In wintertime, long strips of black plastic cover the earth, as growers fumigate next year’s strawberry beds with compounds like chloropicrin, which has been designated by both the Environmental Protection Agency and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation as an air contaminant.
Because strawberries are so often planted on their own here, year after year, the industry has resorted to these chemicals to control soil-borne fungal diseases like verticilium, which thrive in the company of their strawberry hosts. But organic grower Javier Zamora has a different strategy.
“I make sure before and after strawberries there’s always something different,” said Zamora, whose JSM Organic Farms has expanded from 1.5 acres to over 100 acres in just five years. “I normally plant broccoli right after—no potatoes, no tomatoes, no eggplant in the three years between strawberries. Those things host the same diseases.” Diversifying his crops hasn’t completely eliminated pests, Zamora said, but it’s made them easier to manage so they don’t damage his harvest. It also relieves the pressure of soil-borne diseases.
In addition to carefully planning his crop rotation, Zamora also mixes things up by intercropping—planting marigolds at the end of his strawberry beds and perennial flowers like lavender in between them.
“Every flower will have a benefit of hosting some beneficial insects and it’s also something I can sell at market,” Zamora said. An immigrant from Michoacán, Mexico, Zamora enrolled in community college at age 43 before entering the Agriculture and Land-Based training Association (ALBA) program to pursue organic farming. He attributes his success to his disciplined crop planning and attention to soil health. “When you’re very diversified like I am,” Zamora said, “you have to be on top of your game. I already know where my 2018 strawberries are going to be planted.”
Using ‘Distant Genetic Cousins’ to Improve Farming
While Zamora has been planning out his rotations, a postdoctoral researcher two hours north in Berkeley has been analyzing dozens of studies of farms that grow a diversity of plants and rotate their crops, to try to understand which rotations promote better pest control. David Gonthier, who was recently hired as an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky, has no doubt that crop rotation is an effective tool for breaking up pest and disease cycles, as well as improving soil health, managing nutrient balance, and improving water retention—benefits that ecologists have corroborated in recent studies from Iowa to Ontario.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/flower-meadow-1657016_1280-1170x768.jpg7681170Regeneration Internationalhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngRegeneration International2017-04-12 07:00:022017-04-11 12:18:13Mapping the Benefits of Farm Biodiversity
Carlos Hernando Molina pressed his boot onto the shovel and the blade cut into the earth. He rocked the handle, turned over the clump of soil, and fingered the dirt to point out the worms, bugs and plant fibers as the soil crumbled.
His land was alive. Worms twisted and beetles scurried to hide. Microorganisms were there, too, but you couldn’t see them working to help plant fibers decompose, making the soil ready to supply nutrients to roots. The shovel-full of soil was the definition of healthy, but it didn’t always look this way.
Much of the agricultural land devoted to grazing cattle around Molina’s farm in Latin America—and pastures in the U.S.—does not look like his, which contain tree-lined fields that are planted with dense layers of shrubs, grasses, and ground cover. Open grassland or vast acres of monocrop land is more the norm.
But the open land is susceptible to the loss of topsoil from wind and heavy rain, the loss of moisture from increasing cycles of drought, and a decline in nutrients that crops need to grow. In coastal areas, soils are increasing in salinity. In parched areas, it’s blowing away.
Farmers, researchers and development agencies are all increasing their focus on soil. Globally, change in the way land is used and managed puts pressure on soils to do more. Farmers are growing more monoculture crops; rotating them less; and leaving behind pesticide residues, polluted waters from fertilizer run off, carbon loss, and depleted aquifers.
Molina and other farmers I’ve met with over the years are bucking the trend. Their attention to soil has been a business decision, leading to increased production and yields, and has helped them withstand weather extremes.
It’s catching on: In a recent survey, insight from 2,020 farmers from across the United States reflected enthusiasm for cover crops to help improve soils—for the fourth year in a row—and found a yield boost in corn and soybeans following cover crops.
In West Texas, for example, Barry Evans has not plowed his fields in 20 years. By leaving the dried stubble in the fields where he grows sorghum and cotton, he said he “banks the water,” describing how he retains moisture from precious droplets of rain. By not tilling the fields, the residue from cotton, sorghum and wheat grown as a cover crop has created an organic mat that protects the soil from wind and shatters rain drops as they fall, gently dispersing the water and allowing it to filter into the aquifer.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2DU_Kenya72_5367352990-1170x777.jpg7771170Regeneration Internationalhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngRegeneration International2017-04-05 12:52:002017-04-05 12:52:00Is Soil the Great New Integrator?
