Ella Robertson and Eric Wana are members of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and live in northeastern South Dakota. During the past few years, they have been working to reclaim their people’s food producing heritage and show that farming does not have to follow the traditional European model of squared off fields separated from natural habitat. They’re raising traditional fruits, vegetables, and other crops, and are rediscovering the role gathering and preserving “wild” food produced on their reservation can play in providing a healthy form of sustenance. They and other Native Americans are also proving that many of the “regenerative” farming practices spawning so much excitement these days have deep roots in Indigenous ways of interacting with the land.

I recently visited Robertson and Wana to interview them for the We Are Water initiative. Below are excerpts from that interview. You can hear the entire conversation on episode 249 of LSP’s Ear to the Ground podcast.

 

On a New (Old) Way to Look at Farming

• Robertson: “When it was about fighting the Native Americans of the United States, it was about attacking their food source. So what we’re trying to do is trying to regain that knowledge and strength through our foods, because foods met so much to us.”
• Wana: “The farming that comes to mind to the average person in the United States is a squared, blocked-out piece of land with 40 acres of beans, 40 acres of corn, 40 acres of whatever. Native Americans had agriculture, and it went back hundreds and hundreds of years. We cropped. We had orchards.
“We don’t have 40 acres that we’re growing on. We don’t have 200 acres that we’re planting on. But, that being said, we have what we have here. A lot of the food that we gather is all over our reservation. We harvest from a thousand acres. We harvest from 2,000 acres, throughout the seasons. We’re farmers. Not in the traditional European sense, but we’re farming. We’re actually doing it.”

On Unearthing Indigenous Farming Knowledge

• Robertson: “Talking with the elders about food production, none of them did it. They remember stories, but none of them did it. So last year was the first year we tapped trees and we learned it on YouTube. It doesn’t matter where we learn it from, it’s that we’re trying.”
• Wana: “Before the Internet, I spent a lot of time in the library. Once we got the Internet, oh my god, it opened up a whole new world to me about what my people did, what we did previous to all the hardships endured over the past 150 years.”
• Robertson: “You think about our foods — we had ceremonies, we had songs, we had special prayers that we did for each of those things. And that has gone to sleep. So we’re trying to wake it up. Because to me, that strengthens our connection to Mother Earth. Now that we have a better understanding of that, that’s what we pass on to other people, that’s what we share with our children. Because there is always a reason and a purpose for the way we do things.”

On Why Stewardship of Land & Water is Key to Food Production

• Robertson: “Because we utilize our reservation for collecting, we have to be conscious of what we’re doing, where we’re doing it, and what people are doing on the land. So the bigger picture here is in this smaller area. It’s our reservation, but because we have relatives on other reservations, we have a concern for them. As Native Americans we know we can empathize with those that are having issues with land, with water, with chemical use. You know, because that could be us. It could easily be us. And if we don’t collectively have a concern for it, then nothing can improve, nothing’s going to get better. Water is the center of everything that we do. So when there’s a concern about water, our resources being depleted, then it’s scary for us, it’s a concern for us. Because what we do all centers around water.”
• Wana: “Not too long ago, I wrote a number of papers on drain tiling and the impact it had on our area. So drain tiling has been going on here since the 1880s. Immediately, the impacts were seen amongst our people, because by the turn of the century, those waterways were gone, totally gone from us. A lot of the prairie potholes in the Coteau Areas that originally held water are drained, completely drained. A lot of the lakes, even, were drain tiled out to the point where they wouldn’t flood any more. Seasonal flooding, the refilling of the potholes, it just wouldn’t happen. I mean, there is not a spring in the area, not a lake in the area, that isn’t contaminated in some way, shape, or form.
  “So water is life. Water is something from nature that we’re not going to get back from nature once it’s gone.”

