The recent disruption of global fertilizer supplies motivates reassessing key myths that shape perceptions of agricultural policies. A century into modern conventional agriculture, still unfolding impacts on soil, water, biodiversity, farmers, and consumers fuel growing recognition of the need for farming and food system reform. Regenerative farming systems focused on building soil health offer the potential to reshape agriculture and chart a new path toward a sustainable future, but challenge the wisdom underpinning conventional, degenerative farming practices. My new book, ReGen: A New Future for Farming, Food, and Health, shares how regenerative farming practices that upend conventional thinking can reverse the age-old pattern of soil degradation.
In studying the history of soil degradation around the world I came to see how conventional farming today involves both physical and chemical disturbance of soil and soil life. As soil degradation from physical disturbance (tillage) reduced natural fertility, farmers came to depend on synthetic fertilizers to maintain high yields. Whereas organic farming eliminates chemical disturbance and no-till farming eliminates physical disturbance, regenerative farming systems do not rely on routine tillage or agrochemical use and instead minimize or avoid both styles of disturbance.
Over decades studying and writing about soil depletion and regenerative farming systems around the world, I’ve learned to see through key myths of modern agriculture that undermine progress to addressing one of humanity’s oldest problems—and our collective future. Three myths in particular stand out.
Myth 1 is that we must choose between protecting the environment and feeding the world. In my experience, conventional agronomists, journalists, and policymakers tend to assume inherent conflict between sustainable farming and the challenge of feeding everyone. But while commonly cited studies report 10 to 20 percent higher yields in conventional crops compared with organic crops, a 1990 study that compared organic and conventional yields found that in almost half the direct comparisons, organic yields were comparable to or exceeded conventional ones. And a subsequent 2007 global study expanded the comparison and found that organic yields were less than 10 percent lower on average than conventional yields in the developed world but exceeded conventional yields in the developing world. The study estimated that organic farming using legumes as cover crops could supply enough nitrogen to offset synthetic fertilizer use and still meet global food demands on currently farmed land.
Similarly, a 2015 review found that diversified organic crop rotations decreased the yield difference to less than 10 percent and concluded that enhanced investment in organic research could potentially eliminate the difference. And a 2018 study found that yield differences declined over time, with just several years of soil building in organic systems sometimes fully closing the yield gap. I’ve seen this first-hand on regenerative farms around the world that matched or exceeded conventional yields on neighboring farms—after restoring soil health.
In short, rebuilding healthy soils could sustain high yields—just not with now-conventional practices. We don’t have to degrade soil health to feed the world.
Myth 2 is that regenerative farming can’t scale up to replace conventional methods. While mainstream commentators tend to reflexively question whether or not regenerative farming can be done at scale, I’ve visited huge farms I’d consider regenerative. The largest covers 20,000-some-odd acres in South Dakota. On this highly mechanized farm the transition to no-till, cover crops, and diverse rotations dramatically improved soil health relative to that on neighboring farms. The effect on the soil was obvious across a dirt road at the edge of the farm. The neighboring, routinely tilled conventional field was bare, cracking, and pale, in stark contrast to the moist, mulch-covered dark earth of the regenerative field.
While this shows that large, highly mechanized farms can build healthy soils, lots of small farms present another way to scale up regenerative farming. Making small farms more profitable and economically viable could scale out soil-building farming systems. Both large and small farms can regenerate healthy, fertile soil but different approaches work best for different places and sizes of farms. Large farms are well suited for regenerative production of grains and row crops suitable for mechanized farming (such as soybeans, sunflowers, and canola), whereas small farms are well suited for regenerative vegetable production.
Moreover, large farms are not inherently more efficient or productive. A 2021 global review found that small farms produced higher yields, grew a greater diversity of crops, and harvested more food per acre than large farms. In other words, scaling up regenerative farming could entail supporting both large and small farms in different settings. The real question isn’t so much whether regenerative farming can scale up as it is about how to tailor practices on farms large and small to build rather than degrade soil health.
Myth 3 is that we need genetically modified (GM) crops to feed everyone. GM crops are a well-known flash point in agriculture, and it is common to hear their proponents claim we need them to feed the world. Indeed, when first introduced, GM crops were promoted as ways to boost crop yields and reduce pesticide use. Neither promise panned out.
Despite faith that GM crops would increase yields, corn yields in Europe, where GM corn is not allowed, increased at the same pace as in the United States. This means the GM character of U.S. corn was not what boosted yields. Instead, the parallel increases in Europe and North America came from crop breeding that benefited farmers on both sides of the Atlantic. This raises the question of what could be achieved if we dedicated research support to breeding crops for performance under organic or regenerative farming systems at levels comparable to what society showered historically on conventional agriculture and GM crops.
Among the most commercially successful GM crops are those engineered to tolerate the herbicide glyphosate. Crops engineered for resistance to glyphosate provided farmers with an easy button for weed control, boosting adoption of no-till farming. As a result, global herbicide use increased, causing cascading, inadvertent changes to soil life that harm soil health.
Still, I can see potential applications for which GM crops could prove useful for building soil health. For example, GM crops might enhance drought tolerance or nutrient density if we applied the technology toward such goals. So far, however, GM crops have tended to enable and rely on the use of products that scramble soil life, enhance pest resistance, and produce unintended consequences that create demand for more agrochemical products. That’s a better agribusiness model than agricultural strategy. While building soil health is not necessarily incompatible with GM crops, it matters how the technology is deployed.
Looking beyond the myths that fueled conventional thinking about agriculture over the past century, regenerative farming can help usher in a new, soil-health building future for farming, food, and health. To sustain intensive farming into a post-oil future, we need to integrate what we’ve learned about soil ecology in recent decades into soil-building farming systems based on minimizing both physical and chemical disturbance.
Conventional thinking misses critical aspects of how farming affects soil, soil life—and us. Soil degradation stems from farmers approaching soil ecology backwards, undermining soil life instead of enabling and engaging trillions of tiny farmhands.
Like it or not, agriculture will change this century as a growing global population confronts a shifting climate and ongoing soil loss and degradation. Business as usual risks the wellbeing of generations to come, we’ve got to do something different with our soils. Fortunately, regenerative agriculture could turn the tide of soil degradation. The hardest step may prove to be seeing through key myths of modern agriculture.
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Photo courtesy of Satish Chand, Unsplash
