What is Regenerative Agriculture?

Regenerative agriculture is talked about a lot, but it is not always clear what it means.

Some people think it just means using practices like cover crops, less tilling, or rotational grazing. But doing one of those things does not automatically make a farm regenerative. What really matters is whether the farm is improving over time, including the health of the soil, the strength of the ecosystem, and the profitability of the farm.

But can regenerative farming actually make a farm more profitable? Research on Northern Plains corn farms found that regenerative systems were significantly more profitable than conventional systems, largely because they lowered input costs, improved soil health, and generated additional revenue streams, even though they produced lower grain yields. In the study, regenerative fields had 29% lower grain production but 78% higher profits than conventional corn production systems.

Regenerative agriculture is about making the land healthier, supporting more plant and animal life, reducing the need for outside inputs, and helping farms become stronger and more profitable. This guide explains what regenerative agriculture is, how it works, its main benefits, and how it compares to organic farming.

Key takeaways

• Regenerative agriculture is about improving farm outcomes over time, not just using specific practices.
• The main goals are healthier soil, more biodiversity, stronger ecosystems, and more resilient farms.
• Common practices include reducing soil disturbance, keeping soil covered, maintaining living roots, increasing biodiversity, and integrating livestock.
• Regenerative farming can support better farm economics by reducing reliance on external inputs and creating access to premium markets.
• Regenerative and organic farming are not the same. Organic focuses more on what inputs are allowed, while regenerative focuses on measurable improvements to the land.

What is regenerative agriculture?

Regenerative agriculture is a holistic farming system that focuses on restoring and improving the land, not just maintaining it.

It works by using farming practices that support nature, such as reducing soil disturbance, planting cover crops, rotating crops, keeping living roots in the ground, and integrating livestock where it makes sense. These practices help build healthier soil, improve biodiversity, reduce erosion, support the water cycle, and lower the need for synthetic inputs.

For example, a farmer might plant cover crops after harvest instead of leaving the field bare. This helps protect the soil, feed soil organisms, hold more water, and add nutrients back into the ground. Over time, the farm can become healthier, more resilient, and more profitable.

Regenerative agriculture principles vs. practices

Regenerative agriculture is not defined by one single practice. A farm does not become regenerative just because it plants cover crops, reduces tillage, rotates crops, or adds livestock.

Those practices can support regeneration, but regenerative agriculture is really about outcomes. The goal is to improve the farm system over time, including soil health, biodiversity, water retention, climate resilience, input costs, nutrient density, and long-term profitability.

This is why regenerative farming looks different from farm to farm. A regenerative ranch may use managed grazing to improve grassland health, while a vegetable farm may focus on cover crops, compost, crop rotation, and reduced soil disturbance. The principles are similar, but the practices depend on the farm’s land, climate, crops, livestock, and business model.

Core principles of regenerative agriculture

The core principles of regenerative agriculture help farmers make decisions that improve the land instead of degrading it. These principles often include:

• Minimizing soil disturbance
• Keeping soil covered
• Maintaining living roots in the ground
• Increasing biodiversity
• Integrating livestock where appropriate
• Measuring outcomes over time

Together, these principles help build healthier soil, improve ecosystem function, reduce reliance on synthetic inputs, and make farms more resilient.

Common regenerative farming practices

Regenerative farming practices are the tools farmers use to apply these principles. Common examples include cover cropping, no-till or reduced-till farming, crop rotation, compost application, rotational grazing, intercropping, agroforestry, and planting diverse pasture mixes.

The right practices depend on the farm. What matters most is not whether a farm uses every regenerative technique, but whether the practices are helping the land, ecosystem, and business improve over time.

Measuring regenerative outcomes

To know whether a farm is truly regenerative, farmers need to measure results season after season. Regeneration is not just a claim. It needs to be backed by real improvements.

These measurements may include soil organic matter, water infiltration, biodiversity, crop health, input costs, yields, profitability, and other indicators of soil and ecosystem health.

