Climate and Agriculture Ep22: The Missing Link in Realizing the Full Potential of Regenerative Agriculture.
In the face of the ongoing climate change crisis and growing population pressures exacerbate stress on sufficient access to nutritious food. Adopting regenerative farming practices presents a promising solution to address these challenges and ensure food security for the nation.
Regenerative farming practices aim to restore and improve the health of soil, water, and ecosystems while increasing agricultural productivity. It has huge potential to improve agriculture in East Africa and throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, addressing the pressing issue of food security.
It builds on well-known facts such as crop rotation, nutrient and water requirements, soil and water conservation, farm-gate prices, global trade, and supply chains. Moreover, it tackles known unknowns, such as weed, pest, and disease control without agrochemicals, cover crops for profit and protection, preventing and responding to the climate crisis, resilience and rolling points in ecosystems, farming systems, and societies, and how we can pay for necessary changes.
Despite being clear that this type of farming is a superior option, its adoption has been gradual since smallholder farmers are afraid to abandon the traditional methods that have served them well for decades. The main fear is the counterproductive effect that can occur regarding yields. This is attributed to a lack of knowledge of their soil profile, which drives them to go for a conventional solution to improve soil fertility for each farming season.
This article seeks to establish a shared understanding of why the regenerative agriculture approach is likely to fail if not well implemented and identify some of the missing links where investment is needed.
What data shows
The 2021 UN Food Systems Summit highlighted that tomorrow’s food and land use systems must be multi-objective with measurable impacts on not only food security, but also nutritional security, environmental security, climate security, and livelihood security.
A rising number of research suggests that large improvements in food production and consumption might help feed 10 billion people by 2050 while arresting and reversing ecosystem and biodiversity loss, protecting freshwater and soils, and limiting global warming to 1.5°C.
However, agricultural expansion and unsustainable agricultural practices are resulting in widespread soil degradation and threatening food security. The FAO estimates that at least one-third of agricultural soils are degraded and the soil organic matter content of many agricultural soils is very low. Half of the world's topsoil has been lost in the last 150 years, and cultivated lands are losing more than a millimetre of soil every year, a pace that is nearly a hundred times faster than the rate of soil formation.
Looking at carbon metrics, an additional 27 Gigaton (Gt) of soil organic carbon is expected to be lost to land conversion and land management by 2050, resulting in reduced infiltration and water-holding capacity, as well as loss of nutrients and negatively affecting agricultural yields.
This will not only threaten global food security and farmers' livelihoods but also make it more challenging to meet human demand without causing further environmental damage.
What’s Missing? What Do We Still Need to Know?
Currently, there is no universally accepted framework and set of metrics to set, track and measure outcomes from regenerative agricultural practices. The metrics could help to set standards for reference. Also, there is limited access to resources such as capital, technical knowledge, and markets further impeding their ability to regenerative techniques.
Water management is key when it comes to Regenerative agriculture success. To use this method of farming, there needs to be sufficient information on how water can be retained in the soil, considering that most of the time farming is rainfed thus accounting for the largest proportion of water use in agriculture and provides the world with over 60% of global food supply (Rockström et al., 2007).
Rainfed farming is more impacted by weather within a variable climate, affecting crop growth, timing of planting and harvesting, and yields. Climate change shock and weather extremities are likely to water down efforts done by farmers in regenerative agriculture. For instance, floods can destroy farmlands or extreme droughts cause crop failure or reduce vegetation cover. However this approach does not offer 100% immunity, rather it can significantly reduce climate change stress.
Financial support is not arriving at sufficient scale or speed which limits the quantity of adaptation finance to go around. This stems from global and national sources to local entities. The low priority that is given to this issue by national governments; and – let’s face it – constrains the capacity of some local actors to absorb and manage finance at scale.
Real-time impact reported is insufficiently available to target implementors which causes farmers to doubt the solution. Most farmers need to understand the impact that is ahead of adopting regen ag as a better solution.
Notably, nutrition knowledge has been missing as a driving wheel that can give farmers reasons to embrace this farming approach. This is to mean that, the interconnectedness of increased productivity, food and nutrition security, climate resilience and socio-economic rewards and climate change resilience are not well elaborated. There is uncertainty about the different nodes where the farmers can connect as beneficial to them.
