Regenerative Agriculture

Brooke Bridges,
Food Justice Assistant Manager, Soul Fire Farm

Regenerative Agriculture is a practice that gives back more, or as much, to the land than is being taken. Industrial agricultural practices are extractive in nature. Not only are the crops being grown extracted, but the land is left barren and nutrient deficient.

Regenerative agriculture is humble in nature - it reminds us that we, humans and Mother Earth, need one-another. It means growing as though your field is a forest. By mimicking the forests’ symbiotic processes, we can love the land and steward it with intention, patience, and gratitude. Regenerative practices include no-till or low-till farming, mulching, raised beds, terracing, intercropping, and cover cropping.

Agriculture should be generative and regenerative. We should not use the land and what it gives us as a commodity, but as a gift.

(1) Leah Penniman, Farming While Black

(2) Black farmers embrace African practices as empowering

(3) Returning Livelihood to the Land: A Radical Biopolitics for 21st Century Pandemics

(4) Soul Fire Farm Liberation on Land

(5) Soil: The Dirty Climate Solution