Warning of “colossal” negative impacts for the environment and human societies if the massive stores of carbon trapped in the Earth’s soils are released, Fijian president Jioji Konousi Konrote called for stronger management of this critical natural resource at the start of an international symposium today.
There is currently more carbon locked up in just the first meter of the planet’s soils than can be found in the atmosphere and all terrestrial plant life combined, he said during his keynote address to the Global Symposium on Soil Organic Carbon (21-23 March).
Referring to international commitments to limit global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius made under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, Konrote warned: “If we fail to maintain our soils as a carbon reservoir, I am afraid that these discussions and negotiations would have been in vain.”
“We cannot afford to neglect a resource that could be our serious and viable ally against climate change,” he added.
Fiji and other small island developing states are on the front lines in the battle against climate change. The government of Fiji is poised to assume the presidency of the next Conference of Parties of the UN Climate Agreement that will take place in in Bonn, Germany, in November.
FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva in his remarks stressed that beyond their critical role as a carbon sink, healthy soils underpin multiple environmental processes upon which humankind depends and which are the foundation of global food security.
Author: Alexis Baden-Mayer | Published: March 22, 2017
There are three interrelated challenges facing agriculture over the next 50 years.
The first is soil loss.
In the United States, soil is swept and washed away 10 times faster than it is replenished. That costs $37.6 billion every year. Globally, all of the world’s topsoil could be gone within 60 years.
The second challenge is diet-related disease.
About half of all American adults have one or more preventable chronic diseases related to diet. Diet is now the number-one risk factor for disease. More than two-thirds of adults and nearly one-third of children are overweight or obese. This costs $190 billion a year. Obesity is the new malnutrition. Globally, a growing number of people have plenty to eat and yet remain malnourished.
The third challenge is climate change.
Floods, droughts, wildfires and extreme or unseasonable temperatures cause crop and livestock losses. In 2011, exposure to high temperature events caused over $1 billion in losses to U.S. agricultural producers.
Phasing out greenhouse gas emissions is important, but it won’t reverse climate change. Until we remove enough CO2 from the atmosphere to get back down below the dangerous tipping point of 350 ppm, the impacts of climate change will persist.
Luckily, there’s an inexpensive and easy-to-use technology for reliable carbon dioxide removal and sequestration. Soil.
Agricultural activities have removed roughly 660 GtCO2 from terrestrial ecosystems. The good news is we can put it back.
Shifting to agricultural practices that can draw that carbon back down to the soil would:
Reduce atmospheric CO2 by 40-70 ppm by 2100,
Build soil instead of losing it, and
Improve resilience to drought and floods, while
Producing more food that’s more nutritious, and
Generating higher farm incomes from increased production of nutrient-dense food.
We need more research on the microbial communities in the soil that generate carbon storage. Plants give the carbon they get from photosynthesis to soil microorganisms in exchange for water and nutrients. It works best when there are lots of different plants exchanging lots of different nutrients with lots of different microbes. The greater the plant biodiversity, the more carbon gets stored. The best way to reverse soil loss and sequester carbon is to continuously cover soil with a diverse array of living plants.
Scientists are currently documenting microbial soil carbon sequestration using carbon-13 isotope pulse labeling. Using this method, they can track the carbon flows from plants to and through soil microorganisms and identify the plants and the microorganisms that store the most carbon.
Fence line comparisons have demonstrated greater resilience to droughts and floods in carbon rich soils. Now, scientists can measure water flows through soil in three dimensions and accurately document soils’ water infiltration and holding capacity.
Grazing and pasture-raised animals can be managed to increase plant biodiversity and microbial activity. Well-managed pastures can sequester even more soil carbon than cropping systems. But we need a deeper understanding of how methanotrophs in the soil utilize methane emitted from grazing animals.
Finally we need an assessment of the socio-economic impediments to, and opportunities for, realizing the full potential for soil carbon sequestration.
If increasing soil carbon can help produce more food than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine, as John Jeavons would say, then why don’t more farmers do it?
