Learning About Regenerative Agriculture

This image is a good representation of what regenerative agriculture is not. What do you think happens to the soil when it rains? Where does the water go? Is the soil healthy? Answers: The soil erodes as the water runs off and is not absorbed because this soil is unhealthy due to the agricultural practices occurring.

Learning about regenerative agriculture has been a process that not only feels timely, but critical. I cannot think of other times, if any, where I felt I was on the wave of opportunity and change, where the “landscape” of a movement is gaining traction so quickly. I must admit that I enjoy this wave. The passion of learners and teachers who preach the gospel of Regenerative Ag. do not preach the word for monetary value (not many anyhow), they preach for the Hopeful Future. These are the people who have taken a step back to look at our food system and pinpoint a systemic issue, soil health. Although they are not the discoverers of such practices, they are adding a modern accent to the practice. 

So what is Regenerative Agriculture? That is a burning question that many governmental bodies are currently attempting to define. To me, it is An agricultural practice that continually improves the health of the ecosystem, minimizing or, ideally, excluding harmful practices. A simple definition that allows for creativity in practice, allowing for tailored styles of agricultural practices because as we know, each plot of land is different from the last. 

Why is this so exciting? 

Our modern agricultural practices, sometimes referred to as “Industrialized Agriculture” or “Conventional Agriculture”, have a small…addiction, if you will. Actually, it is not so small, it is the application of hundreds of millions of tons of chemical fertilizers, annually. It is one of the largest challenges facing our planet today. 

Taken from Science.org. The image represents the nine planetary boundaries that we are impacting, and rely on. As you can see, Nitrogen and Phosphorous are through the metaphorical roof. “The major anthropogenic perturbation of both the N and P cycles arises from fertilizer application”. Phosphorus is another issue that I’ve touched on.

This practice has not been going on long, the super-brief history of it is that the modern chemical fertalizer used to increase soil nitrogen, called ammonia (a primary nutrient of plants) was invented in the early 20th century by German scientist Frtiz Haber. The new fertilizer grew traction slowly until after the second world war, when is became widely adopted. Crop yields soared and food was plentiful. What wasn’t recognized was that the fertilizer was detrimental to soil health and after a handful of years, the soil health declined. How was the problem remedied? Add more fertilizer! This produced a positive feedback loop where more and more fertilizer was needed each year to produce the same quantity (This is important, remember this) of crops. 

This is where regenerative Ag. comes in, it allows farmers to jump off the synthetic Nitrogen treadmill and begin holistic land practices that do not degrade the very land they depend on for a livelihood and nutrition. 

Food produced on regenerative Ag. plots vs conventional plots can not only match the quantity of crops produced without additional fertilizers, but has a dramatic increase in quality of crops produced. And when the expensive inputs of fertilizer costs are removed, that means there is more room for profits at the end of the year. 

You may be asking yourself, why isn’t the practice of regenerative agriculture being practiced all over then? The long and short, policy. Policy is a huge driver of agricultural practices as well as insurance and crop subsidies. 

Coming to this field with an ecological background is exciting, to learn of the intricacies of agricultural relationships is akin to learning of natural ecological relationships. There’s even a name for it, Agroecology! I mention this because looking at agriculture from an ecological lens makes sense and when asking a few questions about it, seems to make more sense. 

Does crop quality suffer when soil quality is degraded? 

Are crops intertwined in the ecological landscape or are they separate? 

Do healthy soils produce healthy crops? 

Do resilient soils produce resilient crops? 

Answer them how you please, but I pose them because, from an ecological view and quite literally, crops are a product of the soil. Soil health = Crop Health. That may be oversimplistic due to various factors, but overall is agreeable. Expanding on the thought that crops are a product of soil, animals are a product of crops/forage and we are…a product of a combination of those two…so…we are ultimately…a product of soil? Yes. Soil health is indicative of human health and it doesn’t take a lot of digging to discover that North America is having some troubles. Remember, we are currently producing for quantity of calories over quality of calories. 

Regenerative Ag. is exciting because it is simultaneously tackling several issues that humanity is facing (disease due to lack of nutrition, food shortages, biogeochemical imbalances, soil loss, ecosystem degradation, pollinator loss, Green House Gas emissions, and more), by changing the way we grow food, we cannot only improve the quality of life on Earth, but we can sustain it. 

