Regenerative Agriculture
This project aims to understand and define regenerative agriculture (RA) practices in Alberta from production to policy. The Simpson Centre aims to address the following questions:
- How do producers and agri-food professionals mean by ‘regenerative farming’?
- What regenerative agriculture practices are currently being used?
- What business models are RA farmers using?
- What are the barriers and constraints to expansion of RA farming practices?
- Where are the gaps and opportunities for enabling policy design and implementation?
Where we are now
Agriculture in Canada tends to rely on inputs and production practices that degrade soil and wider ecosystems. Policies incentivize farmers to increase yield and revenue while unintentionally neglecting longer term risk mitigation.
However, interest is growing in regenerative agriculture, which seeks to improve soil quality, reduce reliance on synthetic inputs, nurture on-farm relationships, reduce off-farm impacts, bolster climate resilience, and enhance crop quality.
At issue is a clear definition of regenerative farming, which is currently an unofficial and voluntary designation with little policy support from governments to promote uptake and viability.

Our process
Over 18 months, we will seek a detailed and actionable understanding of regenerative agriculture through an in-depth review of existing literature, through online surveys among diverse agricultural stakeholders, and through in-person events with producers, industry commodity groups, and policymakers.
Desired outcomes
Our findings will:
- Provide solid evidence of RA methods in use on farms across Alberta.
- Benefit farmers and farming organizations with valuable insights on business models and regenerative practices.
- Inform businesses on the products and services that producers require.
- Generate a policy-friendly definition of Regenerative Agriculture.
- Offer agri-food companies a more precise definition to help transitioning sourcing to producers adopting more sustainable production practices.

Frequently Asked Questions about Regenerative Agriculture
So far, we have considered some of the most pressing and pertinent questions around the topic of Regenerative Agriculture (RA). This work is part of an ongoing initiative to explore agri-food controversies, supported by the BMO Ag Literacy for Healthier People and Planet Program. Click on the questions below to learn more about the current status and thinking around RA:
Many of the agricultural practices known today as regenerative were, and are, known to traditional and Indigenous cultures, including pre-colonial knowledge systems worldwide.
The term first appeared in the late 1970s but achieved wider circulation after being adopted by the US-based Rodale Institute in the early 1980s as something beyond the concept of ‘sustainable.’ Robert Rodale’s description was a form of agriculture, “that, at increasing levels of productivity, increases our land and soil biological production base. It has a high level of built-in economic and biological stability. It has minimal to no impact on the environment beyond the farm or field boundaries. It produces foodstuffs free from biocides. It provides for the productive contribution of increasingly large numbers of people during a transition to minimal reliance on non-renewable resources.” Interest spiked again around 2016 among farmers, NGOs, multinational companies, and US charitable foundations seeking opportunities for greater sustainability.
Currently, there is a lack of consensus on an authoritative definition of RA and its practices, inhibiting effective government policy, public action and research activity, as well as rendering RA vulnerable to co-option by certain actors whose own agendas and definitions risk turning it into a greenwashing term.
Though an authoritative RA definition does not yet exist, farmers, environmentalists and conservationists broadly agree on RA as an approach that lives up to the ideal of not negatively affecting the environment, and, if possible, enhancing it. RA further aims to shift away from understanding the natural world in order to master it and reshape it to our needs, preferring to operate within natural principles and embracing notions of reciprocity. RA advocates promote its contribution to climate change mitigation by sequestering carbon in the soil, increasing profit for farmers, and building greater resilience to climate change. Current practices and principles include:
- Minimizing soil disturbance (e.g. tillage)
- Keeping the soil covered year-round
- Keeping live plants/roots in the soil for as long as possible
- Incorporating biodiversity
- Integrating animals (e.g. rotational grazing)
- Retaining stubble
- Diversifying crop rotations
- Multispecies cover crops and intercropping
- Composting and use of biostimulants
- Reducing or eliminating synthetic inputs such as pesticides
One complicating factor is that of outputs versus outcomes. Some non-RA practices may nevertheless lead to environmental improvement. For example, the use and effect of fertilizers or tillage might be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depending on the specific farm context. Similarly, keeping roots in the soil may not be possible or desirable in all terrains or environments.
