California has long been at the forefront of climate and environmental policy. Last year, the state became the first to officially adopt a statewide definition of regenerative agriculture.
The move reinforces the state’s climate goals, which identify natural and working lands as a key part of reaching carbon neutrality.
“This was about aligning state policy and programs, especially our grant programs, around a shared definition throughout our state government,” said California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary Karen Ross.
California’s resulting outcome-based framework focuses on eight key areas that aim to improve and restore soil health. Environmental leaders say healthier soils can store more carbon, improve water retention during drought and make farms more resilient to climate change.
While the definition outlines the results, it does not prescribe the specific practices to achieve them, leaving farmers, researchers and policymakers to navigate what regenerative agriculture looks like across California’s diverse farming ecosystem.
Policy plotted
One place exploring what that looks like is Maples Farm in Yolo County. The demonstration farm is run by the Center for Land-Based Learning.
The nonprofit uses the property to teach farming practices that are designed to improve soil health and support wildlife. Executive Director Mary Kimball thinks of the term as a spectrum.
“I think of regenerative agriculture as something that is a continuum of improvement over the farm to improve your soil health, both in terms of organic matter in the soil as well as just soil structure,” Kimball said, adding that depending on resources and the size of the farm, reaching regenerative outcomes could take anywhere from a handful of years to decades.
Those outcomes can be achieved in different ways. Delaney Sondag runs the nonprofit’s Farm and Climate Program where she teaches current and future farmers about some of the guiding principles like cover crops and keeping living roots in the soil year-round.
“It’s really taking these principles and identifying practices that you can put into action,” Sondag said.
Sondag said farmers could develop a functional ecosystem that — over time — would do a lot of the work for them.
“You don’t have to apply as many inputs every year. You probably don’t even have to irrigate as much because you have all of that, those living roots in the soil that are healthy and can take up water,” Sondag said.
Kimball said farmers will need a lot of support to transition farming practices.
“Transition to regenerative, it takes time and it does need to have the society at large’s help from that standpoint. I mean it isn’t something that is a magic pill,” Kimball said.
She said the state’s definition could lead to grants to support that transition in the future.
“Not everyone wants to define things, but I think that when you do define things at least as we were saying, it helps to start the conversation and that’s important,” she said.
A two-year debate
But agreeing on what regenerative agriculture means proved almost as challenging as putting it into practice.
California’s definition was preceded by two years of public debate — mainly between organic growers and environmentalists, who pushed for a strict ban on synthetic pesticides, and conventional farmers who advocated for a more flexible definition.
“Lots of times in California agriculture, while people might think we're one monolithic kind of entity … . There's always going to be different approaches,” Ross said.
While soil health is at the foundation of California’s definition, measuring other practices like animal welfare and sustainable pest management measurements also serve as indicators for reducing environmental harm.
UC Davis professor Amélie Gaudin has been researching resilient agroecosystems for over the past 20 years. She said providing evidence of improvement is important, particularly for public funding.
“That's why these definitions become very tangible because it works hand-by-hand with funding, technical assistance and incentive programs for farmers to get cost-share help in implementing some of those practices,” Gaudin said.
Because California’s definition measures outcomes instead of banning specific practices, it leaves room for farms to reduce their dependence on synthetic pesticides over time.
“There's definitely an eagerness and a desire to get to a place where synthetics are not so used or less dependent upon,” Ross said.
Gaudin is optimistic the framework is a starting point to allow more growers to implement environmentally-conscious practices.
“It can work. It can work at scale. What we need is to remove the locks across the food systems, including technical assistance, so that we can scale up and scale out adoption of those practices,” she said.
This story was produced by the Climate Solutions Studio, a project of the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative and its partner newsrooms. CapRadio is a founding partner.
