What is Regenerative Agriculture?

Regenerative agriculture can help us stop climate change. It can also help us produce more nutritious food, more resilient crops, and less wasted water. Too good to be true? Watch this video to discover what is regenerative agriculture and why it’s so important.

EIT Food is helping farmers and businesses across Europe to transition to regenerative agriculture. To learn more about what we’re doing and how you can join the regenerative agriculture revolution, visit www.eitfood.eu/regenerativeagriculture.

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Script:

It is no secret that we are running out of time to protect our planet.
For millennia, we lived in harmony with nature. But modern agriculture is destroying the very habitat we depend on.

Intensive farming releases 30% of all greenhouse gases and erodes 24 billion tonnes of topsoil every year. That is an area the size of Greece!
If this goes on, we may have just sixty harvests left. But what if the solution lay right beneath our feet?

Regenerative Agriculture restores the natural rhythm of our ecosystem, reviving landscapes for generations to come. The secret lies in the soil.
Unlike depleted soils, healthy, organic topsoil retains water, absorbs nutrients, and stores carbon.

The idea is simple - just five key principles:

1. Do Not Disturb
Firstly, instead of tilling the soil, we leave it in peace – keeping carbon in the ground--- and helping microbes to thrive.

2. Cover up
We keep the ground covered with plants throughout the year to help us protect and build healthy soils.

3. No chemicals, please
Pesticides and fertilisers can kill important microbes and make crops vulnerable to disease. We lose the chemicals and let nature regulate itself.

4. Boost biodiversity
We create a rich ecosystem of many plants and animals living alongside one another, just as nature intended.

5. Listen to the land
And finally, regenerative agriculture looks different in different places and it’s important that we always listen to the land.

By working with nature, we can produce more nutritious food, more resilient crops, and less wasted water.

What is more, we could stop or even reverse climate change. If the world’s soils stored just 0.4% more carbon every year, it could offset all human C02 emissions.

Regenerative Agriculture gives us the chance to improve food quality, protect farmers’ livelihoods, and safeguard the land we depend on.
It is a profitable, sustainable system that makes sense for farmers and food-lovers alike.

So, come and join the regenerative agriculture revolution.

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Thanks to

Matteo Mazzola
Paola Archetti and family
Andrea Fasolo
Federico San Bonifacio
Manuel Urquiza
Alfonso Chico de Guzman
Yanniek Schoonhoven
Jose Luis Garcia
Miguel Angel Llorente
Tomasso Gizzi

Created by
Storytravelers
Caspar Daniël Diederik | film and edit
Nacho Spinola | additional film
Silvan Bouman | motion graphics
Joseph Gridley | narrator
Flo Robertson | Copywriting