top of page

Loading Post

Olivia B

Apr 9, 2025

3

min read

Regenerative Agriculture: Healing Soils to Heal the World

Regenerative agriculture offers a new way to restore soil health worldwide.

Regenerative Agriculture: Healing Soils to Heal the World

“Regenerative agriculture” is a concept we often hear, but what does it mean and what does it do? To understand its aims, we must first understand soil and its place in the environment. “Soil” and “dirt” are terms often used interchangeably, but they differ in critical ways: put simply, soil is alive while dirt is dead, and we are turning the former into the latter at a high rate. This is concerning and potentially catastrophic for our environment and economy, so the difference is worth exploring in more detail.  


Soil vs. Dirt

Soil is a structured, complex, thriving biosphere that supports and promotes all manner of life. Its fertility comes from organic matter that hosts a variety of microorganisms, which in turn create stability in this tiny ecosystem by absorbing carbon, recycling nutrients, and supplying vital resources like water and gas. A healthy soil might take thousands of years to form. It’s also the planet’s second-largest carbon sink, topped only by the oceans. 


Dirt, meanwhile, is composed of clay, sand, and silt. The minerals it contains are only accessible to plants once they’ve been processed by microorganisms. Soil might contain dirt, but dirt is not enough to support life on its own. Soil becomes dirt through degradation, which removes its fertile properties and releases its trapped carbon into the atmosphere. In short, soil is a precious and increasingly limited resource. 


Soil Degradation: A Global Problem

Alarming metrics are everywhere: Earth's soil is vanishing. According to the FAO, fully a third globally has already degraded. UNESCO projects that 90% of the planet's terrestrial surface could be degraded by 2050. From 2015 to 2019, 100 million hectares were lost annually, totaling an area twice the size of Greenland over those four years. Impoverished areas disproportionately carry this burden: today, Africa bears 40% of our degraded soil, and the rest mostly occupies communities already afflicted by food insecurity.  


Poor land management and harmful farming practices over the last century are largely responsible for this damage. For instance, monocropping, growing a single crop year after year, degrades soil by continuously diminishing the same nutrients, killing the microorganisms that could replenish them. Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides like fumigants can also be lethal to soil dwellers (and detrimental to human health, as well). Heavy farm machinery and excessive tillage cause soil compaction and erosion, which hinders water absorption and filtration and makes the land more susceptible to flooding and desertification. Unsurprisingly, this leads to dire consequences not just for the environment but for human livelihoods, and the economy: one study estimated that damage from soil erosion alone globally costs $400 billion per year.  


The American Dust Bowl of the 1930s is one potent example of soil degradation’s very real perils. Drought, heat, and corrosive farming methods resulted in severe soil erosion on a massive scale, leading to dust blizzards in the Great Plains that devastated entire states and impoverished millions of people during the Great Depression. The lands affected have still not fully recovered nearly a century later. To avoid repeating history, something must be done to reverse degradation, and here regenerative agriculture enters the picture. 


Restoring Soils with Regenerative Agriculture

Where past sustainable farming has focused on simply avoiding degradation, regenerative agriculture aims to not only prevent further damage, but also actively improve the quality of the earth. It strives to offer a holistic approach, starting with the soil but also accounting for the plants, animals, and workers, essentially building agroecosystems that form a mutually beneficial relationship with nature rather than a purely extractive one.  


In the micro, regenerative agriculture revitalizes soil by reintroducing organic matter, prioritizing the biodiversity of its inhabitants, encouraging water absorption, and restoring ground nutrients. In the macro, regenerative practices lead to carbon recapture, healthier and more robust crops, less food insecurity, and more economically bountiful yields.  


So, what methods does regenerative agriculture use? There are many. Cover cropping maintains soil quality by ensuring the earth is never bare, which decreases erosion during the non-growing season. Intercropping (the practice of growing multiple crops in the same place simultaneously), rotational grazing by livestock, and crop rotation add nutrients to the soil, disrupt pests that thrive on monocrops, and increase yield as well as populations of beneficial bacteria. This allows farmers to use fewer pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, which further keeps soil microbiomes diverse and thriving. Agroforestry protects crops from wind and water damage. Limiting excessive tilling and heavy farm equipment keeps soil absorbent and aerated, potentially garnering greater yields that would eclipse efficiency gains created by those tools. 