One key issue with any encompassing definition for strategic, political, or economic purposes is that socio-political, technical and economic dimensions are constantly changing, while farm conditions and climate variations are very diverse. Defining something freezes it into inflexibility, with the danger of it becoming an inflexible catch-all or an empty buzzword.
An additional problem is how an RA definition combines (or doesn’t) with other concepts such as conventional agriculture, organic agriculture, conservation agriculture, or circular agriculture – many of which focus on the same practices and outcomes. Is there compatibility and crossover? Is there a hierarchy? Is there redundancy among terms?
If a single authoritative definition is problematic, one solution may be to consider a series of outcome-based RA practices and/or principles that can be applied appropriately in context, for example by considering soil types in relation to carbon storage. Such overarching outcomes could include climate adaptation and mitigation or socioeconomic benefits.
Even so, one danger of a process-based definition is that a series of identified best practices could be reduced to a tick-list whereby any actor could claim adherence to and compliance with RA principles or regulations while not necessarily achieving – or even actively undermining – the overall outcomes ingrained in the idea.
Furthermore, a process-based approach may ignore or marginalize the more philosophical and holistic elements of RA as a concept, such as continual improvement in environmental, social, economic, and spiritual health. The ideal would be to prioritize soil health and biodiversity while simultaneously improving social well-being, profits, and food security. In such a definition, farmers would be free to select different tools adapted to their individual holistic context towards regenerative outcomes.
Consensus on a definition of RA cannot be solely ‘academic’ or conceptual. Some would argue that any RA definition incompatible with the systems of politics, power, and equity is unlikely to result in widespread change of agricultural practices. At the same time, any definition that does not recognize the huge diversity of real-world farming contexts is unlikely to produce genuinely effective results.
In the absence of consensus, stakeholders are drawing their own lines around what RA means to them. Inevitably, each of these definitions comes with a bias, whether selling a service or product, making a political/cultural case, or representing a particular group.
For example, Bayer’s website states: “For Bayer, regenerative agriculture is an outcome-based production model which has improving soil health at its core and strengthening resilience as a key objective. Other principal aims include mitigating climate change, maintaining or restoring biodiversity, conserving water as well as increasing yields and improving the economic and social well-being of farmers and their communities.”
General Mills defines RA as: “a holistic, principles-based approach to farming and ranching that delivers positive environmental, social and economic outcomes. This approach is relevant to all types of farms – large and small, conventional and organic. The principles have roots in global Indigenous agricultural traditions, and we celebrate the land stewards who pioneered and continue to preserve these techniques.”
Greenpeace states: “At its core, regenerative agriculture is about farming with the environment, not against it.” Their definition focuses specifically on the farmer and identifies four pillars of practice: diversity of planting and grazing; soil health; low-impact inputs (i.e. natural rather than synthetic pesticides and herbicides); and seeing agriculture as a single, holistic system.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has summarized RA as “methods of regenerative agriculture [that] are meant to restore soil and ecosystem health, address inequity, and leave our land, waters, and climate in better shape for the future.” Their survey of 100 RA farmers returned a finding that RA success goes beyond yield and farm size to include “things like joy and happiness, the number of families they feed, watching how the land regenerates and flourishes, the money saved from not purchasing chemical inputs, the debt avoided by repurposing old equipment, and the relationships built with community members.”
Australia’s Soils for Life notes, “The term ‘regenerative agriculture’ is a simplification, like all terms. Reality is complex. No definitions are perfect. But we need shorthand terms, so we can communicate concisely.” For them, RA is “any system of principles, practices and decision-making processes that effectively rebuild soil and landscape diversity and function through agriculture. A ‘regenerative’ approach to agriculture aims to rehabilitate, enhance and work with – rather than against – ecosystem processes, placing a premium on soil health.
The Conversation, a research-based and authenticated journalism platform, describes RA as, “a more sustainable alternative to industrial agriculture” and lists some the typical RA practices.
