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Twenty years ago, when I was writing Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, I took a deep dive into the environmental history of farming, documenting how agricultural practices that degraded soil had undermined past societies around the world. The stark realities uncovered during that extensive research laid the foundation for a profound shift in focus, moving from historical analysis of agricultural decline to an urgent examination of present-day challenges and future solutions. Since then, the focus has pivoted to how this critical theme of soil degradation continues to play out in contemporary agriculture, scrutinizing how conventional farming practices systematically erode the very health of the soil that sustains global food production. Yet, amidst this alarming trend, visits to pioneering regenerative farms across the globe have offered a powerful counter-narrative, demonstrating unequivocally that it is possible to rebuild healthy, fertile soils without compromising highly productive harvests. This realization forms the core of a new book, ReGen: A New Future for Farming, Food, and Health, which meticulously outlines how regenerative farming offers a viable solution to the age-old problem of soil degradation, simultaneously promising to feed the world, mitigate climate change, enhance biodiversity, and deliver a host of environmental and economic benefits.
The Urgent Need for Change: A Historical Perspective on Soil Degradation
The history of civilization is inextricably linked to the health of its soil. From the collapse of ancient Mesopotamian city-states due to salinization from irrigation, to the Dust Bowl of 20th-century America caused by unsustainable tillage, the evidence is overwhelming: societies that neglect their soil ultimately jeopardize their own survival. For millennia, agricultural practices have often prioritized immediate yield over long-term ecological balance, leading to widespread erosion, nutrient depletion, and a decline in soil organic matter. This historical pattern underscores the gravity of the current situation, where conventional agriculture, driven by technological advancements and market demands, has intensified the degradation of arable land on a global scale. The consequences extend beyond mere productivity losses, impacting water quality, biodiversity, and contributing significantly to greenhouse gas emissions.
Modern conventional farming, characterized by monocultures, extensive tillage, and heavy reliance on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, has become a double-edged sword. While it has enabled unprecedented food production to feed a growing global population, it has done so at a considerable ecological cost. The mechanical disturbance of plowing disrupts soil structure, releases carbon into the atmosphere, and exposes topsoil to erosion by wind and water. The routine application of synthetic chemicals, while controlling pests and weeds, can harm beneficial soil microorganisms, further weakening the soil ecosystem and contributing to water pollution through runoff. These practices have fostered a cycle of dependency, where farmers increasingly rely on external inputs to maintain yields on increasingly impoverished soils, creating economic vulnerabilities and environmental liabilities.
Defining Regenerative Agriculture: More Than Just a Buzzword
Properly understood, regenerative farming is rooted in the general principle of minimizing or avoiding both physical and chemical disturbance to the soil. This foundational approach is crucial for building soil health across a wide range of settings and climates. It is more than just a new buzzword; it represents a distinct and comprehensive paradigm shift from previous agricultural movements. Regenerative farming differentiates itself from both organic systems, which minimize chemical disturbance but often employ routine tillage to control weeds, and no-till farming, which can rely heavily on herbicides to manage vegetation without disturbing the soil physically.
At its core, regenerative farming systems are typically founded on a triad of practices: minimizing soil disturbance (often through no-till or reduced-till methods), incorporating cover cropping (planting non-cash crops to protect and enrich the soil), and implementing diverse crop rotations. This combination of practices is recognized globally, with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) referring to a similar approach as "conservation agriculture." By integrating ancient wisdom, such as crop rotation and minimal soil disturbance, with modern scientific understanding of soil biology and ecological processes, farmers can achieve remarkable results. These methods not only curtail soil erosion and build robust soil health but also enable farmers to profitably reduce outlays for expensive inputs like diesel, synthetic fertilizer, and pesticides, thereby enhancing economic resilience alongside ecological benefits. The global adoption of these principles could revolutionize food systems, offering a path to sustainable productivity and environmental restoration.
Current Policy Landscape and Its Shortcomings
Encouragingly, there has been growing recognition within governmental bodies, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), of regenerative agriculture’s potential as an attractive alternative to conventional farming. In a notable move, the Trump administration launched a regenerative pilot program in December 2025 and issued an executive order in June 2026, directing federal agencies to advance regenerative practices. These initiatives signal a nascent acknowledgment of the need for change and represent a step, however small, towards a more sustainable agricultural future.
