Leave It Better Than You Found It

Regenerative agriculture is more than just a philosophy, it's a way of life

Dear friends,

At this point, I think it’s pretty obvious that I love food.

I love making it, I love eating it, I love the curiosity I feel when I'm inspired by a new recipe of my creation.  

Preparing food—like farming—is a labour of love. It requires meticulous and repetitive actions that eventually produce the fruits of our labour. It is an endless pursuit of learning.

It demands thinking to constantly evolve, asks us to have a growth mindset, and rewards us time and time again for our efforts.

It is best consumed in the company of others, and it usually tastes best outside.

I, like hopefully you, love food.

But let me ask you a question: The food that you eat on a day-to-day basis, do you know where it comes from? More importantly, do you know how it’s produced?

When we farm, we plant seeds in the soil, which grow into nutritious fruits and vegetables for our consumption. As the plant grows, it absorbs nutrients from the soil, helping it grow into that bright orange, dense carrot filled with beta-carotene, fibre, vitamin K1, potassium, and antioxidants. That carrot goes great in soups, stews, and stir-fries, while also improving eyesight.

This ability to benefit from nutrients found in fruits and vegetables is thanks to something known as the Soil Food Web. The Soil Food Web is a community of organisms that live in the soil and break down organic matter, cycle nutrients, and support plant growth. It is made up of insects, earthworms, and microscopic creatures such as fungi and bacteria.

The Soil Food Web is the soil's operating system, and when in balance, it creates a state of homeostasis, replenishing and maintaining abundant ecosystems—not dissimilar to a thriving gut biome.

With a healthy biome, the soil can provide the plant with all the nutrients it needs while protecting it from pests and diseases, drought and flooding, and even reducing the effects of climate change through carbon sequestration.

Healthy soil is the most important foundation of a healthy farm ecosystem.

Yet, most of the common farming techniques used in industrial agriculture—such as synthetic fertilizer application, tilling, and monocropping—degrade soil over time, break this food web, and leave soil unusable, says Food Print magazine.

When soil becomes unusable and the demands of capitalism increase, we turn to cutting down forests to keep growing food. Old-growth forests are often targeted because they contain rich, thriving Soil Food Webs beneath their towering, moss-covered pines—trees that have stood for centuries.

As the soil degrades and ecosystems fail to be replenished, climate change intensifies.

According to Regeneration International, “At current rates of soil destruction (i.e., decarbonization, erosion, desertification, chemical pollution), within fifty years we will not only suffer serious damage to public health due to a degraded food supply characterized by diminished nutrition and loss of important trace minerals, but we will literally no longer have enough arable topsoil to feed ourselves.”

Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?

Bear with me, because this is where regenerative agriculture comes in.

Regenerative agriculture is about rebuilding this broken web.

Regenerative agriculture aims to improve the land rather than degrade it. It aims to do so using technologies that regenerate and revitalize the soil and the environment while producing high-quality, nutrient-dense food that leads to productive farms, healthy communities, and thriving economies, says Regeneration International.

It’s about restoring ecosystems through natural processes and reintroducing microbes into the soil through various methods, such as biochar, Indigenous Microorganisms (IMO), bokashi, diverse composts, cover crops, rotational grazing, and foliar sprays. By prioritizing soil health it creates an environment hospitable for homeostatic growth.

We learned all of this during our time on the farm in Belize. The two things we spent the most time doing were creating biochar and building and tending to two massive compost piles.

Biochar is a charcoal-like substance made by burning organic material, such as wood chips, leaf litter, or dead plants, in a container with very little oxygen, under a controlled process called pyrolysis.

As the materials burn, they release little to no contaminating fumes and are converted into a stable form of carbon that can’t easily escape into the atmosphere, says Regeneration International.

On the farm, we had large piles of unusable wood to be cleared, giving us the perfect opportunity to create biochar. Alex dug out a massive cone-shaped hole in the ground that we strategically layered with various biomass. The flames licked up the dirt walls and broke down hundreds of pieces of dead wood. When left to cool, the biochar crumbled beautifully between our fingers into a carbon-neutral fertilizer.

We then sprinkled the biochar over the floor of the goat shelter, so the goats could poop on top of it and “activate it.”

Activating biochar means charging it with nutrients and beneficial microbes, making it more effective in improving soil conditions and supporting plant growth. Once the biochar is activated, it can be added to degraded soil, helping it retain water and nutrients, which leads to better crop yields and reduces fertilizer requirements, according to Forbes magazine.

The second method we learned about was compost. Compost is made from the decomposition of biomass to create natural fertilizer. There are many different ways to create compost, but here’s how we did it:

We started by clearing out an area about five feet deep and eight by eight in width and length (yes, the pile was massive). We gathered four big piles of biomass: straw, weeds, leaves, and cow manure, and poured buckets of Effective Microorganisms (EM)—a type of microbe—over the leaves. We arranged the compost in layers, over and over, until the hole was full and the piles were gone. Each morning, Alex measured the temperature of the compost. Once it reached 160°F, it was ready to be turned. To turn the compost, you have to move the layer that’s on the bottom to the top, and so on, until one full rotation is complete. Yes, that’s an incredible amount of work. You repeat this process for an extended period of time until it’s ready to be added to the soil.

And although these processes are laborious, it is an enriching experience to give back to the soil and the earth.

This fostered in me a connection with the land, exemplifying what regenerative agriculture has to offer us.

Regenerative agriculture is more than a practice or a philosophy; it’s a way of life—one that was established and led by Black, Indigenous, and other communities of colour for millennia, says The Nature Conservancy.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

But how do we implement this on a scale large enough to replace a broken system. That’s a question for another essay. For now, we start small—in our own backyards.

Because the heart of regenerative agriculture is no foreign subject—it’s the basics we learned in kindergarten, and therefore, something we’re all capable of.

Leave it better than you found it.