Backed by data, a former USDA scientist makes the case for regenerative agriculture

In June, agroecologist and South Dakota farmer Jonathan Lundgren had five minutes with President Donald Trump. “This is the answer that American farmers have been looking for,” he said, urging the president to sign an executive order advancing regenerative agriculture. 

Lundgren’s trip to the White House was an apparent success, as President Trump did then sign an executive order instructing federal agencies to expand research and support for regenerative agriculture.

In a blog post, Lundgren recounted sharing “striking data” with Trump based on visits with 2,000 farms across the US over the last few years exploring the costs and benefits of an alternative to conventional industrial agriculture. 

After leaving a career as a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist in 2016 when he became disillusioned with the agency’s scientific integrity, Lundgren has emerged as a prominent advocate for regenerative farming, which he now practices and studies on a farm in South Dakota.

Last month, Lundgren published a study in Environmental Research: Food Systems based on data points collected from more than 2,000 farms ranging from highly conventional operations reliant on pesticides and frequent tilling to farms that practiced no-till, used cover crops and incorporated livestock, and eliminated synthetic inputs.

In addition to studying yields, profitability and health effects, the study hones in on the possibility of regenerative farming as a climate mitigation tool.

Lundgren will present these findings in an address on September 22 at the Food Solutions Summit during New York Climate Week

While the term has varying definitions, regenerative agriculture is generally considered to be an approach to farming that works in harmony with nature. It favors limited use—or no use—of pesticides. It also promotes diversity in crops, and practices such as adaptive grazing, in which farmers rotate animals frequently through multiple small pastures to mimic the natural grazing patterns of wild herds, and “no-till,” meaning farmers don’t plow up fields before planting, limiting soil disturbance and erosion. 

Carbon capture potential 

To avert the worst impacts of climate change, various carbon capture technologies have been proposed as mitigation strategies to pull carbon directly from the atmosphere. Researchers have argued for years that agriculture can play a vital role in carbon capture and Lundgren’s work reaffirms that. 

Crops draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and, through photosynthesis, turn it into plant biomass and food. A portion of that carbon travels into the soil through the roots, where it can remain stored for several years, and if it reaches deep enough and the ground stays untilled, it can remain captured for decades.

The study found that biodiversity was greater on regenerative farms, from soil microbes and invertebrates to plants and birds. Moreover, this biodiversity was strongly correlated with total carbon storage within the examined farms. Rather than losing carbon to the atmosphere through plowing and soil degradation, regenerative fields were found to act as a carbon sink.

Specific findings include: 

• Regenerative farms store 39% more carbon in soil than conventional farms.
• If all US field crops were managed regeneratively, the additional carbon stored could equal 1.49 times annual US greenhouse gas emissions.
• This carbon storage potential exceeds all other proposed tech-based climate solutions by 2050, combined.

“Some of the carbon that plants take out of the air ends up going below ground through the plant’s roots and below ground structures, and if it’s not tilled, that carbon stays there,” explained Emily Heaton, professor of regenerative agriculture at the University of Illinois. 

The findings don’t surprise Heaton. “I think agriculture and regenerative agriculture has been overlooked as a tool for climate mitigation,” she said.

Heaton said that while people may be familiar with carbon capture technologies such as direct air capture, where carbon is pulled directly from the atmosphere through chemicals or physical filters, “those have a much more limited scope to take carbon out of the atmosphere than plants. Plants evolved to take carbon out of the atmosphere. It’s what they do, and they do it without needing any electricity.” she said.

Profits and priorities 

The data showed that regenerative yields were equivalent to national averages for the respective crops. Because researchers were investigating best management practices, the conventional farms produced slightly higher yields. However, net profits were the same between the two sets of farms.

And while conventional farms had higher average crop yields, Lundgren’s data found that regenerative farms achieved equivalent net profits due to significantly lower input costs such as money spent on fertilizers and pesticides. 

“You could say I might have lower yields from using a lower input approach that doesn’t use synthetic fertilizers or doesn’t use synthetic pesticides. But I’m spending less money, and so I’m going to have a higher profit at the end of the year, even if my yields are a little lower,” said Heaton.

Lundgren agrees. “All of those products do one thing: they replace what life used to do for free with a costly input,” he said, adding that regenerative farmers are prioritizing the health and wellness of their families. “That’s one of their strongest motivators.”

Flip flop

Despite Trump’s recent executive order on regenerative agriculture, the administration has introduced several policies supporting pesticide use. 

In February, the President signed an executive order protecting production of and providing “immunity” for glyphosate-based herbicides, such as Roundup, which have been linked to cancer and are the subject of widespread US litigation.

The EPA approved three new herbicides—trifludimoxazin, diflufenican and epyrifenacil—to be sprayed directly on major food crops, which the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines as PFAS, also known as forever chemicals.

“There’s been so many other policies that are in direct opposition to that regenerative agriculture executive order, and we’re going to have to navigate that schizophrenia if we’re going to be able to drive our food system out of this mess that we’re in right now,” Lundgren said. 

Featured image credit: Christina Lind