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The agricultural and social landscape of rural Australia is changing, with many farmers interested in, and some actively moving towards, regenerative agriculture--but what do we understand of the farmers undertaking these transitions? Regenerative agriculture is a holistic way of managing landscapes that aims to move beyond sustainability to regenerate natural systems, while supporting farming system viability. While several authors have discussed the higher-level philosophical underpinnings of regenerative agriculture, there are few empirical studies exploring the motivators for farmers to implement a suite of practices within the regenerative agriculture tool-kit. By undertaking an online survey targeting regenerative farmers, this study identifies common attributes of regenerative farmers, as well as key motivators for, and barriers to change, including perceived benefits arising from the approach. An online survey was promoted through the social media pages of three farming groups, resulting in 96 self-identifying Australian regenerative farmers included in this analysis. Results demonstrate that a clear and recent shift has taken place for this group, who may feel ostracized within their local community, hence often rely on information from online and international sources of agricultural information. This article builds a core understanding of the goals, attributes, aspirations and challenges of regenerative farmers and offers a definition of regenerative agriculture that is derived from farmer responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern agriculture is underpinned by a colonial, industrial and productivist discourse. Agricultural practices inspired by this discourse have fed billions but degraded socio-ecological systems. Regenerative agriculture (RA) is a prominent alternative seeking to transform food production and repair ecosystems. This paper proposes that RA discourse is supported by a shared storyline binding diverse actors and discourses together—a discourse coalition. Consequently, multiple discourses contribute to the over-arching discourse of RA. A discourse analysis was conducted on texts from ninety-six organisations and complimented by twenty-two interviews in Australia and the USA. This analysis identified nine discourses contributing to RA discourse: Restoration for Profit; Big Picture Holism; Regenerative Organic; Regrarian Permaculture; Regenerative Cultures; Deep Holism; First Nations; Agroecology and Food Sovereignty; and Subtle Energies. This paper describes and examines these component discourses and discusses tensions that may make RA vulnerable to co-optation and greenwashing, diluting its transformative potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial farming contributes significantly to feeding and clothing the world's population of nearly eight billion people. While the use of mechanized, chemical and scaled-up farming practices have enabled increased food and fiber production, the practices associated with industrial agriculture also have the potential to adversely impact soils, environment and climate. Organic agriculture began as a movement to counter industrial farming, and organic certification has played a significant role in expanding organic agriculture worldwide. Regenerative agriculture is a fast-developing industry that also offers an alternative to industrial farming. It has been dubbed as going 'beyond organic' to take a more holistic view of agricultural production and practices. Based on 15 key-informant interviews with experts in the Australian organic and regenerative agricultural industries, this case study presents insight into the challenges that the organic industry has faced in its relationship with certification, thus offering a guide to the regenerative agricultural industry in developing its own approaches to labeling or certification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regenerative agriculture (RegenAg) can help landholders attune their agricultural practices to the natural design of the earth's cycles and support systems. The adoption of RegenAg, however, hinges not only on a good understanding of biophysical processes but perhaps more importantly on deep-seated values and beliefs which can become an obstacle for triggering widespread transitions towards synergistic relationships with the land. We designed and facilitated a Participatory Modelling exercise with RegenAg stakeholders in Australia—the aim was to provide a blueprint of how challenges and opportunities could be collaboratively explored in alignment with landholders' personal views and perspectives. Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM) were used to unpack and formalise landholder perspectives into a semi-quantitative shared 'mental model' of the barriers and enablers for adoption of RegenAg practices and to subsequently identify actions that might close the gap between the two. Five dominant narratives which encode the key drivers and pain points in the system were identified and extracted from the FCM as a way to promote the internalisation of outcomes and lessons from the engagement. The Participatory Modelling exercise revealed some of the key drivers of RegenAg in Australia, highlighting the complex forces at work and the need for coordinated actions at the institutional, social, and individual levels, across long timescales (decades). Such actions are necessary for RegenAg to play a greater role in local and regional economies and to embed balancing relationships within