Humans have been farming the land for 12 thousand years. (Possibly 23 thousand years if new evidence is correct.) And for most of that time, we have been doing it mostly in harmony with nature. But, in the late 1700’s something changed. And we have been doing it all wrong since then.
But there is something you can do to help not only slow down, but actually reverse that damage. And you can do it simply by changing what you eat.
"Till" Death Do Us Part
So what changed in the late 1700’s?
Well, we invented the plow.
That is when humans began tilling the land. Tilling is essentially opening the ground and exposing the soil for the sake of making planting easier. It allowed for a huge increase in agriculture and the idea very quickly caught on. But tilling comes with a cost. And as it turns out, that cost is huge.
The short version of the story is that tilling exposes the soil and the microbes living in it. Those microbes are made of carbon, and they sequester more carbon to make their homes. All totaled, the microbial community in the ground stores more carbon than all the plants growing on top of it. But being exposed to sunlight kills them. And all that carbon is released into the atmosphere.
Plant life does not grow as well when the microbes aren’t there either. This is because the microbes are symbiotic with the plant life above them. The plants pull the carbon out of the air and into the ground through their roots, the microbes take it from the plant roots. And in exchange they give other nutrients back to the plants. Weak soil makes for weak plants. So farmers have to spray fertilizer and other chemicals to make up for the poor soil. Which kills more microbes. Which leads to more chemicals. And the cycle continues.
For a much longer and more in depth version of the tilling story, there is an excellent documentary that (at the time of writing) is available on Netflix. It is called “Kiss The Ground” and is well worth watching.
~Did you know that most fruits and vegetables we eat today have between 20-50% less nutrients in them than the vegetables we ate 40 years ago? Yet most of those vegetables are significantly larger than they were in the past.~
The Carbon Footprint of Tilling
So with the invention of tilling, and the beginning of the industrial revolution around the same time, humans have been building our carbon footprint at extreme rates since the mid 1700’s.
Food and land use (farming, timber, and grazing) has contributed to nearly a quarter of the total green house gas emissions in our atmosphere today. And while not all of that is tilling specifically, a significant chunk of it is. And that is reason enough to change things. But, moving away from tilling has for more climate benefits than just not contributing 25% to greenhouse gas emissions.
Have You Heard of 'Project Drawdown'?
If people stop tilling the ground, the ground can heal. And if it heals, it will begin to pull all that released carbon back in. This is the idea behind Project Drawdown. A mission to get the land to the point when greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere start to decrease, not just stabilize. And regenerative farming is a big part of the plan to do that.
How is Regenerative Farming Different?
The simplest way to say it is, no tilling. But really it goes deeper than that. Regenerative farming restores land damaged from other agricultural techniques. It ‘regenerates’ it. Regenerative farming puts soil first, not crops. But that in turn makes for healthier crops because crops need healthy soil to thrive.
This can be a tough change for modern farmers because most farmers these days specialize in growing just one, or a few crops and that is it. Regenerative farming requires a diversity of crops. Every plant contributes differently to soil health. And so soils with more species of plants are healthier. It’s a lot like the human diet. Eating only one type of food isn’t good for us, so why would it be good for the ground? And so for regenerative farming to work, farmers need to change from mono crops to mixed crops, add in cover crops (to prevent the soils from ever being exposed) and crop rotation. This means a major change in methods, and that doesn’t come easy.
Adding in livestock to the rotation makes soil even healthier. Poopoo is fertilizer after all! The healthiest grasslands in the world have massive herds of grazers living on them. The animals keep the grass short, they keep brush and trees from taking over, their hooves aerate the ground, and they also fertilize it. Allowing livestock to graze crop lands on rotation has the same effect. And that means animals raised in healthy environments instead of meat lots (which are horrendous, look it up) and grass fed meat and dairy products for people as well. Better for people, the land, and the livestock.
The Benefits of Regenerative Farming
Aside from the healthy soil and drawdown effect already mentioned, regenerative farming has other benefits too.
- Resilience: The crops and the soil are more resilient. Crops are less likely to fall victims to pests and disease. And the soil is less likely to wash away in flash floods or storms. Today, flash flooding in dry dead soil leads to polluted runoff that gets into the oceans and into our fish and drinking water. Regenerative farming could essentially eliminate that.
- Financial Security for Farmers: More resilient crops, of course, mean less financial risk. If one crop does have a bad year the farmer isn’t out an entire years income. S/he still has all the other crops to fall back on.
- Healthier People: Everyone knows that organic is better for you. And with regenerative practices there will be a whole lot less need for chemicals, making organic farming a lot easier to come by. And in addition, all food farmed this way contains more nutrients. Most fruits and vegetables today are drastically lacking in nutrients because there are no nutrients in the ground for the plants to pull into the fruits and vegetables. Soil that is leeched of its nutrients grows food that is also deficient in nutrients. But food grown in healthy soil contains everything it is supposed to contain. Win-win.
How to Support Regenerative Farming?
Everything listed above is a good reason to support regenerative farming. But how do you supposed to support it?
Like most things, regenerative farming practices are a consumer driven thing. The more people demand the products, the more farming will change to meet the demand. So when you shop for food, look for things that were grown or raised this way. Sometimes you can find that information on the label. Other times you can ask (such as at a farmers market). Some key words to look for are : Biosequestration, crop rotation, grass fed, pasture raised, animal integration, agroforestry, intercropping, compost, cover crop, no-till, or food justice.
Finding these terms isn’t a sure-fire way to figure out if a food was grown or raised right, but it drastically increases the chances that it was. As more people start to demand this kind of food, the market will adjust, making easier to find and more cost effective. But we have to start somewhere!
A simple change in your diet can lead up to a big change in the world. Choose regenerative food over conventional as often as possible. It matters!
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