And On Passing Knowledge onto the Next Generation

• Wana: “Ella and I are into history, reading books from two or three hundred years ago and accumulating knowledge. When we’re doing these things, writing them down, what’s in the back of my mind is that we’re revitalizing our food ways. Two or three hundred years from now, people are going to be reading about what we’re doing, and the knowledge we’re passing on.”
• Robertson: “I like to say, ‘It’s not lost, it just went to sleep.’ It’s just waiting for us to find it and to breathe life back into it.”

Harvey Benson had a simple transition plan for the farm that had been in his family since the late 1860s: he would continue living on those 160 acres until he died, and then it would be passed on to his partner, Bonita Underbakke. In fact, when people ask him if he’s lived on the farm all his life, the 90-year-old quips, “Not yet.” Bonita is 16 years his junior and they have grown quite close since they started dating in 2009 or so. Didn’t this arrangement make sense?

When she learned of this proposal, Bonita, not one to mince words, had a response that was clear and to the point: “That’s not a plan.”

What followed was a half-a-dozen years of discussions, some quite difficult, around creating a more nuanced transition plan for the farm in southeastern Minnesota’s Fillmore County. With the help of a young couple who has an interest in farming, community, and land stewardship, the older couple created an arrangement that strikes a balance of allowing Harvey to live out his wishes without putting an undue burden on Bonita when it comes to estate issues. A bonus is it provides a land access opportunity for beginning farmers while building soil health. It required creative thinking, but Harvey is glad he was pushed to think deeper about the future of the farm — it’s changed not only how he views the land, but how he views himself.

On a spring afternoon, as he gives a tour of the farmstead, Harvey reflects on how he has transitioned from being a “failed farm owner” to someone who is successfully passing on a stewardship legacy.

“I avoided even starting to think about passing on this farm because that would change my relationship with the land,” he says. “But ultimately, I’m very happy with this decision.”

Lifelong Learner
Harvey likes to say that “every decade you learn something more,” and it’s clear his curiosity about the world around him is boundless. He was born in the house he lives in now, and while he was growing up the farm was a typical diversified crop and livestock operation. After graduating from the University of Minnesota, Harvey was a social worker in the area. He eventually moved to Finland, where he taught English at the Helsinki University of Technology for 30 years. After retiring, he traveled around the world for a few years before returning to the farm, where he’s lived for the past two dozen years. During that time, the farm’s been rented to a neighbor who grows corn, soybeans, and alfalfa on the land.

Harvey has no children, and when he entered his 80s, he started thinking more about the future of the land. In 2016, Bonita, a long-time Land Stewardship Project member, talked him into attending a series of Farm Transition workshops the organization puts on periodically. The workshops, which are led by LSP staffer Karen Stettler, offer participants access to legal experts, as well as people who can help retiring farmers and non-operating landowners do the kind of goal setting needed to transition a farm in a way that meets their financial and conservation desires.

Harvey says the workshop was valuable, but he still didn’t feel he was in a position to pass off the farm to the next generation, especially if it meant moving off the land.

Bonita, who is a self-identified “pushy person,” along with Stettler, talked to Harvey about how selling to the highest bidder would likely mean the farm would just become one more field in a bigger cropping operation. Harvey started attending LSP workshops that covered, among other things, building soil health through practices like cover cropping, managed rotational grazing, and no-till. He was intrigued that working farmland could be good for the landscape.

“I’ve got that LSP bumper sticker that says, ‘Let’s Stop Treating Our Soil Like Dirt.’ I look at that every day and think to myself, ‘Good for them,’ ” says Harvey.

And through the Farm Transitions workshop and other LSP meetings, Harvey became aware that beginning farmers face significant barriers when it comes to accessing affordable land.

“Young people, unless they inherit the farm, there’s virtually no way they can get started,” he says. “So I wanted young people with good ideas and who were going to take care of the soil. I wanted people who would be in the community, part of the community.”

