Regenerative agriculture is farm resilience

Most regenerative practices are not new. They were the norm until modern soil-depleting, fossil-fuel-dependent practices promising high yields at any cost took hold in corporate agriculture. These now-conventional practices may have led to cheaper food, but they deplete soil of vital nutrients, microorganisms and reduce our soil’s ability to hold carbon, and they require more water. Small farms like the one I grew up on have gradually disappeared. On our dairy farm we used little, if any, fertilizer or pesticides. Manure was regularly spread over fields. Cow pastures and crops like alfalfa, clover and oats were rotated and fertilized naturally and gradually. Not only do these practices sequester carbon, they reduce methane.