A lack of consensus on definitions means that national or international regulations are problematic. In that void, certain bodies have taken the initiative to introduce their own certification programs.
For example, Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) is a certification for food, textiles and personal care ingredients developed by the Regenerative Organic Alliance (ROA), founded in 2017 by the Rodale Institute, Dr. Bronner’s (a personal care product company), and Patagonia (an outdoor clothing and recreation company). This certification builds on the existing USDA organic food standard – specifying criteria for soil quality, animal raising, pest control, additive use and other factors – while additionally prioritizing soil health, animal welfare, and farmer/worker fairness.
ROC applicants must already meet the USDA organic seal’s requirements before becoming eligible. Thereafter, farmers or cooperatives can apply for all, or a portion of their land and crops to be certified under the ROC programme. Companies using ROC ingredients in their produce can apply to become ROC licensed, displaying an ROC logo on the packaging of their consumer products. In April 2024, ROC had 194 licensed brands and 1,605 certified products.
Thirteen different certifying bodies have been approved and trained by ROA to certify in 95 countries, though it remains a voluntary certification and not legally mandated by any nation.
ROC is one of many private certification standards. For example, global supply-chain provider FoodChain ID offers a Regenerative Farming Standard that it calls an independent, globally applicable, voluntary certification scheme. This “provides supply chain transparency with chain of custody principles,” is “applicable to any agricultural system and either organic or conventional farming,” and, “prepares farmers to participate in a carbon credit exchange market.”
A Greener World (AGW), meanwhile, offers Certified Regenerative status. As part of this certification, “the farmer and their regenerative experts develop a plan for the operation of the land being farmed. This plan is reviewed by a panel of experts that approve the vision for the farm’s regenerative journey, which is measured and audited on an ongoing basis. This approach allows for true regional and local flexibility while adhering to regenerative principles, giving confidence to consumers and stakeholders.”
It is worth noting that Canadian Organic Growers (COG) has said that RA is not a state achieved simply by meeting regulations or receiving certification. “Unlike a set of standards where a farm can have achieved it and then maintain it, regeneration is a never-ending process of always learning, always adjusting and improving.”
As industrial agriculture has embraced organic, so it is adopting regenerative agriculture. Nestlé, for example, has set a goal of 20% of key ingredients being sourced from farmers adopting regenerative agricultural practices by 2025 and 50% by 2030. They say: “We are supporting farmers and food producers to be part of this transformation by scaling regenerative agriculture, aiming to improve soil health, sequester carbon, support food security, restore water resources and enable biodiversity.”
Nestlé’s policy focuses on biodiversity, water security, soil health, diverse cropping, livestock integration and landscape action. Their website notes: “Regenerative agriculture puts people at the center, supporting solutions that are right for their regions and crops. We aim enable people in our supply chains to support themselves and their families.”
In 2019, General Mills committed to advancing RA on a million acres of farmland by 2030. Among its climate and water “desirable outcomes” are reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30% across the full value chain by 2030, reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and championing the regeneration of water resources in priority watersheds.
In both cases, success is a decided as outcome metrics, whose interpretation is set by the companies. For example, McCainspublished an RA framework committed to implementing regenerative agriculture practices across 100% of their potato acreage worldwide by the end of 2030. However, this 100% actually means that 100% of McCains farmers should be onboarded with RA training and a soil health assessment by 2030.
Big ag offers no metrics for social wellbeing or spiritual health, which are admittedly difficult to quantify for a corporate entity.
Friends of the Earth has suggested that certain aspects of RA could keep farmers reliant on the pesticides and other chemicals produced by Big Ag, noting that, “the majority of no- till farmers rely on herbicides such as glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.” They cited figures that “86 percent of No-Till Farmer readers said they planned to plant Roundup Ready corn in 2017, while 80 percent planned to plant Roundup Ready soybeans, and some 92 percent planned to use glyphosate for weed control.”
