There is a common misconception when it comes to Regenerative Agriculture. When talking about Regenerative Ag, most people only think of grass-fed and pasture-raised animal products - but what they are missing is the underlying goal Regenerative Farmers are striving for: The enhancement of all the cycles of nature.
Nature functions on equilibrium, where everything must be functioning properly in order for its cycles to work. Over the past 100 years, conventional agriculture has displaced nature’s equilibrium through technological advancements via the use of pesticides, herbicides, tillage and monocrop agriculture. Because all of these modern-day advancements kill the natural habitats to artificially grow things, it has caused nature’s cycles to be displaced and never have the chance to catch up to function how it is suppose to.
However, in Regenerative Ag, the goal is not to kill, but to bring life and encourage all of nature’s cycles to thrive. Every cycle on a Regenerative farm enforces the other. You have the ruminant animal which grazes and produces manure, which enhances the decomposers, like the dung beetle, to break down the manure and put the nutrients back into the soil, which then enhances the pollinators, like the bee, because the plants have been given their nutrients back, allowing the pollinators to start the cycle all over.
Because these cycles work in unison, each one has to be given the opportunity to perform at its full potential. Regenerative Ag encourages this unison better than any other method, simply because it doesn’t get in the way of nature. Regenerative farmers work with nature, rather than against, and are constantly looking to find ways to encourage all the cycles to flow properly. No matter the problem, nature always has the solution. It is very easy nowadays to look for the easy method and slip away from nature’s order. However, when working with the order, it will be more fruitful in the long run and improve not only the health of the planet, but the consumer as well.
Over the past few years, our farm has seen how complex nature’s mechanism is. While it is complex, it is also perfect. Because it is perfect, we know if we take care of nature, nature will take care of us. This means we cannot just look to produce Grass-Fed and Pasture-Raised products; we have to be constantly focused on enhancing the cycles of nature so it will provide us our perfect product.