Avoiding a regenerative dystopia
The regenerative agriculture movement has the opportunity to flourish and create many positive benefits for people and the planet. However, Mike Lee shares why the current state and structure of the movement is vulnerable to co-opting from less than honest actors looking to use it for greenwashing.
Regenerative agriculture has been one of the most discussed topics in the food industry over the past decade.
Its supporters advocate for it on the basis of how well it can nurture soil and farmland to produce high quality food in a more circular way. Yet the principles of regenerative agriculture are not new, despite the renewed interest in talking about it, and have been practiced by First Nations farmers worldwide for millennia.
With regenerative agriculture, the promise of growing food on healthy, resilient, carbon capturing farms that treat their workers and communities well is a deeply alluring one. It offers a vision for a more perfect world where humans live in greater harmony with Mother Nature where both thrive.
Regenerative agriculture; what’s in a name?
We are now at a crossroads in agriculture where the future of how to farm is an ongoing debate.
With issues like climate change and obesity looming over us, supporters of industrial and regenerative agriculture alike are trying to feed a growing world population in ways they believe will be best for people and the planet, which are often at odds with one another.
Industrial agriculture is still the dominant method for farming, but supporters of regenerative agriculture have been fighting hard for decades to unseat it from power.
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However, one of the factors that its most ardent supporters say is a feature of regenerative agriculture is also its biggest bug: the lack of a widely agreed upon definition.
Generally speaking, one of the main objectives that regenerative agriculture prioritises is soil health and growers have a varied toolkit to accomplish this. From avoiding tillage, to planting cover crops, to using rotational grazing techniques with livestock, there are many ways to boost soil health.
This flexibility offers farmers far more freedom and control over their land to nurture it the way they see fit. Regenerative agriculture is more preoccupied with creating good outcomes for people and the planet, and less rigid on dictating the methods by which farmers reach those outcomes, within some boundaries. This is a point of difference compared to things like organic agriculture, which more sharply dictates what farmers can and cannot do in order to earn organic certification.
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More than a buzzword
Regenerative agriculture implicitly assumes that the farmer is an honest and capable person who understands their farmland well and can successfully diagnose and execute the best techniques to keep their farm healthy. Two farms in different regions with different crops, soil characteristics, and weather may have drastically different methods for achieving healthy soil, yet they could both be considered a regenerative farm. It’s not as easy to regulate their methods of achieving soil health, because with regenerative agriculture, it’s all about the outcomes, not the means.
The freedom that regenerative agriculture gives farmers to decide the best methods is its greatest asset for honest, competent farmers but can be a liability when practiced by farmers who are ill-prepared or even looking to exploit the movement for personal gain.
In fact, there’s not much to stop a farmer from taking their crops to market and advertising them as being “regeneratively grown” and charging customers a premium or simply using the buzzword to stand out from the rest of the crowd.
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A farmer could easily implement a token regimen of planting a cover crop every couple of seasons and say they are practicing “regenerative agriculture,” without doing the real work to boost biodiversity, capture carbon, take care of waterways, and treat its workers fairly. It’s a scenario that I depict in my book, Mise. This is not in the true spirit of regenerative farming and is blatant greenwashing that can tarnish the reputation of regenerative agriculture for the farmers who do it properly.
Define regenerative agriculture, refine consumer awareness and education
Many proponents of regenerative agriculture I’ve spoken with recoil at the idea of explicitly defining what regenerative agriculture is because it encourages reductive thinking about complex systems. But I still think there needs to be a way to clearly describe the defining characteristics of a regenerative farm without forcing a one-size-fits-all framework on farmers. These characteristics should focus on outcomes like soil organic matter or carbon capture and specify that continuous, relative improvement in those metrics is desired, rather than setting an absolute threshold to reach.
An ideal definition should depict the essence of what regenerative agriculture can look like without dictating specific ways to achieve it.
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There are a multitude of other factors that could be addressed to shore up the prospects of regenerative agriculture becoming the de facto way to cultivate food. Like increasing the availability of capital and training for farmers to transition to regenerative agriculture. Or raising consumer awareness and education to create more demand for regeneratively grown products. But strengthening the definition of regenerative agriculture would go a very long way in advancing the cause and enabling it to more easily spread without degradation of its core values.
ESG investing a cautionary tale for regenerative agriculture
Like the ESG investing movement, which feels like it’s fading away before it could fully take hold, the regenerative agriculture movement could also fizzle out due to people bastardising its definition or rejecting it as a threat to profits. We’ve seen how pundits and business leaders have misinterpreted ESG ideals as “woke capitalism” and accused its supporters of shirking their fiduciary responsibilities by investing in ESG friendly companies. ESG investing was a well-intentioned framework for how capitalism could co-exist with altruism. And while it hasn’t been wiped out of existence, it’s a highly contentious issue that many in the financial world don’t dare mention, for fear of triggering certain audiences in a negative way.
Regenerative agriculture hasn’t captured the same kind of spotlight ESG has yet, but already it’s being derided by critics as being pure greenwashing.
Regenerative agriculture purists may bristle at the idea of creating a definition for their movement, but if they don’t, then someone else will. And that definition may be far worse than having none at all.
Mike Lee is a food futurist, innovation strategist, and author of the book Mise: On the Future of Food. Learn more on his keynote presentation at evokeAG. 2020 here.
Tickets are now on sale for evokeAG. 2025 to be held on 18-19 February 2025 in Brisbane, Queensland. Following a sell-out event in 2024 we are encouraging delegates to secure their tickets, flights and accommodation early.
We look forward to seeing you in Brisbane for evokeAG. 2025. In the meantime, catch up on the other conversations about sustainability, climate resilience and the role of agtech in meeting those challenges from here.