Regenerative agriculture strives to work with nature rather than against it. Regenerative agriculture is more than just being sustainable.
I recently attended a day-long report launch workshop on strategies and business cases for scaling the manufacturing of organic fertilizers in Kenya at a city hotel in Nairobi. The event ignited a newfound passion for agriculture journalism, a beat I am relatively new to.
From keenly listening to the presentations, arguments and counterarguments, by key stakeholders in the industry, I came up with my journalistic angle for the story I was to write about.
The natural disasters bedevilling us are symptomatic of our fast-paced lifestyles and one-sided relationship with the planet. We have forgotten that we are nature, and because of that, we’ve extracted from the earth without giving back. How do we give back? How do we restore degraded soils using practices such as adaptive grazing, no-till planting and zero use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers? I thought to myself.
Regenerative agriculture
Regenerative agriculture strives to work with nature rather than against it. Regenerative agriculture is more than just being sustainable. It is about reversing degradation and building up the soil to make it healthier than its current state.
A rice farmer in Mwea. /FILE
In the context of food and modern-day agriculture, this type of farming is essentially the new organic or sustainable farming, but it goes a few steps further. In addition to omitting chemicals, regenerative agriculture replenishes and strengthens the plants, the soil, and the nature surrounding it.
And because most of what we consume are actually plants, “regenerative ag” should become a shiny new buzzword in the sustainable conversation.
I chose this as my angle because this is one of the places where we can make a positive impact. Rather than just pollute less or do less harm, we can actually kind of revive the earth through our day-to-day activities.
Most young journalists in my age bracket eschew agriculture journalism as a beat and have never set foot on a farm, and the conventional-versus-
The easiest way to understand regenerative agriculture is to first picture what you think of as a “typical farm”: It’s probably hundreds of acres of a single crop, like maize or beans. It probably looks normal to your eye, though not entirely natural, because it isn’t: Most of those farms use pesticides and other conventional methods, like deep tilling.
A regenerative farm is the complete inverse of that: Imagine acre upon acre of different crops, many of them strategically planted to help each other grow and flourish. On a coffee farm, there might be rows of snap peas planted as “cover crops” to shade the soil so it stays cool, absorbs more water, and thus grows more microbiomes.
Regenerative farms also implement “pollinator strips” of crops that attract bees and butterflies to the area, or they’ll add “trap crops” to divert pests from their hero crops in place of chemical pesticides. It’s mimicking what nature does already. You never see just one crop in nature, you see a vast diversity. There’s a reason for that.
Regenerative farming produces stronger crops and provides a healthier way of life for farmers, but it’s the impact on soil that’s making it an environmental movement. Rich, nutrient-dense soil sequesters carbon from the atmosphere through a process we all learned as primary school pupils: photosynthesis. When plants photosynthesize, they capture carbon in the air and draw it back into the earth, where it becomes food for microorganisms and mycelia.
It’s all part of earth’s natural cycle—the atmosphere has always traded carbon with the soil—but after the Industrial Revolution, humans have been releasing disproportionate amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. The cycle is no longer in harmony, and the carbon trapped in the atmosphere is now warming the planet. To make matters worse, modern-day farming practices have led to massive areas of stripped, barren land that can’t effectively absorb carbon.
We constantly hear about reducing our carbon emissions or new technology that captures carbon, but if the earth could just return to its natural, abundant state, it could fix the problem of global warming on its own.
Soil has lost close to 140 billion tons of CO2e through tillage, overgrazing, and churning it up to develop urban and suburban sprawl. Of the available landmass that is not picked over, we can sink all of the carbon in our atmosphere, which is 109 billion tons. So we owe the soil MORE carbon than we need to sequester.
Our land is bare and essentially devoid of life, with an intentional collective zeal by the government and the private sector, transforming conventional maize, beans and other crop farms into regenerative is possible.
Amid economic turmoil, it’s unlikely that many brands have set aside an agriculture budget. Some might be cutting their sustainability budgets altogether. But if they’re willing to think long-term and leap, investing in regenerative farming methods is the best thing they can do for the planet.
A rice farm in Nyando. /TAALAMU NEWS
It may not be big enough to change the whole world, but it’s big enough to change our country. And it’s big enough that if we do it well and get more journalists writing and screaming about it, much bigger brands will jump on board, and consumers and farmers deep in the villages will demand it.
In other words, it’s doable. And while it sounds scientific, it’s also radically simple.
Ooro George is a Kenyan journalist, art critic, digital stories, and cross-cultural curator. You can reach him via LinkedIn here, through email: [email protected] and on X @OoroGeorge