Hi I'm Beth McGee, Director of Science and
Agricultural Policy at the Chesapeake
Bay Foundation. I'm going to talk to you
today about regenerative agriculture.
Maybe it's a term you've heard before
and wondered what the difference was
between it and sustainable agriculture.
Maybe it's a term you've never heard
before. So what is regenerative agriculture? Well
let's start with sustainable agriculture.
Sustainable agriculture, that term
generally refers to agricultural systems
that are economically sustainable to the
farmer, that do no environmental harm, and
that are socially acceptable and
sustainable as well. You kind of see one
of the challenges of videotaping
yourself in your backyard when you have
barking dogs–including your own—
interjecting, but this like the fifth
time I've done this, so it is what it is!
Anyway let's get back to your regenerative ag...
so and the term sustainability,
when you think about sustain, it
really implies that there's no
improvement to the environment, it's
really were just maintaining the status quo.
So the term regenerative ag kind of came
on the scene because it's the idea that
we want our farming system to actually
improve the environment, we want them to
improve water quality, improve soil
health, benefit our ecosystem, provide
wildlife habitat, and so it's a, it's a
it's several principles that farmers
can adopt that will result in
actually making improvements to the
environment. So it's things like keeping
the soil covered year-round as possible,
minimizing disturbance–they're practicing
no-till for example. A crop diversity,
so whether that's a really diverse crop
rotation or whether it's having a
pasture full of different species,
bringing animals into the system, those
are some of the principles that that
result in a regenerative ag that can
actually improve the environment. So how
does how does that improve the
environment? Well one thing that these
practices do is improve soil health
which is also linked to water quality. So
I'm in my backyard, you can hear my
barking dog, again sorry about that, but
we have you know some vegetable gardens
and you can see here that we have it
covered with
compost during the the winter to keep
the moisture in and then the soil looks
pretty healthy. We've got some earthworms
in here, diversity, I mean soil health is
another term that maybe you've heard a
lot about lately and the reason why you
want to improve soil health is for a
couple reasons.
What are quality reasons, let's talk
about those first. One is that healthy
soils will capture more rain water, so if
soils are capturing more rainwater, less
is running off and so that is a benefit
to water pollution. If it's capturing
more rain water it means during a
drought period there's more water
holding capacity in soils and that's
great for the farmer. It's also great for
the farmer which we get a lot of rain
because more will go into the ground as
opposed to running off. Another benefit
of healthy soils and it's being talked
about more and more, is that healthy
soils make organic matter–organic
matter's largely composed of carbon–so
basically it's sequestering carbon from
the atmosphere and there's huge
potential for soils globally to
sequester a lot of carbon. So this is
great when you think about greenhouse
gases and getting farmers to do this
regenerative ag practice, and some even
call it carbon farming, that we can
actually get farmers to sequester carbon
and maybe there's a role for them to
play in mitigating greenhouse gases–
certainly that is true. So what can
you do with regenerative ag? You can do
stuff in your your own yard, get healthy
soils in your own yard if you want by
covering, by adding organic matter, etc,
hopefully it'll be be good for you. You
can be a conscientious consumer and so
look for farmers that are practicing
these practices. A couple ways that you
can do that is we have some online
resources, something called the 'Amazing
Grazing Directory' which is a directory,
a multi-state directory, of farmers that
are raising grass-fed products. So cheap
beef, milk, that are raised all on pasture
which is a really great regenerative
technique. Should mention that we,
Chesapeake Bay Foundation, actually owns
a farm in Upper Marlboro, 300 acre
farm that does grass-fed
beef, all regenerative ag. Once
we're out and about, if you live
close to there, I'd encourage you to go
visit the farm. And then just you know,
buying locally. We have a 'Buy Fresh, Buy
Local' guide available on, also on our web
page and just get to maybe learn your
farmer, asked them what practices they
use, do they consider themselves a
regenerative farmer. So hopefully you've
learned a little bit today. Sorry for the
background noise but that's what
happens when you live in a neighborhood.
Thanks for listening!
