Is Regenerative Agriculture the Future of Farming?

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 50 seconds.

Summary

• Microsoft Open Sources its FarmVibes.ai software

• A breakdown of Regenerative Agriculture

• A tracker for small vs. large farms

Let's dive in

What you missed in Agriculture

• The future of farming: how global crises are reshaping agriculture: The Financial Times opinion piece on Regenerative Agriculture.

• Microsoft Open Sources FarmVibes.ai: This software allows users to combine datasets and estimate carbon footprint, understand growth rate, detect practices followed

• Stop Making Farmers Pay to Fight Climate Change: This piece speaks to the systematic challenges regenerative agriculture faces.

Regenerative Agriculture

Regenerative Agriculture addresses two of massive challenges humanity faces. Our planet faces immense warming conditions, and top soil depletion.

Industrial farming (current system) creates central points of failure, and monocultures. Monocultures deplete the soil, but provide more units/acre. Industrial farmers are reliant on a crop species, and are in more danger to ecosystem changes. They need companies like Bayer to provide pesticides and fertilisers, which can affect human health.

Industrial Agriculture only works because of cheap fossil fuels, and government subsidies. Institutions in agriculture are set up to work within the existing system. Government funds go to industrial farmers, not regenerative ones. Most crop insurers don't accept regenerative farmers, because of the added complexity in their systems.

Biodiversity creates healthier end products, and protects its environment. Regenerative Agriculture looks at farms as whole ecosystems and rehabilitates the land by recreating natures biospheres. This can include using soil biology and controlled livestock grazing to give plants the nutrients they need to grow.

Smaller farms have more biodiversity, and grow more of the world's food volume. These are mostly in economically developing countries, and provide food security at a local level. While these statistics do have their issues, a world with smaller farms becomes more resilient to changes. For example, the loss of wheat exports due to the war in Ukraine. 

As we've talked about farmers are keen to maximise their input to output ratio. So to even consider regenerative agriculture, it has to make sense on a spreadsheet. Advocates claim that it allows farmers to completely replace many of the normal inputs. Cattle Ranchers can feed their herd on local crops and cut food costs. In some cases they can even sell carbon credits.

Yet, many of the regenerative methods require experimentation and short term sacrifices. Farmers have thin margins they have to protect, so any changes in yield can have catastrophic effects to their bottom line. While many want to attempt regenerative agriculture, the process to is quite difficult. Regenerative processes aren't a one size fits all fix. Soils need different solutions dependent upon climate, location and native organisms.

Food stability should come before regenerative methods are implemented en masse. Otherwise situations, like that in Sri Lanka, can become a risk.

While these challenges are real, regenerative agriculture is not impossible. Regenerative Farming is a spectrum. It can begin as with eliminating tilling, all the way through diving deep into full ecosystem land management.

Regenerative Agriculture needs to be a tool in the toolkit for farmers. It gives them a chance to redevelop their land, produce enough food, and protect their margins. A complete overhaul is unlikely in the short term, but baby steps could make this possible in the long term.

Goal Keepers

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has put together some fantastic trackers for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This one looks at the average income for small vs. large producers. As we know most of the worlds food is grown by small farmers.