Most farmers toil over how to get the best returns for their labour. But a new trend may offer a different path to achieving better yields.

Known as regenerative farming, the practice aims to provide the most benefits to both crops and the surrounding environment.

But what exactly is it?

“Regenerative farming is basically trying to bring back life on land. It could be above land, it could be in the soil, it could be in many different forms; could be microbiome (improvement) but bringing back life on land, that’s what makes regenerative important,” Diane-Laure Arjalies, associate professor, managerial accounting and control, sustainability, at the Ivey Business School at Western University said in an interview with FoodNX.

“There are different ways to bring life back on land: you can do cover cropping, you can bring some wetland, you can try to work with seeds, and we have co-benefits for other species. It varies but it’s bringing back the life to heal the land: to leave the land better than you find it.”

Old ways coming to forefront

While a lot of major companies are currently talking about the practices, including McCain with potatoes or McDonald’s with beef, the techniques are not new, according to Arjalies.

“If you look at our Indigenous brothers and sisters that have been farming in a regenerative way since time immemorial, the Haudenosaunee people in Canada, they used to have the three sisters (corn, beans and squash), so they were breeding different crops together.”

While in the post-Second World War era there arose a big push for more commercial farming and fertilizers, today there is a pushback.

“Regenerative farming came more recently as a counter-movement to what we call conventional farming,” she said.

There will be a regenerative farming conference May 26 and 27 in Winnipeg, known as the Regenerative Food Systems Investment 2026. It will feature more than 150 investors, funders, producers, intermediaries and policy influencers, which speaks to its growing popularity.

Improving local conditions

As well, the reality of the Canadian farming ecosystem today is coming into play. “The research shows that in Canada we’ve lost almost 50 per cent of the top soil. I think farmers and scientists and even financiers, understood that the current system we’re in has brought many benefits but is not sustainable.”

Besides the loss of top soil through erosion, “we’ve killed the microbiomes with the fertilizers; the chemicals,” Arjalies said.

As well, the farmland is suffering from a very human-like reaction to being pumped full of chemicals, she explained.

“We also know that the land right now is a bit like an addicted person; the only way they can go through is by adding more chemicals and fertilizers, and then if you withdraw this, it’s a bit like a withdrawal phenomenon.”

All of this, combined with the high costs of fossil fuels which are heavily used in agriculture, means the factory-farming model is not sustainable in the long term, according to Arjalies.

However, for those farmers who want to adopt regenerative farming methods, the process is not quick. “There have been some studies in Europe that say the transition takes on average nine to 10 years to break even,” Arjalies said.

With the high financial costs, it’s a tough ask to encourage more farmers to adopt the practices.

“Who’s going to finance the transition? We know there’s going to be losses during those years. Is it fair to ask a farmer who might have 35 or 40 seasons to sacrifice 10? It’s a quarter of their life. You can say it’s a generational investment but this famer, they still need to feed the family so we should carry the burden.”

Positive outcomes for farmers, environment

For those who do make the switch, the benefits are clear. Regenerative farming is “(more) nutritious, it results in higher quality of food, higher quality of the soil from a biodynamic perspective: that’s been proved,” Arjalies said.

“European reports show that when the transition is made, then the yields are higher.”

As well, by promoting diversity, certain costs can be avoided. For example, if a farmer grows potatoes and breeds cattle on the same farm, the manure can be deployed resulting in little outside costs for fertilizer.

“So that’s an advantage, and of course, you have all the co-benefits from nature: pollination, water filtration, that maybe are not directly appropriated by the farmers, this extends to maybe other stakeholders and rights holders,” she said.