Community Couple
Enter Aaron and Amy Bishop. The couple live in nearby Harmony and have roots in the community. Aaron grew up two miles from Harvey’s farm — his family owns and operates Niagara Cave, which offers tours of the underground cavern. He also serves on the local school board, and is involved with other nonprofits. The couple is remodeling an old bank building on the Main Street of Harmony, and plan on turning the upper level into Airbnb lodging and the lower level into space for a future business.

Amy grew vegetables and marketed them through the farmers’ market and Community Supported Agriculture models for four years, and worked at Seed Savers Exchange in nearby Decorah, Iowa, for an additional six. It’s her goal to farm fulltime, and she had been looking for land in the area for a number of years. Both are mindful of land stewardship — Aaron has a geology degree and through his experience studying and exploring southeastern Minnesota’s karst geology, is intimately aware of the oftentimes fraught relationship between land use on the surface and water quality underground.

To top it off, the young couple — he’s 30 and she’s 38 — is close friends with their older counterparts (Harvey and Bonita served as their marriage witnesses). In short, they checked a lot of boxes. “Aaron and Amy are the family Harvey didn’t get around to having earlier,” says Bonita.

There’s just one catch: since they had never anticipated being able to afford 160-acres of land, the Bishops aren’t quite ready to take over management of the entire farm. Timing is the great enemy of successful farm transfers. It’s difficult to align when the landowner is ready to move on with when there is a new farmer ready to step in. But the two couples have come up with ways to manipulate the calendar and fit it to their situation.

Back to the Books
In January, the Bishops officially took over ownership of the farm. However, Harvey will continue to live on the land and call it home for as long as he wants. Even though he’s convinced the young couple’s worldview perfectly matches his values and wishes, Harvey says it’s still difficult to realize he’s no longer the owner.

“Joining futures with them was absolutely the right decision, but it comes with mixed emotions that still rise up once in awhile,” he says.

Because of Harvey’s generosity, the transition resembles a family land transfer more than a sale between two unrelated parties, which made it necessary to make certain the legal details were taken care of to deal with issues like probate law and the “clawback” of assets that can occur if a former landowner needs to go into long-term care. The two couples worked with a local attorney who specializes in ag law; the process required many calls, meetings, and e-mails.

“Harvey was resolute when it came to his expectations of the land transition,” Aaron recalls. “There were multiple ways we could have gone about it, but he wanted no mortgage and no interest involved.”

In order to meet those criteria, the attorney had to delve into notes he’d taken during college classes on seldom-used concepts.

Aaron and Amy will make payments on the farm for 20 years, which will likely cover Harvey’s lifetime; after that, Bonita will receive them. Any payments remaining after Bonita’s passing can be donated to charity. In the end, Harvey will have ended up selling the farm to the younger couple for about half the going market rate.

“Essentially, we will be taking care of Harvey and Bonita until then, with paying off the farm to the agreed-upon amount and time,” says Amy. An unofficial part of this arrangement is that the younger couple will continue doing something they’ve already been doing the past few years: provide Harvey support with maintaining the yard, his house, and his garden.

The purchase agreement includes “a right of reentry” — if Aaron and Amy don’t live up to their promise to keep it a family farm utilizing conservation practices and/or if they don’t allow Harvey to remain living on the property, then the older man, or Bonita, can reclaim ownership.

For Now: Stewards, Not Farmers
The younger couple has also developed a creative work-around when it comes to the other timing issue involved — they may not be ready to farm the land’s 145 tillable acres fulltime, but in the meantime they want to make sure it’s stewarded to Harvey’s specifications. As a result, after consulting the lease templates included in LSP’s Conservation Leases Toolkit, they approached the current renter with three options that provide the opportunity to reduce his rental rate by implementing additional soil-friendly practices — the more cover crops he implements, the lower the rate. The renter recently signed a two-year lease, and for the 2021 growing season went with the middle option offered: planting cover crops on half of the row-cropped acreage.

