Regenerative Agriculture: Working the Land in Alliance with Nature
By Jose Luis Gallego, environmental communicator (@ecogallego)
In an encouraging development, regenerative agriculture is gaining ground around the world. The reason it is so encouraging is because this agricultural approach aims to halt the advance of large-scale monocultures and reverse the environmental damage caused by bad industrial farming practices over the course of more than a century.
In addition to depleting the soil and polluting air and waterways, intensive farming methods represent the second biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions globally and one of the leading causes of biodiversity loss.
Mas La Plana vineyard, DO Penedès, a Familia Torres property.
By contrast, regenerative agriculture is about revitalizing the soil to restore its fertility and thereby assure a more secure, sustainable, and climate-crisis resilient food production system. It is a way of farming in harmony with nature and in alliance with the biodiversity living within the surrounding environment.
Through regenerative farming practices, cropland can absorb as much carbon from the atmosphere as forests, in some cases even more, and store it in the soil where it is transformed into nutrients. Furthermore, regenerative farming conserves water resources by preventing agrochemical leaching and makes crops more resistant to pests without resorting to pesticides. This results in healthy foods and fosters the development of a circular economy in rural areas.
All these principles are laid out in the numerous manuals on the topic that have been published, on a larger or smaller scale, in the past few years. Before getting into the details of this agricultural model, I would like to recommend a small volume, modest in size but impressive in content, which a good friend from the Penedès region gave me a few years ago. The book in question is The One-Straw Revolution written by Masanobu Fuzuoka in the autumn of 1975 and published in Spain by Descontrol under the title La revolución de una brizna de paja.
As a young man, Masanobu Fukuoka left his home in rural Japan and moved to the city of Yokohama where he studied pedology or soil science with a specialization in microbiology and phytopathology. In other words, the man who would later develop the celebrated Fukuoka Method for natural farming began by studying the science that examines nature and soil conditions in relation to plants.
Besides being one of the leading references for anyone interested in an introduction to natural and regenerative agriculture, The One-Straw Revolution invites us to discover a new way of seeing the relationship between humans and nature through a form of farming that is honest, conscientious, and closely linked to caring for the planet.
As described in the book’s prologue, natural farming grows out of the spiritual health of the individual. For the author, the healing of the land and the purification of the human spirit is the same process, and ultimately the type of agriculture he proposes is a way of life that unites both processes.
The points of view which Fukuoka shares in his book have been reproduced countless times in permaculture manuals and have even found their way into books of aphorisms. Most of them revolve around the respect which a farmer must show the earth, but some of the statements are pure philosophy. Here are a few examples:
“The motto of the farmer in his work is to serve nature, then all will be well.”
“Weeds play their part in building soil fertility and in balancing the biological community. As a fundamental principle, weeds should be controlled, not eliminated.”
“Ultimately, it is not the growing technique which is the most important factor, but rather the state of mind of the farmer.”
“Disease appears when people separate themselves from nature. The severity of the disease is directly proportional to the degree of separation.”
“There is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song.”
“A great variety of weeds and grasses means that a variety of essential nutrients and micronutrients are available to the vegetables.”
“Pollution will not cease until each one of us transforms our awareness in a fundamental manner.”
“Chemical fertilizers are applied in large quantities of which only a small fraction is absorbed by the plants in the fields. The rest leaches and dissolves into springs and rivers. This is why the biggest source of water pollution in Japan derives from the chemical products used in agriculture.”
In 2021, the Regenerative Viticulture Association was called into being as a way of encouraging regenerative farming practices in winegrowing. The main goal is to join forces and bring about a paradigm shift in how vineyards are managed around the world. This new viticultural model contributes to the natural regeneration of the soils and increases their productivity, as well as preventing erosion and halting the spread of desertification. It encourages biodiversity and nature conservation through the responsible management of the vineyard, thereby helping to mitigate climate change by restoring the carbon cycle.
This year saw the introduction of the international certification of the Regenerative Viticulture Alliance (RVA), a new standard in regenerative viticulture which recognizes the efforts of wine producers with regard to climate action through environmentally-committed winegrowing that has a positive impact on soil restoration, biodiversity, the water cycle, and carbon sequestration.
