What is the Regenerative Revolution?

The Regenerative Revolution

Reimagining a Broken Food System through Agroecology

By: Natalia Meehan

The globalized food industry dominating the world today demonstrates the hypocrisy and inefficiency within a failing system. The Green Revolution of the 1960s intended to feed a growing global population while stimulating the economy. The implications of this revolution reconstructed human relationships to food altogether. This revolution was made possible through the development of industrial agriculture. The use of highly specialized and mechanized processes now dominates a global food market, catering especially to industrialized societies. The external inputs that make industrial agriculture function consist of advances such as synthetic fertilizers, chemical pesticides, selective breeding, and monoculture practices. Agribusiness focuses on producing an abundance of low-cost, low-quality goods. While the goal of industrial agriculture aspired to create more food to feed a growing world - the reality is that this system has led to more food insecurity, and harm to the health of the total environment (soil microbiology, plants, water, air, animals, insects, humans, etc.)  The failure of this system can be seen through the issue of food waste. While more food is produced today than ever, one-third of the food grown for human consumption every year (1.3 billion tonnes) becomes waste and rots in a landfill. [1] As of 2019, nearly 690 million people face hunger, and close to 750 million, or 1 and 10 people in the world, are exposed to severe levels of food insecurity.[2] The practices that support industrial agriculture and the values they are based on have led to a disconnect between humans and the very nutrients that sustain us. A metabolic rift never seen quite before in human history, has severed the flow of natural processes and strains the total environment, creating a plethora of harm. The way agribusiness has rapidly changed human relationships to land and food is difficult to fully encapsulate. Though it can be made clearer by recognizing how half of the world’s habitable land is currently used for agriculture along with 70 percent of global freshwater withdrawals. Human estrangement from natural processes is the paralyzing tragedy that pervades the current environment-industrial society relationship. Present in all systems, perhaps most contradictory and hauntingly within the industrial food system.

Today industrialized food systems produce an abundance of low-cost goods. Issues surrounding quality of life dependent on soil health, plant health, animal health, and human health are undoubtedly connected to the food systems in place today. The dominant food system has been hijacked by the corporate pursuit of profit above all else. This inefficient and harmful system needs remodeling. This paper will explore alternative agricultural practices to reimagine our food systems, which inherently promote climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies along with health and equity. Human and planetary health depend on the reformulation of old paradigms brought about by the green revolution and the industrial agricultural model of the 20th century. Agroecology provides a path forward, a way to farm the future. The first step is imagining it. 

The sociological imagination is a concept first coined by C.W. Mills in contrast to the ecological imagination. According to Mills, the ecological imagination can be considered the ability to perceive relationships between human actions and their effects on earth’s biophysical systems. This school of thought has been bolstered in industrialized societies with a heavy focus on natural sciences.[3] The scientific community has made great progress; we know what atmospheric scientists have been telling us for decades about the changing climate. We know the impacts of unhealthy foods and toxic chemicals on the human body and in our soils. Without the social sciences, this “ecological” information cannot be integrated into action. In this way, Mills stresses the importance of strengthening the sociological imagination. Mills argues that we must begin rethinking our ways of life on a societal scale. “The focus on individuals is more than a theoretical choice; it has the political function of leaving governments and corporations unaccountable. An individual can take shorter hot showers, but the U.S. military remains the biggest consumer of oil in the world. A symptom of how underdeveloped our sociological imagination is relative to our ecological imagination is the recent finding that more Americans can imagine the "end of the world" than can envision a switch from using fossil fuels or an economic order other than capitalism” (Norgaard, 2). The ability to rethink the way things are so that they can be better is a gift. From the construction of the oil industry to the studies of contemporary poetry, Mills believes that action and transformation lie within the human sociological imagination. The sociological imagination emphasizes the power of combining scientific rigor with moral clarity, and analysis with empathy. Where strategy and imagination meet, there is room to grow.[4]

