Regenerative agriculture is farming and ranching in harmony with nature. It is a holistic agriculture method that means to restore soil and ecosystem health, address inequity, and leave our land, waters, and climate in better shape for the future.
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) describes how our food system today “[…] contributes to approximately 25% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, three-quarters of biodiversity loss and is a leading cause of non-communicable disease” (WBCSD, n.d.). They also say that regenerative farming is the way to sustain and enhance the farm ecosystem, in contrary to exhausting it.
The World Economic Forum writes that the rising global population is placing increasing pressure on traditional agricultural systems, which often rely on expanding farmland and using more chemical inputs to boost production – further intensifying the strain on biodiversity. To address this challenge, it is essential to shift from conventional farming methods to a regenerative approach that prioritises and enhances biodiversity. They explain how regenerative agriculture can help:
- Regenerative agriculture is the way forward to decarbonise the food system and make farming resilient to climate shocks.
- It won’t happen unless we succeed in making it commercially attractive for the farmers.
- Farmers must be prioritised as key players in our fight against climate change. (World Economic Forum, 2023)
They also explain that the exact upscaling needed to sufficiently limit climate change is to farm regenerative on 40% of the world’s cropland, which would save around 600 million tons of emissions. But in order to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees, it must be scaled faster, and move from covering around 15 % of global cropland today to 40 % by 2030 (World Economic Forum, 2023).
The World Economic Forum lists 5 benefits from regenerative farming:
1. Climate. It helps mitigate emissions such as through carbon sequestration and improved crop resilience for climate shocks.
2. Soil Health. It improves soil fertility through increased biomass production, thereby preventing soil degradation.
3. Resource use efficiency. Higher nutrient use efficiency (NUE) increases crop yield and optimizes land use efficiency, while improved water use efficiency reduces the stress on freshwater reserves.
4. Biodiversity. More diverse rotation and reduced pesticide usage supports biodiversity on farms while, in some cases, higher crop yields mean more natural habitats can be protected rather than cleared for agriculture.
5. Prosperity. Regenerative agriculture improves long-term farmer livelihood through reduced costs, improved crop yield and crop quality, and greater resilience to market volatility and extreme climate events. It also opens new green revenue streams for farmers, such as rewarding them for carbon capture and storage in the soil.
These are some very attractive benefits that you would think made everyone push for regenerative practises. However, this is not the case. This is because the transitioning fase is very risky and could be costly, which is why it is this is the fase the World Economic Forum prioritises to tackle. They present 5 concrete routes to reach scale:
1. Agree on common metrics for environmental outcomes. Today, there are many disparate efforts to define and measure environmental outcomes. We must move to a set of metrics adopted by the whole food industry, making it easier for farmers to adjust their practices and for positive changes to be rewarded.
2. Build farmers’ income from environmental outcomes such as carbon reduction and removal. We need a well-functioning market with a credible system of payments for environmental outcomes, trusted by buyers and sellers, that creates a new, durable, income stream for farmers.
3. Create mechanisms to share the cost of transition with farmers. Today, all the risk and cost sits with the farmers. It is impossible to achieve systems transformation without sharing the burden and benefits through the value chain.
4. Ensure government policy enables and rewards farmers for transition. Too many government policies are in fact supporting the status quo of farming. That has led us to a broken food system. The food sector must come together and work jointly with regulators to address this.
5. Develop new sourcing models to spread the cost of transition. We must move from sourcing models that take crops from anywhere to models that involve collaboration between off-takers from different sectors to take crops from areas converting to regenerative farming.
(World Economic Forum, 2023).
The solution to both the climate emergency and the food crisis is in the soil, quite literally
To make regenerative farming relevant for my research, I need to look at how design can be implemented. Design can play a crucial role in supporting the transition to regenerative agriculture by raising awareness, or developing innovative tools. Thoughtfully designed educational campaigns, user-friendly digital platforms for tracking environmental outcomes, and collaborative design strategies for farm operations can help farmers adopt sustainable practices with greater confidence.
Sources:
NRDC. (2021, 29th of November). Regenerative Agriculture 101. NRDC. Retrieved from https://www.nrdc.org/stories/regenerative-agriculture-101
WBCSD. (n.d.). Agriculture and Food. Retrieved from https://www.wbcsd.org/actions/agriculture-and-food/
World Economic Forum. (2023, 11th of January). 5 benefits of regenerative agriculture – and 5 ways to scale it. Wold Economic Forum. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/01/5-ways-to-scale-regenerative-agriculture-davos23