If increasing soil carbon produces food that is flavorful, aromatic, and so healthy and nutritious that it could cost-effectively reverse diet-related diseases, why aren’t more consumers demanding it?
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/30385174191_ec602db534_k-1170x878.jpg8781170Regeneration Internationalhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngRegeneration International2017-03-18 00:44:582017-03-18 00:44:58Challenges Facing Agriculture and the Regenerative Solution
Soil is a miraculous living membrane, crucial for human and ecosystem health. Physically, soil sustains and nourishes us, each year bringing forth the bounty of crops and food that feed us and our fellow animals. Soil stores water, cycles nutrients and is the largest land-based sink for carbon. But we are literally plowing through and destroying this life-giving resource. The energy-intensive practices of industrial agriculture, involving the overuse of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, intensive tillage and plowing, failure to cover resting soil with fertility-building cover crops, as well as overgrazing, has systematically destroyed soil biota necessary for proper cycling and drawing down of atmospheric carbon into soil. Instead we are oxidizing huge amounts of soil organic matter (SOM) and releasing it into the air.
Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are the lynchpin of the industrial ag machine. They produce 95+% of the beef, chicken, pork, eggs and dairy in this country in horrific conditions, and consume most of the carbon and water-intensive conventional corn and soy grown in the US while generating huge manure lagoons. Over half of US farmland is dedicated to animal feed crops grown with synthetic carbon-intensive fertilizers and pesticides that ravage and destroy soil biota and non-target wildlife. CAFOs and their monoculture deserts of feed are like a million burning oil wells, destroying soil fertility and generating huge amounts of greenhouse gasses (GHGs).
Up to a third of the excess carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is from oxidized organic matter from depleted topsoil on mismanaged farms and overgrazed rangelands, as well as land use changes such as deforestation and the draining of wetlands that are driven by agriculture. Even if we were to decarbonize our economy by 2050, with energy and transportation sectors utilizing 100% renewable energy, we will still have a huge legacy load of greenhouse gasses that we need to draw down to 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2, to avoid catastrophic climate change and acidification of our oceans. Industrial agriculture is also killing huge amounts of non-target wildlife, depleting fresh water aquifers globally, and creating massive dead zones in the ocean from synthetic nitrogen runoff.
The good news is that we can restore healthy soil biota and rebuild soil organic matter through regenerative organic agriculture that sequesters carbon, stores and retains water, provides healthy food for our children and children’s children, and provides bio-diverse habitat for wildlife on a planet not facing catastrophic climate change.
1. Minimize disturbance of soil from excessive tillage that disrupts soil biota and oxidizes SOM; careful tillage is fine, depending on the overall holistic context of a given regenerative farm, termed “conservation tillage”.
2. Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides disrupt healthy soil function and soil forming processes; synthetic nitrogen in particular takes a huge amount of energy/fossil fuel to manufacture and is the primary direct contributor to GHG emissions of industrial agriculture, in addition to sabotaging soil’s natural fertility.
3. To boost fertility, turbocharge soil biology and conserve topsoil, use nitrogen fixing cover crops to keep bare soil covered and roots in the ground as much as possible; use lots of compost; and implement a diverse rotational crop strategy.
4. Carefully manage ruminants (such as cattle, sheep, goats and buffalo) grazing pastures and cover crops, in ways that promote overall pasture and soil health. Ruminants should absolutely not be in feedlots inefficiently fed corn they did not evolve to eat in the first place.
These principles are clear and essential as far as they go, which my company, Dr. Bronner’s, has signed on to and endorsed. However, I am concerned we are shortchanging the regenerative movement’s ability to fix and elevate the organic movement to its true regenerative potential, versus catering to lower bar low-chemical-input no-till agriculture with cover crops. The latter is hugely important and commendable, but insofar as any amount of synthetic fertilizer and pesticide is used, another term such as “sustainable no-till” is a better descriptor. As soon as we go away from organic as the floor, we go down the rabbit hole of having to decide which chemical inputs can be used in what amounts and when. We should reserve “regenerative” as the gold standard and incentive for true holistic no-chemical-input “regenerative organic” agriculture. If we don’t, then there’s no incentive to improve toward the holistic regenerative goal. And “regenerative organic” can then take a more holistic approach that addresses the wellbeing of farmworkers as well as farm animal welfare.
