Regenerative Agriculture is a State of Mind
by CRARS staff member Sheryl Karas. M.A.
Photo courtesy of Foggy Bottoms Boys
Sometimes things happen to shake up your mindset and spark conversation. That recently happened in one of our regenerative agriculture classes in response to a paper entitled “Scientific Literature Review of Regenerative Agriculture Definitions, Practices, and Outcomes”, produced by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) for the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Science Advisory Panel. In it, they recommended that the CDFA adopt the following definition of regenerative agriculture:
Regenerative agriculture is a system of crop and/or livestock production based in Indigenous knowledge that recognizes that natural ecosystems are complex networks that support farms and societies in multiple ways. Through the lens of soil conservation, regenerative agriculture actively seeks to restore and improve the numerous provisioning, supporting, regulating, and cultural ecosystem services that society depends on while operating within the natural resource constraints of a specific area. These ecosystem services include human health—particularly farmworker health and safety, nutrient cycling, erosion prevention, biodiversity, and water filtration, and cultural services such as social connection and spiritual traditions that lead to social outcomes such as farmer wellbeing and farmer innovation. Both individual practices and groups of agricultural practices (including/such as organic farming) are regenerative if they help restore and improve ecosystem services without having negative impacts on human health.
Read their rationale in the full paper (PDF).
The focus on social and cultural benefits of regenerative agriculture was interesting to class participants because, until recently, most research-oriented institutions such as our own have tended to shy away from making statements about factors that are not scientifically provable and materially tangible. And yet our own mentor-farmers repeatedly and enthusiastically comment on those “intangibles” as did the 113 farmers interviewed for the NRDC’s report. Intangibles include the state of mind of the farmers themselves.
The Challenge and the Joys
Many of our mentor-farmers talk about how the biggest challenges they have had in transitioning to regenerative agriculture have less to do with learning new practices and more to do with changing their mindset. What’s particularly hard is that most farmers today were taught to trust what was considered cutting edge in the field of agriculture starting in the early 1900s (tractors, fertilizer, monoculture, and centralized production) and know very well the great initial improvements in yield and efficiency that came from those methods. And yet the benefits of making the shifts needed with regenerative agriculture have led to their biggest joys and the motivation to continue.
Will Harris of White Oak Pastures(opens in new window) in Bluffton, Georgia is one of our most experienced regenerative practitioners. He started the process of transitioning his family’s conventional cattle-raising operation to a regenerative one in 1995 by going back to practices his ancestors used such as raising multiple species of animals at once and rotational grazing. He calls his approach “radically traditional” and, while he says that the first years of taking such a risk and learning how to make it work were a bit rough, he is now one of the most outspoken proponents of regenerative agriculture in the field:
When I was an industrial farmer, I'd have said that I wish that you knew how hard it is, how stressful it is, how complicated it is, how much work there is . . . Now that I farm differently, that is not what I would wish for you to know.
I wish that you could know how much fun it is, how great it is to work with friends and family, how good it is to be in touch with the changing of the seasons, how rewarding it is to see the condition of the soil improve, how peaceful it is to watch animals express their instinctive behavior, how pleasing it is to watch our community start prospering again.
Coming Home to Mother Nature
It might seem disingenuous for the NRDC to say that regenerative agriculture stems from or is based in indigenous knowledge after centuries of modern science, industry, and agriculture step by step rejecting those ways of knowing and ways of life. However, based on what many regenerative agriculture practitioners describe, Will Harris is not alone in feeling like the process of going regenerative leads to rediscovering ways of looking at a landscape and learning to work with natural processes that is similar to what their ancestors used to do. In fact, most of our grandparents or great-grandparents used to farm this way only 75-100 years ago, and those farming methods had been passed down for generations long before that. Some go back to when those families WERE indigenous to the places they used to reside before emigrating to the United States and are similar to indigenous ways of farming throughout the world. Almost all of the practices we associate with regenerative agriculture—no or low-till, crop rotation, intercropping, rotational grazing, silvopasture, use of soil amendments, and cover crops—were and still are used by various indigenous cultures(opens in new window).