Consider now a concept coined by the American designer-architect, William McDonough, and German chemist, Michael Braungart, known as “Cradle to Cradle”. The cradle-to-cradle design focuses on transforming trash into treasure through completely redefining the concept of waste and reimagining systems of production altogether. This process necessitates the creation of an eco-effective production system, where all materials are essential nutrients that can be in perpetual flow with one of two distinct metabolisms: the biological metabolism and the technological metabolism. Biological nutrients are materials that can feed biological processes, return to the soil, and regenerate the environment, leading to new growth. Technical nutrients may be defined as materials, “frequently synthetic or mineral, that have the potential to remain safely in a closed-loop system of manufacture, recovery, and reuse (the technical metabolism), maintaining their highest value through many products’ life cycles”. [5] This model redefines waste synonymously with food. As experienced within industrial economies and societies, products - even if biological, are intended not to break down under natural conditions by design. For example, while the world wastes about 1.4 billion tons of food every year, ‘the United States discards more food than every other country in the world: nearly 40 million tons — 80 billion pounds — every year. That’s estimated to be 30-40 percent of the entire US food supply and equates to 219 pounds of waste per person. That’s like every person in America throwing more than 650 average-sized apples right into the garbage — or rather right into landfills, as most discarded food ends up there. In fact, food is the single largest component taking up space inside U.S. landfills, making up 22 percent of municipal solid waste”. [6] The current highly mechanized and extractive food systems today are examples of cradle-to-grave practices, where materials produced end up in landfills, enabling a metabolic rift, and extreme environmental degradation throughout a products’ lifecycle and even after its death. Cradle-to-cradle practices emphasize the importance of restoring nutrients to the soil and by nature, everything else. The soil is Earth’s place of birth and death, constantly cycling, where waste is indistinguishable from fuel and food. Preceding the industrial agricultural revolution, more people understood the value in potential nutrients of organic “waste” turning into tomorrow’s food. Now, life within nutrients is lost when disposed of in landfills or designed to become obsolete, rupturing, and overwhelming natural processes. (Instead, depositing toxins in our natural systems and straining the overall health of the environment.)

The dark history of industrial agriculture feeds societies oil, not soil. Leading up to the Green Revolution, after World War Two, the manufacturers of explosives and chemicals for warfare remodeled and rebranded as the agrochemical industry.[7] The push for chemicals changed the way ecology was viewed and how food was produced. Rather than honoring the cooperation between plants and the environment, resources were framed as constantly in competition. Rather than working with ecological processes that naturally facilitate the well-being of the entire agroecosystem, agriculture was reduced to an “external input system fueled by poisons”. [8] A new system strategically implemented by the corporate world based on violence now uses external inputs of seeds that require chemicals, fertilizers, and equipment all available only by purchase. The system of industrial agriculture can be considered a “necroeconomy” – an economy that profits directly from death and destruction.[9] This disturbing paradigm is intrinsically at odds with the mission it is meant to carry out.

Through looking at the use of synthetic fertilizers and monoculture practices, it is clear to see the annihilation resulting from agribusiness. Monocultures are a model for growing food where the same crop is grown year after year in the same location, with little to no rotation or diversity. Monocultures were promoted in the name of efficiency, productivity, and profit; however, they do not even fulfill these intentions. Crops are mass-produced and calculated to be traded globally. Imagine acres of land dedicated to growing just corn, wheat, rice, or soybeans, where the genetically uniform single crop goes on as far as the eye can see. Technologies facilitating specialization and mechanization are the only way this is possible. Monocultures need external inputs to function and is an exhausting practice in comparison to diverse farming systems.[10] One of the external inputs used in this model are agrochemicals, made to fertilize the crops as well as control weeds and insects. Synthetic fertilizers are man-made inorganic compounds, derived from by-products of the petroleum industry. Plants process nutrients and cannot distinguish between synthetic or organic fertilizers. However, synthetic fertilizers do not add anything other than the limited manufactured nutrients to the soil, and plants need more than just nutrients to survive. Synthetic fertilizers do not support microbial life in the soil. They do not add organic content or material to the soil, resulting in soil depletion and erosion. Chemical fertilizers can easily be over-applied, creating toxic conditions within the soil for plants. Chemical fertilizers can also release nutrients at a rate too quickly for plants to use resulting in overgrowth on the top of plants and weak development of root structures, leaving them prone to disease, pests, volatile weather conditions, and contributing to less productivity overall.[11] Monocultures are generally more vulnerable to pests, disease, and volatile weather conditions as well because they are manmade growing systems, rejecting the vital role diversity plays in creating healthy, long-lasting, and productive ecological lifecycles.

