Aligning Regenerative Agricultural Practices With Outcomes To Deliver For People, Nature And Climate

Generated Summary

This report provides a comprehensive overview of regenerative agricultural practices, aiming to align these practices with specific outcomes to deliver benefits for people, nature, and climate. The study employs a meta-analytic approach, synthesizing quantitative evidence from 127 meta-analytic reviews, representing 55,485 original experiments, to assess the effectiveness of various farm-level practices. The research focuses on three key outcomes: biodiversity, climate change mitigation (measured primarily as soil organic carbon or carbon sequestration), and yield. The scope of the analysis is global, with a focus on understanding how these practices can be scaled to meet global challenges, such as food security and reducing environmental impacts. The study also addresses the challenges of greenwashing and the lack of a universally accepted definition of “regenerative agriculture,” advocating for an outcome-based framework to guide practitioners and inform policy interventions. The report also looks at the spatial and temporal limitations of assuming carbon sequestration can lead to climate change mitigation due to issues around permanence and leakage. The paper further emphasizes the importance of considering local contexts when assessing the effectiveness of regenerative agricultural practices, highlighting the need for tailored approaches to maximize positive outcomes. Ultimately, the research aims to contribute to the development of an outcome-based framework for assessing regenerative agricultural practices to be used universally.

Key Findings & Statistics

• The study found that crop diversification and low or no tillage practices have a significant positive effect on biodiversity outcomes, with increases ranging from 7% to 93%.
• Agroforestry, intercropping, crop rotations, reducing chemical inputs, and holistically managed grazing all have a significant positive effect on climate change mitigation in terms of soil organic carbon (SOC) and/or carbon sequestration rates.
• Organic farming showed a 19% reduction in yields compared to conventional farming. However, yield reductions are much smaller when organic systems are diversified.
• Inoculation with arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi or rhizobacteria resulted in increases ranging from 19% to 57% in crop yields.
• The FAO estimates that approximately one-third of all agricultural lands are degraded.
• Soil degradation could result in a food production shortfall of 25% by 2050.
• Studies estimate that there will be an increase between 35-56% in global demand for food by 2050.
• The number of acute food-insecure people has almost tripled in two years.
• A growing body of evidence shows that significant changes to food production and consumption could help feed 10 billion people by 2050.
• The studies in the literature review largely focused on on-farm outcomes, but mostly neglected landscape- and global-level outcomes.
• Of the definitions reviewed, roughly half include outcomes, with most commonly stated outcomes being to improve soil health, sequester carbon, increase on-farm biodiversity, improve water resources, and improve the social and/or economic wellbeing of communities.
• For climate change mitigation, the highest SOC included organic farming (+19.2%) and rotational grazing (+25%).
• One meta-analysis focusing on cocoa showed an increase of 250% in tree carbon under agroforestry.
• For yield, crop diversification and inoculation have a significant positive effect on crop yield.
• For example, Lichtenberg et al. (2017) showed that Mediterranean biomes might see greater arthropod richness gains by increasing in-field plant diversity than organic agriculture, and certain crops may be more likely to boost arthropod abundance with organic farming.
• The authors found that regional diversity positively correlated with on-farm diversity under organic and plant diversification farm management schemes.
• Crop yields can be increased by 20-70 kg/ha for wheat, 10-50 kg/ha for rice, and 30–300 kg/ha for maize with every 1000 kg/ha increase in soil organic carbon.
• Approximately two-thirds of the world’s cultivated maize and wheat lands currently have SOC contents of less than 2%.