Amy and Aaron based their rental option calculations on the cost of putting in a cover crop. They also provided the renter resources on cover crop cost-share programs available through agencies like the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. Fortunately, Harvey has maintained the fencing on the land, so the renter has the ability to graze his cattle on the cover crops.

“It’s fortunate for us the neighbor is willing and able to continue renting because it’s going to ensure that something’s going to happen under the conservation terms that we worked out,” says Aaron.

The new lease buys the Bishops time to develop and implement various plans for the farm, including returning a portion of it to native prairie. This year, Amy is using three acres on the farm to grow a contracted vegetable seed crop for Seed Savers Exchange and to conduct small grains trials. Meanwhile, Aaron will continue working as a cave guide and substitute teacher.

Harvey is thrilled with this new arrangement. He had previously approached the renter about adopting soil health practices, but the conversations were difficult, with hurt feelings involved. With new owners taking over, it opened up the opportunity to renegotiate the lease without the burden of decades of tradition hanging over their heads. Farm transition experts say that a change in ownership offers a prime opportunity to modify a lease to include more conservation requirements.

Finally, the foursome has come up with a plan to deal with the other bugaboo when it comes to farm transfers: where will everyone live? Harvey has made it clear where he’s residing, and Aaron and Amy will eventually be making their home in a 1950s-era corn crib that is downhill from the house.

After Harvey shows off his tree plantings on this recent spring day, the young couple provide a tour of the crib they are remodeling, pointing out where different rooms and work places will be. They also talk excitedly about future plans for the farm that include the possibility of providing opportunities for other beginning farmers who might want to do everything from rotational grazing to small grains production.

Harvey is excited too. In fact, he asks, why not live a little longer just to see how all these plans work out? “I’m looking forward to this,” he says with a smile.

The depth of soil in the American Corn Belt is legendary. One popular saying is that some Midwestern soil is deep enough to bury a pickup truck in — vertically. In many cases, such images are not that far from reality. But there is a danger of equating soil depth with soil health or soil productivity.

It turns out a relatively small portion of the soil profile is where most of the biological magic takes place in terms of productivity. It’s called the “A horizon” — the darker part of the profile we know as “topsoil,” and it’s full of the living microorganisms and decaying plant roots that create organic carbon. Sitting on top of the topsoil is the “O horizon,” which is made up of dead plants and other organic material in various stages of decomposition. Beneath the A horizon is the subsoil, which normally has less organic matter than the A horizon, so it is generally a paler color. Below that is the “substratum” — a layer of rock and mineral parent material that has not been exposed to much weathering, so is pretty much intact. Finally, in the deepest recesses of the land’s basement is bedrock, or the “R horizon.” All those horizons play a role in making this resource so useful for doing everything from producing food to managing water and storing carbon. But topsoil, despite the fact that it can occupy a relatively narrow space compared to the other horizons, punches above its weight in terms of biological activity. If soil was a car, topsoil would be the gas tank, and without it, that car doesn’t go very far.

That’s why a recent study showing that a third of the farmland in the Corn Belt — that’s some 100 million acres — has lost its carbon-rich topsoil to erosion since we started plowing it is so troubling. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was based on an examination of corn and soybean fields in Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa. Because the A horizon is darker, scientists were able to use satellites to compare the color of soil with the USDA’s direct measurements of soil quality. In many cases, the lighter col-ored soil they documented contained so little organic carbon that it wasn’t even considered A horizon soil anymore, even though it was sitting where topsoil was supposed to be. In effect, erosion was so bad the subsoil had become the topsoil. The bottom line: the removal of all that rich topsoil has released nearly 1,500,000,000 metric tons of carbon and reduced corn and soybean yields by 6%. This is costing farmers some $3 billion annually, estimate the researchers.

