Race and Regenerative Agriculture
Black and Indigenous farmers and leaders have mixed feelings about whether regenerative agriculture can reform itself to address issues of inequity and power. Despite their potential, Indigenous practices are seldom discussed or studied, said Romero Briones, and “no one is asking the Indigenous communities for their input.”
“People are trying to figure out which cover crop is the most beneficial, when Indigenous people can tell you which plants they planted and ate to insure biological and environmental health,” she said. “There’s a learning curve that the regenerative movement has to go through that the Indigenous food movement has figured out long ago.”
If for no other reason, the regenerative movement—including the scientists who study soil and ecosystem health—should aim to learn about Native people’s ways of farming and managing land so that more farmers can incorporate Indigenous practices, crops, and varietals, Romero Briones said. Such a change would benefit not just soil, but also forests, national parks, and other natural areas, not to mention the climate, she said.
The regenerative movement also needs to question the outsized role that cattle are supposed to play in regenerative agriculture, Romero Briones said. The arrival of cattle in colonial America—which she dubs “cattle colonialism”—led to entire tribes of Native people being displaced for pasture grazing permits. The cattle ate plants that were important to Native people and to the environment. It’s likely some of those plants also sequestered a lot of carbon, she said.
But she also emphasized the fact that Indigenous land stewardship practices shouldn’t be viewed as cures to environmental problems because “to place the burden of reverse engineering of sorts on Indigenous peoples is disingenuous.”
The Minneapolis-based Regenerative Agriculture Foundation wants to encourage more white people do the hard work of fighting for social justice within the food system—especially in the Midwest, where focus on no-till farming and other regenerative practices is growing, said executive director Mark Muller.
“The soil health movement among Midwest farmers has infiltrated the established organizations, including the Farm Bureau . . . to protect the soil and make more money, that’s resonating. But the transformational vision of regenerative agriculture, that’s not quite there yet,” Muller said.
To bridge the two visions of regenerative agriculture and bring more farmers on board with social transformation, Muller’s group is launching a cohort of white food and farm leaders to address the lack of equity in today’s regenerative agriculture. The goal is to give them more resources and training from BIPOC experts, Muller said, but also to create a network in which they can connect with other local like-minded people who have a social justice focus.
“A lot of rural white people want to be part of the conversation. They want to be good allies, but they find it challenging in the rural Midwest where it’s always been a white-dominant culture,” Muller said. “Our goal is for them to talk to each other, learn from each other, and encourage each other to take action.”
Muller said that while carbon markets and soil health are important to the regenerative movement, conversations about land ownership and who has access to farmland are also imperative to addressing climate change.
Farmers and leaders of color emphasized that there still is time to change focus. “Regenerative agriculture has a moment to recalibrate its initial direction,” said Sanjay Rawal. “If they start including other voices, start listening to the elders, a lot of knowledge will be disseminated quickly and profoundly.”