Other Important Findings

• The report highlights the increasing interest in “regenerative agriculture” among industry leaders and farming communities.
• The lack of a universally accepted definition of “regenerative agriculture” leads to confusion.
• The report advocates for moving away from practice-based definitions and towards alignment around results to accurately measure and report the potential to contribute to positive social and environmental co-benefits.
• It is important to acknowledge that mixed and variable yield effects can have adverse impacts on biodiversity at the landscape and global level.
• The study recognizes the need for an outcome-based framework to measure and report on regenerative agricultural practices across farm, landscape and global levels.
• The importance of clear definitions – noted as an issue for the general term “regenerative agriculture” in Section 2 of this paper – also holds for each regenerative agricultural practice assessed.
• The report shows that more evidence and published literature on these three outcomes (biodiversity, climate change mitigation, and yield) and their potential trade-offs that allows for a substantial literature review.
• That greater carbon sequestration alone will not lead to climate change mitigation.
• The report recognizes additional outcomes, such as productivity and profitability, that are critical when exploring yield, however have not been included in our review given the complexity and challenges in measuring these outcomes.
• The report found that organic agriculture was the only practice showing a negative result.
• The report notes that the lack of both agreed scientific definitions and transparency of implementation of regenerative agriculture increases the potential for misuse by food producers and greenwashing.

Limitations Noted in the Document

• Studies tend to focus on certain geographies (North America and Europe) and on certain farming systems (cereals) which makes it difficult to generalize results for farmers operating in different locations and systems, especially the majority of small farms in developing countries.
• Future studies should focus on collecting more robust data from the Global South and across diverse systems, especially those that can contribute to nutrition outcomes and climate resilience.
• Studies in the literature review largely focused on on-farm outcomes, but mostly neglected landscape- and global-level outcomes.
• There is not yet a standardized way of measuring outcomes in agricultural systems.
• Current available metrics are inconsistent in definition and application making comparisons ineffective (see Table 1 for the diversity of metrics used).
• For example, some studies only measure soil carbon sequestration, whereas others will look at total system carbon sequestration, including above and below ground.
• For biodiversity, the choices of proxy variables and methodology have a large impact on results.
• Studies do not account for climate change impacting yields under business as usual.
• It is important to note that measuring the output of diverse crop systems versus monocultures raises methodological challenges because yields from different crops are not comparable.
• Only a few studies comment on long-term yield effects or yield stability, often due to the lack of comparable data over time.

Conclusion

The central argument of this research underscores the necessity of an outcome-based framework to comprehensively evaluate regenerative agricultural practices across diverse levels, from individual farms to global landscapes. The report synthesizes evidence from extensive meta-analyses to highlight the impacts of specific regenerative practices on biodiversity, climate change mitigation, and crop yields. The study emphasizes that, while crop diversification, low-tillage methods, and integration of trees and livestock often yield positive outcomes, the variability of these results across different contexts requires careful consideration of spatial and temporal factors. This nuanced approach, as the report suggests, is essential to prevent greenwashing and ensure that practices are genuinely effective in specific settings. The findings underscore the need for a more nuanced approach, focused on evaluating progress against outcomes. This perspective challenges the simplistic categorization of agricultural practices into “good” or “bad,” advocating instead for a context-specific assessment that considers the complex interplay of factors influencing outcomes. Key takeaways from the study highlight the limitations of current metrics and methodologies in capturing the full scope of regenerative agricultural impacts. This underscores the urgency of developing standardized metrics and frameworks that incorporate farmer experiences and local knowledge. The report highlights that the success of regenerative agriculture lies not only in the adoption of specific practices but also in a holistic approach that integrates diverse perspectives and addresses systemic issues such as land conversion and food security. Ultimately, by adopting a comprehensive and outcome-oriented framework, the study suggests that stakeholders across the food system can collectively scale practices to achieve global sustainability goals. In summary, this report provides a framework for stakeholders to identify the best agricultural practices for their environment, and emphasizes the importance of looking at outcomes beyond the farm level, including landscape and global metrics, in the framework can mitigate potential trade-offs. It can also ensure that switching practices can achieve global goals. This underscores the urgency of developing standardized metrics and frameworks that incorporate farmer experiences and local knowledge and to collectively scale practices to achieve global sustainability goals.