systems currently reliant on conventional agriculture with few internal incentives to change. Our methods and findings are relevant not only for those seeking to promote the adoption of RegenAg in Australia but also for governments and agriculturalists seeking to take a behaviorally attuned stance to engage with landholders on issues of sustainable and resilient agriculture. More broadly, the participatory process reported here demonstrates the use of bespoke virtual elicitation methods that were designed to collaborate with stakeholders under COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to demonstrate methods that sustainability-conscious brands can use to include their primary producers in the measurement and reporting of the environment and sustainability performance of their supply chains. It explores three questions: How can farm businesses provide information required in sustainability reporting? What are the challenges and opportunities experienced in preparing and presenting the information? What future research and policy instruments might be needed to resolve these issues. Design/methodology/approach: This study identifies and describes methods to provide the farm-level information needed for environmental performance and sustainability reporting frameworks. It demonstrates them by compiling natural capital accounts and environmental performance information for two wool producers in the grassy woodland biome of Eastern Australia; the contrasting history and management of these producers would be expected to result in different environmental performances. Findings: The authors demonstrated an approach to NC accounting that is suitable for including primary producers in environmental performance reporting of supply chains and that can communicate whether individual producers are sustaining, improving or degrading their NC. Measurements suitable for informing farm management and for the estimation of supply chain performance can simultaneously produce information useful for aggregation to regional and national assessments. Practical implications: The methods used should assist sustainability-conscious supply chains to more accurately assess the environmental performance of their primary producers and to use these assessments in selective sourcing strategies to improve supply chain performance. Empirical measures of environmental performance and natural capital have the potential to enable evaluation of the effectiveness of sustainability accounting frameworks in inducing businesses to reduce their environmental impacts and improve the condition of the natural capital they depend on. Social implications: Two significant social implications exist for the inclusion of primary producers in the sustainability and environmental performance reporting of supply chains. Firstly, it presently takes considerable time and expense for producers to prepare this information. Governments and members of the supply chain should acknowledge the value of this information to their organisations and consider sharing some of the cost of its preparation with primary producers. Secondly, the "additionality" requirement commonly present in existing frameworks may perversely exclude already high-performing producers from being recognised. The methods proposed in this paper provide a way to resolve this. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this research is the first to describe detailed methods of collecting data for natural capital accounting and environmental performance reporting for individual farms and the first to compile the information and present it in a manner coherent with the Kering EP&L and the UN SEEA EA. The authors believe that this will make a significant contribution to the development of fair and standardised ways of measuring individual farm performance and the performance of food, beverage and apparel supply chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: The removal of phosphorus (P) in harvested grain and poor recycling of P creates unique concerns for farming systems that aim to reduce reliance on non-renewable fertiliser inputs, such as 'regenerative' farming systems, or for organic grain growers for whom synthetic P inputs are prohibited. Aims and methods: We examine gross P budgets across the Australian cropping landscape and explore implications for the land area that could be potentially cropped if all P removed in harvested produce was replaced using domestic recycled P sources. Key results: Major cereal, pulse and oilseed crops occupied 21.7 million ha year−1 on average from 2000 to 2018, removing around 136 274 t P year−1. The 27 200 t P in captured animal manure could only sustain around 20% of this area. A further 23%, around 4.9 million ha, could be sustained from sewage and greenwaste resources, but potential pathogens/contaminants limit their current use on organic farmland, and on other farmland when contaminant levels exceed thresholds. Conclusions: Development of technologies acceptable to organic certifying agencies to extract P from sewage and greenwaste would expand available resources for organic and regenerative farming and would enable systems to move further towards closed loop nutrient cycling. Ultimately, export of grain overseas results in a large deficit between the 136 000 t P removed annually from fields and domestic recyclable P (around 74 000 t P year−1). Implications: Apart from importing rock phosphate-based P or recycled P products, this deficit could only be overcome in the long term by reducing grain exports, or by reducing the concentration of