Regenerative Agronomy

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

There doesn’t seem to be any one universal definition of regenerative agriculture. However, to get the best picture of what regenerative farming can look like, there is nobody better to explain the concept than John Kempf. John founded Advancing Eco Agriculture and says it’s about managing biology and not just managing chemistry.

Kempf… “ Historically, mainstream agronomy focused on balancing plant attrition to achieve the highest yields possible. That was almost a singular goal. With primarily a chemistry oriented approach, and there were very good reasons for that. The fundamental reason is simple: that chemistry was the one thing that we were able to measure readily. We could measure soil mineral balance profiles in laboratories and plant nutritional balance and so forth, and we didn't have the ready capability of measuring biology. So where agronomy is shifting and evolving now is getting into the space of managing biology. And even to a degree, I think \with our work with changing internal plant environments, also changing biophysics. So we're measuring and managing biology and biophysics in addition to chemistry. Not discarding chemistry, but just saying actually the picture is more complex than just measuring chemistry alone.”

Kempf says this requires a more nuanced and complex approach, which is why he recently helped create Field Lark AI to inform better decisions.