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The current focus on intensification and maximizing productivity in agriculture can endanger soil biota and the ecosystem services they provide in such a way that it acts counterproductive and increases the dependence on external inputs. In this study, we aimed to identify the factors that are most limiting for the restoration of soil biota and their ecosystem services on sandy soils. To this end, we assessed microarthropod communities, their relationship with the aboveground food web and their effect on organic matter decomposition, in two land-use types: grasslands with agricultural land use and grasslands with nature land use. The latter are grasslands converted from agricultural land use, for the development of the Dutch National Ecological Network. For these land-use types, we took into account two main factors of disturbance: the number of years since the last tillage (i.e., plowing event), and the current grassland management (mowing or grazing). We found that the diversity of microarthropods was higher in nature grasslands than in agricultural grasslands. The abundance of microarthropods increased with time since last tillage for grasslands that were mown, but not for grasslands that were grazed. An agricultural grassland without tillage since 39 years had a microarthropod abundance similar to reference natural grasslands reported in previous research. The number of predatory beetles increased with a higher microarthropod abundance in mown grasslands, but not so in grazed grasslands. The number of fungivorous and herbofungivorous grazer microarthropods positively influenced the decomposition of soil organic matter as measured with the Tea Bag Index. Furthermore, we found a negative effect of Difenyl and total fungicide concentrations in the soil on (herbo)fungivorous grazers. Contrary to our expectations, we found more pesticide residues in nature grasslands than in agricultural grasslands. In conclusion, to restore the soil microarthropods and the ecosystem services they contribute to, the best practice is to strive for permanent grassland (without tillage) with mowing or low-intensity grazing (without compaction of the topsoil).

Despite the role of the horse having changed from working and sporting toward leisure, types of management have remained similar for the past century, with horses still being kept in small stables and paddocks which were predominantly designed for rest and recuperation after hard work. Many of the UK's major equine welfare challenges, such as stress and obesity, can now be traced towards management that does not fit well with horses' ethological needs. Some UK horse owners are now using creative strategies to manage their horses' welfare in a domestic setting, by structuring their turnout areas in ways that are designed around the horses' three key needs of ‘forage, friends and freedom’. Owners suggest that these management systems can be particularly useful for managing some of the most common equine health and wellbeing challenges, including equine metabolic syndrome, laminitis, stress or behavioural issues and arthritis. A better understanding of these systems could therefore be particularly useful to veterinary professionals who commonly need to assist owners in managing those conditions. This article describes the most frequently used alternative grazing systems, and the common advantages and pitfalls of each.

In India the demand of sustainable energy is growing at a fragmented level. The demand of rural electrification and economic growth requires high production of energy. Hence, the use of renewable energy may help to mitigate air pollution, and allow specific regenerative agriculture, waste, and forest biomass for producing the energy and achieving sustainable development goals. In the current work, we have selected a district of Maharashtra state of India as a case study and mapped the different land cover categories, and their estimated biomass. Based on this we have prepared the biomass thematic maps for the study area. These biomass maps have been prepared in the GIS environment and they displayed the biomass of crops, forests, and wastelands. The studied district has huge potential for agricultural biomass and can act as biofuel and biomass economies. These maps may play a crucial role in upgrading biomass sites focused on generating power from plants in the district Akola of Maharashtra, India.

Agriculture is in crisis. Soil health is collapsing. Biodiversity faces the sixth mass extinction. Crop yields are plateauing. Against this crisis narrative swells a clarion call for Regenerative Agriculture. But what is Regenerative Agriculture, and why is it gaining such prominence? Which problems does it solve, and how? Here we address these questions from an agronomic perspective. The term Regenerative Agriculture has actually been in use for some time, but there has been a resurgence of interest over the past 5 years. It is supported from what are often considered opposite poles of the debate on agriculture and food. Regenerative Agriculture has been promoted strongly by civil society and NGOs as well as by many of the major multi-national food companies. Many practices promoted as regenerative, including crop residue retention, cover cropping and reduced tillage are central to the canon of ‘good agricultural practices’, while others are contested and at best niche (e.g. permaculture, holistic grazing). Worryingly, these practices are generally promoted with little regard to context. Practices most often encouraged (such as no tillage, no pesticides or no external nutrient inputs) are unlikely to lead to the benefits claimed in all places. We argue that the resurgence of interest in Regenerative Agriculture represents a re-framing of what have been considered to be two contrasting approaches to agricultural futures, namely agroecology and sustainable intensification, under the same banner. This is more likely to confuse than to clarify the public debate. More importantly, it draws attention away from more fundamental challenges. We conclude by providing guidance for research agronomists who want to engage with Regenerative Agriculture.