The study found that the greatest loss of carbon-rich topsoil was on hilltops and ridgelines, a sign that repeated tillage is taking its toll. You don’t need satellite imagery to witness some of this firsthand — when you drive by a field that has lighter, tannish colored soil at the top of a ridge, that means the A horizon has been seriously compromised.

This study indicates that we have lost much more fertile topsoil than the USDA has been estimating. Some soil experts have questioned the Proceedings study’s methodology, but acknowledge that even if it is exaggerating the loss, we are still losing that A horizon at a troubling rate. And that causes numerous problems on and off the farm. For one thing, if a field is to remain productive, the fertility benefits provided by a biologically-active A horizon need to be replaced somehow. In most cases, that means adding more petroleum-based fertilizer, which is already a major water quality problem when it escapes agricultural acres. And loss of carbon-rich soil means more greenhouse gas emissions.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Farmers throughout Minnesota and the rest of the Midwest are utilizing regenerative practices like no-till, cover cropping, managed rotational grazing, and diverse rotations to build back soil health and sequester carbon. In fact, recent scientific breakthroughs show that farmers have a much greater ability to send soil health trends in a positive direction than once thought. LSP’s Soil Builders’ Network initiative is working with hundreds of farmers who are proving soil healthy practices can be practical and profitable.

But regenerative practices won’t become enough of a norm to have widespread landscape impacts without public support. For decades, government subsidies and tax-funded land grant research, along with market signals, have made raising corn and soybeans in an intensive, soil-damaging manner just about the only game in town. Stepping out of a monocultural, input-intensive system can be accompanied by significant financial risk. Converting to no-till and managing cover crops costs time and money. No wonder less than 15% of farmland in the upper Mississippi River watershed is managed using no-till methods, and under 3% of Minnesota crop ground is cover cropped any given year, according to estimates.

That’s why the provisions of the “100% Soil-Healthy Farming Bill,” which LSP introduced during the 2021 session of the Minnesota Legislature (some key provisions passed), are so critical. Studies and surveys show that once farmers have transitioned into a practice like cover cropping or no-till, they see higher yields, more profit, and resilient soils. But it takes a couple of years to go from good idea to practical, everyday field method. Bridging the gap to ensure that regenerative methods are profitable in the near term removes financial barriers that often limit farmers’ ability to put in place long-term invest-ments on the land.

States like Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa have shown that public cost-share and grant programs can play a significant role in increasing the number of “soil smart” acres. They’ve committed to helping farmers bridge the innovation gap. It’s time we did the same in other states, before the other two-thirds of the all-important A horizon ends up over the hill.

It would be difficult to imagine a publication like America’s Private Land, A Geography of Hope being produced by a branch of the federal government today. That it was released in 1996 by an agency housed within the United States Department of Agriculture is even more astounding, given the authors’ acknowledgement that industrialized, monocultural farming systems have caused significant problems when it comes to the health of our landscape, and changes are needed if we are to head off ecological catastrophe. To top it off, it quotes Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, and Wallace Stegner, writers who were never shy about critiquing the philosophy that farmland, and all land for that matter, is there for the taking, and that humans have an innate right to do with it what they will.

But when the 80-page booklet was published by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), A Geography of Hope represented not just a report card on the negative impacts of farming and ranching when it comes to our soil, water, and wildlife — it was also seen as an inspiring argument for the positive role diversified agricultural systems could play in developing a landscape that is ecologically and economically viable. So inspiring, in fact, that when then-Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman read a draft of the document, it brought tears to his eyes.

One of the reasons A Geography of Hope was not your typical, dry government document was that it was the brainchild of Paul Johnson, an Iowa farmer and former state legislator who has long promoted the idea that conservation of our natural resources and food production are not mutually exclusive. Before becoming the head of the NRCS in 1994, Johnson studied forestry and farmed near the Upper Iowa River in northeastern Iowa. During his tenure in the Iowa Legislature, he was instrumental in establishing Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture and the creation of a groundwater protection law that is seen as a national model.