In particular, a “regenerative organic” standard could require that pasture-based standards be met for monogastric (e.g. pigs and chickens) as well as ruminant livestock, as laid out in Global Animal Partnership (GAP) 4+, Animal Welfare Approved, or Certified Humane “Pasture-Raised” level rules. On the farmworker side, we could incorporate Agriculture Justice Project’s standards or similar. Additionally, we could require that minimum 50% of livestock feed (both protein and energy) be sourced domestically to boost domestic demand and supply, while allowing for next level regenerative projects abroad and shortages at home. This could be a relatively straightforward and efficient process: take NOP standards as the baseline, incorporate existing animal welfare and farmworker labor standards, and formalize the criteria outlined by Carbon Underground’s regenerative definition, in a process driven by and housed with Rodale and IFOAM (the originators and lead custodians of the regenerative organic movement). The organizations at the table should self-select based on commitment to the more expansive definition of “regenerative organic,” with minimum membership or revenues from regenerative organic agriculture and advocacy, or otherwise establish their regenerative rock star status.
Otherwise, “regenerative” is going to go the way of “sustainable” and mean whatever anyone wants it to mean. Already there are signatories to the Carbon Underground definition that don’t remotely meet regenerative criteria. In a similar vein, I am concerned that American Grassfed Association (AGA) standards are often extolled as regenerative in and of themselves. In fact without organic as a floor, huge amounts of synthetic Nitrogen and other chemical fertilizers and inputs are used on grass and forage pastures, for direct grazing and as well as cut hay, just like feed grain crops. This point was driven home when I recently visited Will Harris and White Oaks Pastures in Georgia with Gabe Brown. Both are AGA certified but cautioned that while they only use compost on their pastures, many AGA producers rely on synthetic fertility.
Gabe Brown and White Oak Rock
On my visit, Gabe relayed that he is moving to full regenerative organic no-till this year on his ranch in North Dakota, where he grows all the feed grains he needs for his pastured poultry and pigs without any synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. Until recently, he employed an herbicide pass for weeds—but now he’s cutting that out too, blazing the path and setting the bar for all to follow. Through cover cropping and carefully managed grazing, Gabe hasn’t imported any off-farm fertility for over ten years, while boosting his soil organic matter five times over.
White Oak Pastures in Georgia has already dialed in their grass-fed cattle operation, carefully rotating cattle grazing and timing along with many other species of livestock (goats, sheep, chickens and pigs), such that the pasture health and soil organic matter at White Oak is off the charts. White Oak is certified at the highest 5+ GAP level for farm animal welfare, and single-handedly restored the rural economy of Bluffton, paying its 130+ workers living wages. White Oak Pastures has “put the cult back in agriculture.” White Oak founder Will Harris also built an on-farm slaughter facility, designed by Temple Grandin and certified Animal Welfare Approved, to maximize animal welfare and minimize animal stress during transport. As Will shared and is plainly true, his animals have a great life at White Oak with one bad day, which Will ensures isn’t nearly as bad as the everyday nightmare of industrial CAFO confinement and slaughter practices. In the caged living hell of a CAFO animal, the best day is often its last, when it’s finally put out of its misery.
My visit to White Oak was incredibly productive and exciting, and our company has agreed to explore a joint venture with White Oak for growing animal feed in regenerative organic dryland fashion like Gabe Brown does, with Gabe’s close involvement. Dr. Bronner’s has extensive experience with regenerative organic farmer projects in the tropics, from which we source coconut and palm oils, as well as mint oil from India—and we’re eager to engage on a similar project on US soil. Our whole team is psyched to show that what Gabe has done up in North Dakota can be done in the South or anywhere else: grain for feed can be farmed in regenerative organic no-till fashion, with cost of production equal to or lower than in conventional agriculture, once the soil biology and SOM have been built up sufficiently through correct regenerative management. The first couple of years, as depleted soil is allowed to heal, will entail spreading lots of compost, seeding multi-species cover crops, and rotational grazing, to bring the soil biology back to life. After growing the first few years of grain crops, we will likely have to engage in conservation tillage until the soil health is improved sufficiently, but we are confident we will eventually have a full on organic no-till operation like Gabe’s in North Dakota.
