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Olivia B

May 9, 2025

8

min read

Regenerative Agriculture: Three Expert Perspectives

At the Collective's May event, three panelists discussed how regenerative agriculture can drive value for farmers, businesses, and communities.

Regenerative Agriculture: Three Expert Perspectives

Our soil is in a critical state. Conventional agricultural practices are decimating the lifegiving properties of soil around the globe, releasing additional carbon into the atmosphere and rendering croplands infertile. Already a third of our planet’s soil is degraded, and UNESCO predicts that the number could be as high as 90% by 2050. Nowhere is immune — agricultural systems from giant operations in the Midwest to subsistence farms in rural Malawi are affected by soil degradation.


Regenerative agriculture offers a way forward, using sustainable land management practices to not only avoid doing more harm, but also to restore already degraded soil. At our fourth community networking event, we welcomed three expert panelists to share their perspectives on this pressing agricultural issue: Melissa Spear, Executive Director at Tilth Alliance; Paul Shoemaker, CEO of Carnation Farms; and Richard Moe, Principal Technical Program Manager at Opportunity International’s Digital Innovation Group. 


The Global Impact Collective brought together a diverse group of professionals from farmers to agronomists to professors to discuss this important subject. The topics ranged from the adoption to the economics and future of regenerative agriculture. A few key themes emerged:


Challenges


Establishing Standards of Regenerative Agriculture

Regenerative agriculture is widely defined as farming practices that are minimally disruptive to the soil, exercise crop diversity, utilize cover crops in the off season, and maintain living roots. However, unlike the rigorous criteria built around organic certification, we don’t yet have universally accepted standards and certifications for what it means to claim a company practices regenerative agriculture. If businesses and governments wish to certify and systematize regenerative farming, and if they want consumers to trust the certification, they will need hardier definitions.

  • Greenwashing: “Because it doesn’t have a definition, because there is no legal standard, regenerative agriculture is subject to greenwashing,” Melissa said. She pointed out that many large corporate food companies implement a no-till policy and label themselves regenerative despite still using pesticides and herbicides. “We have to figure out how to clarify and protect the integrity of what it is that we’re calling regenerative.” 

  • “Organic Plus”: Despite the term generally gaining traction, an average consumer will not have a clear idea of what regenerative agriculture means when the label appears on a food item. Paul suggested pitching the concept to consumers as “organic plus,” signifying that regenerative food has all the same qualifications of organic food plus the benefit of reinvigorating the soil. 

Entrenched Political Systems

A long history of political incentives has led the United States to favor large, corporate, conventional farms, often at the expense of smaller ones. Changing this existing bureaucracy is slow and arduous, but it can be done. Europe, for instance, is 10-15% organic, compared to only 1-2% in the US. 

  • Historical precedent: Paul identified three moments in American farming that led to our current agricultural system:  

    • At the end of World War II, pesticides and herbicides were commercialized on a broad scale.

    • Earl Butz, the Secretary of Agriculture under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, promoted a “get big or get out” approach to farming and urged farmers to plant commodity monocrops like corn “from fencerow to fencerow.” 

    • The focus on ethanol created a strong orientation towards conventional agriculture. 

  • Lack of subsidies and financial support: The 2018 Farm Bill allocated $428 billion dollars over five years for agricultural subsidies with the majority of those funds supporting conventional farming. The federal financial support for sustainable farming is extremely low by comparison, and the shift from conventional to regenerative is difficult.


Economic Barriers to Adoption

“It’s expensive to be an organic, regenerative farmer,” Melissa said. “You have higher labor costs, you make different kinds of investments, it’s a more complicated method of farming, and certification costs money.”

  • Slow transition time: The transition period from conventional to organic certified is three years, and during that time the farmer cannot sell the food with an organic premium despite farming organically. 

  • Lack of information: Rich pointed out that small-scale farmers, especially those living rurally and experiencing extreme poverty, often don’t know how to find markets, negotiate for better prices, and understand the economic outputs of their own farms. Existing resources are hard to access without basic literacy and access to the internet. “Getting information to the end user is critical,” he said.


Promising Developments


Farmers Educating Farmers

It’s critical that farmers teach one another. “We know that farmers learn best from farmers,” said Rich. To leverage this insight, Opportunity International is setting up a mentorship program in rural African farming communities and building its educational tools around insights gathered from the local farmers themselves. Rich mentioned OI’s agricultural team in Rwanda has implemented a system of “farmer support agents.” He says, “They get a bicycle, a pair of boots, a smartphone, and training, and in exchange they take the learnings out into their communities and spread it amongst the farmers in that community.”


Melissa also pointed to the Transition to Organic Partnership Program, which helps provide resources to aspiring organic and regenerative farmers. “Paying farmers to talk to farmers: that is really where the information gets transferred, because it’s often not as simple as reading a couple sentences. You need someone there to show you, to explain it to you, to demonstrate.”


