Agricultural Regeneration

Regenerative Agriculture or Soil Regeneration: practices aimed at promoting soil health by restoring soil’s organic carbon. 

The world’s soils store several times the amount of carbon as the atmosphere, acting as a natural “carbon sink.” But globally, soil carbon stocks have been declining as a result of factors such as the conversion of native landscapes to croplands and overgrazing. One goal of regenerative practices is to use some of the carbon that plants have absorbed from the atmosphere to help restore soil carbon.Practices grouped under regenerative agriculture include no-till agriculture — where farmers avoid plowing soils and instead drill seeds into the soil — and use of cover crops, which are plants grown to cover the soil after farmers harvest the main crop. 

Other practices include diverse crop rotations, such as planting three or more crops in rotation over several years, and rotating crops with livestock grazing, as well as reduced fertilizer or pesticide use.

Farming and ranching practices that employ this technology can among other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity – resulting in both carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle.