![]() ![]() These types of initiatives can serve as a model for other states looking to reward farmers for better management. Since 2017, Iowa’s Department of Agriculture has been offering a $5-per-acre “good farmer discount” on crop insurance premiums to farmers who plant cover crops. In California, there are incentive programs like the Healthy Soils Initiative, the Biologically Integrated Farming Systems Program, and Sustainable Agriculture Lands Conservation Program. But some states have started to encourage farmers, ranchers, and private landowners to adopt practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. farms have adopted regenerative practices-in part because U.S. Supporting regenerative farms and ranches that embrace crop and animal diversity while boosting yields can help farms stay in business and prevent farmland from being lost to other uses.ĭespite all the benefits of regenerative agriculture, only a small percentage of U.S. According to American Farmland Trust, 2,000 acres of agricultural land are converted by development every day in the United States. In some places, agricultural land is at risk of conversion to suburban and urban development. Of course, as population increases, farmland is impacted in different ways in different regions. ![]() Increase Food Production and Preserve Agricultural LandĬonsidering that by 2050 we will need to feed a world population teetering on 10 billion, farms and ranches need to make even greater efforts to sustainably increase their productivity. Some regenerative practices-including no-till farming, cover cropping, and rotational grazing-can decrease overall emissions from the agricultural sector. Environmental Protection Agency, with the largest sources being livestock (such as cows), agricultural soils, and rice production. greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to farming and ranching, according to the U.S. Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in AgricultureĪbout 10 percent of U.S. “Policies that advance regenerative agriculture should avoid exacerbating deep-seated inequities.” “The way we see it, regenerative agriculture goes beyond on-farm practices and techniques to encompass broader social and cultural components,” says Lee. “Our members face enormous challenges-including a system that disproportionately leaves them behind.”Īt the federal level, steps have been taken to address equitable access to land, training, and credit and to support underserved producers-including funding and directives to shift the decades-long legacy of racial discrimination at USDA. And yet, even as we acknowledge that historic racial and gender inequities have contributed to unequal access to wealth and land ownership, “doors continue to be closed to many Black farmers,” notes John Wesley Boyd Jr., president and founder of the National Black Farmers Association. White farmers, by contrast, now own 98 percent of the land in America. But after more than a century of land theft, racist polices, and discrimination, that number is closer to 45,000 today-out of an estimated 3.4 million farmers, according to census data from the U.S. These systems compartmentalize natural resources and focus on the yields of individual crops.īack in 1920, there were nearly one million Black farmers in the United States. “We need agriculture that does not lose our carbon and does not deplete our people.”īy contrast, the industrial agricultural system that dominates Western food and fiber supply chains incentivizes practices that promote soil erosion at a rate of 10 to 100 times higher than soil formation nutrient runoff and harmful algal blooms in freshwater and coastal systems and monocropping and other threats to local biodiversity, including critical pollinators. “We need to realize that working landscapes provide not just products but also ecosystem services like carbon sinks, water recharge, and evolutionary potential,” says Leonard Diggs of Pie Ranch, an incubator farm where he teaches regenerative agriculture. Practitioners take a broader view of their role in the world, especially in terms of soil and nutrient cycles. Regenerative Agriculture Is a PhilosophyĪt its core, regenerative agriculture is farming and ranching in harmony with nature. Sharma is part of the team from NRDC’s Nature program that interviewed more than 100 regenerative farmers across the United States to inform recommendations on creating a food system that can help fight our climate crisis. “The regenerative agriculture movement is the dawning realization among more people that an Indigenous approach to agriculture can help restore ecologies, fight climate change, rebuild relationships, spark economic development, and bring joy,” says Arohi Sharma, water and agriculture policy analyst at NRDC. In fact, Indigenous communities have farmed in nature’s image for millennia. It’s important to appreciate that this is not a new idea and not all who practice these principles use the label. ![]()
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