Technological Advancements

Recent developments in technology, especially in the AI sector, have exciting implications for agriculture and education. 

  • Precision agriculture: With better instruments, companies and farmers can manage their farms more effectively. Robotic tools that monitor the soil, for instance, can inform users when they need to irrigate, look for pests, know when to apply pesticides, and so forth. “I think this is actually going to reduce the use of some of the more toxic synthetic chemicals on even conventional farms,” Melissa said. “Any stop toward eliminating or reducing the use of those chemicals is good.”

  • Agricultural education: Using generative AI and other tools, Rich and the Digital Innovation Group at Opportunity International are building a WhatsApp chatbot to help rural farmers in the field get answers to their questions. Given many might be illiterate, the bot can take verbal inputs in the farmers’ native languages, and it can analyze pictures of crops to determine diseases and offer advice.


Climate and Economic Resilience

Farms that practice regenerative agriculture withstand both market pressures and extreme weather. "You're more resilient to drought. You’re more resilient to heat. Your yields will remain higher in the face of a drastic climatic event,” Melissa said. 

  • Community relevance: Paul extrapolated this concept into economic resilience for whole communities by extension, using White Oak Pastures as an example. “They employ nearly a couple hundred people in their local community,” he said. “That’s economic resilience at all levels. The way to try to think about economic resilience is to think locally, think regionally, think within the Puget Sound to try to solve the problem in that domain if you have the chance.”

  • Interested customers: If consumers remain willing to pay the price premium for organic food, regenerative products will likely also do well on the market provided the certification issues are solved.

  • Shifting markets: Melissa mentioned market research by the Organic Trade Association that found young people driving demand for organic food. “Younger generations are faced with this existential crisis of climate change, are recognizing that eating is a political act, and that their food choices actually have social, environmental, and economic impacts. And they are willing to make the investment to go organic and regenerative.”


a crowd of attendees mingles in the Tactile event space
Attendees mingle before the panel.

Reflections

As the panel ended, the discussion was far from over with an insightful Q&A and further networking discussion. Dan Schiaffo, a consultant at Slalom who is currently pursuing a master’s program focused on sustainability, was left thinking about how to shift the public’s focus from organic to regenerative. “This sort of conversation is music to my ears. I absolutely love it,” he said.


Pamela Cardone shared the recent documentary Common Ground as a resource. The question of how to inspire conventional farms to use regenerative methods —even those who are hostile towards sustainability — piqued her interest as a financial risk analyst. “We have to show that they will make more money, even without the principles.” She wants to put her risk knowledge to better use in this space.


Several attendees were intimately familiar with the challenges growers face as growers themselves. George Thomas owns an alfalfa farm and recently got a grant from Tilth Alliance to plant a food forest and a prairie strip. The difficulty of growing alfalfa means that getting organic certified is a very unlikely prospect, but he still wants to make the farm more regenerative. “It’s important work. I think I could get there, eventually.”


Andrew Tuttle, a permaculture expert and educator currently restoring a historic farm in Arlington, is creating an online learning platform where participants can partake in virtual tours of regenerative lands. He wanted to stress that there is big investment in the field from nongovernmental sources. “The thing is, regenerative farming can make people really, really rich,” he said. “We don’t talk about that enough, and if it were more widely known, we could convince more farms to make the switch.”


He was excited to attend the event and wished there were more like it in his field. “We just need a pure opportunity to get together because the future of this industry depends on community. Cultural relationship-building comes from working together, and this is the way you do that.”


Zachary Gray from Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies, a company that is using fungi to protect plants from heat stress and difficult environments, echoed that sentiment.


The diversity of backgrounds and professions present at the event highlight just how interdisciplinary the challenge of implementing regenerative agriculture is, and the networking that took place promises that this wicked challenge has ever more brilliant minds working on it. A huge thank you to our panelists and everyone who attended.


Follow us on LinkedIn to stay connected to this vibrant and growing community, and we hope to see you at our next event in the fall.


Resources

  • Coalition for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture (CORA) is a coalition of farmers, businesses, organizations, and activists advocating for progressive programs and policies in support of organic and regenerative agriculture in Washington State. The Tilth Alliance is one of the 11 member organizations.


  • White Oak Pastures transitioned away from industrial agriculture techniques in 1995 and began operating their farm as a living ecosystem. They now raise 10 species of humanely treated animals, and the land is managed to increase living organic matter. They employ more than 155 members of their local community.


  • Common Ground Film is the sequel to Kiss the Ground, which the filmmakers claim inspired the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to put $20 billion toward soil health. The film explores the money, power, and politics intertwined in our broken food system and profiles farmers using regenerative agriculture models that could stabilize the climate, improve health, and grow America’s economy.