Regenerative Agriculture proposes to contribute to climate change mitigation and increased food production through improved yields by building soil organic carbon (SOC). We examine three Regenerative practices: reducing tillage intensity, cover cropping and including a grass-based phase in arable rotations (ley-arable systems). Our Bayesian meta-analysis of 195 paired SOC and crop yield observations from published studies finds statistically significant increases in SOC concentration for reduced tillage intensity (0.06 g C.100g-1) and ley-arable systems (0.05 g C.100-1g per year of ley) compared to conventional practice over an average study duration of 15 years, but no effect of cover crops. None of these practices come at a cost to yield during cropping years. However, we find no evidence of a win-win between soil carbon sequestration and enhanced agricultural productivity. Further, the small magnitude of SOC increases suggests a limited role for these Regenerative practices in climate change mitigation strategies in temperate regions.

Coffee is highly vulnerable to climate change, thus impacting coffee-dependent livelihoods and economies. As rising temperatures continue to reduce the suitability of many historical coffee-growing regions, some farmers are practicing regenerative, organic coffee farming as a means of climate change mitigation. In the Central Highlands, the primary coffee growing region of Vietnam, conventional sun-grown, monocrop coffee requires intensive inputs, including fertilizers, pesticides and water. However, some farmers are converting their conventional sun farms to organic shade farms utilizing regenerative farming techniques for both environmental and economic reasons. This study examined regenerative farming practices and sustainable coffee in a small ethnic minority village in Lâm Ðồng province. The comparative analysis between soil samples taken from a regenerative shade-grown coffee farm and two conventional sun-grown coffee farms revealed that the soil of the regenerative farm, enriched with organic manure, is comparable to, or healthier than, the soil on the conventional farms enriched with chemical fertilizers. The results indicate that regenerative farming practices promote biodiversity; however, they also maintain microclimates that promote the growth of Roya fungus, which can decrease coffee yields. The economic analysis of farm costs and net returns found that regenerative farming practices decrease external inputs through a system of crop diversification and integrated livestock production that improves productivity and economic performance while preserving the ecological and environmental integrity of the landscape. Regenerative agriculture is an important step toward climate change adaptation and mitigation; however, in order for the farm communities in the Central Highlands to make the transition to regenerative agriculture, the success factors and benefits of this method must be demonstrated to the coffee farmers.

We hypothesize that Fashion brands’ demand for organic agroforestry cotton (OAC) may foster more sustainable supply chains in the cotton industry. However, to realize the potential of the OAC market, a better understanding of the market demand for OAC, as well as the quality and production standards under which the brands operate, the institutional frameworks, and the market mechanisms that underpin its commercialization, is needed. We evaluated the existing organic markets in Brazil using an interview-based methodology with key stakeholders throughout the organic cotton supply chain in 2022. Our study revealed that some brands are willing to pay prices ranging from USD$ 2.57 to USD$ 4.61 per kg of cotton lint depending on the brand. These brands require suppliers to meet quality specifications for the cotton fiber; for example, they require average to long fibers and specify harvesting practices that influence fiber quality. There are also social and environmental criteria that prioritize vulnerable communities of family farmers and women groups planting cotton based on established sustainable practices. The institutional framework includes different stakeholders throughout the organic cotton supply chain, which is fundamentally driven by private demand for cotton, counts on the support of agents connecting brands to farmers, and is indirectly supported by public policies. Existing markets for organic cotton are established via contracts that provide farmers with guarantees to invest in planting cotton and have different certification systems used by the brands that monitor and verify adherence to the standards. Market demand for OAC may, therefore, potentially lead to new markets that promote sustainable supply chains and farming practices. However, existing markets for organic cotton reveal complex requirements that must be addressed, such as the need for supporting agents connecting brands to farmers, and market mechanisms, such as complex contracts and certification.

