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| Globally agriculture is the main driver of deforestation and land conversion and food systems account for more than a third of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions making food production a major contributor to climate change. At the same time agriculture is extremely vulnerable to shifts and variability in temperature and rainfall which are expected to increase because of climate change. More and more farmers and particularly the smallholders who produce about a third of the world’s food are struggling with harvest and livestock losses while trying to adapt to increasingly irregular weather conditions. However the United Nations Food System Summit (UNFSS) in September 2021 pointed out that the global food system also holds important keys to keeping global warming below 2 °C. With the right investments in research innovation and smallholder farming UNFSS argued that it is possible to transform global food systems in ways that simultaneously reduce climate risks hunger and poverty and improve access to healthy diets while also enhancing biodiversity. As part of the European Green Deal the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies together address the challenging transition of European Union (EU) agriculture towards a net 55% reduction in GHG emissions by 2030 with the aim of making European food production the global standard for sustainability. This is to be achieved by substantially strengthening diverse efforts to tackle climate change protect the environment and restore and preserve biodiversity in European agricultural landscapes. Here the concept of regenerative agriculture is increasingly viewed as a promising set of principles to meet the main goals and targets of the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies. Regenerative agriculture aims to maintain agricultural productivity increase biodiversity and in particular restore and maintain soil biodiversity and enhance ecosystem services including carbon capture and storage. Our evaluation of the concept of regenerative agriculture has revealed some clear advantages when it comes to developing policies for sustainable agriculture. Regenerative agriculture is not viewed as defined a priori by a given set of rules and practices; instead the goals that should be achieved are set and then practices and new technologies are adopted over time which contribute to achieve these goals. Hence the concept is viewed as broader and less prescriptive compared with other related concepts such as agroecology organic farming conservation farming and carbon farming and does not exclude the use of for example modern plant and animal breeding technology tilling use of inorganic fertilisers or pesticides but aims for a limited more targeted use. Although regenerative agriculture has no clear consensus definition and may have many components there are two main characteristic features: 1. Restoration particularly of soil health including increasing the capacity of soils to capture and store carbon to mitigate climate change. 2. Reversal of biodiversity loss. Despite the increasing interest and application of regenerative agriculture in farming and its wide adoption by agricultural businesses a critical scientific analysis of its effectiveness has not been conducted. This report provides a critical analysis of the main components of regenerative agriculture: soil restoration carbon capture and storage and reversal of biodiversity loss. On the basis of an extensive review of existing meta-analyses and systematic reviews on farming practices commonly viewed as part of regenerative agriculture (i.e. intended to increase carbon capture and storage and enhance biodiversity) the report analyses the potential synergies and trade-offs that may occur at different scales from plot- and farm- to landscape scale and derives evidence-based policy recommendations for meeting Green Deal targets. Given the global nature of the problems regenerative agriculture is meant to address the report analyses regenerative agriculture in the EU in its global food system context where agriculture is viewed as a subsystem of the food system. |
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