  • Transition to Organic Partnership Program is investing up to $100 million over five years in cooperative agreements with non-profit organizations providing technical assistance support, training, education, and outreach to aspiring organic farmers.


  • The Nature Conservancy supports building regenerative food systems and has a variety of resources on regenerative practices, food system solutions, technological innovations, as well as their Foodscapes Report, which provides a global perspective on necessary food systems transitions to meet “this century’s most pressing challenge: the threats posed by climate change, biodiversity loss, and increased demand on the integrity of the global food system.”


  • Regenerative Agriculture Podcast is a podcast for professional growers and agronomists who want to learn about the science and principles of regenerative agriculture systems to increase quality, yield, and profitability.


  • Noble Research Institute was founded in 1945 and is the nation’s largest nonprofit dedicated to farm and ranch management education to build soil health and increase profitability on U.S. farms and ranches. The organization has an entire category of research dedicated to regenerative agriculture.

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Harnessing Human-Centered AI for Societal Good: Insights from Seattle's Design and Impact Community

  • Writer: James Bernard
    James Bernard
  • Oct 18, 2024
  • 6 min read

Updated: Oct 22, 2024

A Malawian farmer uses the UlangiziAI app to better understand how to determine crop health. The app uses a WhatsApp front end to communicate with farmers in a format that is familiar to them.



In the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, it's crucial to pause and consider how we can harness this powerful technology for the betterment of society.

  

Recently, the Global Impact Collective brought together members of Seattle's design and impact community to explore this topic. Our event, "Harnessing Human-Centered AI for Societal Good," featured an engaging panel discussion with experts from diverse backgrounds, offering valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities presented by AI. 



Our Distinguished Panel 


We were fortunate to host three remarkable experts: 

 

1. Ruth Kikin-Gil, Responsible AI Strategist at Microsoft 

2. Jennifer Dumas, Chief Counsel at Allen Institute for AI 

3. Greg Nelson, Chief Technology Officer of Opportunity International 

 

Their varied experiences and perspectives led to a rich, thought-provoking discussion that touched on several key themes. 



Key Discussion Themes 


Defining AI: Beyond the Buzzword 

One of the first challenges we face when discussing AI is defining what we mean by the term. As our panelists pointed out, AI isn't a monolithic entity but rather an umbrella term covering thousands of different technologies.  


This complexity underscores the nuances that should be considered when discussing AI's capabilities and implications. For instance, AI can be categorized into narrow AI, which is designed to perform a specific task (like voice recognition or image classification), and general AI, which aims to understand and reason across a wide range of contexts, though we are still far from achieving this level of sophistication. Moreover, the rapid progress in AI research and development has led to a proliferation of techniques, including machine learning, natural language processing, and neural networks, each with its own set of ethical considerations and operational challenges. 


  • The AI Landscape: According to a 2021 Stanford University report, AI publications have grown by 270% in the last five years, indicating the rapid expansion and diversification of the field and the proliferation of new technologies, as outlined above. 


  • Extractive vs. Generative AI  


    • Extractive AI focuses on analyzing and deriving insights from existing data, greatly reducing the risks. Examples include sentiment analysis tools and recommendation systems. Greg Nelson cited an example where Opportunity International is working on an AI-driven agronomy tool, called UlangiziAI, for smallholder farmers in Malawi. Rather than pull from broadly available online information, the model was built using specific data from the Ministry of Agriculture in Malawi, making the information more relevant for farmers in that country. “This way, we know that farmers are getting the best and most relevant data for their own circumstances,” he said. If you’d like more information on this tool, you can read recent articles on Devex and Bloomberg. 


    • Generative AI, on the other hand, creates new content based on learned patterns. It can be used as a creative prompt but shouldn’t be used as a definitive source of the truth. Generative AI includes technologies like GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) models, which can generate human-like text, and GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks) used in creating realistic images. These tools, while impressive, may not have the depth for specific AI applications in impact and sustainability. 

 

  • Risk Assessment: The level of risk associated with AI applications varies greatly. For instance, an AI system used for movie recommendations carries far less risk than one used in healthcare diagnostics or criminal justice decision-making. 


  • AI as a Tool: Our panelists emphasized that generative AI should be viewed as a creative prompt rather than a source of factual information. A 2022 study by MIT researchers found that even state-of-the-art language models can generate factually incorrect information in up to 30% of cases, highlighting the importance of human oversight and verification. 



Navigating the Policy Gap 

A significant concern in the AI landscape is the lag between technological development and policy creation.  


  • Policy Development Timeline: Historical precedents suggest that comprehensive policy often lags technological innovation by several years. For example, it took nearly a decade after the widespread adoption of social media for the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to come into effect in 2018. 