Increasing knowledge and literacy around soil biodiversity is essential to discover and implement biological solutions for the discouraging challenges people face in agriculture and human wellbeing. Therefore, this review was done to get an insight into the awareness and understanding of the contribution of soil biodiversity to regenerative agriculture. The review was done by referring to the latest different research findings; reports, working guidelines, as well as knowledge shared from different soil biodiversity conferences and webinar discussion points. The review disclosed that to meet the increasing demand for food for the ever-increasing global population and the 2030 sustainable development goals, regenerating the already degraded lands through regenerative agriculture principles and practices is vitally important. The findings and report documents showed that soil biodiversity facilitates the regenerative agriculture system as soil organisms are using as soil health improvement machines, a remediates for soil and water pollution, a fertilizer, pesticide, as a means of carbon sink, and used in the pharmaceutical industry to discover new drugs and vaccines for animal and human health. Moreover, the meta-analysis publicized that the consideration and use of soil biodiversity in the regenerative agriculture system have promising results although little is known about the role of those soil organisms in the ecosystem due to the presence of knowledge gap and complexity of relationships in the soil system. Therefore, furthermore, attention should be given to the discoveries of soil biodiversity to use them as a natured based solution for regenerative agriculture in the 21st century and to meet the 2030 sustainable development goals.

Regenerative agriculture aims to improve soil health and promote biodiversity while producing nutritious food profitably. Almonds are the dominant crop in California agriculture in terms of acreage and revenue generated, and are mostly farmed using practices that degrade the soil, deplete water resources, and reduce biodiversity in the orchard. We examined the soil health, biodiversity, yield, and profit of regenerative and conventional almond production systems that represented farmer-derived best management practices. Regenerative practices included abandoning some or all synthetic agrichemicals, planting perennial ground covers, integrating livestock, maintaining non-crop habitat, and using composts and compost teas. Total soil carbon, soil organic matter, total soil nitrogen, total soil phosphorous, calcium, sulfur, and soil health test scores were all significantly greater in regenerative soils. Water infiltrated regenerative soils six-fold faster than conventional soils. Total microbial biomass, total bacterial biomass, Gram + bacteria, and Actinobacteria were significantly greater in regenerative soils. There was more plant biomass, species diversity, and percent cover in regenerative orchards. Invertebrate richness and diversity, and earthworm abundance and biomass were significantly greater in regenerative orchards. Pest populations, yields, and nutrient density of the almonds were similar in the two systems. Profit was twice as high in the regenerative orchards relative to their conventional counterparts. No one practice was responsible for the success of regenerative farms; their success was the result of simultaneously combining multiple regenerative practices into a single, functional farm system. This style of farming may assist in combatting planetary scale problems (e.g., climate change, biodiversity loss, agricultural pollution, chronic human health problems, declining rural communities, etc.) while making farms more profitable and resilient.

Food embodies our most intimate relationship with nature. We ingest it to survive. Without it, perish. Through time humans have physically distanced the places of food cultivation from human inhabitation. In recent decades green planning initiatives embraced urban agriculture as a critical element of sustainable communities. However, current approaches to bring food cultivation into cities require labor, capital, and physical resources that are often unavailable in sufficient quantity, quality, or duration for provisioning sites to be considered sustainable. Within each pillar of sustainability - economy, ecology, and equity - barriers exist. Rooted in indigenous land stewardship and food provisioning practices, permaculture (permanent agriculture) offers strategies and tactics to overcome those barriers. Despite mounting evidence that permaculture will result in more sustainable food systems, adoption is limited. Social aesthetics is the term employed by cultural theorists to describe how institutions, social groups, and collective projects codify their values and beliefs. The diffusion of innovation theory suggests that ideas and information from a highly specialized world require translation into a language the rest of society understands to reach widespread adoption. This thesis translates permaculture to contribute to a sustainable social aesthetic for food provisioning and change American food culture. The translation occurs on iconic public land - 'America's front yard'. In 1901 the National Mall was envisaged to serve as a stage on which democratic values are expressed and became the prototype for America's City Beautiful movement. Today, its carpet of lawn framed by American Elm trees epitomizes the economic, ecological, and equity challenges of monoculture landscapes. This project aims to express democratic values through polyculture. It invites every citizen to participate in acts of justice rather than submit to illusions of order and control. From site selection through design, spatial and temporal scale is critical. This thesis explores food's past to understand our present and imagine our future. The design creates an immersive food experience that equips visitors with the knowledge and resources to apply permaculture at the homestead, neighborhood, city, and regional scales. The remade front yard becomes the symbol of a country where places of food cultivation and human inhabitation are one and the same. Master of Landscape Architecture Food embodies our most intimate relationship with nature. We ingest it to survive. Without it, perish. Through time humans have slowly increased the distance between where we grow our food (the country) and where we live (the city). In the process, we have built a system where millions of people either suffer from diet-related illnesses or experience hunger on a regular basis. We have damaged our soils and introduced chemicals that have contaminated our waters and polluted our air. We have built a system that both contributes to and is threatened by climate change. Our relationship with nature has become toxic. For decades there have been movements to change, transform, or replace the food system. In cities across the country, these movements appear as organic food in grocery stores, community gardens, urban farms, farmers' markets, farm-to-table restaurants, and more recently, food forests. The problem is each requires labor, capital, and physical resources that are often unavailable in sufficient quantity, quality, or duration for them to be sustainable, let alone scalable. What if there is another way to grow food - a way that heals the soil, decontaminates water, supports biodiversity, and provides enough for everyone? Rooted in indigenous land stewardship and food provisioning practices, permaculture (permanent agriculture) offers strategies and tactics to reverse the negative impacts of the existing food system. Despite mounting evidence that permaculture will result in more sustainable food systems, adoption is limited. For it to become mainstream, someone has to translate it into a language society understands. I try to do that through this thesis. My translation occurs on iconic public land - 'America's front yard'. In 1901 the National Mall was imagined to serve as a stage on which democratic values are expressed and became the prototype for America's City Beautiful movement. Today, its carpet of lawn framed by American Elm trees epitomizes the economic, ecological, and equity challenges of monoculture landscapes. This project aims to express democratic values through polyculture. This thesis explores food's past to understand our present and imagine our future. The design creates an immersive food experience that equips visitors with the knowledge and resources to apply permaculture at the homestead, neighborhood, city, and regional scales. The remade front yard becomes the symbol of a country where places of food cultivation and human inhabitation are one and the same.

