Anyone who is even remotely tuned into the food system knows that regenerative agriculture is having a moment. Regenerative agriculture, for those who don’t know, is an idea and set of practices that promise to reverse climate change by returning atmospheric carbon to soil. Worldwide, millions of dollars are flowing into new regenerative agriculture projects. Celebrities are rallying behind it. Organisations have cropped up to promote its uptake. Schools have opened across the world teaching its principles. And it’s not hard to understand why—soil depletion and environmental degradation in agriculture are real and pressing issues, and there’s also something intellectually appealing about ‘regeneration’ as a concept in this particular moment in history. We’re becoming acutely aware of how extractive and degenerative our relationship with the planet has become. An alternative like ‘regeneration’ that evokes renewal, rebirth, and reciprocity is undeniably attractive. There’s a spiritual element to it—the restoration of a severed relationship to the earth—that adds to the appeal. It’s easy to rally behind, partly because the picture it paints is a beautiful one—the dream of living in alignment with the earth’s systems, of restoring ecosystems, of healthy soil, healthy food, healthy lives.

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