Public policy is difficult without consensus on an RA definition but its potential value is sufficiently recognised that money is being invested in research, In July 2024, the Government of Canada, through coordination across federal departments and in partnership with all levels of government and industry announced investments of more $21 million for 14 projects to build Alberta’s value-added agricultural sector. “Value-added” refers to Alberta’s strengths in commercializing innovative agricultural products, technologies, and services for global markets.
Though the money is not aimed solely at RA, one of the investments is $250,000 for the Stettler Adult Learning Council to establish a Regenerative Agricultural Lab to help Alberta food producers and stakeholders explore and adopt sustainable regenerative agriculture practices.
The Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (Sustainable CAP) program, meanwhile, is a five‐year (2023-2028), $3.5 billion investment that includes $1 billion in federal programs and activities and $2.5 billion in cost-shared programs and activities by federal-provincial-territorial governments. The aim is to support continued innovation, growth and prosperity in agriculture and the agri-food industry in Alberta.
Again, the investment is not specifically RA focused, Sustainable CAP aims to help businesses manage risks that threaten the viability of their farm and are beyond their capacity to manage. One of the programs is The Resilient Agricultural Landscape Program (RALP), which offers funding of up to 100% of eligible expenses to support producers in their ability to implement and maintain projects over a three-year term.
There is broad consensus that RA practices are good for soil health. No-tillage, for example, lowers soil erosion and encourages water to infiltrate soils. Cover crops have the same effect and can reduce water pollution. Diverse crop rotations, meanwhile, can lower pesticide use, while practices such as moving cattle around frequently, adding legumes or fertilizers, and avoiding overgrazing can increase vegetation and protect water sources.
No-tillage’s role in aiding carbon sequestration is less clear, with a question over whether no-till redistributes carbon from deeper to shallower zones rather than increasing the overall stock of soil carbon. One research paper notes that, “study results are inconsistent and varying from significant [carbon] increase to significant decrease. It is unclear whether this variability is caused by environmental, or management factors or by sampling errors and analysis methodology.” The same paper suggests that, “increasing cropping frequency might be a more efficient strategy to sequester C in agro-ecosystems.”
Friends of the Earth have noted that the benefits of no-till may be counterbalanced by an increased use of herbicide; however, diverse crop rotation and cover cropping can manage weeds, reducing or eliminating both tillage and herbicide use. A 2022 paper argues that, “More no-till cropping systems must be investigated to determine whether sustainable no-till herbicide-free systems are possible.”
One argument is that the amount of land required by regenerative agriculture means the global food system could not solely use RA to produce the same amounts of dairy and meat. A 2022 report suggested that RA-dedicated land would have to triple to 40 percent of global farmland by 2030 to meet demand – an impossible goal without deforesting and destroying wild landscapes that currently sequester vast amounts of carbon.
On the other hand, RA practices are aimed at making better use of available land rather than necessarily increasing the amount of land under cultivation. Resilience to the effects of global climate change is one of the best ways to address concerns about food security. For example, improved soil health and quality increases its water-holding capacity to build drought resistance, while mulching and cover cropping plants require less irrigation to thrive. Improved soil health also creates a thriving microbiome, imparting more nutrients to the plants we eat.
The flexible approach of RA further aids farmers to create plants that are better adapted to their climates and growing seasons, ensuring better yield controls and availability.
Conventional farming practices have led agriculture worldwide to monocultures. It may make economic sense to intensify farming until all obstacles to maximum yields – e.g. weeds or insects – are eradicated. Food security goes beyond profitability, though. Monocultures minimize natural interactions between different organisms, and therefore reduce biodiversity.
There have been claims that 84% of the world’s 570 million farms are smallholdings and that, nevertheless, these farms are already producing the majority of the world’s food. Yet if we define a smallholding as less than two hectares, one calculation is that such farmers are in fact producing just 29% of the world’s crops (if measured in kilocalories). These tend to be some of the world’s poorest people engaged in hard, manual agriculture.
The question of whether RA can feed the world is therefore not merely a question of whether RA practices are effective but whether the majority of the world’s farmers can become aware of them and put them into action. Investment specialist AlTi Tiedemann Global reported hearing from producers at the 2023 Regenerative Food Systems Investment Forum that access to capital was the primary challenge in the transition to RA. Change on a global scale requires making RA practices available to millions of small and mid-scale farms.