Regenerative agriculture (RA) is gaining increasing recognition as a plausible solution to restore degraded agroecosystems. In Mediterranean drylands, RA has been limitedly adopted by farmers due to its initial state of development and lack of empirical evidence on its impacts. To support its large-scale adoption, we carried out a participatory monitoring and evaluation project in the high steppe plateau of Southeast Spain, involving local farmers applying RA in their almond farms. To assess the effect of RA, we studied 9 farms and selected in each farm one field with regenerative management and one nearby field with conventional management based on frequent tillage (CT). We clustered fields under regenerative management based on the different RA practices being applied and distinguished 4 types of RA treatments: 1) reduced tillage with green manure (GM), 2) reduced tillage with organic amendments (OA), 3) reduced tillage with green manure and organic amendments (GM&OA), and 4) no tillage with permanent natural covers and organic amendments (NT&OA). We used physical (bulk density and aggregate stability), chemical (pH, salinity, total N, P, K, available P, and exchangeable cations) and biological (SOC, POC, PON, microbial activity) soil propertoes and the nutritional status of almond trees (leaf N, P and K) to evaluate the impacts of RA compared to CT. We found that GM treatment improved physical soil properties, presenting regenerative fields higher soil aggregate stability. Our results showed that OA improved most soil chemical and biological soil properties, however physical properties remained similar. RA treatments combining ground covers and organic amendments (GM&OA and NT&OA) exhibited greater overall soil quality restoration than individual practices, improving physical, chemical and biological soil properties. NT&OA stood out for presenting the highest soil quality improvements. All RA treatments maintained similar crop nutritional status compared to CT. We conclude that RA has strong potential to restore the physical, chemical and biological quality of soils of woody agroecosystems in Mediterranean drylands without compromising their nutritional status, thereby enhancing their resilience to climate change and long term sustainability.

Global population growth poses a threat to food security in an era of increased ecosystem degradation, climate change, soil erosion, and biodiversity loss. In this context, harnessing naturally-occurring processes such as those provided by soil and plant-associated microorganisms presents a promising strategy to reduce dependency on agrochemicals. Biofertilizers are living microbes that enhance plant nutrition by either by mobilizing or increasing nutrient availability in soils. Various microbial taxa including beneficial bacteria and fungi are currently used as biofertilizers, as they successfully colonize the rhizosphere, rhizoplane or root interior. Despite their great potential to improve soil fertility, biofertilizers have yet to replace conventional chemical fertilizers in commercial agriculture. In the last 10 years, multi-omics studies have made a significant step forward in understanding the drivers, roles, processes, and mechanisms in the plant microbiome. However, translating this knowledge on microbiome functions in order to capitalize on plant nutrition in agroecosystems still remains a challenge. Here, we address the key factors limiting successful field applications of biofertilizers and suggest potential solutions based on emerging strategies for product development. Finally, we discuss the importance of biosafety guidelines and propose new avenues of research for biofertilizer development.

