Regenerative agriculture is a giant step forward from conservation agriculture. “Conservation” implies that we want to keep our farmland as it is. “Regenerative” means that we want to return (improve) our land to a formerly healthy status. 

For years we have referred to the typical soil preparation methods of the past century as “conventional tillage.” Research has shown that conventional tillage (plowing, discing, cultivating) has degraded our soil, typically reducing organic matter in half. 

Instead of “conventional tillage” suppose we called it what it has really been for more than 100 years — “degenerative tillage.” Degenerative tillage has removed about half the organic matter and often eroded several inches of topsoil. 

Fresh Aroma?

How many farmers would proudly announce to their farmer buddies at a December breakfast meeting, “Hey, I finished my degenerative tillage last night. Not a speck of trash in sight. I just love the aroma of freshly plowed ground.”

We’re not downplaying the important role of the steel moldboard plow in our farming history. But in 1943, William Faulkner published a book, Plowman’s Folly, with the startling comment, “The fact is that no one has ever advanced a scientific reason for plowing.”

Within 20 years, research at Ohio State University, and experiments with reduced tillage or no-till by innovative farmers — including Harry Young in Kentucky and Bill Richards in Ohio — demonstrated the potential of growing a successful crop without plowing. Development of herbicides to manage weeds without tillage came a few years later, with Paraquat…