Regenerative Agriculture article

[brimstoneSalad]

I started one as a link dump, can't remember if we have more somewhere else but didn't see it on the index.

@Jamie in Chile @Lay Vegan @NonZeroSum Do you have any ideas for more resources, or how it should be laid out?

[Jamie in Chile]

I've come across regenerative agriculture occassionally as I've read extensively on veganism and climate change and it touches on both topics, but to be honest I don't know much about it, and I don't think I could contribute much.

[Lay Vegan]

@brimstoneSalad Here’s a good read that closely examines regenerative ag and attempts to reconcile its principles with “evidence.” http://csanr.wsu.edu/regen-ag-solid-pri ... ry-claims/

Table 1 in that article displays the principles and practices of various versions of regenerative ag (as compared with conservation ag). Pixel count was too high to post.

I think the wiki should synthesize and summarize the most common attributes. E.g., regenerative ag’s core principles are to minimize tillage, protect the soil, cultivate biodiversity, integrate livestock etc. with a brief overview for each one. In the criticism index you could list the most common arguments used by proponents of regenerative ag. and parse the suggested evidence.

The author did most of the work for us here:

LaCanne, C.E., and J.G. Lundgren. 2018. Regenerative agriculture: merging farming and natural resource conservation profitably. PeerJ 6: e4428. doi: 10.7717/peerj.4428.

Here is a 2018 paper that offers itself as an evaluation of 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.”
The “most” regenerative farms were defined as using multi-species cover crops, “never-till”, used no insecticides, and grazed livestock on their cropland. None of the conventional farms used cover crops, almost all of them used tillage and none of them grazed their cropland (Table 1 in the paper). What did they find?

Pest management services
The abstract states:
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.

However, the paper states that “none of these pests [in either system] were at economically damaging levels.” Both types of farms managed their pests, so this 10-fold difference does not really matter. The paper also tells us that the treatment in “insecticide-treated fields” consisted of “genetically modified insect resistant varieties and neonicotinoid seed treatments.” Not really a high concern scenario in terms of insecticides

Like @Jamie in Chile I don't personally know much about this subject and wouldn't be of much use outside of direct quoting from experts or scientific/educational institutions. Hope this helps though

[brimstoneSalad]

Thanks, I added those in.

Yeah, sections kind of like that make sense, although maybe breaking it down by how contentious the aspects are would work.

Like no-till is mainstream, but the claims about needing animals and the sequestration aren't.