However, these programs, while positive in intent, currently fall short of providing a truly transformative framework. They primarily make regenerative farming voluntary and do not offer substantial financial incentives for farmers to adopt new practices, which often involve initial investments in equipment or knowledge, and a learning curve. Moreover, the government’s approach remains inconsistent and often contradictory. Simultaneously, federal policies continue to support practices that actively degrade soil health, such as affirming support for the increased use and production of glyphosate, a widely used herbicide. This dual approach—offering token support for regenerative practices while propping up conventional, soil-depleting methods—highlights a fundamental lack of a coherent and comprehensive strategy. To truly engage the transformative potential of regenerative agriculture, a more integrated and robust policy framework is urgently needed. This framework must actively incentivize and reward soil-building practices, disincentivize harmful ones, and ensure that all agricultural policies work in concert towards a common goal of regenerating our agricultural landscapes.
Five Pillars for a Sustainable Future: Policy Recommendations
To move beyond piecemeal efforts and establish modern agriculture on a more resilient and sustainable foundation, five broad, high-level policy recommendations are proposed:
1. Reform Agricultural Subsidies to Support Soil Health
For decades, federal agricultural subsidies in the United States have been a contentious issue, widely recognized for promoting conventional commodity crop production, often at the expense of environmental and public health, while disproportionately benefiting large agribusinesses. In 2025, U.S. farmers received more than $13 billion annually in federal subsidies for conventionally growing commodity crops, a staggering sum that is more than seven times the amount allocated to conservation programs on farms. This significant imbalance highlights a systemic problem: public funds are inadvertently subsidizing practices that degrade natural resources.
A long-standing reform movement has advocated for changes to these subsidies, and the growing interest in regenerative farming now presents a unique opportunity to fundamentally adjust federal subsidies and programs. The goal should be to actively encourage and financially reward farmers for adopting practices that build and support soil health. Shifting government financial support towards practices that regenerate soil would encourage farmers to incorporate no- or low-till practices, plant cover crops, and implement diversified crop rotations into their operations. This pivot would reduce their dependence on increasingly expensive synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which are subject to volatile global markets and supply chain disruptions. Such a reform would enhance farm profitability by lowering input costs, while simultaneously delivering widespread societal benefits. These benefits include bolstering local rural economies, fostering a healthier food supply with potentially higher nutrient density, significantly reducing off-farm water pollution from agricultural runoff, and sequestering atmospheric carbon back into the soil, contributing to climate change mitigation efforts.
2. Revising Crop Insurance to Incentivize Resilience
The federal crop insurance program, established in 1938, represents another significant area ripe for reform. Taxpayers currently subsidize premium payments for this insurance, which insulates farmers from crop failure or a bad year. In 2025, the program cost taxpayers over $10 billion, with more than three-quarters of this sum supporting just four commoditized crops: corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton. This emphasis on a narrow range of commodity crops means that insurance can be difficult to obtain for growing the fruits and vegetables that nutritionists widely recommend, creating a market distortion.
In practice, crop insurance, in its current form, distorts market dynamics by socializing risk (through taxpayer subsidies) and privatizing reward. By guaranteeing farmers a payout for a failed crop, the program inadvertently stifles innovation and undermines incentives to adopt practices that build soil health and enhance farm resilience. This leaves farms less capable of withstanding environmental shocks and more dependent on ongoing government support. Reforming crop insurance to provide comprehensive coverage that explicitly incentivizes the adoption of soil-building regenerative practices would fundamentally shift this dynamic. Such a reform would reward risk avoidance through proactive soil management, reduce the need for perpetual government bailouts, and foster a more resilient and self-sustaining agricultural sector. Farmers who actively improve their soil health, thereby reducing their risk of crop failure, should see lower premiums or receive bonuses, reflecting their contribution to ecological stability and long-term food security.
3. Reframe Policies and Programs to Support Small, Diversified Farms
Current agricultural subsidies overwhelmingly benefit large farms, with the largest 10 percent of American farms receiving half of all crop insurance subsidies. Commodity price support programs, designed to stabilize farm income, also disproportionately favor large operations focused on a limited range of crops, most often corn and soybeans. This structural bias overlooks the significant contributions of small, highly productive farms. These smaller operations not only typically produce a greater diversity of crops and support richer biodiversity but also, remarkably, often yield more food per acre than their larger counterparts.
