The Real Difference Between Regenerative and Conventional Agriculture
A University of Arizona researcher suggests the regenerative movement is less of a revolution and more of a return to agronomic principles that seasoned growers have used for decades.
Regenerative ag is a buzzword in farming at the moment, but what does it really mean? A recent study conducted by Jeffrey Silvertooth, professor and Extension specialist in agronomy and soil science at the University of Arizona, sought to compare regenerative and conventional production systems.
Silvertooth says the regenerative movement might be less of a revolution and more of a homecoming to principles seasoned produce growers have practiced for generations.
“It’s a call, a clarion call, to return to the basics,” he says. “I was oftentimes schooled and indoctrinated in ideas about conservation rotations. The very practices that we embody in the regenerative agricultural systems today. They’re not new.”
The Roots of Conservation
Silvertooth says while the term “regenerative ag” might be new packaging for age-old ag concepts, the interest in agriculture is a good thing. But Silvertooth says this rebirth of old-school farming practices is what inspired him to compare traditional cropping systems with these regenerative farming practices. He says he also wanted to share those past connections with those less familiar with traditional agriculture practices that might be new to the regenerative movement.
Silvertooth says he compared farming practices from row crops, annual crops and also cereal grains.
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“I just went in broad spectrum as to what is out there, what’s been done. What I’ve basically found is this is highly variable,” he says.
He says this is similar to research he conducted in organic fertilizers compared to inorganic fertilizers. While many believe organic fertilizers might be more beneficial to the plant, he says that’s not what his research found.
“That’s just a basic scientific fact,” he says. “What the plant takes up in either case is nitrate nitrogen, and so it’s totally indistinguishable chemically for the plant. Whether that nitrogen came from a manure source or came out of an industrial fertilizer, it’s nitrate. That’s it.
And, when it comes to traditional production methods and regenerative practices, he says he sees it as important to knock back some myths that regenerative practices are better than conventional practices.
“All said and done, based on all the evidence available today, there’s really no difference,” he says. “It does show that there are benefits, though, to utilizing these types of practices. That is clear. And you can’t really say the conventional systems are all bad either.”
The Farm as an Integrated System
He says at the heart of regenerative ag is looking at the farm as a system — the soil, plant, everything.
“We look at the bugs, diseases, the weeds, and we look at putting on fertilizer as there’s individual components that’s all interacting out there as a system,” he says. “And that’s the best thing, I think, that comes from regenerative agriculture, if people think of it as a system.”
Another myth Slivertooth says he wants to dispel is that conventional systems wreck the soil and deplete it of nutrients, and that’s why regenerative production is believed to be better.
“I look at what people do,” he says. “I think they do the best they can. We couldn’t grow these productive, these healthy crops the way we do if we didn’t have healthy soils. There’s this assumption that all commercial agriculture is destroying the soil — we have no ecosystems and it’s a sterile, dead environment.”
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He says, wholeheartedly, there’s value in regenerative production, but it can be a challenge for growers to survive financially as well as take care of the land.
“We’re just coming back and recognizing there’s value in this, but it’s not a magic potion,” he says.
The Knowledge Gap
And this, he says, goes back to his mission of helping to debunk myths and educate consumers as the farm and fork divide continues to widen. Arizona, he says, is 80% urban — and most residents are a few generations separated from the farm.
“They have an interest, a lot of them do about where their food comes from, but they don’t really have a realistic understanding,” he says. “And they hear these things like regenerative agriculture and ask, ‘So why are all these farmers doing this?’ A lot of them are, and they’re just not advertising it.”
He says at the heart of regenerative ag is an interest in taking care of the land, which all farmers want to do.
“We want to make them sustainable for everybody,” he says. “Agriculture has an interest in doing that. There’s some good things that come from regenerative agriculture that we’re already doing a lot of, and we’re just trying to encourage people to do as much as they can.”
Source: www.thepacker.com
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