FAQ
What is Regenerative Agriculture?
Like Love, RegenAg cannot be captured in a single definition. We can only try to describe aspects:
- RegenAg is a holistic approach to establish flourishing, productive landscapes acknowledging the immense and even impenetrable complexity of creation and the need to abide by the inherent laws.
- RegenAg combines our forefathers knowledge with up to date research of scientists all around the globe to meet today’s standards and needs.
- RegenAg as a carbon sequestering way of agriculture focuses on regenerating soil through humus build-up while at the same time storing excess CO2 from the atmosphere in the humus content of the soil.
- RegenAg boosts soil properties like fertility, looseness and decompaction, water and nutrient retention, increased resilience against erosion and climate change. Strong and healthy soil allows strong and healthy plant growth. Strong and healthy plant growth leads to stable crops and more nutrient dense forage.
- RegenAg as a holistic approach is applicable in any agricultural enterprise: farming, ranching, husbandry, vegetable, fruit plantations. It aims at regenerating the productivity of landscapes and communities.
- RegenAg mitigates climate change and desertification and stabilizes brittle landscapes
How does Regenerative Agriculture work?
The RegenAg principles
RegenAg supports the upward cycle of soil and landscape regeneration. It aims at humus build up. Humus boosts the soil properties like fertility, looseness and decompaction, water and nutrient retention, increased resilience against erosion and climate change. It goes without saying that stronger, healthier soil allows stronger, healthier plant growth.
This is basically achieved by:
- Keeping soil covered at all times
- Changing tilling habits (conservation tillage, no till, biological tilling)
- Using green manure and cover crops
- Taking proper care of the soil food web
- Applying certain quantities of humus as a kick start
- Reducing agrochemicals to zero
- Mulching
- Mixed crops
- Crop rotation
- Planned livestock grazing
- Making use of the synergies of divers farm enterprises
Does Regenerative Agriculture lead to higher yields?
Many farmers around the world have reported substantial yield increases with the introduction of RegenAg to their farms. Such an increase depends on so many different factors such as the type of enterprise, how fast, and how completely a farmer transitions to RegenAg, how depleted the soil was before regeneration started, the climate, the soil type, the crop variety and many others. Therefore an increase in yield is not predictable.
Is RegenAg profitable?
Is Regenerative Agriculture time intensive?
Does Regenerative Agriculture save costs?
Yes.
Stable humus in the soil boosts soil properties and leads to strong healthy plants, making chemical fertilizers superfluous. The much lamented yearly increase of chemical fertilizers and their cost will not trouble your business anymore. Healthy plants do not easily fall victim to visiting pests, as pests are basically nature’s hangmen to do away with what is not fully productive. Thus, aided by mechanical pest control and other practises, your business will feel a reduction of chemical pest control costs and eventually farmers do not have to invest in chemical pest control any more.
Your input cost reduction varies with the amount of humus you want to/can apply on your farm and how completely and fast you can/want to implement the corresponding RegenAg practices. Basically, the more humus you apply in alignment with RegenAg practises the less N-P-K fertilizer, pesticides herbicides and fungicides you will need. In fact, all these common agro chemicals lead to humus destruction and soil depletion, effects which RegenAg reverses if properly carried out. There is a way of transitioning from conventional to regenerative farming, but we are afraid there is no stopping half way and enjoying the full benefit. (you would not think of wearing your dress suit with bathroom slippers, would you?
Depending on your farm enterprise you can also minimise machines, their maintenance and fossil fuel costs. As RegenAg core value is to fight climate change through sequestering atmospheric carbon, it is also designed to reduce fossil fuel, leaching and oxidizing of nutrients and any other form of waste. Therefore, it works more based on tools than (big)machines. Since machines often set the spacing of your crops, the combination of using tools and humus leads to bio intensive production and from there to higher yield/m2, especially applicable in vegetable farming.
To enjoy the full potential of RegenAg it is advisable to combine at least 2 or 3 farm enterprises. The waste of one enterprise will be the gold of the others.
What is Humus?
Humus is a habitat and a soil organism that enables thriving, biodiverse soil life, called the soil food web.
Humus basically consists of:
- Space for life, air and water
- Dead Organic Matter (DMO)
- The soil biome
Pure mineral soil is compacted (strong soil) There is neither space for roots to penetrate or for water to be retained, nor for the soil biome. Even if the mineral soil contains important nutrients, they are not available for plants, because there is no soil biome to make the nutrients plant soluble.
Dead Organic Matter (DOM) is anything dead that was once alive. God created the circle of life and death: from soil you are taken, to soil you shall go. So anything that is born will die and anything that dies will feed and be transformed into new life.
The soil biome consists of visible and invisible creatures, the Microbiome. The soil biome works as the soil food web and feeds plants with what they need whenever they need it. They are nature’s plant-feeding-experts. They do not only feed crops, but also forage and thus your life stock and of course you, your family and your community. It is wise to treat the soil biome with respect.
Another basic function of humus, apart from feeding plants and boosting soil properties, is the creation of more humus. To fully function and multiply on its own, the critical mass is a minimum of 5% humus content of the soil. Unfortunately most arable land on our planet today can only boast of 2-3% in temperate climate and even below 1% under arid and semi arid conditions. For tropic climate and sandy soil, which are notorious for poor humus enhancement resulting in erosion and fast depletion, the terra preta technology has brought surprising results and proved high potentials for humus enhancement under such conditions.
Why is Humus Good for the Soil?
Humus is the major player for your soil’s qualities. These qualities are called properties of the soil such as
- Fertility
- Looseness and decompaction
- Water and nutrient retention
- Increased resilience against erosion and climate change
It goes without saying that stronger, healthier soil allows stronger, healthier plant growth and thus stable and increased crops.
No matter how favourable the mineral content of your soil is, if there is no humus, your plants cannot take up these minerals well.
What is Humus Good for?
Depending on how humus is produced it can be used as
- fertilizer
- means to build up stable humus in the soil
- basis for soil production
- mulch as ground cover
How is Humus Produced?
Humus is created through composting. Composting is a natural process. In undisturbed ecosystems like forests, bush and virgin land it happens on its own.
Many agricultural practises disrupt this natural process. RegenAg protects and works with the natural process of composting.
Today scientists supply us with new information on how we can monitor the natural process of composting to make it faster and to avoid too much loss of nutrients. Such produced humus is a multiple tool.
What does Humus do for farmers?
Humus boosts the soil properties and leads to
- Strong, healthy plants – reduced losses
- Longer irrigation intervals – less irrigation costs
- Biointensive spacing for vegetable farms – higher yields
- Need for less to even no agro-chemicals – less agro-chemical costs
- Nutrient enriched crops – happy customers
Can Humus Control weeds and pest?
Humus in combination with mulching, cover crops, and bio-intensive spacing plays a key role in weed and pest control.
God has created everything for a purpose, also weeds and pests. Weeds show where the soil suffers from deficiencies and lying fallow. Pests are nature’s hangmen. They are the first on the spot to bring plants, which are not fully productive, back to the death and life cycle to use them for new life.
Keeping this in mind, RegenAg uses many practises to control weeds without contaminating ecosystems with toxic agro-chemicals. To understand the weeds’ purpose enables a farmer to take adequate measures.