About this Research Topic

Background

Regenerative agriculture is a form of farming that seeks to conserve (or ‘regenerate’) biodiversity and soil health while producing nutritious food, profitably. It involves practices that intend to increase soil organic matter and carbon sequestration, restore (functional) biodiversity, reduce soil erosion and nutrient runoff, enhance soil fertility, and rebuild natural biological pest control and pollination. While the concept primarily aims to improve ecosystem health, it often also addresses social inequity and seeks to ameliorate the overall resilience of rural communities. As such, regenerative agriculture presents tangible benefits for farmers, consumers, and the environment.

The rehabilitation of biodiversity-based ecosystem services is achieved through remediative actions at field, farm and/or landscape scales. Regenerative farming thus often makes use of crop diversification, ecological infrastructures (e.g., hedgerows, flower strips, beetle banks), agroforestry tactics or enhanced landscape complexity, reduction of synthetic inputs, and a (re)integration of crop and livestock production systems. Regenerative agriculture emphasises the smart use of natural functionalities (i.e., supporting and regulating ecosystem services) and ecological processes to create more resilient and sustainable agroecosystems.

While regenerative agriculture may be pivotal to upholding food security and societal wellbeing during times of unprecedented global change, it is crippled by a lack of clarity and the absence of an overarching framework. Indeed, there are many definitions of regenerative agriculture in usage. This may lead to uncertainty among certain actors, but can also offer end-users flexibility to best implement regenerative agriculture under specific social-ecological contexts. In the absence of an established ‘regenerative agriculture’ framework, farmers often draw upon agroecological or biodiversity-based practices to curb agrochemical usage and raise the profitability, resilience, energy use efficiency and overall sustainability of their operations. To what extent this makes regenerative agriculture distinct from agroecology, organic agriculture or other frameworks clearly merits further thought and clarification.

Despite the growing interest in regenerative agriculture among the world’s farmers, land managers and grassroots organizations, the term continues to be ill-defined and its broad societal benefits are insufficiently recognized. For instance, the impacts of regenerative agriculture on social inequity still need to be addressed. This Research Topic aims to close this gap, offering greater clarity and consistency in the application and assessment of regenerative agriculture practices, particularly as they relate to environmental and other social benefits in diverse farming systems. Additionally, it will further investigate how established regenerative farms contribute to key (ecological, but also socio-cultural) ecosystem services and profitability across diverse farming systems. In the end, this can inform the development of more effective and targeted strategies to promote agroecological and biodiversity-based farming.

Research articles and review papers submitted to this topic should contribute an understanding towards:
- Conducting a comparative analysis of real-world, replicated, regenerative and conventional agriculture systems
- Defining regenerative agriculture relative to other frameworks e.g., organic, agroecological, traditional/indigenous, diversified farming systems, etc.
- Evaluating regenerative agriculture practices (singly or combined) under varying agroecological or socioeconomic contexts
- Quantifying the role of regenerative agriculture systems in lowering the carbon footprint of agriculture while bolstering climate resilience, sequestering carbon, reversing biodiversity decline or reconstituting ecosystem functionalities
- Exploring the social implications and consequences (including equity) of farming approaches that are founded upon regenerative principles
- Holistically examining biodiversity-ecosystem function (BEF) relationships within farmer-defined regenerative systems
- Assessing the potential of regenerative agricultural practices to contribute to broader environmental goals and policy objectives.

Keywords: agroecology, biological control, soil health, ecological intensification, diversification, multifunctional landscapes, landscape complexity, biodiversity conservation, climate-resilient agriculture, carbon sequestration

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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