On the compliance with current requirements for the search for new alternative intensive models of agricultural production, the article has analyzed the structure of sown areas of farms in the Ukrainian Veld zone with an area of agricultural land up to 50 hectares; factors that indicate the need to optimize the structure of crops to meet the requirements of sustainable development and regenerative agriculture has been identified; the role of crop rotations in the system of modern agriculture has been revealed; the assumption that the tool of optimization of sown areas can be inclusion of medicinal plants in them has been put forward and substantiated; an optimization model has been built, with the help of which, based on production resources (land, labor, material, etc.), the optimal structure of sown areas of farms in the Ukrainian Steppe zone with an area of agricultural land up to 50 hectares has been determined; on the basis of the optimization economic-mathematical model with the help of the simplex method the increase of profitability of agricultural production has been calculated; the optimal structure of sown areas of the studied farms of the Ukrainian Veld zone with the introduction of medicinal plants has been developed.

Agricultural expansion has been the main driver of land-use change in the Atlantic Forest. Nowadays, more than 60% of the biome is dedicated to mostly unsustainable agricultural land-uses; however, most people live in urban areas and overall production is low. Here, we discuss the impacts of agriculture in shaping the landscape and its potential to restore socioecological interactions. The focus is on agroforestry, which is broadly understood as the integration of trees in productive systems and landscapes. In the first part of the chapter, we review the concept of agroforestry, benefits, its relation to urgent global issues, its role in Forest Landscape Restoration and achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In the second part of the chapter, we present examples in the Atlantic Forest and discuss the opportunities and challenges for upscaling the adoption of agroforestry and overcome the apparent dichotomy between production and conservation.

Farmers are responsible for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions and there is no plan to deal with this; their impact on land and water resources, floods, droughts, and the global extinction of species also cries out for attention. Half of the humus that makes the Black Earth what it is has been pumped into the air and, with it, the soil’s capacity to receive rainfall, supply water to crops, and recharge streams and groundwater is diminished. Since 1970, soil carbon across the steppes has been run down by 2.4–3.8/tC/ha/yr (5 times more where the soil has been eroded). Taking the least of these figures, mineralization of soil organic carbon (SOC) has emitted 195 Gt or 25 ppm of atmospheric CO2. Adoption of Conservation Agriculture that includes a diverse crop rotation with perennial legumes and grasses offers carbon capture of 0.5–1 Gt/yr, arrest of soil erosion, and bigger crops. At present, there is no market for the perennial grasses and legumes needed to put the organic matter back into the soil. The old-fashioned answer is to integrate crops and livestock – farmyard manure doubles the benefit of crop rotation, integrating crops and livestock will regenerate rural communities, and the extra production will make space to restore degraded land for wildlife, water resources, and amenity. But the people and skills needed for livestock enterprises are now hard to come by. Alternatively, the green biomass can be converted to biogas: a ready market for all the green biomass that can be grown would transform farming systems. This would be a strategic investment that can easily be funded through Green Bonds.

Regenerative agriculture is a newly codified approach to agriculture that emphasizes reducing reliance on exogeneous inputs, as well as restoring and enhancing ecosystem services such as soil carbon (C) sequestration. These regenerative agriculture principles suggest that modern livestock systems can be redesigned to better capitalize on animals' ecological niche as biological up cyclers and may be necessary to fully regenerate some landscapes. One example is a multispecies pasture rotation (MSPR) system, which symbiotically stacks multiple animal production enterprises (i.e., chickens, cattle, sheep, and pigs) on one landscape. We conducted a whole-farm life cycle assessment (LCA) of an MSPR in the southeastern United States that was originally converted from degraded cropland. We compared the production outputs, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, land footprints, and soil health outcomes to a conventional, commodity (COM) production system of each respective species. Our 20-year MSPR chronosequence of soil C and other soil health indicators shows dramatic improvement since establishment, sequestering an average of 2.29 Mg C ha−1 yr−1. Incorporation of soil C sequestration into the LCA reduced net GHG emissions of the MSPR by 80%, resulting in a footprint 66% lower than COM. However, when comparing required land between the two systems for food production, MSPR required 2.5 times more land when compared to COM. Thus, while our model indicates that MSPR can simultaneously produce protein while regenerating land, a considerably greater land area is needed when compared to COM. Our results present an important yet paradoxical conclusion on land and food production balance. Should society prioritize an input-intensive, COM system that produces more food from a smaller yet degrading land base? Or, alternatively, should systems such as MSPR that produce less food on a larger, but more ecologically functional landscape be more highly prioritized? These complexities must be considered in the global debate of agricultural practice and land. Our results indicate MSPRs are a useful model for alternative livestock production systems with improved environmental outcomes, but in this study may present considerable land-use tradeoffs.

