Regenerative Agriculture
Note: This was central to Klaus Mager's check-in during the OGM 2025-11-06 call, discussing economic models to incentivize regenerative practices. This page provides background on the concept.
Core Concept
Regenerative Agriculture goes beyond "sustainable" to actively improve and regenerate:
- Soil health
- Water quality
- Biodiversity
- Carbon sequestration
- Ecosystem function
Rather than just maintaining current conditions or reducing harm, regenerative practices actively heal and enhance agricultural ecosystems.
Key Practices
- Cover crops - Planting between cash crops to protect and enrich soil
- No-till farming - Avoiding plowing to preserve soil structure
- Crop rotation - Diverse crop sequences to improve soil and reduce pests
- Perennial crops - Deep-rooted plants that hold soil and carbon
- Integrated livestock - Animals that cycle nutrients and build soil
- Reduced chemical inputs - Relying on biological processes instead
The Destructive Current System
Klaus noted that food and agriculture is "probably the most damaging part of our interaction with the natural world," destroying:
- Watersheds
- Soils
- Biodiversity
- Climate stability
The Regenerative Potential
Agriculture "has the capacity to turn that... to recover and to heal, and to regenerate."
This makes it uniquely positioned as both problem and solution.
Economic Challenge
The Middle is Squeezed
"Agriculture of the Middle" - small to medium-sized farmers:
- Can't access wholesale markets
- Combined farmers markets + CSAs = only ~3% of total food sales
- Can't afford capital-intensive "smart agriculture"
- Excluded by economies of scale
Big Ag Direction
Companies like Monsanto and Nestlé pursuing:
- Automation
- "Climate-smart technology"
- Hugely capital-intensive approaches
- Further excluding smaller farmers
Klaus's Solution: Dual Revenue Streams
The Innovation
Farmers grow two crops:
- Food crop (traditional revenue)
- Environmental benefit crop (new secondary revenue stream)
How It Works
Payment for Environmental Services:
- Measure promised actions (e.g., cover crops, reduced nitrogen)
- Monitor outputs (e.g., nitrogen runoff reduction)
- Pay farmers for verified environmental benefits
- Create contracts for ecosystem services
The Cascade Effect
Example: Nitrogen Reduction
To reduce nitrogen runoff, farmers must:
- Improve soil health
- Which requires cover crops
- Maybe no-till farming
- Possibly crop rotation
- Perhaps perennials
Result: "All these other things fall into place"
One targeted measurement can shift the entire system.
Successful Example: Mississippi Delta
- Farmers paid to reduce nitrogen runoff into Mississippi River
- Nitrogen flows to Gulf of Mexico (creates dead zones)
- Easy to measure
- Incentives sufficient to motivate conservative farmers
- "There's just so much money at stake that they are going to do it"
The Schumacher Institute Project
Klaus is working with the Schumacher Institute in the UK on two work streams:
-
Getting food hubs into wholesale markets
- Aggregating/bundling small farmers
- Accessing larger market channels
-
Paying farmers for ecosystem services
- Creating secondary revenue streams
- Scaling regenerative practices
The Resistance
Klaus's frustration: "How stubbornly resistant the market is to engage in change"
Despite viable solutions and urgent climate warnings, adoption remains slow.
Equipment Challenge
Practical Barrier: Farmers wanting to use cover crops need different equipment - which is expensive.
Question: "How is a small to medium-sized farmer going to shift into environmental farming without having the support structure for it?"
Scalability
Klaus's belief: "You can absolutely shift into regenerative practices at scale if farmers are being incentivized and paid for it."
Not just for small farms - applicable across the agricultural sector.
Related Chat Discussion
David Witzel shared a Nature article on regenerative agriculture economics, and discussed Gates Foundation agricultural strategy critiques.
Related Concepts
- Agriculture of the Middle
- Environmental Services Revenue
- Schumacher Institute
- Food Hubs
- Growth in Living Systems (David Witzel's parallel inquiry)
- Klaus Mager
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