RA has evolved out of the challenges and limitations of sustainable agriculture narratives that have been dominated by the corporate actors of industrial agriculture and by the Global North, primarily North America, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Such foundations tend to focus on economics, production methods and agronomy while marginalizing or omitting non-material aspects such as spirituality, values, cultural beliefs and reciprocity, which are inseparable from agricultural practices for many Indigenous peoples. Disconnecting practices from Indigenous origins may appear to be objective/rational/scientific, but represent a (mis)translation into a different socio-cultural context with the risk that the fundamental meaning and efficacy is lost.
RA may therefore follow the trajectory of Organic Agriculture, whose founding counterculture philosophical values were similar but whose eventual USDA definition hardened and reduced the concept into the elimination of certain chemicals. As RA moves in this direction of more sustainable food production, it may fail to tackle systemic social and political issues beyond the scope and interests of its corporate stakeholders, thus perpetuating a business-as-usual approach to the food system rather than a transformation of its principles and outcomes.
The northern-hemisphere, agri-industrial foundations of RA mean that it often fails to credit Indigenous practices and knowledge whose roots are fundamentally regenerative in principle, are landscape-specific, and tied to wider social wellbeing. It is a bias that tends to overlook the needs of farmers in the Global South and power inequality in the food system.
The growing popularity of RA also threatens to marginalise the agroecology movement, which combines agronomy (agricultural science) and ecology while explicitly seeking to address injustice and inequity in food systems. Agroecology tends to operate at a grassroots and community level rather than be driven by the large corporate interests of industrial agriculture.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) states that, “the transition to regenerative agriculture systems by farmers is often hindered by a common yet critical aspect of many systems changes: financing. While environmental motivations may be present, ultimately, this transition represents a business decision for every farmer. Shifting from long-standing, conventional practices, to regenerative agriculture requires an increased investment of time, labour, and money.”
Such investment is typically a short-term hurdle for farmers as they face initially higher costs for new technology and possibly temporary declines in yield. With an increase in soil health, however, there is greater crop resiliency and potentially greater yields. WEF recommends that. “farmers require financial support, including upfront payments or guarantees and lending or insurance on more favourable terms that shift the risk away from the farmer during the first few years after adoption.”
Success requires collaboration among stakeholders such as financial service providers, policy-makers, crop value chain actors, technical assistance providers, and regulators. WEF recommends “an anchoring organization” to act as a “coordinating mechanism” between these various stakeholders.
The Rockefeller Foundation’s 2024 “Financing for Regenerative Agriculture” report makes clear that, “financing for regenerative agriculture is a nascent area, and across global financial markets, the degree of nascency cannot be overstated. Cynically, one could argue that all financing to date in regenerative agriculture lacks scale and replicability.”
The report goes on to say that “the current financing gap to support widespread adoption of regenerative practices is massive. Several studies estimate the global annual need for transition costs to be USD $200 billion – $450 billion for at least the next decade, while funding flows today are approximately one-tenth of estimated annual need.”
One of the inherent problems of private investment is that it tends to operate on the same principles of industrial agriculture. The doubt is not whether RA is valuable or effective, but rather, according to the Rockefeller Foundation, “the primary barrier to increasing capital deployment for regenerative agriculture is missing confidence that the financing will fit financiers’ current risk and reward standards.”
Organic has shown that a strict focus on process and outcomes does not necessarily address the social dimensions of regenerative agriculture. A more flexible and adaptable holistic system approach would consider the continual environmental, social, economic, and spiritual wellbeing on the farm. Farmers could choose from different tools and methodologies adapted to their entire context to reach regenerative outcomes.
Rather than trying to fix a definition of RA, a series of sustainable principles would allow individual farmers to integrate natural systems into production and evaluate practices through continuous observation to improve performance. Observation, learning from personal experience, and community knowledge-sharing permit producers to experiment with even radically alternative practices.
