What is Regenerative Agriculture?
What is Regenerative Agriculture?
Over 95% of our food comes from the soil or relies on it for feed - at present, more than half of the world’s agricultural land is degrading. Researchers found more than 90 percent of the conventionally farmed soils in the study were thinning, and 16 percent had lifespans of less than a century.
Agriculture practices today use heavy machinery, fertilizers, and pesticides in an effort to increase food production, but it is the main contributor to this harmful erosion. It threatens food security, increases carbon emissions, reduces the yields of crops, and impacts the pastures in which animals graze.
Regenerative agriculture offers a solution to transform traditional farming methods into environmentally friendly practices that nourish the soil, improve crop yield, and produce healthy animals. With increased farming production, farmers can see improved profitability and food output, ensuring the growing population can stay fed and reducing food insecurities that threaten our future.
What is Regenerative Agriculture?
In its simplest form, regenerative agriculture is farming by working in harmony with nature. It’s a practice where farms use sustainable and regenerative farming and grazing practices that nurture and restore the soil’s health. By focusing on the health of the soil, farmers can protect the natural biodiversity of the soil and leave our lands in better shape for the future. By adopting regenerative agriculture, farms can reduce their impact on climate change by reducing the carbon drawdown and improving the water cycle.
How Does Regenerative Agriculture Work?
Throughout farms around the world, over half of the land is degraded. As the population grows and the need for food increases, the pace of soil degeneration sped up. Farms use machinery and synthetic fertilizers to mass-produce crops, but these methods have dire long-term consequences. The land was stripped of biodiversity, leaving less organic matter in the soil and less nutrient density, which increases floods and droughts and releases more carbon in the atmosphere.
Regenerative farming includes reducing tilling and plowing. This keeps the CO2 in the soil and improves the water absorbency. It also nourishes and leaves vital ecosystems within the soil undisturbed.
Farms can also rotate crops to improve biodiversity. Instead of using harmful fertilizers, farmers can use manure and compost to reintroduce vital nutrients in the soil.
Grass-fed farm animals left to graze on the same plot of land also contribute to soil degradation. Farmers can introduce regenerative practices by allowing their animals to move to different pastures to graze and even allow different kinds of animals, like goats, cows, and horses, to graze together.
Regenerative agriculture regenerates the soil to produce carbon-rich soil filled with essential nutrients to support a healthy soil microbiome. Regenerative agriculture is also considered a ranching style that nurtures your health and the environment. By implementing these practices, farming yields are increased and able to feed the world as the population grows, and carbon emissions from farming are greatly reduced, cutting down the impacts of climate change.
Regenerative farming is an incredible way to farm that can be the answer to industrial farming and the harmful tolls it takes on the earth. Traditions Meat Co believes in sustainable and regenerative farming and returning things to how they should be: raising animals humanely, nurturing the land, creating life, and regenerating the soil to produce the cleanest, highest-quality meat available.
Learn more about our high-quality, nutrient-dense selection of meats by visiting our website. https://traditionsmeatco.com/