Tracking outcomes helps farmers understand what is working, what is not, and where they need to adjust. If a practice improves soil health, lowers costs, or makes the farm more resilient, it may be worth continuing. If it does not create meaningful results, the farm can change its approach.

Regenerative agriculture verification and certification

Third-party verification helps confirm that regenerative agriculture claims are supported by measurable outcomes. This can give farmers better data, protect the farm’s brand, and help consumers understand how their food was grown or raised.

Several regenerative agriculture certification and verification programs exist, including:

• Regenified
• Land to Market & Ecological Outcomes Verified (EOV)
• Regenerative Organic Certification
• Soil & Climate Alliance
• Real Organic Program

These programs do not all define regenerative agriculture in exactly the same way, but they share a similar goal: making regenerative farming more transparent, measurable, and credible.

Benefits of regenerative agriculture

Regenerative agriculture can benefit both the land and the farm business. By improving soil health, increasing biodiversity, reducing erosion, supporting natural nutrient cycles, and lowering reliance on external inputs, regenerative farming can help farms become more resilient and productive over time.

Healthier soil

Healthy soil is the foundation of regenerative agriculture. All farms depend on the soil to grow their crops. Soil is a living, breathing, and vibrant ecosystem with its own entire food web. The health of the soil food web depends on various conditions, many of which farms can purposely create by following the six principles of soil health. 

1. Contextual management

The practices and techniques vary depending on whether a farm is along the coast, in the desert, or the tropics–raising livestock, growing vegetables, or tending a coconut grove. Understanding the context of the farm is the most important starting point, as each circumstance–being geographical, crop-specific, climate, access to markets, etc–will determine the limitations and parameters each farm must abide by to cause regeneration. 

2. Minimize soil disturbance

Maintaining healthy soil structure allows the soil food web to thrive. Every time the soil is tilled or disturbed, the populations of bacteria and fungi living in the soil are disrupted and destroyed. Whatever the farm’s context, minimizing soil disturbance is vital to regeneration.

3. Maximize soil cover

Keeping soils covered with living plants or residues reduces erosion, conserves moisture, moderates soil temperature, and provides habitat and food for soil organisms. Cover crops are useful tools for maintaining soil cover during non-growing seasons, can be grazed with livestock, and help control weeds.

4. Maximize biodiversity

Increasing above and below ground biodiversity through crop rotations or intercropping enhances soil biodiversity, breaks pest and disease cycles, and improves nutrient cycling and soil structure. 

5. Maintain continuous living roots

Keeping living roots as long as possible feeds the soil food web, improves soil structure, increases water infiltration, and enhances nutrient cycling. This can be achieved with cover crops, perennial crops, or sequential plantings. If your context doesn’t allow for cover crops after your cash crop, then minimizing soil disturbance and covering your soil residue is next best. 

6. Integrate livestock

Incorporating livestock into the farm’s rotation can help recycle nutrients, improve soil organic matter, and stimulate plant growth. Livestock can help manage cover crops and crop residues and provide diversity in income and product offers. If a farmer can’t manage livestock independently, they can collaborate with a neighbor who does. Managing livestock regeneratively involves rotational grazing, holistic management, and ethical welfare.

Healthier farm ecosystems

Nestled into ecosystems, farms depend on ecological processes to function, soil being one. Improving ecological outcomes appears different across the various expressions of agriculture, but they all share these cycles. When these cycles function properly, there is resilience and a sense of harmony across the ecosystem.

Energy cycle

All life depends on photosynthesis, which starts with plants’ ability to capture the sun's energy and turn it into sugars. This process drives life below and above the surface. Measuring Brix using a refractometer can give farmers an inside look at how efficient plants are at photosynthesizing. The healthier the plant, the more sugars it can produce.

Water cycle

The water cycle is the continuous water movement within the Earth and atmosphere. There is the big water cycle and the small water cycle. Farms can affect the small water cycle on their farm by increasing the infiltration rate, increasing soil organic matter, and reducing erosion. For every percentage of soil organic matter increase, 25,000 gallons of water can be stored. That’s a tremendous amount of water, especially for areas with relatively low rainfall. 