Agriculture and ecosystems are tipping toward collapse due to land use and climate extremes. Irreversible feedbacks in the land system can lock in food insecurity, biodiversity loss and a hot house world. However regenerating agro-ecosystems is possible and can be profitable. In this talk, Prof Justin Borevitz will introduce the components of precision landscape regeneration, linking genotype, phenotype and environment, and the outsized role Australia can have in the world. The solutions are to both increase carbon capture via photosynthesis of grasses and trees and to reduce emissions from plant stress (autotrophic respiration) and soils (heterotrophic respiration). Smart farming practices including regenerative agriculture and ecosystem restoration can rebuild agro-ecosystems. This includes methods for boosting soil carbon with microbes and management. Integrating and scaling these land based solutions can build planetary health and resilience.

Herbivore-carnivore interactions have been fundamental to grassland ecosystem functionality and to the human cultures that have long depended on these ecosystems for their nutrition. However, a large literature has developed during the past century indicating that animal agriculture is responsible for numerous negative environmental impacts. In this paper, I review literature on some of the environmental impacts of two different livestock management approaches, industrial-conventional (IC) management and regenerative-multi-paddock (RM) management. I consider the null hypothesis that the environmental impacts of ruminant livestock production are independent of the approach used to manage animals and grazing lands. It evident in the literature that managed grazing ecosystems are complex, and for certain system attributes, such forage quality and community structure, determination of the better management system is difficult to discern. It is, furthermore, unclear whether more research will produce a more definitive answer. In other areas resolution was clearer. For instance, it would appear that the soils of RM grasslands exhibit higher microbial biomass and diversity, and higher fungal: bacterial ratios than IC soils. Several impacts associated with livestock production appear to have less to do with grazing, per se, and more to do with support factors, most notably feed production. Data from several sources suggest that changes in feed production use factors by pasture-based (RM) management may reduce blue withdrawals by >50% and GHG emissions by approximately 28% relative to conventional production. Life cycle assessment reveals that RM livestock finishing tends to be carbon negative due to high C-sequestration rates associated with grazing-land management, while IC finishing represents a substantial carbon source. Accumulating data suggest that a significant portion of the CO2-eq can be removed from the atmosphere and stored in the soil by applying RM management practices. While research design may affect the outcome of some studies, the quality and quantity of the science may not resolve discrepancies in the data. It is suggested that the viability and sustainability of animal agriculture may depend on broadening the goals of practitioners to include both food production and the maintenance of environmental health.

Ruminants including domestic livestock, have been accused of causing damaging impacts on the global environment and human well-being. However, with appropriate management, ruminant livestock can play a significant role in efforts to reverse environmental damages caused by human mismanagement and neglect. Worldwide, at least one billion people living in grazing ecosystems depend on them for their livelihoods, usually through livestock production, and for other ecosystem services that affect human well-being. For long-term rangeland sustainability and ecological resilience, agricultural production policies are urgently needed globally to transform current damaging industrial inorganic input agricultural practices to resource conservation practices that enhance ecosystem function. This is supported by evidence that farmers and ranchers who apply regenerative management practices to restore ecosystem functionality create sustainable, resilient agroecosystems cost-effectively. With enhanced management of grazing resources, domesticated ruminants can be used to produce higher permanent soil cover of litter and plants, which are effective in reducing soil erosion and increasing net biophysical carbon accumulation. Incorporating forages and ruminants into regeneratively managed cropping systems can also elevate soil organic carbon and improve soil ecological function and reduce production costs by eliminating the use of annual tillage, inorganic fertilizers and biocides. Ecosystem services that are enhanced using regenerative land management include soil stabilization and formation, water infiltration, carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling and availability, biodiversity, and wildlife habitat, which cumulatively result in increased ecosystem and economic stability and resilience. Scientists partnering with farmers and ranchers around the world who have improved their land resource base and excel financially have documented how such land managers produce sound environmental, social, and economic outcomes. Many of these producers have used Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) grazing management as a highly effective approach for managing their grazing lands sustainably. This approach uses short-duration grazing periods, long adaptively varied post-grazing plant recovery periods requiring multiple paddocks per herd to ensure adequate residual biomass, and adjustment of animal numbers as environmental and economic conditions change. Using this approach, farmers and ranchers have achieved superior ecosystem and profitability outcomes. This manuscript summarizes the use of AMP grazing as regenerative tool for grazed and rotationally cropped lands.