Vandana Shiva, a renowned environmental scientist and activist, has studied the effects of industrial agriculture on environmental health particularly focusing on issues in India. In her book, “Soil Not Oil”, she highlights the violence of agrochemicals. “Fertilizers block the soil capillaries, which supply nutrients and water to plants. Infiltration of rain is stopped, runoff increases, and soil faces droughts, requiring ever more irrigation and ever more fossil fuels for pumping groundwater. Excess nitrogen in the root zone also denies nutrients to the plant…Plants deficient in micronutrients create micronutrient deficiency in food and the human diet. And micronutrient deficiency leads to metabolic disorders”. [12] Much like the harm associated with any economically oriented “input”, agrochemicals have many externalities. One of the vast side effects of this industrial product includes runoff and eutrophication, resulting in anoxic conditions in waterways. This creates deadly conditions for aquatic life, and the leaching of harmful chemicals into drinking water. 78 percent of global ocean, as well as freshwater eutrophication, is due to runoff from agriculture.[13] Another harmful consequence stemming from this form of agriculture is species loss. Of the 28,000 species evaluated to be threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List, agriculture and aquaculture are listed as threats for 24,000 of them.[14]

Monoculture production is also made possible through a globalized market, demanding food to travel across the world to end up in a grocery store. This “food” is made of chemicals, fossil fuels, and capital. Not only is industrial agriculture producing highly toxic, less nutritious plants, water, soil/microorganisms, air, animals, and humans, it is also unsurprisingly a leading driver of global climate change.

The long-distance globalized food system serviced by industrial food production is responsible for 25 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, 60 percent of methane gas emissions, and 80 percent of nitrous oxide, which are all powerful greenhouse gases.[15] A study by the Danish Ministry of the Environment coined the term, “Food Miles”, measuring the greenhouse gases associated with the journey that food undergoes from where it is produced to where it is consumed. They found that 1 kilogram of food traveling around the world typically generates 10 kilograms of CO2.[16] The increase in food miles is a direct result of subsidies supporting the fossil fuel and dominant food industry, making it much more expensive to buy locally grown fresh food and cheaper to buy low-quality food transported across the planet. This food system is projected to fail in the wake of the climate crisis, resulting in more food insecurity in a hotter, drier world. It is difficult to encapsulate just how much the food system has changed in the last few decades, but it is necessary to imagine how much it will change in the years ahead. Looking forward, environmentalist Paul Hawken found that eight of the top twenty most effective strategies to combat climate change exist in the realm of agriculture, and the solutions are embarrassingly simple.

The sociological imagination reminds us of the strength in re-examining ways of doing things, which can alter the ways societies function. For some people living in industrial societies – not going to the grocery store, or not denying the complex reality of the harm that the glyphosate-infused broccoli they are about to ingest for less than $1 creates, is pretty much unfathomable. However, when the shelves are bare in many grocery stores in the United States during the middle of a pandemic, the fragility of the current food system does not seem as hard to grasp. Sometimes it takes confronting mistakes to learn the hard way. Sometimes it takes hitting rock bottom to realize the only thing to do is root down and start growing up. The climate is changing, organisms as a collective are suffering, as it gets hotter, can these issues get any clearer? The deficiencies of this system beg the question, what are the alternatives? Our sociological imagination allows us to question: can we envision a society in which things operate differently? If so, what kind of society do we want? How do we get there?

In light of shifting perspectives, Sharon Olds wrote a powerful poem in 1942, expressing a deeply beautiful sentiment of appreciation for the life that grounds us, it reads:

“Ode To Dirt”

Dear dirt, I am sorry I slighted you,

I thought that you were only the background

for the leading characters—the plants

and animals and human animals.

