Regenerative agriculture for food security and ecological resilience: illustrating global biophysical and social spreading potentials

Published 2023 – As part of the Earth4All project, collaborators have submitted this paper to delve further into the steps to be taken to widely transform our conventional agricultural system to provide food security and improve ecological resilience in a rapidly changing global climate. This article analyses the potential positive effects on soil ecology and crop yield of a global-scale transition to regenerative agriculture, while also considering social spreading dynamics that determine the adoption of such practices by farmers.

The authors argue that the transition to a global regenerative agricultural system cannot be achieved without considering the deeper societal processes driving the effective dissemination and adoption of the change. Furthermore, the surrounding factors and conditions such as farmers’ political and institutional embeddedness, public opinion, the economic situation and the climate conditions they face within their region or community, as potential barriers hindering the transition, have to be taken into account.

Therefore, it is not only the farmers’ responsibility to drive the change but also the politicians, institutions, companies and individual actors’ which, all together, will support such transition processes.