It hardly matters if you’re dealing with food justice activists or tech-startup entrepreneurs. Small, independent farmers or the corporate leadership of agribusiness giants. Policy wonks or research scientists. Everyone is talking about regenerative agriculture. Some even say it’s the future—and not just of farming. The most fervent advocates say so-called “regenerative” practices have the power to restore the balance between human beings and nature, a solution finally big enough to save our beleaguered planet from all of us.  

“With such a small percentage of people trying to do all the farming in the country, we have a huge rupture between people and ecosystems—there’s not enough human care involved,” said Liz Carlisle, a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and co-first author of the study. “In an agro-ecosystem that’s being managed regeneratively, there would be a lot of monitoring and observation and adjusting and care of plants and soil. We have people farming tens of thousands of acres, but they can’t possibly observe at that level what’s happening.”