Measuring Regenerative Agriculture
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
The promise of regenerative agriculture to work with nature rather than against it is enticing. But is that how it plays out? And if we can work with nature, how can we quantify those benefits for investment returns? Kevin Wright and his team at Manulife want to model the impacts of regenerative farming and determine which practices to roll out on their farms across 17 different states and three Canadian provinces.
Wright… “ We entered into a relationship with, with Downforce Technologies a few years ago with the intent of. Conducting a comprehensive analysis of soil health and stored organic carbon across a subset of our portfolio. And that collaboration was really aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of regenerative farming practices. And those impacts on soil, organic carbon levels. So this project really encompasses a detailed assessment across a big part of our farming acres. And what we wanted to do, I guess the outcome we were looking for, we're wanting to leverage the modeling, the data analytics. The soil science expertise that Downforce provides us and really model out what are the impacts that, on the ground that we see. That are generated from the practices, the sustainability and regenerative practices that we incorporate, into the farms.”
Wright said these practices can help the land they farm themselves and those that are leased out to tenant farmers.