Current production agriculture systems typically focus on yield outcomes at all costs. By shifting to best management practices based on regenerative farming principles, however, agricultural systems worldwide could maintain or even improve yields while sequestering atmospheric carbon (C) into soil organic matter (SOM). To demonstrate the effectiveness of regenerative principles at simultaneously benefiting agriculture and reducing greenhouse gasses, their C sequestration potential was examined through SOM data from 486 soil sampling locations from multiple farms throughout the coastal plains of South Carolina. These data were compared over varying multiple-year periods between 2013 and 2017 as their land management practices shifted from conventional methods to those based on the regenerative-based practice of cover cropping. The implementation of cover crops in crop rotations resulted in statistically significant mean SOM percentage increases of 0.11 (p ≤ 0.001), 0.11 (p ≤ 0.001), and 0.55 (p ≤ 0.001) for sampling sites converted into rotations utilizing cover crops for two, three, and four years, respectively. When averaged out per year for each sampling group, this results in an average of 622, 425, and 1584 lbs./acre/year of C fixed from the atmosphere and retained in the soil as organic matter. Increases were observed across all soil types sampled in the study with soil texture not significantly influencing a soils’ ability to increase soil OM or sequester atmospheric C through cover crop implementation. The calculations based on the coastal plains’ soils studied here demonstrate the promising potential of the application of regenerative farming principles to not only restore degraded biodiversity, recycle nutrients, improve farm profitability, and reduce chemical inputs, but also to sequester atmospheric C and simultaneously help reduce the effect of global climate change while creating healthy soils.

In the upcoming United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a global challenge for scientists and practitioners will be to develop a well-functioning seed production sector on the basis of a sound species-selection process. To balance crop production with biodiversity functions in Mediterranean woody crops, agroecological practices suggest the need to move towards the establishment of herbaceous ground covers. However, establishing such plants requires a supply of suitable native seeds, which is currently unavailable. Here, we present a comprehensive process for selecting regionally adapted species that also emphasizes considerations for seed production. Using olive groves as a target system, we found that research on ground covers for regenerative agriculture has largely overlooked native species at the expense of commercial and ill-suited varieties. Our assessment of native annuals showed that 85% of the grasses and forbs evaluated exhibit a suite of ecological and production traits that can be tailored to meet the requirements of farmers, seed producers and environmental agencies. These findings suggest that many native species are neglected in agronomic research, despite being potentially suitable for ground covers and for supporting a nature-based solution in restoration practice. The framework used here may be applied in other agroecosystems to follow global greening initiatives and to support native seed production to scale up restoration., This research was funded by the PEOPLE/Marie Curie Actions of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 under REA grant agreement number 607785 through the ITN project NASSTEC (www.nasstec.eu). B.J.-A. was further supported by the Marie Curie Clarín-COFUND programme of the Principality of Asturias and the European Union (ACB17-26) and the Asturias regional grant number FC-GRUPIN-IDI/2018/000151.

Regenerative agriculture is being used by a small number of innovative farmers in Australia and elsewhere, using a range of holistic methods that work with the land and climate, such as short duration time of controlled grazing with long rest periods for the paddock and higher proportions of aboveground biomass, to improve soil health and farm profitability. This paper uses a delta life cycle assessment, focusing only on the differences between regenerative and conventional production systems to assess the potential impact of regenerative agriculture on a full range of midpoint impact categories and end-point areas of protection for an extensive sheep system in Australia. We assess the potential improvement to the water, carbon, and biodiversity footprints of sheep production, and find that regenerative agriculture has the potential to improve environmental performance compared with current industrial agricultural practices. In particular, there seems to be considerable potential to offset a significant proportion of the on-farm climate change impacts through a combination of biosequestration in soils and aboveground biomass and using harvested biomass to offset fossil fuel use. The assessment highlights the need for additional data to confirm the findings and the potential contribution that regenerative agriculture can make to sustainability of ruminant livestock production. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2020;16:282-290. © 2019 SETAC.

