Regenerative agriculture: merging farming and natural resource conservation profitably
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
Evaluating the relative effects of regenerative and conventional corn production systems on pest management services, soil conservation, and farmer profitability and productivity throughout the Northern Plains of the United States provides the basis for dialogue on ecologically based farming systems that could be used to simultaneously produce food while conserving the authors' natural resource base.Abstract:
Most cropland in the United States is characterized by large monocultures, whose productivity is maintained through a strong reliance on costly tillage, external fertilizers, and pesticides (Schipanski et al., 2016). Despite this, farmers have developed a regenerative model of farm production that promotes soil health and biodiversity, while producing nutrient-dense farm products profitably. Little work has focused on the relative costs and benefits of novel regenerative farming operations, which necessitates studying in situ, farmer-defined best management practices. Here, we evaluate the relative effects of regenerative and conventional corn production systems on pest management services, soil conservation, and farmer profitability and productivity throughout the Northern Plains of the United States. Regenerative farming systems provided greater ecosystem services and profitability for farmers than an input-intensive model of corn production. Pests were 10-fold more abundant in insecticide-treated corn fields than on insecticide-free regenerative farms, indicating that farmers who proactively design pest-resilient food systems outperform farmers that react to pests chemically. Regenerative fields had 29% lower grain production but 78% higher profits over traditional corn production systems. Profit was positively correlated with the particulate organic matter of the soil, not yield. These results provide the basis for dialogue on ecologically based farming systems that could be used to simultaneously produce food while conserving our natural resource base: two factors that are pitted against one another in simplified food production systems. To attain this requires a systems-level shift on the farm; simply applying individual regenerative practices within the current production model will not likely produce the documented results.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
The Ability of Conservation Agriculture to Conserve Soil Organic Carbon and the Subsequent Impact on Soil Physical, Chemical, and Biological Properties and Yield
TL;DR: In this paper, a narrative review examines the literature published worldwide over the last 30 years to assess the impact of one widely applied agricultural management system, conservation agriculture (CA), on its ability to maintain soil organic carbon and the subsequent impacts on soil physical, chemical and biological properties, and yield.
Journal ArticleDOI
What Is Regenerative Agriculture? A Review of Scholar and Practitioner Definitions Based on Processes and Outcomes
TL;DR: In this article, the authors reviewed 229 journal articles and 25 practitioner websites to characterize the term "regenerative agriculture" and found that there were many definitions and descriptions of regenerative agriculture in usage.
Journal ArticleDOI
Cropland expansion in the United States produces marginal yields at high costs to wildlife.
Tyler J. Lark,Seth A. Spawn,Seth A. Spawn,Matthew Bougie,Matthew Bougie,Holly K. Gibbs,Holly K. Gibbs +6 more
TL;DR: It is found that croplands have expanded at a rate of over one million acres per year, and that 69.5% of new cropland areas produced yields below the national average, with a mean yield deficit of 6.5%.
Journal ArticleDOI
Integrated pest management: good intentions, hard realities. A review
Jean-Philippe Deguine,Jean-Noël Aubertot,Rica Joy Flor,Françoise Lescourret,Kris A.G. Wyckhuys,Alain Ratnadass +5 more
TL;DR: Agroecological Crop Protection is proposed as a concept that captures how agroecology can be optimally put to the service of crop protection, an interdisciplinary scientific field that comprises an orderly strategy at the field, farm, and agricultural landscape level and a dimension of social and organizational ecology.
Journal ArticleDOI
Regenerative agriculture – the soil is the base
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors reviewed 28 studies to find convergence and divergence between objectives and activities that define regenerative agriculture (RA) and proposed a provisional definition of RA as an approach to farming that uses soil conservation as the entry point to regenerate and contribute to multiple ecosystem services.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Soil carbon sequestration impacts on global climate change and food security.
