What Is Regenerative Agriculture and Agroecology?

Regenerative agriculture and agroecological farming protect soil life while ensuring plants, animals, humans, wildlife, and the environment can thrive within an agricultural system.

To understand why regeneration is so important, we first have to understand the problems with our food systems, summed by two important facts.

First, carbon is not our enemy. There are the same quantity of CO2 atoms on this earth, that there were at the beginning of time. They’re just stored in the wrong places. Which is what causes global warming and climate breakdown to proliferate.

Second, all thriving is mutual. In just one teaspoon of healthy soil there are more lifeforms than humans on this earth. These living beings who dwell within our soil, support all life on this planet. And their health and vitality directly relates to our health and vitality.

How Does Food Production Contribute To Global Warming?

Industrialised agriculture is fed by fossil fuels. When we burn fossil fuels, we are displacing carbon dioxide from its home in the soil, where its presence creates life. And forcing its migration into the atmosphere and oceans, where its overpopulation takes life.

Unfortunately, the harms of the farming industry don’t end with carbon displacement. Through the use of agrochemicals, the way we grow our food and fibers poisons the air, soil and waterways. Negatively affecting the health of all living beings (humans, plants, animals, ocean life, soil life and wildlife) and putting lives – and our own – at risk.

In addition to the agrochemicals and fossil fuel abuse, the way we farm breaks up the soil’s structure as well. By tilling and ploughing the soil, we release more carbon dioxide from its safe home in the soil by destroying the soil aggregates (which give the soil structure). Soil aggregates are essentially a housing complex for those millions of lifeforms who dwell below ground, in the same way a coral reef is home to small sea life. Without their home, soil life, and the soil itself, dies. Which means we cannot grow food and nature cannot thrive.

There are many more ways industrialised agriculture’s methods contribute to global warming and ocean acidification. Including monocrops, GM, overgrazing, misplaced slurry, over-farming, and so on.

So, what is the solution to this messy system of supremacy? The answer lies in a set of practices and principles known as Agroecology or Regenerative Agriculture.

What Are The Advantages Of Agroecological Farming and Regenerative Agriculture?

Agroecological farming or regenerative agriculture protects this soil life while ensuring plants, animals, humans, wildlife, and the environment can thrive within an agricultural system.

Regeneration also reverses the effects of climate breakdown and global heating by keeping carbon out of our atmospheres and oceans, and inside the soil instead.

Because each ecosystem and soil type is unique, there is no single method to Agroecology that works everywhere. Instead, it is an umbrella term for many diverse practices which regenerate our biosphere. Each principal offered. is a gift passed down from surviving Traditional and Indigenous Ecological Knowledge, gathered and shared by the true stewards of the earth.

Some of the main principles of Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture include:

– planting diverse cover crops and perennials
– holistically mob grazing native animals
– planting tree crops alongside food crops (agroforestry)
– crop rotations (which eliminate monocultures)
– banning pesticides, herbicides, fungicides + synthetic fertilisers.

The amazing thing about Agroecology is that its principles can be practised in spaces as small as a plant pot, or as big as a farm, offering food sovereignty for all. Click here to learn more about how you can integrate regenerative living into your lifestyle.

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