P in exported grain. Large quantities of phosphorus are removed from fields in harvested cereal, oilseed and pulse crops each year and at some point, this phosphorus needs to be replaced. If phosphorus from all waste products was recycled back to Australian crop fields each year, it would only be able to replace phosphorus removed annually from around 54% of the total cropland. The deficit can only be overcome by importing phosphorus, reducing grain exports, or reducing the concentration of phosphorus in exported product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding what motivates farmers to adopt "climate-smart" regenerative practices is critical for developing the right policies, incentives, outreach, and support mechanisms. This article explores factors that motivated farmers in NSW Australia to transition from conventional to regenerative agriculture (RA), focusing on the role that their perceptions of agrochemicals and the microbiome played. Drawing on integral theory, the article takes a holistic approach to analyzing how farmer interiorities in personal and collective realms interacted with external behavior and the larger social-ecological system in which food and fiber is produced. A key finding is that negative experiences with agrochemicals associated with increasing costs and declining results were an important driver of change. Conversely, positive experiences learning about the microbiome and practicing ecological approaches to fertilization and pest control engendered enthusiasm and commitment to a transition away from high-input agriculture and a transformation in mindset. Further, conviviality associated with communities of practice, e.g. microscope groups, played an important role in the transition process, as farmers solidified new identities and participated in ongoing social learning. Based on these results, I argue that farmers' feelings of kinship with nature (animals, plants, microbes) resulting from learning about and working with soil are underappreciated drivers of behavioral change and powerful leverage points for larger-scale social-ecological transformation. The integral model facilitates recognition of the connections between soil condition, farmers' perceptions of and feelings about its condition, ensuing behavior including participation in new networks, and the creation of new norms, all of which create space for the emergence of institutional and systemic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 KEY POINTS: Regenerative agriculture can reduce the carbon footprint of sheep production if bioenergy production offsets fossil fuel use.Soil carbon sequestration can offset only part of the total life cycle emissions for sheep production.Most of the environmental improvements in regenerative agriculture are due to a reduction in fertilizer usage.A delta life cycle assessment can provide useful information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regenerative agriculture is an alternative approach to farming that has been gaining traction and interest among farmers due to its potential to reduce input costs, improve soil health, and increase the resilience of farming systems. This paper undertakes a practice-based analysis of farmers, applying a lens of regenerative agriculture. Surveys were developed as a part of a broader project using an established methodological framework. Topics were developed and adapted with input from local stakeholders before being mailed out to three farming regions across Australia (the Western Australian Wheatbelt, the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia and Central West New South Wales). The research clustered farmers into two groups: those who are using best-practices that fall inside the scope of regenerative agriculture, and those who are not. The similarities and differences in farmer attributes, as well as self-reported knowledge levels and information sources used by each group are explored. Results indicate that a belief in anthropogenic climate change may be one of the primary divides between the two groups, and therefore a possible driver of best-practice implementation. The findings provide insight into perceptions of regenerative agriculture for Australian farmers, and may assist with knowledge dissemination amongst those managing our environment., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Dr Hanabeth Luke reports financial support was provided by Cooperative Research Centre for High Performance Soils (Soil CRC). Mathew Alexanderson reports financial support was provided by Cooperative Research Centre for High Performance Soils (Soil CRC)., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Tree regrowth plots are often utilised to reduce soil erosion and increase soil organic carbon (SOC) as well as providing shade for cattle. However, unfenced tree regrowth plots have been found to make limited improvements in soil health in grazing lands. To better inform land management decisions, the impact of an unfenced tree regrowth on soil erosion rates and soil properties was analysed for an improved (i.e., sown with introduced species) cattle pasture in Eastern Australia. Soil cores were collected to 20 cm depth for two paired transects: one with improved pasture and a tree plot, and one consisting only of improved pasture. Samples were analysed for soil organic carbon and soil properties and soil erosion rates were determined using the diffusion and migration model (DMM) and Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE). Maximum DMM erosion rates were similar for the two transects