What on earth is regenerative farming?

Apr 16, 2024

About 2,000 years ago, the most powerful thing in the world were the Legions of Rome. About 200 years ago, the most powerful thing in the world was the British Royal Navy. Today, the most powerful thing in the world has neither sails nor swords – we’ve learned that blowing up vast portions of population isn’t practical after all – so we find in our era of mass media and instant communication, that the most powerful thing in the world is words.

We largely form our understanding of reality via language, and so when a new chunk of verbiage comes along, I think it’s important to closely examine it and question what is actually being said. Over the past few years in the world of ag media and marketing “regenerative” is a slogan that we hear over and over again. What does it mean?

I got on the phone with Terry Good, of Good Family Farms, outside of Meaford, Ontario, where he and his sons Mitch and Marcus raise grass fed beef, pastured hogs and certified organic cash crops on 1,500 acres of owned and rented ground in the rolling hills of Grey County. Terry has decades of experience in conventional fertilizer sales, and 10 years ago set out to develop a decidedly low input mixed farm that reflected a lifetime of lessons in the industry. With his new farm underway, Terry was explaining to his father (a man of the land born in 1931) the sort of regenerative agronomy they were carrying out: Long crop rotations, ploughing down legumes, integrating livestock and so on – all this ‘natural’ stuff – and dear old dad couldn’t help himself: “We used to just call that farming.”

And so, it was with a bit of scepticism that I started looking into what regenerative means to those who actually practise it. Are they just trying to reinvent the wheel, or is there something genuinely novel taking place? I was surprised by both the passion and depth of its practitioners: the movement is a genuine response to problems on farms and in the food system, and its primary mission is a make a future for farmers and a healthier diet for consumers.

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Video: From Conventional to Regenerative: Will Groeneveld’s Journey Back to the Land

"You realize you've got a pretty finite number of years to do this. If you ever want to try something new, you better do it."

That mindset helped Will Groeneveld take a bold turn on his Alberta grain farm. A lifelong farmer, Will had never heard of regenerative agriculture until 2018, when he attended a seminar by Kevin Elmy that shifted his worldview. What began as curiosity quickly turned into a deep exploration of how biology—not just chemistry—shapes the health of our soils, crops and ecosystems.

In this video, Will candidly reflects on his family’s farming history, how the operation evolved from a traditional mixed farm to grain-only, and how the desire to improve the land pushed him to invite livestock back into the rotation—without owning a single cow.

Today, through creative partnerships and a commitment to the five principles of regenerative agriculture, Will is reintroducing diversity, building soil health and extending living roots in the ground for as much of the year as possible. Whether it’s through intercropping, zero tillage (which he’s practiced since the 1980s) or managing forage for visiting cattle, Will’s approach is a testament to continuous learning and a willingness to challenge old norms.

Will is a participant in the Regenerative Agriculture Lab (RAL), a social innovation process bringing together producers, researchers, retailers and others to co-create a resilient regenerative agriculture system in Alberta. His story highlights both the potential and humility required to farm with nature, not against it.