Why the approach is likely to fail if not well implemented
Failure shouldn’t be the case but it will be prudent to radiate light on all possibilities. Reports indicate there is quite a progress on enabling regenerative agriculture to get an upper hand in its uptake but this comes with a share of hurdles towards the success of this approach.
There are controversies as to whether agricultural practices that increase on-farm biodiversity and carbon sequestration may compromise agricultural production. Fundamentally, agriculture provides food security for a growing population. We all rely on data and evidence, and the absence of it builds loopholes for interrogating the practicality of the approach in terms of the way distinct parameters impact yield, for example, metrics (e.g., crop per hectare vs total system yield), crop type, and study length, all of which will result in different outcomes.
Still addressing the technical and practical climate mitigation potential of regenerative agricultural practices, scientists have differing opinions on the carbon sequestration potential of soil on working agricultural lands and how much it can realistically be scaled up to combat climate change.
That said, it is important to focus on climate change mitigation more broadly, rather than carbon sequestration alone, given the role of other Greenhouse Gas emissions such as methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2 O) in agriculture are also part of the threat.
Using agroforestry for instance, as one methodology in regen ag, farmers may not know which trees are most likely to sequester more carbon whilst being better companions of food crops or rather giving food security and better returns on investment.
The transition requires a significant investment of time, energy, and resources. Regenerative systems require a shift in mindset away from traditional and extractive models, and towards regenerative cycles that support the natural environment. Costs can be a deterrent for some individuals or businesses considering a shift from their current practices.
However, the expenses of switching to such a system are not entirely monetary. Regenerative farming requires tailored understanding and skills, which might take years to develop and refine. Farmers are likely to encounter resistance from peers or the local community who are comfortable with conventional farming techniques and are accustomed to speedy results.
There is less advancement in technological modalities for conducting monitoring different frameworks and metrics. In some instances, the role is left to some farmers to take the records. This can be often a costly and labor-intensive task that farmers cannot take on without greater support from institutions and the government. In fact, without support, there is the likelihood of squeezing the solution scope by targeting corporate stakeholders who are likely to be already using regenerative agricultural practices and leaving smallholder farmers who take 70% of agricultural space.
Regulatory barriers facing regenerative systems: a Lever balance in regulations and policies is critical for influencing high adoption. The lack of regulations governing regenerative practices means companies and farmers are unsure of what and where to act with assurance. The policy gaps to assist with this transition in terms of agronomic research and support, financing options, or crop insurance recognition of the on-farm risks mitigated through regenerative farm practices are visible.
This even limits the concrete degree of support that is enabled for organizations to combat climate change and invest in regenerative ecosystems, investing in infrastructure and market development of local and regenerative produced goods will come down to addressing regulatory hurdles.
What can be done
Moving towards an outcome-based framework to measure regenerative agricultural practices can promote global alignment while also guiding practitioners in identifying site-specific interventions and enabling how agriculture fits into the broader food and land use system transition.
Significant changes to food production are also needed, including sustainably intensifying production, replacing synthetic with natural pest controls, improving soil and water management, and developing and deploying new technologies to, for example, increase monitoring efficiency and facilitate peer-to-peer service exchange.
We should also leverage on the 13 principles of agroecology, which have been adopted by many countries and organizations. These principles can help to guide stakeholders and ensure the implementation of practices is holistic and does not prioritize one outcome over another, reducing the risk of unintended results.
By restoring ecosystems, building resilience, and promoting sustainable livelihoods, regenerative practices offer a pathway towards a more prosperous and resilient future for farmers and communities within the African Region.
We must embrace this paradigm shift in agriculture because it is not only imperative but also indispensable for securing the well-being of the present and future. Moreover, we must note that gross generalizations don’t help us face the challenges in front of us — and there is no single silver bullet to these complex challenges.
References
Making food systems work for people and Planet UN Food Systems Summit +2
Aligning regenerative agricultural practices with outcomes to deliver for people, nature and climate. 2023.
Rawls, W. J., Pachepsky, Y. A., Ritchie, J. C., Sobecki, T. M., and Bloodworth, H. (2003). Effect of soil organic carbon on soil water retention. Geoderma 116, 61–76. doi: 10.1016/S0016-7061(03)00094-6
FAO Project on Land and Soils