Earth-based people had no choice but make decisions dictated by nature and neither did old-time farmers who thought of themselves as anything but part of an indigenous culture. Wendell Berry, the author of "The Unsettling of America: culture and agriculture" likes to point out(opens in new window) that farmers used to know how to use nature-based solutions like crop rotation and diversification because those who came before them used those methods and there was no question that this worked. There were no tractors or plows that deeply overturned the soil; there were no chemicals to substitute for nature’s way. While the idea of having dominion over the land is strongly embedded in our modern societies today, the consequences of ignoring or harming Mother Earth (or at least nature) would once have been thought of as suicidal. Farmers lived in nature and worked from nature.
Tyler Dawley of Big Bluff Ranch(opens in new window) in Colyear Springs, CA says that “in regenerative agriculture, the idea is that we're farming in Mother Nature’s image. We're taking her operating system that is really good at working on its own. But, you know, we have this idea that you can take the humans out of the system and that in time Mother Nature will balance everything—that the checks and balances would all happen without humans involved messing it up.” But, he continues, “We are part of the ecosystem—you can't really pull us out of it. Our Western society makes us feel separate from it, but we need to understand how we fit into it, and how it works on its own, and how we can take our ability to affect the environment and change it from evil to good.”
Context is Everything
Most importantly, regenerative ag practitioners learn that understanding the context you are working in and choosing practices most appropriate for those conditions is essential.
Regenerative agriculture is not a one-size fits all approach that a person can follow like a recipe in a cookbook. It is more of an immersive process of paying attention to what is happening as best you can, adding a practice or two to address challenges on the land (for example, adding cover crops to reduce soil erosion), noting what happens, and making adjustments or additions within the context of both the needs of the land, the greater context of the weather and surrounding environment, and the human needs of those working with the land and living around it (including the community the farm or ranch benefits).
Many of us call this a “systems approach” to agriculture because it is about looking at the whole farm or ranch and the environment it is embedded in as a system or nested series of systems that interact in a variety of ways. Others use the term “holistic” to describe the same thing, and indigenous people wouldn’t necessarily give this a name at all as they see themselves in the context of the greater whole in the first place.
Mark Biaggi of TomKat Ranch(opens in new window) in Pescadero, CA puts the dilemma of defining regenerative agriculture (RA) well. Attempting to narrow it down to a set of specific practices won’t work. What’s needed is the mindset shift:
We need to recognize that we humans are linear thinkers, good at connecting the dots, solving problems, and producing predictable results. Agriculture is not an entity unto itself but an integral part of the natural world, ultimately governed by the laws of nature which are non-linear. Natural systems are highly complex, multi-circular, incredibly interconnected, and ever changing. Should we ignore the complexity of nature and forge ahead with our linear thinking only, best tools in hand, with a production-only mentality, we eventually create many of the challenges facing the agriculture industry today worldwide. Every decision we make produces corresponding and cascading impacts in the natural world.
To start we must have our ego in check. Is it not the hubris of mankind to think that we can dominate the world, nature, and biology through technological, chemical, and mechanical means to do our bidding? And then to assume that in this domination there will be no negative consequences? Therefore, to succeed within RA—producing food in a way that supports healthy people and a healthy planet—requires a paradigm shift away from the dominating mindset to a mindset of working with nature for a mutual benefit.
Ultimately, the idea of context morphs into a mindset of some farmers feeling like they’re part of a much larger project, and that becomes a motivating mindset in itself. Thomas Nicholson Stratton of Foggy Bottoms Boys(opens in new window) in Humboldt County, CA puts it this way:
Recognizing that when it comes to natural disasters—and I say ‘when’ because it’s only a matter of time before you will experience a natural disaster, from tsunamis to hurricanes to drought to tornadoes, worldwide there is always something—to even be able to support a larger food system and infrastructure outside of our own requires the ability to have a sustainable and sovereign food system locally. That’s really been my charge, my passion and my drumbeat. And it’s hard even trying to do it because it’s so nebulous. Folks don’t really understand that advocation. So sometimes the best advocation is the advocation of doing it and making it work for you as the farmer to ensure that your local community has what’s necessary when there is a challenge.
Learn more at the Center for Regenerative Agriculture and Resilient Systems(opens in new window).