While interest in regenerative agricultural practices is growing, getting a handle on what it is, let alone how to do it is a challenge. But there are some guides out there.
On July 14, the Soil & Climate Initiative released the third version of its Soil & Climate Health Commitment & Verification Standard. This new version of the standard is more streamlined, according to the group, with increased flexibility and practical benchmarking for participating operations.
“Version 3.0 simplifies requirements while maintaining scientific rigor, making regenerative agriculture accessible to diverse production systems while giving consumers confidence in their food choices,” says Kristen Efurd, SCI’s verification director.
V3 focuses heavily on SCI’s seven pillars of regenerative agriculture:
- Minimizing soil disturbance
- Maintaining living roots in the ground year-round
- Keeping year-round soil coverage
- Maximizing diversity above and below ground
- Reducing synthetic inputs
- Continuous learning
- Appropriate integration of livestock
A summary of the new standards
The seven pillars have always been core to SCI’s definition of regenerative agriculture, Efurd says.
“But what V3 represents is their maturation,” she continues. “What we’ve done now is we’ve detailed how farms can operationalize the pillars through what we call the pillar engagement levels.”
The pillar engagement levels replace earlier standards’ levels of verification. These levels are I through IV. Each pillar has its own engagement levels with benchmarked requirements, and these can differ as appropriate based on operation type. For example, within the “Maintaining living roots in the ground year-round” pillar as it applies to perennial crops and orchards, the engagement levels are:
- Middle-row vegetation must be maintained during the growing season
- Middle-row vegetation must be maintained year-round
- Middle-row vegetation must be maintained year-round and must include a mix of grasses, forbs and legumes during the growing season
- Middle-row vegetation must be a diverse mix of grasses, forbs and legumes that is maintained year-round
“The biggest change is going to be moving from the broad verification levels that we had to these more specific pillar engagement levels that are detailed with measurable requirements,” Efurd says. “[Participants] now have clear benchmarks to hit.”
Participating growers, farmers and ranchers are required to progressively advance their practices every three years within the program, “acknowledging regenerative agriculture as a journey of continuous improvement rather than a fixed destination,” SCI says.
Taylor Herren, Farm Program Manager at SCI, says the new standard is “an on-ramp” that provides for the wide differences in what regenerative agriculture looks like on a veteran operation versus one just starting the transition.
“The new standards acknowledges those differences while also still welcoming people who are at the beginning of that progress,” she says.
Variety of operations means flexibility is a must
Not only does regenerative ag look different across experience levels, but also across crops, operation systems and regions. All of this requires not only flexibility in the standards but also in the very definition.
“We at SCI, rather than having a rigid definition of regenerative agriculture, we’ve chosen to use more contextually based guiding principles that help farmers adapt practices and implement changes on their farm that makes sense for their specific region and their land and their goals on their farm and their operating systems,” explains Megan Tymesko, SCI’s senior manager of partner engagement. “Every operational region is so different, so our framework is built on the seven pillars of regenerative agriculture. It allows the farmers the flexibility to choose which practices make sense on their farms.”
Herren explains that when definitions of regenerative agriculture get too prescriptive — “It has to be no-till,” or “You must have cover crops,” for example — they stop working for all operations, let alone being scalable.
“The purpose of this work is to scale across landscapes, and that scaling is only as good as farmers actually being able to do it,” she says. “So, the seven pillars do define regenerative agriculture, they just define it loosely and fluidly, and that is the key to actually getting farmer adoption. And that is the path to impact and doing what we want to do on the land.”
For the regenerative-curious
Interest in regenerative agriculture is growing.
For regenerative-curious growers, there are many potential entry points or on-ramps onto the change. Speaking in the language of the seven pillars, Efurd highlights maintaining living roots in the ground year-round through cover cropping, or keeping year-round soil coverage as low-hanging fruit to regenerative ag benefits.
“These practices are relatively straightforward and easier to implement. They provide immediate benefits for soil biology and structure,” she says. “A lot of times, from my perspective, both growers and grazers can often show quick economic return through reduced input costs and improved soil structure.”
Herren, herself a farmer in Cotton Plant, Ark., recognizes that it’s a really hard time financially to farm right now. She also recognizes how big a deal it is to change how someone farms, because that is ultimately what deciding to take steps toward regenerative agriculture is, she says.
“But I do say, genuinely, this can be a much better way to farm — much better for you financially,” she says.