Long-term agricultural sustainability is dependent in part on our capacity to provide productive, nutritious crops that minimize the negative impacts of agriculture on the landscape. Perennial grains within an agroforestry context offers one solution: These plants produce large root systems that reduce soil erosion and simultaneously have the potential to produce nutrients to combat malnutrition. However, nutrient compositions of wild, perennial, herbaceous species, such as those related to the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) are not well known. In this study, seed ion and amino acid concentrations of perennial and annual Phaseolus species were quantified using ionomics and mass spectrometry. No statistical difference was observed for Zn, toxic ions (e.g., As) or essential amino acid concentrations (except threonine) between perennial and annual Phaseolus species. However, differences were observed for some nutritionally important ions. For example, Ca, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, and P concentrations were higher in annual species, further, ion and amino acid concentrations appear to be largely independent of each other. These results suggest variability in ion and amino acid concentrations exist in Phaseolus. As new crop candidates are considered for ecological services, nutritional quality should be optimized to maximize nutrient output of sustainable food crops.

C an regenerative agriculture (RA) produce an adequate amount of nutritious food for the growing and increasingly affluent world population while also reducing and offsetting some anthropogenic emissions? The question may be reframed: how can RA be adapted to produce enough food, be a negative emission technology, and advance Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (2015)? System-based RA reconciles the need of producing adequate and nutritious food with the necessity of restoring the environment, making farming a solution to environmental issues. It encompasses a wide range of farming and grazing practices aimed at restoration and sustainable management of soil health through sequestration of soil organic carbon (C). There is no one-size-fits-all practice for diverse soils and ecoregions. RA comprises system-based conservation agriculture (CA), which includes no-till farming in conjunction with residue mulching, cover cropping, integrated nutrient and pest management, complex rotations, and integration of crops with trees and livestock (figure 1) (Lal 2015). RA is all inclusive, and its site-specific package(s) must be fine-tuned in the context of biophysical factors and the human dimensions. RA is soil-centric …

Agroforestry is increasingly being recognized as a holistic food production system that can have numerous significant environmental, economic, and social benefits. This growing recognition is paralleled in the U.S. by the budding interest in regenerative agriculture and motivation to certify regenerative practices. Current efforts to develop a regenerative agriculture certification offer an opportunity to consider agroforestry’s role in furthering regenerative goals. To understand this opportunity, we first examine how agroforestry practices can advance regenerative agriculture’s five core environmental concerns: soil fertility and health, water quality, biodiversity, ecosystem health, and carbon sequestration. Next, we review a subset of certification programs, standards, guidelines, and associated scientific literature to understand existing efforts to standardize agroforestry. We determine that development of an agroforestry standard alongside current efforts to certify regenerative agriculture offers an opportunity to leverage common goals and strengths of each. Additionally, we determine that there is a lack of standards with measurable criteria available for agroforestry, particularly in temperate locations. Lastly, we propose a framework and general, measurable criteria for an agroforestry standard that could potentially be implemented as a standalone standard or built into existing agriculture, forestry, or resource conservation certification programs.

For addressing potential food shortages, a fundamental tradeoff exists between investing more resources to increasing productivity of existing crops, as opposed to increasing crop diversity by incorporating more species. We explore ways to use local plants as food resources and the potential to promote food diversity and agricultural resilience. We discuss how use of local plants and the practice of local agriculture can contribute to ongoing adaptability in times of global change. Most food crops are now produced, transported, and consumed long distances from their homelands of origin. At the same time, research and practices are directed primarily at improving the productivity of a small number of existing crops that form the cornerstone of a global food economy, rather than to increasing crop diversity. The result is a loss of agro-biodiversity, leading to a food industry that is more susceptible to abiotic and biotic stressors, and more at risk of catastrophic losses. Humans cultivate only about 150 of an estimated 30,000 edible plant species worldwide, with only 30 plant species comprising the vast majority of our diets. To some extent, these practices explain the food disparity among human populations, where nearly 1 billion people suffer insufficient nutrition and 2 billion people are obese or overweight. Commercial uses of new crops and wild plants of local origin have the potential to diversify global food production and better enable local adaptation to the diverse environments humans inhabit. We discuss the advantages, obstacles, and risks of using local plants. We also describe a case study—the missed opportunity to produce pine nuts commercially in the Western United States. We discuss the potential consequences of using local pine nuts rather than importing them overseas. Finally, we provide a list of edible native plants, and synthesize the state of research concerning the potential and challenges in using them for food production. The goal of our synthesis is to support more local food production using native plants in an ecologically sustainable manner.