Regenerative Agriculture: what is it and how to implement it?

Since its inception, about 20,000 years ago, agriculture has evolved into a system that can provide as much food as possible to the world’s population at the lowest possible cost. As a result, today, farmers – especially those engaged in “commodity” crops, such as rice, corn, soya and wheat – suffer from a generalized drop in profitability, linked to international markets, characterized by extremely fluctuating prices.

In addition, the effects of climate change are felt, with periods of extreme drought and high temperatures interspersed with increasingly frequent episodes of heavy rainfall. This last criticality becomes particularly serious in relation to the non covering of the soils: heavy occasional rains on bare soils determine erosion and loss of organic substance.

Between half 800 and half 900 many rural areas of southern Europe have depopulated precisely because they were rendered unproductive by soil erosion and flooding: which is why the European Community has launched several measures to increase the sustainability of agricultural systems, e.g. Farm To Fork.

In addition, the CE has also identified as priorities those strategies that can ensure the continuity of agricultural activity. One of these is regenerative agriculture: a set of agronomic techniques aimed at safeguarding and “regenerating” the first factor of agricultural production, the soil.

Why regenerative agriculture?

Unlike the “old” intensive agriculture, predominant in Europe at least until the early 1990s, which tended to exploit the soil without worrying about long-term damage (deep ploughs, monoculture, fertilizations mainly minerals, defense from adversities to calendar, etc.), regenerative agriculture has as first objective to maintain and to improve the fertility of the soils, improving sustainability and resilience of ecosystems by ensuring both economic and environmental benefits for farmers.

A real agronomic revolution whose basic philosophy integrates the concepts of: nutrient recycling, atmospheric nitrogen fixation, assessment of the relationship between presence and damage of biotic adversity, water conservation and biodiversity and carbon sequestration (carbon farming).

But what does this approach actually mean? Here are the key points divided by agronomic objectives.

1.     Improving the health of the soil

• Use of conservative farming techniques to reduce wind and rain erosion and increase organic matter content.
• Use of cover crops to reduce erosion, increase rain infiltration and reduce evaporation from the soil.
• Fertilizing with organic fertilizers and compost to increase the content of soil organic substance, enrich the soil with micro-organisms.
• Introduction into agricultural areas of perennial or other plants with deep root systems.

2.     Improve water management

• Construction of levelling pits (ground arrangements capable of collecting and infiltrating water slowly into the ground by reloading the water table).
• Creation of ponds or micro reservoirs for the collection of rainwater.
• Other soil arrangements in low-lying areas that can slow the percolation of rainwater.

3.     Increase biodiversity

• Practice intercropping, that is, associated or promiscuous crops. It consists in sowing different crops in the same plot by dividing them into strips or mixing them completely (durum wheat + alfalfa, corn + wheat, etc.).
• Increase integration between plants and animals.
• Increase crop rotation.
• Create natural corridors, wooded belts, hedges and increase the presence of plants attractive to pollinating insects.
• Base the defense from insects on biocontrol strategies with predators.

Proponents of regenerative agriculture argue that the benefits for farmers practising it relate to the improvement of the agro-environment, with advantages on crop yields and quality and an increase in profitability. These are therefore benefits that can only be assessed in the long run.

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You can also contact us directly via the contact form: our team will be happy to answer all your questions and guide you in choosing the solution that best suits you.