The Problem with Regenerative Agriculture
What is regenerative agriculture?
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 farming uses no-till cultivation, cover crops, and crop rotation. These practices keep carbon in the soil, where it builds over time. In turn, carbon-rich organic matter feeds healthy plants.
*biosequestration: harnessing the relationships between plants and soil microbes to pull excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it in plants and soils where it is a useful nutrient for farmers
Why is regenerative agriculture important?
People are finally realizing that we must take action in order to combat climate change. Regenerative agriculture is an extremely effective way to not only completely eliminate our CO2 emissions but to actually eliminate previous emissions.
The Reality
white Americans are most likely to own land and benefit from the wealth it generates.
From 2012 to 2014, white people comprised over 97 percent of non-farming landowners, 96 percent of owner-operators, and 86 percent of tenant operators.
Farmers of color comprised less than 3 percent of non-farming landowners and less than 4 percent of owner-operators.
Structural Racism in the food/agriculture industry
Discriminatory laws, such as the California Alien Land Law of 1913, prohibited various people of color from owning land. They were also denied reparations after the abolition of slavery, as well as labor protections like minimum wage, union rights, and social security when they worked on farms.
An Example: Kiss the Ground
Kiss the Ground is a documentary that was released in 2020. It promoted regenerative agriculture and showed how it could be a solution to climate change.
(I really liked it because it gives hope to the audience of a healthy planet)
However, the movie excludes the voices of POC and completely ignores their ancestors’ contributions to the regenerative movement. The movie fails to address the social inequities and structural racism at the heart of American agriculture, including Black and Indigenous land dispossession, discrimination, and a lack of access to farmland.
Unrecognized Pioneers of Regenerative Agriculture
Although people may just be starting to recognize regenerative agriculture right now, the concept is not new.
Regenerative agriculture practices have been a part of Indigenous land management.
Example: intercropping- planting more than one crop together in a practice known as intercropping. Intercropping is based on synergy in which the physical aspects of each plant complement one another and improve each other’s health and growth. A combination of corn, beans, and squash known as the ‘Three Sisters’ was cultivated extensively by the Iroquois in the Northeast.
Example: Native American communities did not use plows or till the land. They terraced the land to prevent erosion, planted riparian buffers to protect sensitive areas, and grew both wild and domesticated foods.
Indigenous peoples need to be credited for their practices and not pushed aside.
Regenerative agriculture can be an amazing asset for combating climate change as long as we give proper credit to indigenous peoples and work to ensure equality in the agriculture industry. Although we cannot change the past, we can try to save our world in a way that provides equality for all people.