Nutrient cycle

Healthy soils help decompose non-living materials to make the energy and nutrients available for living organisms. Regeneration of this cycle helps reduce residues and allows bound nutrients to become bioavailable for living plants. Soils are full of nutrients and minerals, but without living soil biology making them available, they will remain unavailable to plants. 

Carbon cycle

Carbon is what life on Earth is based upon. The cycle, in reference to regenerative agriculture, starts with photosynthesis, where plants take in carbon dioxide and turn that carbon into sugars they use for themselves. The cycle also involves root exudates, where plants exchange sugars with soil biology in exchange for nutrients and minerals they need. This carbon is then stored in the soil, increasing the soil organic matter and future food for the soil food web. 

Lower input costs and stronger farm economics

All of these principles are important, but the adoption of regenerative agriculture will remain slow unless the economics work in favor of the farmers adopting it. Regenerative agriculture is more profitable than conventional methods for many reasons, but one major reason is the decreasing dependence on external inputs and access to more premium markets. 

Reaching those premium markets also depends on pricing your products for profit so the value of regenerative practices is reflected in what customers pay.

Learn more about how regenerative farms can succeed in wholesale markets while protecting their margins.

More nutrient-dense foods

For consumers, regenerative agriculture promises to increase the nutrient value and density of the raised foods. There is tremendously important research and development unfolding, touching on how farming practice influences food quality and how that impacts human health.

For a real example, see how Wyebrook Farm proves that local food is actually healthier through its growing practices and nutrient testing.

Is regenerative agriculture the same as organic farming?

Regenerative agriculture and organic farming are related, but they are not the same.

Organic farming mainly focuses on what a farmer can and cannot use. For example, certified organic farms must follow rules around synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and other inputs. This can reduce the use of harmful chemicals, but it does not always mean the farm is improving soil health, biodiversity, water retention, or long-term resilience.

Regenerative agriculture focuses more on outcomes. A regenerative farm should be improving the land over time by building healthier soil, increasing biodiversity, reducing erosion, supporting natural nutrient cycles, and relying less on outside inputs.

This means a farm can be organic without being regenerative. For example, an organic farm may still use heavy tillage for weed control, which can disturb soil structure and harm soil life if done too often. On the other hand, a regenerative farm does not always have to be certified organic, although some farms may follow both approaches.

The main difference is that organic farming is often based on input rules, while regenerative farming is based on measurable improvements to the land. To know whether a farm is truly regenerative, outcomes need to be tracked over time. This can include soil organic matter, water infiltration, biodiversity, input costs, crop health, and profitability.

A simple way to think about it:

• Organic farming asks: What inputs are allowed?
• Regenerative agriculture asks: Is the land getting healthier over time?

For farms that follow both approaches, learn more about how to sell organic food through direct and wholesale channels.

How do you start regenerative farming?

Starting a regenerative farm does not mean changing everything at once; regenerative farming is rarely an overnight shift. Start with an honest look at where your land and business stand today: soil health, water retention, biodiversity, input costs, crop performance, grazing practices, and profitability.

From there, choose practices that fit your land, climate, crops, livestock, and market. On a vegetable farm, that might mean cover crops, reduced tillage, tighter crop rotation, or adding compost. On a ranch, it might mean managed grazing, longer pasture recovery windows, or integrating livestock in ways that build soil instead of compacting it.

What matters is whether the system improves season after season. Regenerative agriculture is not a checklist. It is a long-term commitment to tracking outcomes and adjusting as you go.

As regenerative practices take hold, business systems need to keep up. Stronger soil and stronger sales channels reinforce each other. Local Line helps regenerative farms manage online sales, inventory, price lists, wholesale accounts, subscriptions, and customer relationships in one place, so the time you save on order management goes back into the land.

Once your practices and systems are in place, the next step is finding customers who value that work. See how to build a market for regenerative agriculture for guidance on developing the buyer base your farm needs.

From there, see regenerative agriculture marketing tips for how to communicate your work to customers and buyers in a way that supports premium pricing.

Sign up for Local Line today to sell your regenerative farm products online and run your farm business from one platform.