TL;DR: In this article, the carbon sink capacity of the world’s agricultural and degraded soils is 50 to 66% of the historic carbon loss of 42 to 78 gigatons of carbon.
Journal ArticleDOI
Particulate soil organic-matter changes across a grassland cultivation sequence
C. A. Cambardella,E.T. Elliott +1 more
TL;DR: The POM fraction was isolated by dispersing the soil in 5 g L-1 hexametaphosphate and passing the dispersed soil samples through a 53-micrometer sieve as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
Soil Quality: A Concept, Definition, and Framework for Evaluation (A Guest Editorial)
Douglas L. Karlen,Maurice J. Mausbach,John W. Doran,R. G. Cline,R. F. Harris,Gerald E. Schuman +5 more
TL;DR: The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) Ad Hoc Committee on Soil Quality (S-581) as mentioned in this paper defined soil quality as "the capacity (of soil) to function".
Journal ArticleDOI
Global food security, biodiversity conservation and the future of agricultural intensification
Teja Tscharntke,Yann Clough,Thomas C. Wanger,Thomas C. Wanger,Louise E. Jackson,Iris Motzke,Iris Motzke,Ivette Perfecto,John Vandermeer,Anthony M. Whitbread +9 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the true value of functional biodiversity on the farm is often inadequately acknowledged or understood, while conventional intensification tends to disrupt beneficial functions of biodiversity.
Journal ArticleDOI
Aggregate and Soil Organic Matter Dynamics under Conventional and No-Tillage Systems
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that reduced C sequestration in conventional tillage (CT) compared with no-tillage (NT) is related to differences in aggregate turnover, and suggest that a faster turnover rate of macroaggregates in CT compared with NT leads to a slower rate of microaggregate formation within macroaggregate and less stabilization of new SOM in free micro aggregregates under CT.
Related Papers (5)
Global assessment of agricultural system redesign for sustainable intensification
Jules Pretty,Tim G. Benton,Zareen Pervez Bharucha,Lynn V. Dicks,Cornelia Butler Flora,H. Charles J. Godfray,Dave Goulson,Susan E. Hartley,Nic Lampkin,Carol Morris,Gary Pierzynski,Gary Pierzynski,P. V. Vara Prasad,John P. Reganold,Johan Rockström,Johan Rockström,Pete Smith,Peter J. Thorne,Steve D. Wratten +18 more
Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems
Walter C. Willett,Johan Rockström,Johan Rockström,Brent Loken,Marco Springmann,Tim Lang,Sonja J. Vermeulen,Sonja J. Vermeulen,Tara Garnett,David Tilman,David Tilman,Fabrice DeClerck,Fabrice DeClerck,Amanda Wood,Malin Jonell,Michael Clark,Line Gordon,Jessica Fanzo,Corinna Hawkes,Rami Zurayk,Juan A Rivera,Wim de Vries,Lindiwe Majele Sibanda,Ashkan Afshin,Abhishek Chaudhary,Abhishek Chaudhary,Mario Herrero,Rina Agustina,Francesco Branca,Anna Lartey,Shenggen Fan,Beatrice Crona,Elizabeth L. Fox,Victoria Bignet,Max Troell,Max Troell,Therese Lindahl,Therese Lindahl,Sudhvir Singh,Sarah Cornell,K. Srinath Reddy,Sunita Narain,Sania Nishtar,Christopher J L Murray +43 more
Global Consequences of Land Use
Jonathan A. Foley,Ruth DeFries,Gregory P. Asner,Carol C. Barford,Gordon B. Bonan,Stephen R. Carpenter,F. Stuart Chapin,Michael T. Coe,Michael T. Coe,Gretchen C. Daily,Holly K. Gibbs,Joseph H. Helkowski,Tracey Holloway,Erica A. Howard,Christopher J. Kucharik,Chad Monfreda,Jonathan A. Patz,I. Colin Prentice,Navin Ramankutty,Peter K. Snyder +19 more