Regenerative agriculture is the way we should have been farming for the last few generations it seems that with the advent of chemical usage for fertilisers and alleged increased crop yields that they promised, the techniques now used in regenerative agriculture and farming were forgotten and went out of practice. For example, the use of cover crops, a no-tilling method of farming, using nature to help plants to fight off pests and disease. Farming with a holistic approach towards land management by leveraging plants and crops natural ability to photosynthesise and using protective or cover crops, soil health can be rebuilt to increase crop resilience, and nutrient density overall creating a much healthier crop that will have superior yields without harsh chemicals.

Cover crops are an enormous boon to farming, they help the main crop by adding nitrogen to the soil, as well as helping to prevent excess water evaporation, and help to prevent topsoil erosion from several sources, cover crops help fields to absorb more rainwater, meaning that there is less run-off taking topsoil and essential elements that the soil contains. Of course, with the addition of cover crops, there is increased resistance to wind effects blowing topsoil away from the fields.

Persistent or forever chemicals such as glyphosate are terrible for the environment, they may degrade in around 2 months in the soil, however, if they get into the local water table, they stay active for far longer affecting aquatic life and causing excess phosphorous and nitrogen causing the sharp rise in algal blooms as they allow the algae to grow at rates the local ecosystem cannot combat or contain, they are a major health issue to all of us and our pets. Having healthier soil is brilliant water is far more effectively percolated by the soil, retained in the soil and the run-off will be clean and safe without the forever chemicals that have been present for the last 50-70 years.

Not just talking about the effects in water the effects in the soil of glyphosate is devastating, the chemical once sprayed starts to immediately bind to and sequester the naturally occurring nitrogen molecules in the soil meaning that all plants no longer have access to the essential elements for growth and protection. Furthermore, to combat this chemical companies sell farmers a nitrogen/ammonia mix that they can spray onto their crops to replace the nitrogen and ammonia that they just sequestered by using glyphosate??? What is worse is this synthetic nitrogen is a large cause of algal blooms in bodies of water and releases nitrous oxide into the atmosphere, this is an extremely dangerous greenhouse can that is up to 300 times more potent than CO2.

What is also tremendously bad is that glyphosate spreads into hedgerows and affect local flora and fauna, reducing the ecosystems within the hedges to almost nothing, also many harsh chemicals contain neonicotinoids which are the primary cause of bee populations falling to dangerous levels, without these pollinators life as we know it would no longer exist. Glyphosate use is a very worrying aspect one teaspoon of this chemical is enough to sequester 1 acres worth of nitrogen and farmers in the USA during 2014 sprayed glyphosate at a rate of 1kg/ha (0.8lb per acre) on every hectare of cultivated cropland, worldwide it was not much better with 0.53kg/ha (0.47lb/acre) on all croplands available on the planet!

Finally, farmers are also returning to a no-tillage method of farming, this is great because tilling speeds up the decomposition of and loss of organic matter by breaking up soil structure and massively increases the threat of erosion, this is all hugely negative to the soil, some estimates say that we only have about 40 years of topsoil left if we continue as we are doing, this is not what anyone wants, so by having no-till farms, soils can regenerate over time, we can use enzymes or biota to give the soils a kickstart in their recovery process, and we would use these organic additives for the first few years to ensure soil and plant/crop health. 

So, what does regenerative agriculture mean for the planet, well, by employing regenerative techniques for both farming and grazing it is possible to begin to reverse the effects of climate change, by increasing soil fertility, it means that fields can be used as crops get cycled throughout the year, increasing the nitrogen in the soil allowing for a strong mycelial network to pass nutrients all around, perhaps most importantly CO2 sequestration is increased immensely, for example, the cover crops used can store around ½ tonne per acre.