- Minimal or No-Till Farming: Reduces soil disturbance, enhances water penetration, and preserves soil structure.
- Managed Grazing: Rotational grazing to prevent overgrazing, improve soil health, and support ecosystem balance.
- Composting: Builds soil organic matter, enriches soil nutrients, and reduces reliance on synthetic fertilizers.
- Crop Rotation and Intercropping: Diversifies plantings to naturally manage pests, improve soil fertility, and optimize yield.
- Cover Cropping: Protects soil from erosion, enhances nutrient cycling, and promotes biodiversity.
- Silvopasture and Agroforestry: Integrates trees and livestock for mutual benefits like shade, erosion control, and diversified income streams. These practices foster sustainable farming with lower input costs and higher profitability.
7 Regenerative agricultural practices for beginners to boost yield by 30 %.
Regenerative agriculture is an approach in agriculture that focuses on sustaining and improving the health of the soil, as well as the ecosystem as a whole with the aim of improving yield and crop quality.
Soil health starts with adopting regenerative practices that encourage abundance and diversity of soil microbes. It is these soil microbes that drive processes resulting in a rich cascade of beneficial soil health and structure effects including; improved soil aggregation, water penetration, increased water retention, improved nutrient retention, and availability to plants, decreased soil erosion, reduce agricultural run-off, increased CO2 capture from air and sequestration to soil.
All these together promote more vigorous and productive crops, while also regenerating rapidly depleted soils.
Regenerative agriculture prioritizes environmental sustainability and human health. It means that any farm, apart from growing salable crops, should contribute to nature protection.
Regenerative agricultural practices include;
1. Minimal tilling or no tilling
Tilling is a farming practice that involves breaking up and turning over the soil to prepare it for planting. It’s typically done using a tractor or other machinery, and can be done to various depths, depending on the goals of the farmer.
Excessive or intensive tilling by the use of tractor or other machineries on the soil can lead to soil structure depletion and soil microbial disturbance.
Regenerative agriculture approaches like minimal tilling or no-till aim to minimize these negative effects while still achieving the benefits of tilling.
There are three major methods of minimal tilling which are; Sod seeding, direct seeding and surface seeding.
Reduced or no-till practices leaves soil undisturbed leading to increased water penetration and retention, greater soil nutrient retention and availability to crops, less soil crusting, and increased soil organic matter over time for generation to come. All of these contribute greatly to crop vigor, resiliency to crop stressors, and ultimately, crop yield.
Additionally, there are cost reduction opportunities for growers incurred on tilling and fertilizers. The use of heavy, fuel thirsty machinery to plough and establish land for a new crop can be significantly reduced by a minimum-till approach. This will reduce labour and fuel costs, operator time and greenhouse gas emissions from cultivation.
Year on year these benefits will snowball, and many farms will be able to reinvest the money saved into new equipment to further benefit soil health. In simple terms, the less you disturb the soil, the greater these benefits are.
2. Managed grazing or regenerative grazing
Grazing is an agricultural practice where livestock are allowed to feed on grasses, forages or other crops in a field or pasture. Livestock deposit their manure on the land that provide their feed, which can be used efficiently across the farm to improve the soil health and ecosystem.
In regenerative agriculture, grazing is managed to avoid over grazing which can lead to soil degradation or ecosystem disruption
In managed grazing, sections of a forage field are created, animals are shifted between the sections periodically depending on the number of animals, the speed of forage growth, and the size of the sections in order to allow recovery and re-growth of a sections prior to animal rotation. Regenerative grazing is first and foremost a change in mindset from traditional grazing management.
It is the proactive planning and active management of the grazing events: grazing the appropriate amount of leaf production at the optimal time, encouraging the grazing livestock to uniformly utilize the pasture or paddock, and managing grazing to maintain ample residual and allow full recovery of grazed plants before the next grazing event.
Being adaptive and flexible, active monitoring, and managing for positive changes to improve soil health are the main differences between regenerative and traditional grazing management.
The flexibility of an adaptive system allows and encourages changes in grazing management of a property from year to year. These changes include:
- Shape of grazing paddock
- Size of grazing paddock
- Stock density (number of animals temporarily grazing an area)
- Duration (length of time an area is grazed)
- Intensity (amount of plant remaining after grazing)
- Frequency (how often it is grazed)
- Time of year
Other considerations are what type of grazing animal species to use (cattle, sheep, goats, etc.) and the physiological stage of production of those grazing animals (growing, mature, bred, open, lactating, dry).
Managed rotational grazing is a critical regenerative agriculture practice that will improve soil health, nutrient and carbon cycling, grazing crop quality, animal health, and water retention while reducing soil erosion and run-off.
3. Composting
Building soil organic is essential for rebuilding depleted soils. Composted biological materials such as crop residue, food waste, and animal waste to build soil organic matter are crucial in regenerative agriculture. These materials contain carbon, that when incorporated into soils breaks down slowly, building stable organic matter.
