Regenerative Agriculture is a set of promising farming and technological practices that regenerates soil making it healthy and productive. It restores biodiversity, reduces water use, combats desertification & climate change, stores carbon, improves nutrition & rural social welfare and so much more. Regenerative Agriculture is region specific, solution adoption needs to work for our unique regional growing conditions.
Traditional agriculture has provided for us for many years, however traditional and industrial agriculture are not sustainable and have deteriorated our soils, nutritional values in food, and are heavily reliant on chemical inputs. As a result, we are experiencing soil degradation, and only have around 60 years of nutritious top soil left; which translates to 60 harvests.
Regenerative Agriculture for Soil Capital
Soil is the finite resource that sustains life. Soil has great super powers in combating climate change, in its ability to store carbon emissions. Unlike carbon in the air, carbon in the soil is good for us.
Regenerative Agriculture is about giving back; regenerating, to allow us to keep on taking from the land. It improves our systems; it takes the best practices of traditional agriculture and combines it with nature’s innate cycles. It is inspired by what nature does best in biomimicry and through nature-based solutions.
The Founding Regenerative Agriculture Practices:
These practices are the basis of regenerative agriculture, inspired by what nature does best. They include:
- Minimizing soil disturbance, no tilling practices,
- Maximising crop diversity
- Maintaining crop & ground cover – keep soil covered & manage crop rotation
- Protecting living roots year long – so we don’t disturb the wonderful thriving and supporting ecosystem below the ground
- Integrating animal livestock – rotational livestock grazing
- Incorporating agroforestry
- Adopting relevant local solutions for local conditions
Additional topics are
- Circular Economy methods and usage of farming residue in circularity, example: composting
- Avoiding chemical fertilisers and pesticide usage by using more natural solutions or introducing animals that serve as pest control.
Benefits of Regenerative Agriculture
- Regenerative Agriculture serves as a solution to both climate mitigation and climate adaptation.
- It captures carbon sequestration in the soil, reversing climate change, capturing 30% of carbon emissions.
- Generates healthy and enriched soils that produce nutrient dense foods, that are better for us
- If your soil is healthy, your pasture is healthy, your animals are healthy, we’re healthy and the planet is healthy- soil given the chance has the ability to improve and repair itself
- Higher yields of crops for farmers
- Resilience to climate changes and extreme weather – climate resilient agriculture
- Enhances the soils ability to absorb water by adding organic matter, leading to a more efficient use of the watershed
- This helps in the combatting against droughts and desertification
- Fewer pests because of higher biodiversity, makes the ground & farms more resilient to climate change & extreme weather
- Improves the social welfare of rural communities
Regenerative Agriculture is about sowing the seeds today for a brighter tomorrow. It works in harmony with nature’s cycles, so that nature keeps providing and we reciprocate by giving back to continue this provision for generations to come
The Regenerative Agriculture Venture Programme, Goumbook’s latest initiative in partnership with HSBC and supported by EIT Food – is a transformative journey to develop entrepreneurship skills in the domain of research-based regenerative agriculture solutions. To learn more visit: