Farming, Redefined. A FoodUnfolded Film about Regenerative Agriculture

Outside of this window, you would have seen about two kilometers to the next hills.

Let’s just say, without forests.

It was a poor land.

But 70 years ago, the small farmers who made the biggest destruction, they went away.

Was abandoned for 70 years.

I had been blamed by local people that I bought the best land I have the best land of Bahia and I bought it for a price of breakfast.

The main commentary was “he's a crazy guy” because I planted trees all over the place, I planted trees.

It’s simple I do it together with nature not against nature.

If you cooperate with nature, all the plants animals, bacteria, etc. all of them, will cooperate.

You have no enemies.

All species living on this planet they all appear for one same reason this is to increase life not to steal, not to exploit.

This is Ersnt Gotsch.

40 years ago, he left Switzerland to venture deep into Brazil's Atlantic rainforest.

No forest ecosystem on the planet has suffered as much loss as the Mata Atlantica.

Today, only a sliver of it remains: 90% is gone.

But this isn't just another story of destruction it's the story of a mission, ambitious and a bit unconventional.

To harvest fruits from an ecosystem on the edge of collapse while striving to bring it back to life.

We're here because a term has recently been making waves Regenerative agriculture Regenerative agriculture Regenerative agriculture Regenerative agriculture Regenerative agriculture It’s spiking in scientific papers showing up more in our Google searches and even some of the biggest food companies are pledging to practise it.

Depending on where you live you might already see “regenerative agriculture” all around you or it might start showing up soon.

One of its core principles is to leave the land in a better state than it was before one farmed it and Ernst Gotsch’s story, as we'll see proves that it's possible.

But Gotsch doesn't like to label his methods as “regenerative agriculture” But Gotsch doesn't like to label his methods as “regenerative agriculture” and there are good reasons for that.

Over the past year, I've asked farmers and scientists worldwide what exactly does regenerative agriculture mean?

Is it just a trendy buzzword or is it here to stay?

And why do we need it?

This is our journey to find out if regenerative agriculture lives up to the hype.

Let's go back a little when agriculture first emerged in human history it gave humanity the power to imagine and plan for the future.

People settled, communities grew individuals became skilled at different jobs.

But life for our ancestors’ was far from perfect.

Droughts floods pests nutrient-poor soils were constant threats.

Famines and diseases were common.

Farmers needed a way to boost their production and protect their crops.

So a big invention was bound to come but we'd have to wait thousands of years for it.

It's what experts usually call: inputs inputs Across the 1900s, scientists developed agricultural inputs specifically fertilizers and pesticides.

In the simplest possible terms they’re like food supplements and antibiotics for plants.

In the meantime, new machines began transforming the landscape into vast, manageable patches of green and gold reducing physical demand for farmers.

Genetic modification made plants grow bigger and faster.

By the 1960s, these innovations were adopted globally making it easier than ever to produce food.

Experts now refer to this approach as “conventional agriculture” It's curious that we call it “conventional agriculture” when actually it's relatively new.

We call it this way because this type of farming has become the “norm” around the planet.

Fertilisers alone one of the building blocks of conventional agriculture are said to feed half the world's population today.

We could not live without it.

But conventional agriculture may have broken its biggest promise.

Hunger is increasing while yields are actually also increasing so that is a very strange and also very bad situation.

Between 800 million and 2 billion people suffer from either acute hunger or malnutrition another probably 2 billion people are unable to afford access to food.

And it's not like everything else has been smooth sailing.

Two-thirds of fertilizers are not even absorbed by our crops And instead of feeding our plants, they feed algae which overgrow and suffocate marine life.

They taint our groundwater supplies pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and disrupt ecosystems both on land and in water.

Pesticides are also overused That generates of course, adaptation and resistance which then leads to more outbreaks and to more applications.

So this is kind of a vicious circle also called the pesticide treadmill.

For soil, overloaded with chemicals and compressed by tractors it has become harder to hold onto moisture and nutrients.

We have forgotten that soil is also something alive.

There's a lot of biodiversity in the soil, under the soil making sure that the soil works the way it does.

For the past century we've treated the farm like an isolated, industrial machine.

But land is not a machine and our methods are compromising future resources.

The idea that somehow we would be able to continue farming as we are and feed ourselves is complete fiction, right?

It's also scary to see how long we've discussed these issues.

This 1995 article from National Geographic talked about a farming revolution.

Sustainable agriculture seemed to be shaping up in organic farming ready to take over.

Those days felt revolutionary to many but there were two agricultural revolutions one pushing for industrial scale farming.

the other advocating for organic methods.

Each believed that they were pioneering the future of farming we know which revolution has prevailed until now.

Organic farming has been on the rise across Europe but it still only covers about 10% of agricultural land.

In the U.S. that number drops to just 1% and globally, it's only 2%.

In the meantime conventional agriculture has spread across the globe.

That may also be because organic farming benefits the land, yes but comes with strict regulations, high certification costs and often lower yields.

So where does regenerative agriculture fit in?

The term “regenerative agriculture” has roots in the organic movement.

Back in the late 1980s Robert Rodale, a big name in organic farming started pushing the idea because he thought that the term regenerative was more powerful than the term sustainable.

I’m not satisfied with the term sustainability.

I think it's it's very appealing to policymakers because they think it's simple and they can understand it.

I don't think the average person aspires to live in a sustained environment.

They want to live in something that's expanding and going better.

So I think the idea of regeneration is more appealing, points the way to opportunities.

We're not just going to produce more food we're going to actually do it in a way that is good for the planet.

When you farm, you're actually leaving the land and the environment in a better state than before you’re farming, so you're making things better.

Regenerative agriculture has been seen by some as a further step from organic.

But that's not everyone's interpretation.

Regenerative agriculture seems to be often emerging as an alternative to both conventional and organic farming.

But pinning down what regenerative agriculture really is?

If I were to ask you to define, to say what regenerative agriculture is?

How would you define regenerative agriculture?

If you were to try to define regenerative agriculture?

What would you say?

That's where things get tricky.

Regenerative agriculture is not uniformly defined throughout Western Europe or even in the world.

Regenerative agriculture it combines food production with ecosystem restoration having sufficient attention for the soil, for water quality, for biodiversity.

And beyond that, it also looks for social sustainability and economic sustainability.

It is a strategy. It’s a policy. It's a concept. It’s an idea.

It's not a practice.

It's not a certification, it’s a set of principles If you're feeling confused, you're not alone.

I've been digging into this topic for over a year and the one thing that's crystal clear to me is that regenerative agriculture is intentionally vague.

And that's kind of okay.

Let me explain.

Unlike organic, which follows strict practices regenerative farming is all about following a set of guiding principles and aiming for tangible outcomes.

So farmers have the freedom to interpret how they apply these principles to achieve those outcomes meaning there's no-one-size fits all method.

It's up to each farmer to figure out what works best for their unique situation.

The north star of the movement is all about enhancing soil health and boosting its ability to store carbon.

Because soil is the unsung hero of our food system.

It's packed with microbes that help feed plants which in turn feed us.

And it acts like a giant carbon sink.

As plants grow, they suck up carbon dioxide from the air to build their tissues.

When plants die, they decompose and that stored carbon is transferred into the soil where it can remain locked for centuries.

But bad farming practices, which depletes the soil can transform a virtuous cycle into a vicious one.

This is exactly what regenerative farming claims that it's trying to stop.

Why is soil health a useful term?

I think because it recognizes that the soil does more for us than just give us something to produce crops in.

It's important to maintain soil well, so it doesn't erode because it takes a lot it takes millennia to form soil, and we can lose it very, very quickly in a storm if things go badly.

But since the regenerative term has not been legally certified like organic any farmer can decide which practices they want to use to apply those principles and achieve those outcomes.

But this means that anything goes.

What worries soil scientist at this point isn't just the soil itself.

It's the myths and the misinformation that can cloud our understanding of the issues.

In particular, a dramatic claim has been circulating among the regenerative movement.

The idea that soils around the world are so eroded that we might only have 60 years of harvests left.

The problem is, it's unclear where these number came from.

This comprehensive study on soil erosion which reviews 240 studies, from 38 countries paints a different picture.

According to the study in the next century, we could lose 35% of bare soils 20% of farmed soils and only 7% of so-called “well-managed” soils.

What does this tell us?

Well, we're not on the brink of a global food collapse but it is true that we're losing a lot of soil.

Restoring it could take decades, sometimes even centuries so it is an issue we can't afford to ignore.

The study also confirms that better farming practices can significantly reduce soil damage, which is great news.

But can farming ever truly leave the land better than it was before it was farmed?

This is the question that led me all the way to Ernst Götsch in Bahia State.

For millennia this place had been beaming with the life of the Atlantic rainforest.

But relentless deforestation and farming for timber, sugar cane, coffee, cattle ranching, and urban sprawl left much of it unrecognizable and unproductive.

No large tropical forest ecosystem in the world has suffered so much loss as Mata Atlantica this map shows just how little remains.

By the 1950s locals cold these 500 hectares of land in Piraì do Norte “Fugidos da Tera Seca” “Those who fled dry land” The land was left barren and abandoned for 70 years until this guys showed up in the 1980s.

Ernst Götsch, then a Swiss in his thirties with a background in genetic improvement arrived with a family to feed and a fresh perspective.

And now, Ernst believed there was something missing in conventional farming methods and he set out to prove it.

During his childhood, he had seen his father work on the family farm on the shores of Lake Constance.

I got interested in farming since childhood.

Testing how things function, how plants interact how to get better results without destroying something, that's to say, without degrading soil.

He had an intuition, which to us today might sound trivial but it wasn't at the time.

The health of a plant doesn't depend on the treatment it receives individually.

It depends on how it interacts with all the other plants and animals around it.

Perhaps it could be more intelligent to focus on the conditions that we offer to the plants.

So in the 1970s while the world was jumping on pesticides and fertilizers Ernst was figuring out how intelligent design could make us less dependent on them.

His tests had been successful in Switzerland and Costa Rica his method seemed to work.

So it was just a matter of time before a Brazilian landowner and cocoa producer would knock on his door to extend him an opportunity.

Or rather, a challenge.

Now you will look for land.

It must be in a cocoa region.

It has to be more than 200 hectars, and it has to be seen by the cocoa authority, as not recommended to plant cocoa.

That's to say, so-called bad land.

His mission was clear find the worst land and turn it into the best.

Here's how he tackled the challenge.

First, he started by cutting everything down and covering bare soils with organic matter, compost and mulch.

Then he introduced pioneer species fast growing hardy plants that help to quickly cover the soil.

Next, he planted a mix of vegetables, fruits, herbs and perennials.

Arranging them in layers that mimic a forest canopy.

This set up creates different heights and shades much like a natural forest.

I'm making it sound easy but he has a very sophisticated way of deciding what trees to plant and where.

For the past 40 years Ernst has been out in the fields every day at sunrise pruning and mulching.

And he won the challenge.

Against all odds the thriving cocoa in his land is recognized among the finest in the world.

And that's not all he produces.

His land teems with bananas Brazil nuts, açai, jackfruit, mangoes and countless other species all flourishing without a single drop of additional irrigation fertilizers and pesticides.

After just five years his land had already transformed into a thriving small forest.

Ernst was soon able to purchase the businessman's share of land and settled for the long term.

But all of these years, he hasn't been working alone.

He's orchestrated an ecosystem where pollinators, insects and animals play integral roles in the farm's ongoing renewal.

They do it for me free that's to say, you can learn how they do it, and they do it moved by inner pleasure.

That's to say, they need no salary.

In his farm's ecosystem even plants and bacteria, usually considered weeds and pests are embraced as valued contributors each serving a purpose.

For me, those so-called pests and diseases they are the best friends of me, that’s to say, they are my teachers.

He calls his method “syntropic farming” from the ancient Greek term “Syntropy” that describes a system's tendency towards order, cooperation, and complexity.

Today, Ernst's syntropic farm looks and behaves like a thriving forest.

It's one of the most astonishing places I've ever seen.

And to me, this is a definition of regeneration.

There is no species on the planet which would not have a function each of all these functions is in pro of life and not against life.

And this is what I appoint at ourselves, that we have lost.

We appeared in the same way as any other species or all other species to favour life, to contribute, to increase life.

And if we would understand this, we would ask, first of all what is the first human right?

It’s to be serviceable to life.

The farm is known as “Olhos D’agua”, water eyes because rain has come back too.

Just ten years after Ernst settled technicians from the Brazilian Institute for the Environment decided to visit the farm because they had seen surprising aerial pictures, like this one.

At the time, a severe regional drought was ongoing but the images revealed a thriving forest and clouds hiding a highly productive area.

That's because the farm isn't just a small ecosystem it also creates a humid microclimate from the water evaporating off the plants.

Ernst’s success as “rainmaker” during that drought finally earned him the respect of many of his neighbors.

I can understand why his figure can still be divisive.

His is not just a farming method.

It's a worldview that connects wisdom from biology, agronomy, and ancient philosophy.

Lao Tze says: things are not to be done.

They are being done.

I say things are being done by all species of all time.

They occur equipped to realize their task to fulfill their function moved by inner pleasure.

It's being done moved by inner pleasure.

And I am doing my work, moved by inner pleasure.

That's to say, my first question every day, every morning is always what can I do?

How can I interact so that the result of my interaction my participation will be beneficial to all submitted, affected and present ones of my interaction? Because we are part of a macro-organism and in a macro-organism and we are something like cells.

And if you’re serviceable to life then you are happy because then this gives you the energy and a good feeling.

Finding joy in the work, though isn't always enough to solve the broader challenges farmers have to face.

For starters after putting in so much work to grow their food then it can rot quickly if they don’t find a buyer fast.

So the processing part, like drying, fermenting, whatever, you know, is very important to give it a longer shelf life and also to be able to to sell it, and to add value to it.

This is Gudrun, Ernst ‘s daughter.

She's taken her father's principles and built on them with her business, Selva e Paz.

Her focus is on turning their farm’s and the neighboring farms’ abundance into products that can last and thrive in the market.

But Gudrun’s path wasn't always clear.

There was a time when she was curious about a different life.

I was born two kilometers from here, in my dad's farm.

I moved away by the age of 12.

Well, I only have one brother so all my siblings had moved away, already.

I asked my parents to go with him because I was all alone.

I didn't have any anyone to play with and I wanted to go to school.

When I left Brazil, I always said, one day I'm going to go back I'm going to come back.

I came back to Brazil when I was 27.

What was the impression that you had approaching European agriculture, when you went there?

I think I couldn't imagine me living in Europe from agriculture.

I don't know I didn't connect with that.

I can't imagine myself going a different direction, like supporting something that goes towards, like monoculture and conventional agriculture.

So I think like giving more value to what farmers do it would be really, really great for the world.

And I mean, even you see, even farmers don't like feel like they themselves they don't have value, you know?

For those of us who would rather have our food come from places like Ernst and Gudrun’s rather than vast monocultures the question isn't just about sustainability.

It's about recognizing the dignity and viability of farming as a career.

Because there is a big limit to scaling up this type of agriculture labour.

Unlike monoculture operations where machines can handle much of the work diversified, regenerative farms require dedicated people.

And despite what the 1995 Nat Geo article forecasted today the world is going in the opposite direction.

So many people moving away from the land, like selling their land to buy a house in town, because they think there's more security in the city, than there is on the land.

So farmers is like something they look at like from above, and even farmers feel like they're worth less.

Even when they go to town, you know, they will put on nice clothing scrub their hands so that people won't see that.

If we don't have farmers, we don’t grow food.

We will starve.

I mean, this is so obvious, but I think there’s people who don't even know that farmers actually produce food because they just go to the supermarket so they think that food comes from the supermarket, and not from the farmers.

Farmers are still the invisible backbone of our food supply chain.

But they are also among the lowest-paid in the industry their wages barely scraping by.

In some cases, their situation borders on modern slavery trapped in a cycle of exploitation with no escape.

For these reasons, many people are turning elsewhere for a living.

Why are the salaries so low?

Why is it regarded as a bad job? Why is it so hard?

I mean, the question that often comes when we talk about agriculture is like, who's going to do it? Who’s going to do this work?

The answer is, possibly no one.

In Europe, only 4% of the employed population works in farming.

In the US, 2%.

The World Bank's numbers for employment in agriculture show that the decline has been sharp.

If we follow this trend over the next few decades we'll have a big problem.

So yeah, we might have soil in good enough shape for the next 300 years but we could also ran out of farmers in the next 30.

There's a place in Europe where the shift away from agriculture is painfully clear Ibiza Out of all of the land available, only 10% is being farmed so the majority of agricultural land in Ibiza is simply not used at all it's left fallow. From the 1950s and 60s, as tourism really exploded on the island what happened was many farmers left their land to

to pursue other jobs that had more of an economic benefit.

Currently, 96% of the food that we eat in Ibiza is shipped in and so if we were to see any sort of disruption, we would find ourselves in a really vulnerable place where we have maybe two or three days of food left.

Finn Harris and Christian Jochinck have shifted their careers to do something about that.

Finn Harris has already worn many hats from YouTuber to media co-founder and environmentalist, to a master's thesis looking at the intersection between regenerative agriculture and architecture.

I was trying to understand what it looked like to design regenerative systems. Christian Jochnick comes from a Swedish family, running a successful cosmetic business.

He has always been interested in volunteering on social projects looking at eating disorders, antisocial behavior and drug abuse but his work used to be less socially driven.

I moved to London, started studying finance and ended up working in the mergers and acquisitions department of Goldman Sachs for two years, which was, you know, the opposite end of the spectrum.