Many of these methods have long been used by small farms and Indigenous peoples. Native American tribes, for instance, practiced intercropping with the “Three Sisters”: beans, squash, and corn. Now that regenerative agriculture is gaining wider traction, however, we could revolutionize food systems on a global scale — healing soil, boosting economies, and making the future more fertile for all.


Want to learn more? On May 7, the Global Impact Collective will host our next Community Networking Event at Tactile Studios and bring together a panel of regenerative agriculture experts. Join us for a deep discussion of motivations and challenges to adopting regenerative practices, the use of technology, how impact is being measured, the role of policy/standards, and the importance of partnerships and collaboration between businesses and farmers. We hope to see you there!

Agriculture

Recent Posts

Women's History Month 2025: Five Women Who Shaped Our Food Systems
Food Waste Prevention in the Pacific Northwest: Three Expert Perspectives
Embracing the Second Era of Sustainable Sourcing

Design Swarm for Circularity: Harnessing Our Collective Genius

  • Writer: Carey Renn
    Carey Renn
  • Feb 12, 2024
  • 2 min read

The Global Impact Collective kicked off GreenBiz24 with our session, “Design Swarms® for Circularity: Harnessing Our Collective Genius,” and it was a huge success!

 

James Bernard, co-founder of the Collective, and Judith Hochhauser Schneider, founding partner of the Collective hosted 75 participants from over 50 organizations, representing marketing, technology, finance, corporate social sustainability, and everything in between. Organizations who attended included Microsoft, Starbucks, Levi Strauss & Co., Diageo, WWF, USAID, Toro, KPMG, Aldi, and others.

 

Surya Vanka, Founding Advisor of the Global Impact Collective and founder of Authentic Design, led the group through his design thinking process, Design Swarms, and challenged the room to develop truly transformative ideas that will help operationalize circularity within companies.  Over the course of three hours, participants brainstormed solutions to the circularity challenge that can meaningfully impact our collective approach to this complex problem (more on this in our summary blog post coming out at the end of the week).



Participants at the GreenBiz session, Design Swarms for Circularity: Harnessing Our Collective Genius
Participants at the GreenBiz session, Design Swarms for Circularity: Harnessing Our Collective Genius

We especially want to thank our Lightning Speakers for inspiring the room to think about circularity holistically. They spoke about approaching the problem with curiosity, having a willingness to not only collaborate but to seek mutually beneficial solutions, and aligning corporate strategy and profitability with sustainability objectives.

 

Erin Simon, Vice President, Plastic Waste + Business at World Wildlife Fund, kicked us off with an insightful talk entitled, “Why You Should Be Like a Clownfish Today,” inspiring participants with examples of collaboration in nature such as the clownfish and sea anemone. In this demonstration of mutualism, the clownfish relies on the anemone for safe harbor and in return the clownfish provides food to the anemone. Like the clownfish and sea anemone, organizations need to tap into mutualism both internally, across departments, and externally with their suppliers, partners, and customers. She argued that businesses, governments, and communities should similarly collaborate to tackle global challenges in support of a circular economy.

 

Jennifer DuBuisson, Senior Director of Sustainability at Levi Strauss & Co. spoke to, “The Importance of a Questioning Mindset,” encouraging the participants to disrupt the status quo by engaging in the transformative power of asking the right questions. Jennifer advocated for a questioning mindset to uncover opportunities for innovation and improve consumer engagement in the circular economy.

 

Meghann Glavin, Director, Sustainability & Social Impact at Starbucks asked, “How Do You Turn a 200,000 Ton Cruise Ship?” emphasizing the importance of aligning incentives within businesses to foster sustainability. Meghann discussed how accountability and collaboration across functions can drive significant environmental progress. She highlighted the need for a cultural shift towards both optimism and realism in facing sustainability challenges and inspired the room to work smarter together.

 

Jim Hanna, Director of Sustainability - Construction Operations & Datacenter Equipment at Microsoft was our final Lightning speaker on how “The Business Case is not Dead.” Jim emphasized the importance of embedding sustainability into corporate strategy, illustrating how aligning sustainability efforts with business metrics can overcome internal resistance and drive change and greater impact.

 


Participants at the GreenBiz session, Design Swarms for Circularity: Harnessing Our Collective Genius

All four speakers inspired the room to think differently during our design session and to share these learnings with their own organizations after GreenBiz. If you’d like to connect with either Judith or James to learn more about how to utilize design thinking in your organization, please reach out at info@globalimpactcollective.net.

 
 
bottom of page