The Tamesis
A 2022 study published in PeerJ confirms these trends, noting that crops produced on regenerative farms have higher levels of organic soil matter, soil health scores, and levels of certain vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals. Healthy soil has an increased water-holding capacity, which means rainfall from regenerative farms is captured and stored by the soil rather than causing runoff and erosion. Although it varies based on soil type, according to the USDA, every 1% increase in organic soil matter can hold an additional 20,000 gallons of water per acre of soil—this is especially important for water-intensive industries like fashion, which view reduced water use as a major obstacle to sustainability and are vulnerable to floods and droughts during the natural fiber production phase.
biodiversity
“When you start transitioning to a regenerative farming system, the first thing you end up seeing, whether it’s farmland, pasture, orchards or vineyards, is life comes back first,” Lundgren said.
Although there is widespread agreement that regenerative agriculture can reverse the decline in farmland biodiversity—including plants, birds, and insects—in industrial agricultural systems, supporting evidence from long-term, field-scale studies is sparse.
Early data from 1,000 farms shows that regenerative farms support more than twice as many bird species, four-and-a-half times as many insect species, and nearly 20 times as many plant species as conventional farms. This is on display at Jigsaw Farm in southwestern Victoria, Australia. Over the years, as farmers Mark Wootton and Eve Kantor implemented a series of regenerative practices, pollinators and wildlife returned. Eckard worked with them to quantify the changes they saw; “the number of birds here increased from about 34 to 176 species,” he said. Diverse ecosystems and the return of pollinators enhance natural control of pests and diseases, improve animal welfare, and make landscapes more resilient to extreme weather events.
carbon sequestration
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the livestock industry accounts for 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions annually. The most controversial claims made by proponents of regenerative agriculture involve the potential for carbon sequestration in pastures and farmland to reduce emissions from the industry. Some brands even use regenerative agriculture to imply that their products are “carbon positive” because the amount of carbon sequestered exceeds the amount emitted.
Healthy soil does sequester carbon (or carbon dioxide equivalent), as do trees and plants. While the science behind tree carbon is solid, what scientists struggle to agree on is how long the carbon remains in the soil and whether the carbon can continue to be sequestered indefinitely.
“Carbon can’t be built forever. We see the biggest gains in the first few years [of switching to regenerative management] “We generally see larger gains in more degraded systems,” said Shelby McClelland, Ph.D., a researcher and lecturer in Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. Eventually, carbon storage in soil and plant biomass will reach what’s called a new steady state.