It is crucial to recognize that regenerative farming is not exclusive to any scale; it can be successfully implemented on farms of any size, albeit with different methods and management strategies. Despite broad bipartisan support for local food systems and small farms, recent policy decisions, such as significant cuts to grants and programs supporting small farms and regional food systems by the Trump administration, have been detrimental. Moving forward, a strategic reframing of policies is needed to actively support small, diversified farms. This includes creating programs that encourage and enable farmers to cultivate a wider variety of fruits and vegetables—the very foods nutritionists recommend—alongside other crops essential for diversifying our national food supply. Such policies would foster regional food security, empower local economies, and enhance the overall resilience and nutritional quality of the food system.
4. Expand Research on Regenerative Practices
While the general principles of regenerative farming are universal, their specific application is highly contextual. There is no one-size-fits-all solution; specific practices must be tailored to different regions, crop types, soil conditions, and individual farm operations. Unfortunately, current USDA research tends to focus on marginal adjustments to conventional, high-disturbance, agrochemical-intensive farming. This narrow focus neglects the critical need for comprehensive research into integrated, low-input, soil-building systems—systems that emphasize knowledge and ecological principles over purchased chemical inputs.
Back in 2010, there was a call for a moon-shot-like global research program dedicated to soil health, aimed at facilitating the conversion of conventional farmers to regenerative systems. While the new federal pilot program is a welcome initial step, an urgent and significant need remains to accelerate research into soil-building practices and optimize their employment in diverse regional contexts. This includes investigating cover crop varieties suitable for different climates, ideal crop rotations for specific ecosystems, nutrient cycling in regenerative systems, and the economic viability of various regenerative approaches. A major, coordinated effort to transition conventional farming to regenerative systems stands as one of the most important—and largely neglected—environmental infrastructure projects of this century. Investing heavily in this research is not just about farming; it’s about securing our planet’s future.
5. Treat Agricultural Policy as Public Health Policy
The profound connection between soil health, food quality, and human well-being is increasingly recognized. Eating a variety of nutrient-dense whole foods grown in healthy soil directly benefits human health, contributing to better immune function, reduced chronic disease risk, and overall vitality. If agricultural policy were reframed as healthcare policy, it would fundamentally alter our investment priorities. This perspective would logically lead to increased support for regenerative farming systems, which could significantly help lower long-term healthcare costs by promoting healthier diets and reducing exposure to agricultural chemicals.
Currently, public subsidies often continue to funnel resources into commodity grains used to produce cheap, ultra-processed foods that leave populations overfed and undernourished. Instead, policy should support farmers in cultivating a greater diversity of regeneratively raised foods, prioritizing quality and nutritional value over sheer caloric output. There is growing evidence that crop nutrient density is declining as atmospheric CO2 levels increase. Restoring soil health can help counter this alarming trend by enhancing nutrient density and actively returning carbon to agricultural soils, effectively turning farms into carbon sinks. While more research is still needed to fully assess how farming practices influence the nutrition of crops, treating agriculture as preventive medicine would radically reframe the cost-benefit analysis of agricultural policies. The ongoing costs of conventional, degenerative agricultural practices extend beyond immediate financial outlays; they include significant adverse impacts on human health, damage to agricultural resilience, widespread water pollution, dramatic losses in biodiversity, and a substantial contribution to climate change. Adopting a public health lens for agricultural policy would illuminate the true cost of inaction and the immense value of investing in regenerative systems.
These broad, high-level policy changes would be instrumental in scaling up and mainstreaming regenerative, soil-building farming practices. Such reforms should, in principle, garner broad bipartisan support, as they offer a compelling win-win scenario: boosting farm profits through reduced input costs and enhanced resilience, helping to build healthy and vibrant rural communities, all while significantly reducing agriculture’s environmental footprint and contributing to climate stability. While regenerative farming certainly challenges aspects of conventional wisdom and established interests, restoring healthy soils presents a practical and immediate opportunity to turn things around for the planet and people across the political spectrum. Soil degradation has undermined society after society around the world, but we have a tangible opportunity, right now, to reverse this ancient trend. To make that happen, we need to recognize that what’s good for the land is profoundly good for us, too, and actively incentivize a greener agricultural revolution focused on regenerating healthy soil.
