“Regenerative” is Key to Agriculture/Water Sustainability
Three recent announcements from food and beverage companies use the word regenerative—either applied to sustainable agriculture or water. Today, the term connotes a concept something like the agriculture of the 1950s or earlier when small farms were the norm, and farm activities like rotating crops and spreading manure on the fields from the livestock prior to plowing and planting provided a soil rich in nutrients, requiring very little fertilizer input to get a good yield.
So old is new again, and fashionable—call it sustainable and hope it’s not a fad, but a real trend that produces a sustainable, healthier environment and food. According to the USDA site defining “sustainable agriculture terms,” regenerative agriculture was a term coined by Robert Rodale, which was expanded to “regenerative/sustainable agriculture” by the Rodale Institute and Rodale Research Center.