User:BestofLAandBay/Regenerative agriculture

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Regenerative agriculture is a conservation and rehabilitation approach to food and farming systems. It focuses on topsoil regeneration, increasing biodiversity, improving the water cycle, enhancing ecosystem services, supporting biosequestration,increasing resilience to climate change, and strengthening the health and vitality of farm soil. Regenerative agriculture is not a specific practice itself. Rather, proponents of regenerative agriculture use a variety of sustainable agriculture techniques in combination. Practices include recycling as much farm waste as possible and adding composted material from sources outside the farm. Regenerative agriculture on small farms and gardens is often based on philosophies like permaculture, agroecology, agroforestry, restoration ecology, keyline design, and holistic management. Large farms are also increasingly adopting such techniques, and often use "no-till" and/or "reduced till" practices.

As soil health improves, input requirements may decrease, and crop yields may increase as soils are more resilient against extreme weather and harbor fewer pests and pathogens.

Regenerative agriculture mitigates climate change through carbon dioxide removal; for example, it draws carbon from the atmosphere and sequesters it.

Recent developments (since 2010)
Several days before the opening of the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, a report was published, sponsored by some of the biggest agricultural companies. The report was produced by Sustainable Markets Initiative, an organisation of companies trying to become climate friendly, established by King Charles III. According to the report, regenerative agriculture is already implemented on 15% of all cropland. Despite this, the rate of transition is "far too slow" and must be tripled by the year 2030 to prevent the global temperature passing the threshold of 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels. Agricultural practices must immediately change in order to avoid the damage that would result.

One of the authors emphasised that “The interconnection between human health and planetary health is more evident than ever before.” The authors proposed a set of measures for accelerating the transition, like creating metrics for measuring how much farming is sustainable, and paying farmers who will change their farming practices to more sustainable ones. The United Nations hopes to ensure that by 2030 sustainable food production systems and resilient agricultural practices can drive the production of more crops, maintain more ecosystems, strengthen the capacity for adapting to climate change, extreme weather, floods caused by natural disasters, and drastically improved soil quality from the usage of regenerative agriculture **CITE**.

Principles
The Carbon Underground organization created these set of principles that eld to be adopted by companies like Ben & Jerry's, Annie's and the Rodale Instititute. As previously mentioned, the Rodale Institute was the first to coin the term Regenerative Agriculture.

The Rodale Institute outlined principles that were necessary to build soil health, fertility, increase water percolation and retention in the plants, increasing biodiversity in the ecosystem, and reducing its carbon emissions.

The four principles are:


 * 1) To improve agroecosystems in soil, water, biodiversity
 * 2) create designs specific in order to make decisions that express the potential of the farm
 * 3) ensure that all relationships with stakeholders are maintained and developed throughout the course of farmers adjusting to the method of regenerative agriculture
 * 4) Grow as individuals, farms, and communities to express their most- innate potential

These principles stem from the ideology that conventional agricultural practices from the soil, in its exposure to organic matter to the surface and reduction of tillage, have been estimated to contribute a third of total CO2 inputs since the Industrial Revolution.

Loring argues that, depending on the relative flexibility of people in the food system with respect to the foods they eat and the overall diversity of foods being produced and harvested, food systems can fall into one of four general patterns:


 * Regenerative (high diversity, high flexibility), where ecosystems are able to recycle and replenish used energy to usable forms, such as found in many Indigenous food systems
 * Degenerative (High diversity, low flexibility), where people fixate on specific resources and only switch to alternatives once the preferred commodity is exhausted, such as fishing down the food web.
 * Coerced (low diversity, low flexibility), where people subsidize prized resources at the expense of the surrounding ecosystem, such as in the Maine Lobster fishery
 * Impoverished (low diversity, high flexibility), where people are willing to be flexible but, because they are living in degraded ecosystems and possibly a povery trap, cannot allow ecosystems and resources to regenerate.

The organisation Climate Farmers states that an outcome-based definition of regenerative agriculture is crucial. Topography, climate, soil type, water availability and ecological characteristics all impact agricultural systems. As such, the regenerative practices implemented on farms are only as successful as their consideration of the unique context in which they operate. Combining livestock and cover cropping to increase the flow of nutrients in the soil are practices in regenerative agriculture that are essential for policymakers and crop growers to make informed decisions to realistically achieve resilience against climate change '''. This strategy is based on the biological principle that seeks to enhance productivity and environmental management. The approach has gained traction among farmers and policymakers as a way of enhancing soil health, reducing carbon emissions, and improving food security.'''