  • Legal Liability Challenges: The lack of a comprehensive legal liability rubric for AI poses significant challenges. In the U.S., existing laws like the Communications Decency Act (Section 230) provide some protections for online platforms, but they weren't designed with AI in mind.  


  • Cultural Adaptation: As Jennifer Dumas pointed out, "We released a mature technology without the culture having caught up to that." This echoes concerns raised by scholars like Shoshana Zuboff in her book "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism," which argues that our social and economic systems are struggling to adapt to the rapid pace of technological change. 


  • Ethical Frameworks: The discussion brought to mind Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, highlighting the need for ethical frameworks in AI development. While these laws were fictional, they've inspired real-world efforts like the IEEE's Ethically Aligned Design guidelines and the EU's Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI. 



Ensuring Informed Consent in Diverse Contexts 

The concept of informed consent becomes increasingly complex in the context of AI, especially when considering global applications, and users from diverse backgrounds, some of whom may not even be familiar with major technological platforms like Google.  

 

For instance, in many developing countries, the lack of digital literacy can lead to users unknowingly consenting to data practices that exploit their information. Additionally, the concept of informed consent is not uniform across cultures, which complicates the ethical deployment of AI systems globally. Engaging local communities in the design and implementation of AI systems is crucial to ensuring that their voices and needs are prioritized. 

 

  • Digital Divide: According to the International Telecommunication Union, as of 2023, approximately 2.7 billion people worldwide still lack internet access. This digital divide raises questions about how to ensure informed consent in regions with limited exposure to technology. One way to overcome this, according to our panelists, is to use existing technologies, such as WhatsApp, as the front end for AI-generated tools on the backend. 


  • AI in Emerging Markets: There's a risk of perpetuating digital colonialism through AI implementation in emerging markets if practitioners don’t involve local communities in decision making.  


    Getting information on crop health using the UlangiziAI app in Malawi.

A 2021 report by Mozilla highlighted how AI systems trained primarily on data from Western countries often perform poorly when applied in different cultural contexts. Greg Nelson reinforced this notion by talking about the importance of using locally available datasets and local language to train models.  


  • Stakeholder Identification: Our panelists emphasized the importance of considering all stakeholders affected by an AI system, beyond just the immediate users. This aligns with the concept of "stakeholder theory" in business ethics, which argues that companies should create value for all stakeholders, not just shareholders. 


Building Trust in AI 

Trust is fundamental to the widespread adoption and ethical use of AI yet remains a significant barrier for broader adoption.  


  • Current Trust Levels: A 2022 global survey by Edelman found that only 37% of respondents trust AI companies to "do what is right." This underscores the point made by Ruth Kikin-Gil that "the technology hasn't earned the trust yet." 


  • Misinformation Risks: The potential for AI to generate and spread misinformation is a significant concern. A 2020 study published in Nature Machine Intelligence found that AI-generated text was rated as more credible than human-written text in certain contexts, highlighting the need for robust detection and verification systems. 


  • AI in Critical Decisions: As our panelists noted, when people's lives depend on AI, such as in healthcare or criminal justice, the margin for error must be extremely low. A 2016 ProPublica investigation into COMPAS, an AI system used in criminal risk assessment, found significant racial biases in its predictions, underscoring the importance of rigorous testing and oversight. 


  • Inclusive AI Development: Building trust with underrepresented groups who have historically been marginalized by technology is crucial. Initiatives like the AI for Good Foundation are working to ensure AI benefits all of humanity, not just a select few. 


AI in the Broader Context of Technology 

Finally, our discussion touched on how AI fits into the broader landscape of technological advancement: 

 

  • Over-reliance on Technology: The tendency to over-rely on new technologies, as exemplified by early GPS adoption, is a well-documented phenomenon in technology adoption studies. A 2022 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that people tend to defer to AI recommendations even when they conflict with their own judgement. This means that developers, policymakers, and users must fully understand the limitations of AI and remain critical thinkers when using it. 


  • Amara's Law: Named after Roy Amara, this principle suggests we tend to overestimate technology's short-term effects while underestimating its long-term impact. This is evident in the history of AI itself - the field has experienced several "AI winters" where hype outpaced actual capabilities, followed by periods of significant but less publicized progress. 



Join the Conversation 


This event was part of an ongoing series aimed at professionals working at the intersection of human-centered design and social impact. Our next event, focusing on food waste, is scheduled for January 2025. 

 

To stay informed about future events, follow the Global Impact Collective on LinkedIn. If you're interested in learning more about our work or discussing potential collaborations, visit our website or reach out to us at info@globalimpactcollective.net. 

 

As AI continues to shape our world, it's crucial that we engage in these discussions and work together to ensure that this powerful technology is harnessed for the greater good. We invite you to be part of this important conversation. 



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