Regenerative agriculture is a term that started in the 1980s with an article by J. I. Rodale of Rodale Institute. He saw the potential of organic agriculture to do better at sequestering atmospheric CO2 in the process of building topsoil and biodiversity. Since then, this “organic-regenerative” approach has broadened beyond agriculture to land care of all kinds. It is a fast-growing worldwide movement.

In food production, it tends to minimize rototilling and plowing, instead of using cover crops, mulching, and other methods that hold and build the soil and sequester carbon. Also involved in protecting and extending wild areas such as woodlands and wooded zones along creeks. These areas are increasingly recognized as helping adjacent food-growing through flood and drought prevention, beneficial insect diversity, and other benefits. They also sequester and store carbon and restore the diversity of plants, animals, and microbes that are part of ecosystem resilience.

You can see that permaculture, ecosystem restoration, forest preservation, and biodynamic and biointensive agriculture have contributed to this approach, which emphasizes that we can give back to the land community as much or more than we take. We can leave topsoil and life diversity better at the end of each year than it was the year before.