Compositing can accelerate the decomposition of these materials, creating compost products that can be more immediately available for soil microbes and plants to utilize. Composting processes can be driven by bacteria, fungi, earthworms, nematodes, and other organisms. In addition to adding carbon/organic matter back into soils, composts provide fertilizer value to your soils and crops in forms that are available over more extended periods than conventional fertilizers. This helps to save cost and improve productivity.
There are hundreds of ways to compost but the simplest is just starting a pile in your yard.
The biggest detail is just using a general ration of one third green to two thirds brown materials.
Brow material includes carbon rich matter like dried leaves, wood, paper bags, coffee filters, coffee grounds, egg shells, straw, peat moss, wood ash.
Green material includes nitrogen or protein-rich matter like manures, food scraps, lawn clippings, kitchen waste, and green leaves. The green matter provides raw materials for making enzymes.
The next large detail comes in the “turning of the compost”. Turning largely depends on the temperature of the compost. You want to raise the temperature enough to kill harmful pathogens but not to burn out good bacteria.
Benefits of turning the compost pile are: more oxygen and moisture control. Turning increases the amount of oxygen exposure through the pile and surface exposure allowing more aerobic activities.
4. Crop rotation and intercropping
Crop rotation is a farming practice that involves planting a series of different crops on the same land in a specific order while,
Intercropping is a farming practice that involves growing two or more crops simultaneously in the same field, often in a specific pattern or arrangement.
Crops are selected to complement each other in terms of growth habits, nutrient requirements, and pest resistance.
Examples of Successful Crop Rotation
Corn-Soybean Rotation
A classic example in many regions involves rotating corn with soybeans. Corn is a heavy nitrogen feeder, while soybeans fix nitrogen in the soil. This rotation not only balances nutrient requirements but also disrupts the life cycles of corn-specific pests and diseases.
Potato Rotation
To manage the risk of soil-borne diseases and pests common in potato cultivation, farmers often rotate potatoes with non-host crops such as oats or barley. This break in the potato cycle helps control diseases like late blight and reduces the need for chemical interventions.
Wheat-Legume Rotation
Alternating wheat with legumes like peas or lentils is beneficial for both nitrogen fixation and disease control. Legumes enrich the soil with nitrogen, benefiting the subsequent wheat crop, while also breaking the cycle of wheat pests and diseases.
Crop rotation and intercropping matters because different plants have different nutritional needs and are susceptible to different pathogens and pests.
If a farmer plants the exact same crop in the same place every year, as is common in conventional farming, it will continually draw the same nutrients out of the soil.
Pests and diseases happily make themselves a permanent home as their preferred food source is guaranteed. With monocultures like these, increasing levels of chemical fertilizers and pesticides become necessary to keep yields high while keeping bugs and disease at bay. Crop rotation helps return nutrients to the soil without synthetic inputs.
The practice works to interrupt pest and disease pressure, improve soil health by increasing biomass from different crops’ root structures, and increase biodiversity, water retention and quality. Life in the soil thrives on variety, and beneficial insects and pollinators are attracted to the variety above ground too.
This regenerative practice leads to quality yield, increase in production and profit.
5. Cover Cropping
Cover cropping is an agricultural practice of planting any of several crops between others, in rotation with cash crops or off season in order to prevent erosion and to improve soil quality.
They can be terminated and stored by incorporation into the soil (green manure) for nutrient recycling till next planting season or used as a mulch layer or for grazing.
When cover cropping is incorporated before cash crop planting it can significantly increase yield.
Many crops can be used depending on locations and soil needs. Leguminous cover crops can be used to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere into the soil, reducing the need for nitrogen fertilizers the next season. the root systems of cover crops help prevent soil erosion, stabilize slopes, and improve water retention.
Furthermore, cover crops act as dynamic nutrient managers. They extract excess nitrogen and other nutrients from the soil, subsequently preventing nutrient leaching and improving overall nutrient availability.
Beyond these agronomic advantages, cover crops suppress weed growth, break pest and disease cycles, and provide habitat for beneficial insects. By incorporating cover crops into crop rotations, farmers not only improve soil health but also contribute to enhanced resilience, reduced reliance on external inputs, and a more sustainable and regenerative approach to agriculture.
For example, cover crops like clover or winter rye prevent soil erosion, suppress weeds, and add organic matter to the soil when they are incorporated.
Cover cropping is a key tool that can help to separate carbon from the atmosphere into soils, recycle nutrients, reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers, reduce agricultural run-off, and boost biodiversity, regenerating your soils for optimal crop productivity.
6. Silvopasture
Silvopasture is a regenerative agricultural practice that involves the intentional integration of forestry (trees, pastures) and grazing for mutual benefit. These systems are intensively managed for both forest products and forage, providing both short- and long-term income sources. Trees in grazing areas provide shelter and cooler microclimate for animals on hot, sunny days and serve as windbreaks. Furthermore, they are an alternative source of food for cattle and provide organic matter with their foliage leading to healthier animals and increase productivity.
Well-managed silvopastures employ agronomic principals, typically including introduced or native pasture grasses, fertilization and nitrogen-fixing legumes, and rotational grazing systems that employ short grazing periods that maximize vegetative plant growth and harvest. The annual grazing income helps cash flow the tree operation while the tree crop matures and creates easy access if and when the trees or tree products are harvested. While these systems can require a number of management activities, the benefits can make it worthwhile.
