The Great Regeneration

The regenerative approach – especially in agriculture – represents in my view an essential development beyond sustainability which, as indigenous elders have pointed out, is basically another form of taking without giving. Indigenous approaches always involve reciprocity and mutuality in our relationship with Life and the Earth. The question addressed here is whether the world's farmers can find a way to shift from large-scale, carbon intensive industrial farming that is destroying soil and ecosystems to smaller-scale bioregional systems that not only respect nature but regenerate it. It is the industrial mindset itself involving large-scale so-called economies of scale that needs to be addressed. We now see Big Ag and the WEF calling for the abolition of farms and an increase in artificial foods in response to the very problems created by industrial agricultural itself. What has been called the Great Acceleration has in fact been an era of Great Extraction.

The authors point out that the key to regeneration is the theory of abundance, while existing economic and agricultural systems are underpinned by ‘efficient extraction, allocation, distribution, and competition for scarce resources. (p. 9) Continued extraction degrades the soil over time, making it more difficult to grow and sustain a crop, hence the need for further inputs, herbicides and pesticides. Regenerative agriculture reverses this pattern by improving soils that can then hold more water and become more resilient to floods and droughts. The authors write that the truth is that we live in a world of abundance, not scarcity, as fruit trees demonstrate nearly every year. Nitrogen is highly abundant in the atmosphere, but plants need to access this through underground fungal networks involving ‘an elegant natural symbiosis among microbes, fungi, and plants’ – which is the key to regenerative agriculture. In the absence of nitrogen-fixing plants, the nutrient has to be applied as an artificial fertiliser produced by fossil fuels – a false scarcity is created by our actions. (See diagram on moving from extractive to regenerative cycles, p. 10)

Regeneration is defined as a process that ‘restores and maintains soil health and fertility, protects watersheds, supports ecological and cultural diversity, and expands economic resilience.’ (p. 3). As Sir Albert Howard pointed out over 80 years ago, the health of the soil is central to plant, animal and human health. Soil is fundamentally biology not chemistry and can only be understood in terms of systems. The second key element in the book is open source and sharing of knowledge and technology in a commons system whereby global agriculture can become high-tech and organic at the same time. The new narrative sees humans as positive rather than destructive agents in decentralised, non-authoritarian and democratic relationships.

The chapter on the commonwealth of knowledge explains a ‘knowledge commons’ with a fascinating historical parallel of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopedia, published between 1751 and 1772. They amassed 74,000 topics, developed a sophisticated system of cross-references, and drew on 150 contributors. This amounted to 20 million words in 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of illustrations. The important point is that the very act of collecting and distributing knowledge was seen as seditious to entrenched powers. However, with time, ‘knowledge became a commodity to be protected by patents, institutions, and the professionalisation of science’ (p. 51) – and, one should add, the profits of corporations. New digital open- source possibilities enable cooperatives to collaborate in different parts of the world – there are 30,000 in the US alone, employing 2 million people.

It was encouraging to read that the Food and Agriculture Organisation held a conference in Rome in 2019 on agroecology for food security and nutrition. Agroecology models food systems on nature, and agroecological systems are intentional, intensive and integrated. Importantly, ‘agroecology is as much about families, communities, social bonds, cultural traditions, spiritual beliefs, and economic resilience as it is about specific aspects of farming or ranching.’ (p. 93) It is not built on the proprietary allocation of scarce resources, ‘but on collaborative systems focused on growing abundance through knowledge and working within natural limits.’ The FAO has 10 elements of agroecology that ‘promotes the continual improvement, conservation, and restoration of ecosystem services, including carbon and water storage, nutrient cycling, biodiversity, resistance to pests and diseases, animal welfare, and social justice and equity.’ (p. 95) There are chapters on the elements of abundance, the art and science of collaboration, and the technology of the trust.

As I indicated at the outset, the key shift we need to make it is from a mechanistic and industrial mindset based on scarcity to an organic systems approach working in harmony with life. The authors are sceptical of the basis of rewilding, since ‘this approach abdicates our responsibility for restoring the natural function of land onto the majority of our degraded landscapes.’ (p. 124) The very concept of wilderness implies otherness, and ignores the fact that such landscapes have been managed by people for millennia. Stewardship can offer a useful model, although even this implies anthropocentric separation and neglects the dimension of the sacred; moreover, in the larger scheme of things, Mother Nature can look after herself. The book does offer a radical vision of hope, and its proposals should be widely discussed and implemented.