It’s as if I had loved only the stars

and not the sky which gave them space

in which to shine. Subtle, various,

sensitive, you are the skin of our terrain,

you’re our democracy. When I understood

I had never honored you as a living

equal, I was ashamed of myself,

as if I had not recognized

a character who looked so different from me,

but now I can see us all, made of the

same basic materials—

cousins of that first exploding from nothing—

in our intricate equation together. O dirt,

help us find ways to serve your life,

you who have brought us forth, and fed us,

and who at the end will take us in

and rotate with us, and wobble, and orbit.

—Sharon Olds

A Promising Path Forward: Growing On in the Regenerative Revolution

Agroecology contrasts the harmful effects of industrial agriculture by optimizing the interactions between soil, plants, animals, humans, and the total environment, while also addressing the need for socially equitable food systems. Within which people can exercise choice over what they eat, along with how and where it is produced.[17] The 10 key elements of Agroecology consist of: diversity, co-creation and sharing of knowledge, synergies, efficiency, recycling, resilience, human and social values, culture and food traditions, responsible governance, as well as circular and solidarity economies. [18] Agroecology acknowledges the integral role of humans within the interconnected web of life and attempts to bring harmony back into systems of food production. In another work by Vandana Shiva, “Who Really Feeds the World,” she writes: “In the agroecological paradigm of knowledge, food is the web of life. Humans are a part of this web, as cocreators and coproducers, as well as eaters. When we save seed and replant it, we become part of the cycle of life. When we return organic matter to the soil, we are feeding the soil organisms. Working according to nature’s laws is participating in nature’s processes of creation and production. This is the basis of the sustainability of food and agricultural systems. An agroecological knowledge system feeds the world, not a violent, reductionist paradigm of agriculture”.[19] Agroecology focuses on indigenous cultivation practices, biodiversity, re-evaluating the concept of waste through closed-loop systems, as well as maintaining health and equitable prosperity for all. Agroecology moves away from a paradigm of extraction and towards a paradigm of reciprocity and collective benefit.

Shiva argues that agroecology, living soil, pollinators, biodiversity, small-scale farmers, seed freedom, localization, and women really feed the world. Not a violent knowledge paradigm, chemical fertilizers, poisons, monocultures, industrial farms, seed dictatorship, globalization, or corporations.[20] She writes: “only 30 percent of the food eaten by people comes from large-scale industrial farms; 70 percent comes from small, biodiverse farms. On the other hand, 75 percent of the ecological destruction of our soil, water, and biodiversity is caused by industrial methods of farming…The model of agriculture based on diversity, democracy, and decentralization that is already contributing to 70 percent of the food that nourishes people can be increased to 100 percent”. [21] To achieve this full transition and repair the broken food system in place, cultural shifts honoring the cooperation of humans as a part of the total environment rather than life in competition, is imperative. The authors of All We Can Save said it best when writing, “One of the fallouts of our fifty-year focus on competition is that we came to view all organisms as consumers and competitors first, including ourselves. Now we’re decades into a different understanding. By recognizing, at last, the ubiquity of sharing and chaperoning, by acknowledging the fact that communal traits are quite natural, we get to see ourselves anew. We can return to our role as nurtures, each a helper among helpers in this planetary story of collaborative healing”. [22] Through utilizing the sociological imagination, societies can shift towards cradle-to-cradle production and embrace the powerful knowledge paradigm of agroecology. Implementing agroecological practices promotes viable and powerful ways to repair the food system, fostering access to fresh food while regenerating the total environment.

