Making Sense of Regenerative Agriculture and Measuring Its Impact
Editor’s note: As regenerative agriculture moves from being a buzzword into on-farm practice embraced by the value chain and farmers alike, CropLife’s sister brand, AgriBusiness Global, recently interviewed Jordan Le Roux, Senior Director of Sustainability at Kynetec, on what regenerative agriculture means, and the numbers behind the trend.
AgriBusiness Global: Let’s start at the beginning. What is regenerative agriculture?
Jordan Le Roux: This is the million-dollar question! There is currently no universally accepted definition of regenerative agriculture, but the various definitions outline similar principles. Kynetec defines regenerative practices for the purpose of our farmer surveys as:
“Regenerative agricultural practices focus on improving soil health and water quality, which in turn conserve and or improve biodiversity, with the goal to improve the health and quality of crops in the long term and the general quality of the environment.”
Regenerative agriculture principles are not new, though they are a lot more talked about now mainly due to climate change. Essentially, regenerative agriculture takes us back to the pre-WWII era of agriculture before a generation of farmers used chemistry to increase yield at an exponential rate to feed rapidly growing populations around the world. The 1940s, 50s and 60s were a golden age for agrochemical ag, and while there have been many benefits, the downsides of monoculture cropping, and soil degradation are ready to be set right by regenerative practice. That said, regenerative agriculture does not exclude the use of synthetic chemistry.
For further context, and so as not to pit conventional and regenerative agriculture against one another, comparing a farm to a human gut microbiome can be useful. We are aiming for many interconnected microbes that work together productively to produce energy as an output – and while there is preference for biochemistry, sometimes synthetic chemistry might be required to effectively counter negative overgrowth.
While regenerative agriculture could be perceived as a step back to historical farming methods, however – today, practitioners of regenerative agriculture combine traditional methods and smart farming for maximum insight and efficiency. There is a general acceptance that regenerative agriculture is a long-term strategic move for farm businesses that is likely to initially result in reduced yield in the short term, followed by increased crop quality, yield, water quality and biodiversity in the longer-term. Regenerative agricultural techniques are more widely used than many may expect. Data from our annual farmer survey revealed that in the USA 14% of soybean growers were adopting cover crops and 25% of them using conservation or no tillage methods.
Read more at AgriBusiness Global.
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