Juntos Farm was born in 2018, when Christian and his family decided to leave their busy London lives behind to start a small farm in Ibiza driven by a desire to reconnect with nature and support the local community.

It didn't take long to figure out that farming in Ibiza is no easy feat.

And we realized that there was a real lack of access to resources and infrastructure and distribution for the food that they were growing.

So Juntos evolved from an organic regenerative family-run farm to social project, focused on restoring agriculture on the island.

Part of this project is about making sure that we connect with the existing farmers on the island and support them and try and understand you know, what are the major bottlenecks for them.

Juntos is a project to invest in infrastructure, resources and services to make it easier to start farming in a small scale, diversified, organic and regenerative system.

Christian believes that right now it's almost impossible to get into farming without relying on monocultures and supermarkets.

So he's now focused on doing what he can to change that.

The challenge with the cooperatives today is that they are operating in the system of the monoculture.

So here you have the beekeepers association and here you have the grain producers cooperatives and here is the livestock cooperative.

But if you're a small scale, diversified producer and you have bees and you have chicken and you have sheep and you have trees and you have grains and you have a veggie garden you cannot go to five or six different cooperatives that are 2 to 3 hours away.

If you can link these units together into a global movement, then you can have shared offset agreements.

Through that, a replicated model I can get access to scale and this is a model that I think can work.

I can't help but think that while these solutions offer hope they face a tough test: Could they work in places that don't have the luxury of tourism or affluent residents?

For many small farmers, this kind of support just isn't available.

Despite the fact that we have a small local population about 150,000 residents we have 4 million tourists who come through every year.

And so, a key to this project succeeding is being able to tap into that tourism industry.

And the irony there is is tourism is one of the reasons that we've seen a decline in agriculture and so we're trying to almost reverse it we're trying to make sure tourism becomes one of the key factors that supports agriculture here in Ibiza.

But farming is harder for those who have less agency on their land and the fruits of their work.

Some say that the solution to the social and economic struggles of farmers lies in embracing technology even if it means taking farming away from the farmers themselves.

They argue that farming is a tough job so it's not necessarily bad news if one day no one has to do it anymore.

And look, there's no easy answer here but the farmers we spoke to, see it differently.

I do work for like getting money because I want to be able to travel to visit my siblings and to do all this thing.

But at the end, you know, if everything crashes down I know how to to plant, to harvest, what to do with all that, you know.

So it's okay, I'm fine.

But that's something that gives me such a deep trust in life, in myself.

That, you know, if everything goes wrong I live on a land where I can grow my own food.

For me, it's one of the greatest jobs a person can do.

You know, you're in contact with nature you have challenges every day that you get through.

I mean, I’m super happy with my life I would say. That involves, you know, about 75% of my day doing farming and dreaming of farming so probably 95% of the day.

Also right now tech is great for conventional farms but doesn't quite fit complex ecosystems. That might change soon but for now, if we're serious about fixing environmental issues we're going to need farmers for the foreseeable future.

It's this social dimension of farming that makes some people skeptical in front of big companies’ commitments to regenerative agriculture.

For 12 years I was on the Sustainable Sourcing Advisory Board for Unilever.

So I was at this meeting, it was 2019 I remember it very clearly and people in the meeting were talking about regenerative agriculture.

Now, as a professor working in the field of agriculture I thought: what on Earth are they talking about? I haven’t heard of this.

Over the past few years some of the biggest food production companies in the world have jumped on the regenerative agriculture bandwagon.

From meat and dairy producers and suppliers, including JBS to grain companies such as General Mills to agrochemical producers like Bayer and Syngenta.

Very few actors who define kind of everything, from prices to what is being produced, was being consumed, and then how it's distributed and all that.

But not everyone in the regenerative agriculture movement is thrilled about big companies co-opting the term.

What they're really advocating for are fundamental changes in our economic system Changes that could actually challenge big companies, not reinforce them.

So the regenerative agriculture, the agroecology, they sign up often to issues of fairness and equity and things which go beyond the actual crop production to the way that the whole food system works.

We have studied, during the last 100 years how to squeeze out at the lowest price the products out of plants out of animals and out of people.

That's why Ernst is reluctant to call his agriculture “regenerative” These terms for ecology are being appropriated by those great enterprises which often do the contrary of what those terms, when they had been opted for or created.

It’s very dangerous to give you an answer, it is regenerative agriculture.

But there are other reasons regenerative claims by industry aren't well received.