Collaborative networks could further stimulate the sharing of knowledge between farmers and aid the adoption of sustainable land management. Practices that are adapted to real-world scenarios towards genuine human wellbeing – however they are defined – generate higher adoption rates among farmers.
Moreover, collaboration builds resilience by re-enriching, strengthening, and revitalizing rural communities. The producers and consumers in such a model are closer together with more shared interests when compared to the industrial food system. Consumers, too, can participate in these collaborative networks, improving knowledge of where food comes from and the challenges of producing it.
One example of such an approach could be agroecology (AE): a sustainable farming movement that advocates for Indigenous knowledge and land rights while supporting small-scale farmers. It seeks to challenge neoliberalism, corporate dominance, and globalisation of food systems. The movement is associated with the world’s largest smallholder farmer organisation, La Via Campesina, and has been endorsed by the United Nations.
Regenerative agroecosystems practice the conservation of change by working with the natural cycle of variability. Consumers are flexible and adjust their choices among a diversity of products according to their environmental feedback to maintain resilient livelihoods and nutrient-rich diets. There is an ongoing give and take. This resiliency could be enabled by shortening value chains and simplifying markets by transforming the focus from agroecosystem to bioregion.
The supply chain itself could be transformed into supply webs, in which suppliers and buyers would produce value for each other and collaborate to regenerate the agriculture system. The interconnections between enterprises in the bioregions could empower the community to become more resilient in the face of climate variability because they reduce greenhouse gas emissions by restoring health property and ecosystems services.
Such an approach goes beyond easy definitions. It is less open to corporate or political codification and ownership. Rather, it requires the principles of RA to be adopted bottom-up rather than imposed top-down – something that traditionally runs contra to systems change in the northern hemisphere nations where RA has developed.
The Simpson Centre sees the future of RA as a dichotomy between top-down and bottom-up approaches.
RA could follow the development of organic agriculture with agreed definitions and regulatory controls but with necessary compromises on the more philosophical and less quantifiable factors such as personal welfare or the philosophy of reciprocity with nature. The challenge of such a process is aligning public policy with the diversity of landscapes and climates that affect how land is farmed. Moreover, as Canadian Organic Growers have stated, regenerative agriculture is a never-ending, always-changing dialogue with the land, focused on adjusting and improving farming practices according to conditions and knowledge. The top-down approach of certification and regulation seeks to establish fixed, inflexible terms.
The bottom-up approach, meanwhile, sees RA being adopted at a grassroots and community level by producers selecting relevant RA practices according to their specific needs and collaborating with other RA-focused producers for holistic, long-term sustainability. This way, the focus is on continual environmental, social, economic, and spiritual wellbeing on the farm. Collaborative networks could stimulate the sharing of real-world and proven knowledge between farmers and aid the adoption of sustainable land management.
The primary hurdle to the bottom-up approach is financial. The change to RA practices may require short-term investment to cover new technology and potentially lower yields before greater soil health, resilience and efficiency create better results long term. There is thus an initial risk for the small- or medium-scale producers that make up the majority of farmers worldwide. Financial support could come from governments, from private investors or from Big Ag, with each entity bringing its own interests to the deal.
A potential ‘third way’ is for producers and researchers to collaborate in identifying best practices based on real-world farming. Compelling proof of effectiveness may negate the difficulty of a formal definition in moving the needle on widespread RA adoption. One example of this is The Regenerative Alberta Living Lab: an “ongoing collaboration between farmers, ranchers, and soil scientists that uses on-farm and soil mapping technology to accurately assess soil health created by producer innovations.” This shared information helps farmers and ranchers to build resilience and productivity to enhance their bottom line.
Ultimately, the question must be one of desired outcomes. If RA is to be successfully adopted on a global scale, its goal must be to provide long-term food security for growing populations amid unpredictable climate conditions in a sustainable and resilient manner while maintaining the health and wellbeing of producers. This is less a question of whether RA is the right methodology and more a question of how genuinely committed stakeholders are to realising RA’s goals.
CONTACTS
For more details on the Regenerative Agriculture Program:
Tatenda Mambo at [email protected]