Regenerative agriculture encompasses many different practices, including no-till, cover crops, adaptive grazing management, polycrops and intercropping.

If you've ever been to a meeting that requires a quorum — a minimum number of representatives attending in order to make a decision, you’re on the way to understanding “quorum sensing” as it relates to soil health.

The challenge ahead for farmers is to produce more food on a declining land area, with soils and ecosystems that are continually being degraded — all while using less water, energy and natural resources under difficult economic circumstances.

When Shawn and Shane Tiffany took over the former Black Diamond feed yard in 2007 it wasn’t in terrible shape, mostly because of manure applications that kept organic matter in the soil. But after going to a cover crop field day 8 years ago, the brothers didn’t want to just settle.

As a former telephone industry executive who started driving a tractor when he was 9 years old, Evan Copsey was never one to follow the crowd.