Throughout his career, Johnson has adhered to a core philosophy that if we are to see conservation agriculture become more commonplace, it will require a “social compact” between farmers and the rest of society. It wasn’t just about enforcing certain rules or putting in place specific programs — care of the land had to become seen as the right thing to do, and society had to figure out a way to give farmers the emotional, and economical, support to do that.

He brought that philosophy with him to Washington, D.C. As a dairy and sheep farmer and someone who had run for office based on his farming background, he had the agricultural credentials. But Johnson was not afraid to wear his environmental colors. In his D.C. office, he displayed a picture of Rachel Carson, the author of the seminal environmental book, Silent Spring. “I put her up there and within two days somebody came over and said, ‘You should take that picture down,’ recalls Johnson. “ ‘And I said, ‘No way, leave it up there.’ ”

Johnson is a student of conservation history and knows the power of words. In 1994, the “Soil Conservation Service” became the “Natural Resources Conservation Service,” a name that Johnson felt better reflected the holistic view agency staff should take when it came to working with landowners. He also pushed staff to look beyond just controlling erosion with specific structures and practices, and to consider the overall health of the soil resource. In many ways, the buzz around soil health that permeates the NRCS and much of agriculture today can trace its roots to Johnson’s work two decades ago.

And he played a key role in the creation of the conservation title of the 1996 Farm Bill. Any farmer who has used Environmental Quality Incentives Program funds to put in a rotational grazing system or a season-extending high tunnel has Johnson to thank.

But A Geography of Hope may be his most public legacy. Johnson felt such a publication was needed not only to justify the NRCS’s existence as a stand-alone agency (there were threats to make it part of the Farm Service Agency at the time), but to highlight the key role private agricultural lands play in the health of the overall landscape. As the publication points out, half of the United States is in cropland, pasture, or rangeland. That meant (and still means) care of 50% of the country is the hands of less than 2% of its citizens.

Johnson got the title of the publication from Stegner, who had written that the preservation of the nation’s last tracts of wildlands represented a “geography of hope.”

“Stegner was right…Yet today we understand that narrowly circumscribed areas of natural beauty and protected land alone cannot provide the quality of environment that people need and want,” Johnson wrote in the foreword to the booklet. “We must also recognize the needs of America’s private land and private landowners for us to truly have a geography of hope.”

Through maps, graphics, and writing that veers from the matter-of-fact to downright lyrical, Geography of Hope lays out the environmental problems facing private lands that have been exposed to intensive tillage, too many chemical inputs, and overapplication of manure from CAFOs. But then it goes on to, through case studies and big picture examples, describe the potential sustainable farming systems have for correcting these problems. Johnson feels strongly that farming should produce more than food and fiber — it should generate ecological health.

His audience was policymakers (every member of Congress got a copy, as well as then-President Bill Clinton). But Johnson also saw A Geography of Hope speaking to the farmers who were in a position to put in place effective conservation practices. After all, he wanted them to be proud of the role they had played, and could play in the future, when it came to land stewardship.

When it comes to farming, “regenerative” is having a bit of a moment. For example, Cargill wants to help farmers convert 10 million acres of row crop farmland to “regenerative practices,” and General Mills has said it is committed to advancing “regenerative agriculture practices” on a million acres of farmland by 2030.

There are plenty of questions around whether these and other initiatives, which will supposedly focus on helping farmers adopt such practices as no-till, cover cropping, and diverse rotations, are just so much corporate greenwashing. But this is also a prime example of how the term “regenerative” is gaining traction. These days, the media is full of stories of how farmers are using innovative ways to regenerate the land’s natural processes, thus reducing reliance on practices that harm the very elements we rely on to produce food — soil, water, the carbon cycle.