at 2.7 (tree plot) and 2.3 (pasture) t.ha−1.yr−1, with the tree plot not having a statistically significant effect. RUSLE erosion rates showed less similarity for the transects at 5.58 (pasture) and 3.08 (tree plot) t.ha−1.yr−1. SOC was lower within the tree plot compared to the rest of the transect, while it was significantly higher in the pasture than the tree plot transect (4.93% compared to 3.72%). To examine if the tree plot is buffering against higher erosion caused by this, the RUSLE cover factor was substituted for that of the pasture transect. However, no such effect was observed. Overall, the tree plot had no significant effect on SOC and erosion in this improved pasture grazing system. This has implications for the design of tree plots and their location, which is significant due to their perceived role in regenerative agriculture practices. • Soil carbon and erosion were compared for grazed pasture and tree growth transects. • Soil carbon was not significantly higher within the tree growth area. • There was little difference in erosion rates between the two transects. • Cattle grazing and reduced ground cover limit the regenerative impact of trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cover crops are widely promoted in temperate regions of the northern hemisphere to replace or reduce fallow periods between cash crops. The reported benefits (improved ground cover, reduced nitrate leaching, increased soil organic matter among others) have prompted widespread interest in cover cropping in other agro-climatic zones, including Mediterranean environments such as southern Australia, where the wet, mild winters and hot dry summers are a stark contrast to temperate environments. This review considers the reported benefits of cover crops in temperate environments in the context of cropping systems in the water-limited, Mediterranean climate in the grain-growing regions of southern Australia. Published studies on cover cropping were critically assessed to evaluate whether the reported impacts may be relevant to Mediterranean-type climates. Nitrate leaching is not generally problematic in southern Australian cropping systems due to low summer rainfall and high temperatures, and complete retention of crop stubbles can adequately protect the soil from erosion. Further, summer rainfall is low and sporadic which not only limits cover crop planting opportunities but means that water conserved over summer fallows contributes significantly to winter cash crop yield. Consequently, cover crop duration would need to be short (1–2 months) to balance the benefits of increased cover for water infiltration with transpiration loss during cover crop growth. Restricted cover crop biomass production due to water constraints and short fallow length will limit the potential value of the cover crop to increase soil organic matter, microbial activity, and biologically-fixed nitrogen contributions – all reported benefits for higher biomass cover crops in temperate environments. Appropriate tactical use of summer cover crops may arise in situations where (i) soil cover is reduced by winter crop failure or prolonged drought creating significant erosion risk, (ii) recalcitrant herbicide resistant weeds in winter crops require a chemical spring fallow and summer cover/forage crop, which could be grazed, (iii) full soil profiles at harvest and wet seasonal outlook provide opportunities for cover crop growth without significant pre-emptive competition, and (iv) sandy soil profiles with low water holding capacity combined with reliable winter rainfall minimise contributions of summer rainfall to winter crop yields. The value of more diverse cover crop species to soil health in cereal-brassica or cereal-brassica-legume cash crop rotations is not known. The rationale for widespread summer cover crop use in southern Australia is currently not compelling without more evidence for the scale and mechanisms of the anticipated benefits. [Display omitted] • Evidence for benefits of cover crops in Mediterranean-type climates is lacking. • Opportunities to sow cover crops over the hot dry summer period are limited. • Cover crop water use may reduce yields of subsequent cash crops. • Tactical use of summer cover crops in targeted situations may be warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional agriculture is implemented across approximately 75 per cent of the world's agricultural land and has been linked to climate change and biodiversity loss. In contrast, regenerative agriculture focuses on practices that build soil fertility and improve ecosystem functioning to mitigate climate change and increase biodiversity. This review assesses how the regenerative practice of crop diversification influences soil fertility and crop productivity, pest control, water quality and climate-change mitigation. I take an Ecosystem Services Approach to assessing crop diversification, which is a form of natural resource management that considers the relationship between human and environmental needs. These ecosystem services are analysed within the Australian context to determine both current issues and potential opportunities in Australian agriculture. This review reveals that current methods of agriculture in Australia could be improved, and crop diversification offers a key opportunity for helping Australia ensure food security under future climate change. Further research on interspecies interactions is required to help classify the specific crops that provide beneficial ecosystem services in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]