The regenerative revolution, a movement inspired by the values within agroecology, is arguably the only way forward. Extractive systems have overconsumed the environment, rendering themselves inefficient, degenerative, and destructive. This revolution remedies the root cause of the climate crisis, disconnection. Degeneration is the breakdown of connections within any living system. Regeneration facilitates connections. Planetary issues today stemming from industrial societies have created a narrative that extreme suffering is inevitable, and that people’s quality of life is at odds with the health of the environment. This could not be falser. The book, “Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation,” by Paul Hawken, provides detailed information about the regenerative revolution at play. “Regeneration is not only about bringing the world back to life; it is about bringing each of us back to life. It has meaning and scope; it expresses faith and kindness; it involves imagination and creativity. It is inclusive, engaging, and generous. And everyone can do it. It restores forests, lands, farms, and oceans. It transforms cities, builds green affordable housing, reverses soil erosion, rejuvenates degraded lands, and powers rural communities. Planetary regeneration creates livelihoods – occupations that bring life to people and people to life, work that links us to one another’s wellbeing. It offers paths out of poverty that provide people with meaning, worthy involvement in their community, a living wage, and a future of dignity and respect”.[23] Regeneration quite literally means more life. It also means healing the metabolic rifts that big businesses and governments create and perpetuate. It means embodying the traditional ecological knowledge networks that have been feeding and healing the world from the beginning, honoring our lives as humans, a part of the ecosystem. It means social justice. It means diversity. It means complexity, cooperation, creativity, and imagination. It means collective action, autonomy, decentralization, and maintaining a habitable planet. It means fighting for unexploited health and wellbeing. It involves not only our lands and oceans, but also our cities, industries, sources of energy, and food. The regenerative revolution takes imagining a flowering future, rather than the end of the world. It rejuvenates the exhausted human mind, heart, and soul by plugging back into the world. It means reconnection.

[1] “Worldwide Food Waste.” ThinkEatSave, 2013, www.unep.org/thinkeatsave/get-informed/worldwide-food-waste. Accessed 2 Dec. 2021.

[2] United Nations. “Food | United Nations.” United Nations, United Nations, 2020, www.un.org/en/global-issues/food. Accessed 2 Dec. 2021.

[3] Norgaard, Kari Marie. “The Sociological Imagination in a Time of Climate Change.” Global and Planetary Change, vol. 163, Elsevier B.V, 2018, pp. 171–76, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.09.018.

[4] Johnson, Ayana Elizabeth, et al. All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. Random House Publishing Group, 2020.

[5] Braungart, Michael, et al. “Cradle-To-Cradle Design: Creating Healthy Emissions – a Strategy for Eco-Effective Product and System Design.” Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 15, no. 13-14, Sept. 2007, pp. 1337–1348, Accessed 13 Dec. 2021.

[6] “Food Waste in America in 2022: Statistics & Facts | RTS.” Recycle Track Systems, 2019, www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/. Accessed 13 Dec. 2021

[7] SHIVA, VANDANA. The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology, and Politics. University Press of Kentucky, 2016.

[8] Shiva, Vandana. Who Really Feeds the World?: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology. Zed Books, 2016.

[9] Shiva, Vandana. Who Really Feeds the World?: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology. Zed Books, 2016.

[10] Shiva, Vandana. Who Really Feeds the World?: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology. Zed Books, 2016.

[11] “EnviroIngenuity.” Enviroingenuity.com, 2018, www.enviroingenuity.com/articles/synthetic-vs-organic-fertilizers.html. Accessed 16 Dec. 2021.

[12] Shiva, Vandana. Soil Not Oil. ZED Books LTD, 2016.

[13] Ritchie, Hannah, and Max Roser. “Environmental Impacts of Food Production.” Our World in Data, 15 Jan. 2020, ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food. Accessed 2 Dec. 2021.

[14] Ritchie, Hannah, and Max Roser. “Environmental Impacts of Food Production.” Our World in Data, 15 Jan. 2020, ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food. Accessed 2 Dec. 2021.

[15] Shiva, Vandana. Who Really Feeds the World?: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology. Zed Books, 2016.

[16] Shiva, Vandana. Soil Not Oil. ZED Books LTD, 2016.

[17] “Home | Agroecology Knowledge Hub | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.” Fao.org, 2021, www.fao.org/agroecology/home/en/. Accessed 19 Dec. 2021.

[18] “Home | Agroecology Knowledge Hub | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.” Fao.org, 2021, www.fao.org/agroecology/home/en/. Accessed 19 Dec. 2021.

[19] Shiva, Vandana. Who Really Feeds the World?: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology. Zed Books, 2016.

[20] Shiva, Vandana. Who Really Feeds the World?: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology. Zed Books, 2016.

[21] Shiva, Vandana. Who Really Feeds the World?: The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology. Zed Books, 2016. Page

[22]Johnson, Ayana Elizabeth, and Katharine K. Wilkinson. All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, & Solutions for the Climate Crisis. One World, 2021.

[23] Hawken, Paul. Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in one Generation. Penguin Books, 2021.