Over the last three years a “new” term for methods to advance Australia agricultural practices has become increasingly used, its called regenerative agriculture (RA) and those practicing it are called regenerative farmers. The term has taken over from descriptions like holistic farming, landcare farming, conservation farming, sustainable farming and even some organic farmers call themselves RA organic farmers. Many public farming extension and support organisations like landcare groups, catchment management authorities and departments of agriculture now promote and advocate regenerative agriculture.
In the private sector new organisation and businesses have emerged carrying the regenerative agriculture name as part of their brand. Journalists across all forms of the media constantly profile or report on people who refer to themselves as RA farmers.
But what is regenerative agriculture and how is it distinguished from other forms of farming practice?
Is it a superior form of farming based on social, environmental, productivity, climate resilience, animal welfare and food safety grounds? Are its practioners certified or recognised by any audited process to verify their farming methods achieve any particular ecosystem functions outcomes not achieved by best practice conventional farming management or provide particular consumer assurances around food production and animal welfare as with certified organic farming or in an environmental management system?
The answers to these questions are possibly yes and possibly no. Any farmer can claim she or he is a regenerative farmer, just like they can claim they are sustainable, holistic, and even organic. And there are many farmers who could claim these methods but prefer not to do so as their preferred brand is simply “farmer”. An increasing number of farm consultants claims their advice is based around regenerative agriculture principles, while retailers of “natural” soil health inputs infer their products are compatible with RA.
One New Zealand regenerative agriculture consultant, Nicole Masters, Integrity Soils, highlights the variable interpretations involved when she says on her web site that “Regenerative Agriculture is also known as Biological Agriculture, Holistic Ag, Ecological Agriculture, Natural Intelligence, Eco-Agriculture, Natural Farming, Humus/Carbon Farming…. There are no silver bullets here or one road to Rome, but programs based on observation, ecological principles and regenerative land management practices. It covers a wide range of approaches, tools, and the thinking required to build soil and ecosystem health, food quality, and profitability. You can call it what you want. We call it common sense.”
What Masters omits from her RA definition is any association with agricultural science. This is a common occurrence.
One of the easiest to understand interpretations of what regenerative agriculture is all about is provided in a diagram on the Savory Global website promoting its Ecological Outcome Verification (TM) program. It shows that grazing practices can be degrading the health of the land as a living system, sustaining it or regenerating it, figure 1. The indicators used to measure land health are soil health, biodiversity and ecosystem functions.
The outcomes of regenerative agriculture methods just like best practice conventional farming methods are positive but highly variable for a host of issues including ecosystem functions across farms, biodiversity, soil health including soil organic carbon level, animal and crop productivity, livestock welfare, enterprise resilience in the face of climate change, and the well being of farmers involved.
But brand regenerative agriculture has issues which are not readily apparent especially to less experienced farmers. These stem from the way the brand is interpreted by its wide range of its champions who are a minority of farmers, ag consultants, input suppliers, environmental academics, food and fibre businesses and medicos.
The adoption of RA amongst mainstream professional farmers over time might have been a fairly straightforward process if not for one barrier, the associated ideology promoted by its champions that conventional farming methods and the agricultural scientists and technologists involved with its research and extension are responsible for land and water degradation and for producing food which is less healthy, possibly toxic, and is responsible for the decline in human health around the world. As a consequence instead of being a methodology for positive change it has become a cause of division amongst farmers. The major divisions centre around accusations:
* That agricultural science based farming practiced over the last forty years is degrading farm ecosystem functions. This type of farming is often referred to as intensive, industrial or factory farming.
* That agricultural scientists involved in research and extension have had no interest in improving ecosystem functions and have focused solely on productivity and profitability. These scientists have been manipulated by the multi-national agricultural chemical companies who have become increasingly responsible for research and extension funding as their traditional funders, state governments, have withdrawn their financial support for agriculture.
* That conventional farming using artificial inputs such as herbicides, insecticides and chemical fertilisers is decreasing food’s nutritional quality as well as contaminating it with toxins causing significant health problems for humans.
* That conventional farming and conservation methodologies have not changed significantly over the last 30 – 40 years to ensure ecosystem functions are being maintained or improved where needed.
* That within livestock grazing regions, natural or unchanged environments (as close as possible to pre-1788 status in Australia) have higher ecosystem function quality than environments changed to any extent by introduced species and inputs.
* That the only ‘responsible’ farmers are the small groups of people who contend they practice regenerative agriculture. This distinction has widened in the last few years into an ideological divide for some RA champions who claim some sort of moral and ethical differences between how they farm and how the majority farm.
The ideological distinction – good versus bad farming, is clearly portrayed in the front cover illustration from a book promoted by Regeneration International as what RA is all about, figure 2A.
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Posted by Moffitts Farm
Welcome to Moffitts Farm, a web site for people looking for a greater understanding of farming in-conjunction with nature to produce quality food and fibre for ethical consumers.
On this site you can explore Moffitts Media for articles on current agricultural affairs or Our Farm to learn from practical experience gained from monitoring of the farm itself. See a list of all articles on the right hand side of the page.
About Us
Moffitts Farm is located near Romsey, 60 kilometres north of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The Francis family purchased it in the 1950s from the Moffitts family
We are passionate about agriculture and environmental science and even whilst working off-farm we have pursued these interests . At Moffitts Farm we aim to join- the -dots about farming practice to demonstrate that it can be undertaken in conjunction with the provision of ecosystem services and animal welfare, which consumers have a right to expect. Our approach is to be inclusive of knowledge, not exclusive, that is we appraise and review all types of farming methods and inputs to give readers an opportunity to build on their own knowledge and attitudes. We have developed information on this website to cater for a range of audiences, from agricultural professionals to those consumers who want to learn about sustainable land management. The site provides information on key issues in Australian agriculture and news about what is happening on our farm. We are passionate about sustainable farming and we want to share our ideas and experiences with you.
Patrick Francis, an agricultural scientist who graduated from Melbourne University in1971 has a career embracing the era when chemical based agriculture reached its peak up to around 1995, through to the 2000’s when this dependency has been challenged for failing to embrace the biological fundamentals necessary for soil health, ecosystem services including carbon flows and sequestration, optimum rather than maximum productivity, and greater consumer awareness and concern about inputs and methods involved in food production and animal welfare.