This isn’t just a brainchild of a savvy marketing department — “regenerative” is now part of the agricultural lexicon. In fact, many farmers interested in a more ecologically-based approach say they aren’t satisfied with the status quo connotation of its predecessor: “sustainable.” “I have no interest in just sustaining this farm. I want to regenerate it,” farmer Kaleb Anderson recently told me while standing in a field where his cattle were rotationally grazing a cocktail mix of cover crops in southeastern Minnesota’s Goodhue County. Hannah Bernhardt, a pasture-based meat producer in Pine County who uses social media to promote her product, finds that when she uses the term “regenerative,” her posts trend up — a sign this word resonates not just with farmers and PR departments.

This has spawned a bit of a debate over which term — “sustainable” or “regenerative” — better describes innovative, environmentally-friendly farming systems. It turns out this is similar to a debate Dana Jackson was in the midst of over four decades ago. Dana co-founded the Land Institute, which has been a Kansas-based eco-farming mecca since 1976. Dana later served on the Land Stewardship Project’s board of directors and worked for the organization for a quarter-century, serving as LSP’s associate director, among other things. Throughout her career, she has written and spoke frequently about ways to advance a more sustainable form of agriculture.

Her involvement in discussing what was truly sustainable and the best way to make it part of our food and farming system started in the 1970s, when Jackson and others were casting about for a term that described a “permanent” agriculture, rather than one based on short-term mining of resources. Some eco-farming pioneers favored the term “regenerative.” However, others argued that “sustainable” offered a broader definition of the type of system we should be striving for: support of the land, as well as people and rural communities.

“We were talking systemic agriculture,” she recalled recently during an LSP Ear to the Ground podcast interview. “We weren’t just focused on systems of soil regeneration.”

Eventually, the term “sustainable” won out, mostly because it was already loose on the culture. Since then, the term has been a driver behind innumerable NGOs and government programs. We now have the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, as well as the USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program. Indeed, part of LSP’s mission is to “foster an ethic of stewardship for farmland, to promote sustainable agriculture, and to develop healthy communities.” We define sustainable agriculture as a system that is “ecologically sound, socially just, financially viable, and humane.”

Now, “regenerative” is back, and its resurgence is being spawned by farmers, rather than academics or environmental advocates. I first heard the term used by soil health pioneer Gabe Brown while visiting his North Dakota farm in 2012. In fact, one often sees the word mentioned in connection with particular soil building practices, which could narrow its ability to be applied to the big picture view of a type of farming that, again, does not undermine the very elements it relies on, including people. A big picture, holistic approach is needed, especially now that the pandemic has revealed how our conventional food and farm system undermines everything from soil health to the safety of meatpacking laborers.

But there are signs the concept of “regenerative” is broadening. The Minnesota-based Regenerative Agriculture Foundation puts it this way: “…any practice that makes the land, community and bottom-line healthier year after year is regenerative.” Also, if someone is focused on building the health of the soil, that’s not exactly a reductionist approach. Living soil produces healthy land and healthy food, which supports healthy communities. That’s pretty big picture. And if non-farmers seeking a clean Minnesota River, carbon sequestration, and viable economies support soil-building systems with their food dollar and through policy changes, then that’s sustainable.

Precise, technically correct definitions aren’t always a prerequisite for spawning positive change — words that fire the imagination are important too. When I hear a farmer using the term “regenerative” to describe a practice or system, I detect a special spark. Partly that’s because regenerating something hints at unearthing life, activity, health — that’s exciting. As conservation icon Aldo Leopold wrote decades ago: “The most important characteristic of an organism is that capacity for eternal self-renewal known as health.”

So what to do when agribusiness and food giants co-opt the word? Demand proof that the practices being touted are truly producing regenerative, sustainable results — for land and people. And that means, through public policy and the marketplace, supporting the very people who must make it a reality on the ground, day-in and day-out.

In the end it may not be so much what word we use, but who uses it. As Dana Jackson says, “Maybe that’s one of the ways regenerative has the advantage now in that it’s being spread by and among the right people to make changes — the farmers.”