Silvopasture systems are created by introducing forage into a woodland or tree plantation or by introducing trees into a pasture. Rotational grazing is a key management activity when using silvopasture in order to minimize damage to trees. Special considerations and planning must also be taken into account for long-term tree regeneration.
Potential livestock choices include: cattle, sheep, goats, horses, turkeys, chickens, ostriches, emu, rhea, or game animals such as bison, deer, elk, caribou, etc. Trees can supply valuable fodder or mast such as acorns and honey locust pods for livestock.
One of the main advantages of silvopasture systems is reducing heat stress in livestock, which improves animal performance and well-being. It is important to note that not every pasture in a livestock enterprise needs to be a silvopasture to take advantage of the benefits of this integrated system.
Silvopastures can increase wildlife diversity (e.g., quail, turkey) and improve water quality. The forage protects the soil from water and wind erosion, while adding organic matter to improve soil properties. Silvopastures provide an attractive landscape with an aesthetically pleasing “park-like” setting.
With silvopasture, you’re able to grow timber that is worth more money, as well as raise livestock. You’re getting a more diversified income than if you only grew timber or you only raised livestock. You can combine the best of both worlds and do both!
There are several strong benefits to utilizing silvopasture on your farm. This is a fairly new concept, so there are probably even more benefits than what we are even aware of.
Silvopasture allows you to grow more profitable timber, raise happier, more productive livestock, and allows you to help better the environment. Not to mention all of the wildlife that you will start seeing once you incorporate silvopasture.
Silvopasture is being researched more commonly as a practice that can produce sustainable meat and timber. Sustainability is a major concern in agriculture, so methods that are sustainable are becoming more popular.
7. Agroforestry
While agroforestry includes silvopasture, it is a broader practice with the goal of altering large agriculture landscapes in ways that provide broad environmental, social, and economic benefits.
Agroforestry incorporates cropping between the rows of trees and shrubs and animal farming.
The Importance of Agroforestry
- Biodiversity Conservation: Agroforestry systems provide habitat and food sources for a diverse range of wildlife. These systems often mimic natural ecosystems, enhancing the local biodiversity. In tropical regions, where biodiversity is exceptionally high, agroforestry helps provide habitat for critical flora and fauna to thrive.
- Soil Health and Fertility: Trees in agroforestry systems can improve soil fertility through nutrient cycling, organic matter accumulation, and erosion control. The presence of tree roots can also help break compacted soil, allowing for better water infiltration and aeration.
- Climate Change Mitigation: Trees are exceptional carbon sinks, absorbing and storing large quantities of carbon dioxide. Agroforestry reduces greenhouse gas emissions and can help mitigate climate change. In addition, the practice contributes to local microclimates, reducing temperature extremes and providing shade.
- Enhanced Crop Yields: The shade provided by trees can reduce temperature stress on crops, improving yield and quality. Furthermore, the leaf litter from trees can act as a natural fertilizer for the crops, reducing the need for synthetic inputs.
- Economic Diversification: Agroforestry diversifies income sources for farmers. In addition to traditional crop and livestock products, farmers can also harvest timber, fruits, nuts, and non-timber forest products, creating economic stability and resilience.
- Resilience to Extreme Weather: In tropical regions, agroforestry systems can help reduce the risk of soil erosion and landslides during heavy rains and provide protection against strong winds, and hurricanes.
Animals and the land work together in harmony to ensure all parties thrive. As a result, costs associated with running a regenerative farm as dramatically lower. While traditional farms have costs as high as 33% for external inputs, that figure is a mere 12% on regenerative farms.
Can Regenerative Farming generate more Profit?
Regenerative agriculture is very profitable. In fact, farmers who implement these techniques in their operation stand to earn higher profits than traditional farmers. Reasons are;
Input Costs Are Lower
The profitability of any business depends not only on the revenue it generates but also on the costs it incurs. In conventional farming, the input costs can be quite high due to expenses like synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and heavy machinery.
However, regenerative farming relies more on natural processes, leading to lower input costs. This reduction is primarily because the healthier soil fostered by regenerative practices requires fewer artificial inputs to maintain productivity.
This is best illustrated through an example, so imagine a farm that raises animals and grows a crop on the same plot of land.
The holistic approach of regenerative farming allows animals to graze as they would in their natural habitat – so the farmer doesn’t have to invest in land management equipment or labor. They also don’t have to buy expensive (and unnatural) commercial fertilizer for their herd!
All of this occurs while improving the soil, as rotational grazing gives the various sections of the farmer’s land to heal and recover before they’re grazed again. Then, the farmer can use animal waste coupled with other organic inputs to compost, feeding their crop without expensive fertilizer.
In the end, a regenerative farming system lowers the need for outside inputs. The animals and the land work together in harmony to ensure all parties thrive. As a result, costs associated with running a regenerative farm as dramatically lower. While traditional farms have high costs for external inputs, the cost on regenerative farms tends to be lesser.
That’s not all, either. The farmer earns more come harvest season…
