Regenerative agriculture is an important topic in the conversation about the future of our food supply in a world where the that supply gets more and more disrupted.
And it is hot, because it is a much cleaner and healthier way of growing our food than the industrial agriculture we now rely on. We need it, to drastically decrease the enormous ecological footprint of modern agriculture.

I see it as a holistic approach to agriculture, aimed at continually improving the conditions on a farm, based on ecological / organic principles.
By the way, indigenous peoples shrug their shoulders and say: what's new, we've been doing this for centuries...

A definition from Wikipedia:
“ 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. “

After watching many videos and reading a lot about it, I got very excited about it. So excited, in fact, that one of the main reasons for moving to where we live now was to start a food forest, using the principles of Regenerative Agriculture as much as possible.

Questions

But while doing and reading, some questions came to my mind.

Agriculture from before the green revolution, had a lower yield per acre than modern, intensive industrial agriculture. That’s why we industrialised it in the first place… What's that like for Regenerative Agriculture? Unfortunately, I have not been able to find enough comparison material. Is it perhaps still too young, and applied on too small a scale, to say anything meaningful about it?

Regenerative agriculture should ideally in the long term be able to provide the following:
- meet the current demand for food, both what we eat directly and to feed the animals that many of us eat
- plus what we need to feed the hungry
- and what we need to feed the growing population
- plus what we need in biomass for the exploding demand for bio-electricity and bio-fuel. And that while Regenerative Agriculture itself is very hungry for compost and mulch, and doesn’t produce enough itself to meet its own needs... So will they become competitors of each other? Or will bio- el and fuel production continue to directly and indirectly gobble up entire forests?
- plus the space, literally and figuratively, that everything living on earth needs to recover and become healthy again.

Is this a realistic prospect for the future?
Can it be done within the area we now use for agriculture?
If not, how do we compensate for the damage we do by sacrificing even more nature? And where will we find the necessary land to meet up demand?

Difficult questions, difficult choices… But the guiding principle for everything we do MUST be that we live within the limits of the planet. As long as we do not do that - and we are nowhere near doing that - we are working towards the ultimate demise of the world as we know it.

Note: also read my post on Regeneration

'Autumn Grass (1)' is an artwork in my collection 'Evening Falls', prints are available in my portfolio at the artwork page or send me a message for a quote.

ALL WE NEED IS LESS CONSUMING

Through my artworks I ask you to reflect for a moment on the nature around you, on the beautiful feeling that nature can evoke. Thus to think about your actions to support the wellbeing of the earth and everything that lives on it. And on what humanity loses when many of us continue on the destructive path of ever more greed and consuming. And please, reflect on how you can survive in this rapidly changing world…

So do you want to know your ecological footprint? 

Then visit this website: https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en 

And do you want to reduce your ecological footprint?

Then ask me, I will help you. For free. Or simply visit my website and choose in the menu for Your Footprint.

And if you appreciate my writings and art and want to support me, you can buy me a piece of fruit here: https://ko-fi.com/jacobberghoef, thank you 🍏 !

So are you interested in more? Then read what I wrote about System Change, Man's impact on the earth, Organic Change, Regenerative Agriculture, Regeneration