Foodprints for the Future
5 Things You Didn’t Know About Regenerative Agriculture
February 14, 2025
This Valentine’s Day, show some love for Mother Earth because February 14 is also National Regenerative Agriculture Day! So while you celebrate with that special someone (or re-watch Bridget Jones with a carton of chocolate ice cream — no judgement here), take some time to reflect on how we can all play a part in cultivating resilient soil, growing healthy food, restoring biodiversity, and cleaning our air.
Regenerative agriculture, the practice of farming in a way which revives and maintains soil health by restoring organic carbon levels and nurturing soil biodiversity, is an important initiative for EARTHDAY.ORG.
The farming industry contributes to billions of metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year, degrades farmland with harmful tilling and over grazing methods, and wastes huge amounts of water, energy and other vital resources. As the planet continues to deal with the devastating effects of climate change, it is becoming increasingly important to find ways of producing food for our growing population in a safe and sustainable manner. Regenerative agriculture is the solution.
Regenerative Agriculture Does NOT Use Harmful Pesticides, Fertilizers and other chemicals
Every year, about 3.5 million metric tons of pesticides are used around the world, with herbicides accounting for over half. Pesticide use has dramatically increased in the last few decades, doubling from 1990.
Since the Green Revolution in the 1960s — a period of intense agricultural innovation and progress — pesticides and fertilizers have been widely used to reduce disease, control pests, and increase yields. However, despite the benefits of using these chemicals in agriculture, there are many serious environmental and human health implications.
Crops produced with chemicals are potentially hazardous to humans, as the chemicals used in the growing process can be retained in the final products we eat (not to mention released into the air and water.) They can then enter into our bodies, leading to various health problems including sterility, birth defects and some cancers. Farm workers who are directly exposed to pesticides are even more vulnerable.
Regenerative farming practices, however, do not use any chemicals, and instead focus on restoring soil ecosystem health and sustaining biological processes.
Regenerative Agriculture Supports Soil Biodiversity
A handful of healthy soil is teeming with life — from insects, spiders, and worms, to millions of bacteria and other microorganisms. Scientists estimate that more than half (!) of all known species on Earth reside in soil, including 90% of fungi and 86% of plants.
Without its inhabitants, soil is just dirt — unable to provide any of the environmental services that all life relies on. It is estimated that less than 0.1% of pesticides actually affect their intended target weed or pest, meaning that 99.9% of applied pesticides unintentionally kill other organisms that call soil their home.
These tiny creatures play a crucial role in carbon cycling and retention. Invertebrates, such as worms, break down decaying organic matter and convert the carbon into more stable and useful forms for microorganisms, store it in their own bodies, and release the rest into the soil for retention or uptake by plants.
Many soil invertebrates are also “ecosystem engineers,” building and maintaining the physical structure of their homes. The burrows and tunnels they make enable the flow of air, water, and nutrients, more effectively allowing the soil to retain water and resist erosion.
Higher soil biodiversity also supports healthier plants — reducing the incidence of diseases and pests, and increasing the nutritional value of our crops.
So, by avoiding fertilizers and pesticides in our own gardens, and choosing organic and ethically grown produce, we can all be soil conservationists and climate heroes, and protect the insects, worms and bacteria we need for healthy soil!
Healthy Soil Stores Carbon (and Combats Climate Change!)
When ecological balance is reached and biodiversity is high, our soil is much better equipped to perform the functions that are critical to combating climate change.
The carbon storage capacity of soil is immense. Soil is the second largest carbon sink in the world, after the ocean, and it is estimated that soil is able to sequester more than a billion tons of carbon per year with the right management. However, intensive farming practices have long been degrading farmland around the world, releasing billions of metric tons of carbon from topsoil and making further planting more difficult.
Many scientists consider soil restoration to be one of the most promising ways of reversing the damage caused by man-made carbon emissions over the past several decades, in addition to supporting efforts to scale up food production for the growing human population.
Regenerative Agriculture is “No-Till Agriculture”
Industrial farming often uses tilling, the preparation of soil for seed planting by mechanically digging or turning over the soil. While there are some benefits to tilling soil, including removing weeds and drying out wet soil, there are also many drawbacks. Intensive tilling destroys organic matter, releases carbon, and destabilizes soil, resulting in less productive soil over time.
Generally, regenerative farming follows a “conservation tilling” approach, which encompasses no-till and minimum-till practices. Minimum-till allows the turning over and refreshing of soil with minimal disruption to soil integrity. This approach also retains crop residue, leftover organic material from plantings, on the soil surface which mitigates erosion, water loss, and carbon release. Crop residue is also thought to prevent the formation of “soil crust” after heavy rain which can hinder air exchange and seed emergence.
Another regenerative practice that helps to maintain soil health and productivity is crop rotation, the cycling of crops on a plot of land to increase diversity, reduce soil erosion, and disrupt pests. One popular form of crop rotation is cover cropping, the planting of crops during the off-season to protect soil for the next round of “cash crops” — crops being grown for profit.
So, rotating what you plant season to season is not only helpful in improving yields, but also eliminates the need for harmful pesticides, allowing all kinds of other organisms to flourish!
Regenerative Agriculture Helps Pollinators
All of the benefits discussed in this article, including the reduced use of pesticides and increased soil and plant biodiversity, help pollinators. Pollinators, animals which help facilitate plant pollination by transferring pollen from one plant to another, are one of the most important groups of organisms, but are also threatened by a host of things, including habitat loss, disease, and pesticides.
Butterflies, beetles, flies and bees play particularly significant ecological roles in global plant pollination and human food security. About 80% of the world’s flowering plants require a pollinator to reproduce. Since most of our food comes from flowering plants (fruits, vegetables, coffee — you name it,) we would be in serious trouble without our pollinator friends.
And yet, because of human activity, many of these creatures are experiencing serious population declines and could disappear altogether if current trends continue. Regenerative practices of farming, however, aim to produce food in the least environmentally intensive way possible — prioritizing natural processes and protecting the other organisms which rely on the land we farm.
Crop rotation and cover cropping ensure a diverse array of flowering plants for pollinators, minimum tillage protects nesting habitats and insect eggs, and pesticide-free pest management techniques reduces the number of pollinators that are unintentionally killed.
Hungry For More?
If these facts have sharpened your appetite for further information on the far-reaching benefits of regenerative agriculture, EARTHDAY.ORG has a wide selection of resources to choose from, including overviews of principal regenerative techniques, educational videos, and knowledge quizzes.
Plus, look out for the new Amazon Prime film, Common Ground, coming out on Earth Day, April 22, 2025. The film is a followup to the award-winning 2020 documentary Kiss the Ground, and explores the ways in which regenerative agriculture is a hopeful and promising solution to our most pressing environmental problems.
