Why regenerative agriculture is gaining ground

By Jessica Rawnsley

Driving home from Wales to rural Hertfordshire, north of London, John Cherry was struck not by the bucolic landscape but by the state of his windscreen.

“In the past, at this time of year, you wouldn’t be able to see out of the windscreen because it would be splattered with dead insects. There were one or two,” he says. “Then suddenly we’re driving onto our farm and there are moths and insects everywhere, all over the road, bats flying around, all manner of birds, and it felt like, ‘Hang on, something is happening here.’”

That something is the way Cherry farms his land – and his obsession, as he describes it, with the soil. “The soil is an incredibly complex ecosystem,” he says. “It’s like a poor man’s rainforest. The better your soil, the better everything else performs.”

Cherry is one of a growing number of regenerative farmers. A loose umbrella term, regenerative agriculture is an approach that focuses not just on how much food can be produced per acre – the conventional, monoculture, fertiliser-drenched method – but how the land and surrounding environment can be restored. Its core principles include “no-till” farming to minimise soil disturbance, “cover crops” to increase soil organic matter and water retention, diverse rotations, managed grazing and negligible chemical use.

The potential benefits are profound, Cherry says: healthy soil supports biodiversity (every year more amber and red endangered list bird species flock to his farm – though he is most excited by the dung beetles), reduces erosion and flood risk, produces nutritious food, and absorbs and stores CO2.

On his 1,250 acre no-till farm, Cherry’s main crops are wheat, barley, oats, beans and linseed, sown in rotation with a herbal ley – a mix of herbs, grasses and legumes – to build soil fertility and add some spice to the diet of his grass-fed Shorthorn cattle. Since beginning to incorporate regenerative methods in 2010, it has been a continual journey of “tinkering”, failing and trying again, he says. But the switch has been fruitful: while farmers in the UK had to contend with a sodden winter, followed by a dry spring, Cherry’s crops have proved resilient.

“We’ve had a good year despite the horrible weather,” Cherry says. “It’s because our soil is in good shape. It’s held onto the rain a lot longer than it would have done if we’d been ploughing.”

The practice is not new, and some argue it is simply returning farming to its original modus operandi before modern-day conventional methods took over. But it has seen a surge of interest in recent years, from smallholders to big food conglomerates such as Nestlé, Arla and Danone – and, increasingly, venture capitalists.

One of the drivers is “a feeling that current approaches aren’t working and this idea … can provide long-term stability,” says Richard Francksen, professor of zoology at the University of Cumbria in north-west England. “Farmers are feeling uncertain about the future in a lot of respects. Regenerative agriculture can reduce input costs and provide longer-term resilience to change, whether climate or political.”

Farmers walk a tightrope when it comes to climate and geopolitical shocks. Climate change is felt in crops ravaged by drought and floods; narrow profit margins are squeezed by global price rises of chemicals such as fertilisers (dependent on fossil fuels); and disruption has been caused by Brexit, trade isolationism and Covid-19.

Agriculture is one of the principal contributors to global warming and the destruction of the natural world, accounting for 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. And centuries of damaging, predominantly industrialised farming practices have left the earth scorched, nature depleted and farmers struggling to make ends meet. The Global Environment Facility, a multilateral funding organisation, estimates that 95 per cent of the world’s land could become degraded by 2050; the UN warns 40 per cent already is.

Proponents of the regenerative approach believe it could help to heal the land and shrink farming’s carbon footprint, while also boosting farms’ ecological and economic resilience. Yet questions – and obstacles – remain.

“It’s partly mindset; you’re always looking for reasons not to change,” Cherry says. “If you’ve been doing things a certain way for 50 years, it’s hard to say ‘I’ve been wrong.’”

Education is key, and part of the impetus for Cherry to co-found Groundswell, a UK regenerative agriculture festival, in 2016. Rooted in peer-to-peer learning, the festival has grown from a few hundred attendees to some 8,000 last year. “The lovely thing about Groundswell is that it does change people’s minds,” he says. “I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve come up to me with tears in their eyes saying, ‘You’ve changed my life.’”

Even for those keen to change, the transition isn’t simple. “Context is hugely important,” says Francksen. “The barriers vary for different farmers: depending on the scale of their farm, location, climate. All fall under some kind of risk perception: what it might mean for bottom lines, potential yield penalties, whether there are supportive agricultural policies.”

While yields can initially drop, there is evidence to suggest that they rebound within the following three to six years, Francksen adds. And for Cherry, a massive drop in input costs – such as heavy pieces of machinery and chemicals – means his surplus is larger. “There really isn’t much money in farming at the moment, so the less spent means any income is pure profit.”

“Capital is essential” to support the shift to regenerative agriculture, says Larry Kopald, founder of US-based NGO The Carbon Underground. TCU works with farmers, scientists, companies and policymakers to restore soil health – and draw down millions of tonnes of CO2 – by accelerating the global transition. Different parts of the world – and farms – require different incentives. TCU works through partnerships with farmers in Africa, Europe, Asia, South and Central America, and Europe. Sometimes that means working to help farmers commercialise their carbon; TCU’s Adopt A Meter programme allows consumers to donate $5 which goes to small farmers for equipment, co-op development and the like.

Kopald is adamant the concept can be scaled – and argues that it is the “only scalable, immediate and economic way to fight climate change and improve food and water security”. “With roughly 2bn people growing our food on 600mn farms, the opportunity to scale is already there. And with nature as our business partner – supplying many of our input needs for free – the economic benefits to farmers, food companies, and governments will improve.”

Francksen is more cautious – there are still “evidence gaps” in terms of scaling and what it might mean for food security, he says. “We need to be careful that if we’re reducing total outputs on some farmland, we’re not just creating greater pressures elsewhere.”

While there is robust evidence for benefits such as soil health and water storage, data is more sketchy when it comes to “no-till” farming or pest suppression. There are also concerns that – given the lack of a standard definition or regulatory framework – some corporations greenwash by branding minor changes as “regenerative”.

Yet more research is underway and advocates argue that shifting to regenerative agriculture is critical for farming and the planet. “The urgency of progress cannot be overstated,” Kopald says, “given that agriculture is currently the second biggest cause of climate change, and climate change is projected to reduce food production by as much as 50 per cent in the next few decades just as the world is adding a billion people. It’s the only thing that can feed the world.”

“It’s something we can’t afford not to do,” Cherry echoes.

There are signs of movement. Current investments – from both private and public funds – in regenerative farming are already larger than the entire organic food industry, Kopald says. He draws parallels between regenerative agriculture and renewable energy: “Work with nature and the costs go down, the negative impacts go down, and the promise of the future goes up.”