Define regenerative agriculture without using the words carbon credits in a sentence.
To make a claim like this on a consumer-facing label, the definition has to be straight-forward without a lot of linguistic jiu-jitsu, empirically supported with data.
Our ag and food supply system is constructed in such a way that most people on the planet are fed in as an efficient manner as possible. When consumers and politicians begin dictating agronomic prescriptions to battle inflated or imaginary demons, people die.
Sri Lanka is a recent case study on how a government dictated policy of organic agriculture destroyed an entire country through starvation in less than a year. In times of abundance, we can be more discerning, in times of scarcity, all that matters are calories.
If it were up to me, an easy bar to set in defining regen ag is to have more biological inputs than chemical inputs in crops (obviously with equal or greater production values). And doing it at a price point that is in parity in unit and application cost with conventional agriculture. If we utilize the land grant system in this endeavor, it will make the path through trials more efficient and meaningful to the generations that follow.
Until we have a widely accepted universal definition of regenerative agriculture which brings more money to farmers and ranchers, the obvious questions are: what is it and why does it matter?
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