Care to learn more? Read some David R. Montgomery a professor at the University of Washington, specifically his books: Dirt, Growing a Revolution, and What Your Food Ate. 

Another book that gets more into the quantity vs quality of agriculture is The Dorito Effect by Mark Schatzker. 

I have no affiliation with the provided links or Thrift Books. If you are going to buy a book, please support your local bookstore or library :)

To Plant a Forest

Somewhere along the GDT.

The thought crossed my mind before dawn. I trampled my way through thickets of bushes led by my headlamp while Poncho, my dog, scoured through the underbrush with joy. Can forests be planted? I suppose this is more of a philosophical question than one of science, although, with some set criteria, it certainly could be.

The answer would depend on what one’s definition of a forest is. Is it a plot of land dominated by trees? How many acres must the land be in order to be considered a forest? Does there need to be diversity among the habitants? After the initial thought of “What is a forest?”, the definition becomes more complex.

I stand on the side of; No, a forest cannot be planted.

To say a forest can be planted is to limit its inherent ability to be wild. We can plant one aspect of the forest, the vertical structure, trees, but we cannot apply the details that make forests so special. We cannot force the birds to return, the mammals to roam, nor the insects to crawl. We can, however, invite them.

Aldo Leopold says in his famous essay The Land Ethic that there is an “A-B Cleavage” or a division between perspectives of what a forest is. Group A is happy to grow a forest like cabbages, viewing its inherent value in the volume of cellulose, while group B sees forests as fundamentally different than agronomy because it employs natural species and manages a natural environment. Group B considers other functions of a forest such as: wildlife, recreation, watersheds, and wilderness areas. Aldo finishes the paragraph by writing “Group B feels the stirrings of an ecological consciousness.”.

Humans can facilitate the return of species by creating a viable habitat, as said in the film Field of Dreams “If you build it, he will come”. It is commonly misquoted as “If you build it, they will come”, which is the example I prefer to use here. Planting native flora allows a forest to begin, but it is not ultimately established until it supports life and provides habitat for local citizens of the wild.

Sebastião Salgado and his wife Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, have been establishing a forest that now provides habitat to wildlife. Sebastião’s family land had been decimated, hardly a tree in sight, and rather than mope about the situation, he and his wife chose to change it. Their goal was to reforest the land, and they have done just that. By planting over 4 million native saplings, they have created an ecosystem that now thrives with life.

“You need forest with native trees, and you need to gather the seeds in the same region you plant them or the serpents, and the termites won’t come. And if you plant forests that don’t belong, the animal population won’t grow, and the forest will be silent.” - Sebastião Salgado

Following their philosophy of native planting, they have successfully created habitat for several species not previously documented on their land. There are now over 170 species of birds, 33 species of mammals, 293 plant species, and 15 species of amphibians.

A satellite time lapse of the land reforested by Sebastião Salgado and Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado. credit: Insituto Terra

Beau Miles, a contemporary YouTuber, known for crazy, off-the-rails local challenges chose to plant 1,440 trees in 24 hours and for those of you who are quick at math, know that this is a tree a minute, for 24 hours. The feat itself is incredible and the video is entertaining as always (Video is here), but I challenge the notion that he planted a forest.

Beau will have to wait for his forest to exist, he has laid the foundations, which is all we can do as humans. The land he planted the trees on would not be classified as a forest, it is missing…. something, which is why I say forests cannot be planted. There is a touch of life that is exclusive from human intervention which completes a forest. The touch of wilderness, of life completely independent from our own that completes a forest ecosystem. Without it, we have just planted crops.

Beau will have to wait as there is nothing more he can do to hurry the process of transforming his tree plantation into a forest, the process is reliant on nature now. He will undoubtedly appreciate watching his plantation transform into a forest, the gradual noticing of new species, and the splendor of watching the change he set in motion.

Planting a forest is a theoretical statement, it is up to each individual to determine if the task can be done. Unlike the structures we create, a forest is not complete once the last nail is hammered in, nor the final tile laid. Time is baked into the creation of a forest, free from the influence of humans and our hurried ways. Forests contain immense wonder and beauty because they are an expression of the processes of the earth, a dynamic mystery subtly changing day by day.