Big agicultural companies often link regenerative agriculture to carbon storage in the soil.

McDonald's, for example, claims to be combating climate change by improving soil health.

That's a pretty bold claim.

But how much truth is there to it?

What we know so far is that while regenerative agriculture is undeniably beneficial for the environment its potential to mitigate climate change is limited.

The thing is, we don't know for sure whether regenerative practices can actually sequester additional carbon or how much.

So when it comes to soil quality it depends very much on original soil quality, where it is, the climate conditions what ecosystem services the soil could provide.

And then it's not one size fits all.

It's very, very difficult to find indicators that we could really use in a consistent way to tell a story and to monitor the benefits of what we're doing I'm afraid.

Meanwhile, McDonald's remains one of the biggest meat suppliers globally.

And emits more greenhouse gas emissions on its own than American Airlines.

So could going regenerative really make a dent in its huge emissions or is it just for show?

And is it just bad news that big companies are committing to regenerative agriculture?

The fact that strong companies actually invest into this, you know I feel it’s positive, you know, whether the intention is legitimate or not, you know the fact that they are interested into this, I feel like is going to be a positive change for regenerative agriculture,in general.

Well, of course those companies are there for profit but the people that I work with, who are working within those companies I think are genuinely committed to trying to do their very best within the boundaries that they can.

Sometimes I feel like they are trying to put a nice cover to their own companies but it's not totally real I hope I'm wrong, I hope they're actually really interested in what they are doing.

For example, I came across like huge coffee monocultures in Brazil where you would have the beautiful biodiverse Mata Atlantica rainforest and they have like, I don't know, 2-3 meters of coffee trees there and the soil is just bare and there's no biodiversity at all and super high inputs of pesticides and fertilizers.

And it it called regenerative, they made some calculations to show it’s carbon positive because compared to baseline where there’s probably nothing and then this is branded “regenerative”.

There's a fine line to be walked.

Regenerative will need clear standards to avoid misuse.

My fear for regenerative is that before it has a chance to be taken seriously and to be sort of established with proper frameworks and processes that it's overused to the point where consumers lose their trust in that term.

But it will also have to be adaptable enough to bridge that organic and conventional farming divide.

Funnily enough in some ways I think that the lack of a clear definition is actually a benefit.

If you end up with a clear definition usually that something “thou shalt not do this, thou shalt not do that” it's usually a set of rules which progressively, if you like, eliminate the freedom or the creativity of farmers to be able to do their own thing, to try and achieve a goal.

There are a whole set of kind of overlapping terms like regenerative and organic and agriecological.

that each of them have multiple meanings and uses.

Maybe they’re heading in the same direction but they represent really different levels of ambition.

Now, will regenerative agriculture feed the entire world?

Maybe that's not the right question to ask.

I imagine it as a powerful tool for small scale farmers a way to restore degraded lands a lifeline for communities still deeply connected to farming and a method to combat desertification.

It may not redefine global agriculture overnight but its importance in these struggling pockets of the Earth is undeniable.

Regenerative agriculture is maybe more than anything, a shift in perspective.

It compels us to see our habitats not as lifeless resources to be exploited but as intricate ecosystems to be nurtured and sustained.

Today, Ernst welcomes young farmers at Olhos d’Agua.

He tells them they're not there to pick up a set of recipes but to understand mechanisms. They learn how nature works so they can adapt syntropic farming’s principles to the local conditions of their farms. I am sure that nature functions on clean, logical principles.

For me, the whole universe is a living being but each element, each part of this universe has its peculiarity but they function all on the same principles.

And there is no beginning, no end.

Similarly, regenerative agriculture doesn't seem to be about finding a universal fix it's about rethinking our approach to farming embracing the idea that each piece of land has unique needs.

It’s what nature would do without us.

This is more than just a practice or a nice label maybe it's that long awaited agricultural revolution one that also embraces a different way of life.

And those leading the charge are already in motion.

Part of the solution is not about fixing the food system, it's about fixing how we live our lives.

Something that I think we're not talking about enough is how not only Something that I think we're not talking about enough is how not only how do we need to change the way we farm but how do we need to change the way we consume.

Consumption is a political act it's something you can do in silence to change the world.

Whether this revolution will live up to National Geographic's promises from a few decades ago or we're on the brink of a farmerless era, remains uncertain.

In the end, I like to think that the future of farming will just come down to what we collectively decide to value.

I really believe that we have the power to create our reality. And this is being done

reality. And this is being done with what we think, what we say and what we do.