Regenerative agriculture is commonly defined as a regeneration of soil health. A set of soil management practices that includes non-disturbance (no-till), keeping soil covered, incorporating livestock, utilizing cover crops, increasing species diversity, and maintaining continuous living roots in the soil are generally agreed upon as the drivers of a regenerative farm management system.
However, these management practices all miss a fundamental driver of soil health, which can supersede the impact of all the practices above: plant nutritional integrity.
The nutritional integrity of a crop determines its capacity for photosynthesis and carbon sequestration. Photosynthetic activity can vary as much as 3-4x based on a plant’s nutritional status. Manganese, magnesium, phosphorus, nitrogen, iron, and other minerals are directly involved in the photosynthesis process. Inadequate levels of any of these nutrients will directly bottleneck photosynthesis and limit the quantity of carbon that is fixed and converted into sugars over each 24-hour photoperiod cycle.
The foundational requirements of photosynthesis are adequate water, carbon dioxide, sunlight, a green leaf containing chlorophyll and balanced mineral nutrition. Farmers intimately understand the critical requirement for water. Sunlight is considered a given. Carbon dioxide supply and mineral nutrition are commonly misunderstood or ignored entirely in outdoor production agriculture. Because of this misunderstanding, most crops being grown in an outdoor agricultural setting are photosynthesizing at only a fraction of their inherent genetic potential.
In our consulting work at Advancing Eco Agriculture, we understand that plant nutrition and microbiome management are the foundational drivers of plant immunity and crop yields, which are brought together in the Plant Health Pyramid. We collect plant sap analysis data through the entire crop life cycle to manage nutritional integrity and increase disease and insect resistance. Our team has collected tens of thousands of samples over the last fifteen years on dozens of crop species. Almost universally, crops experience significant nutritional imbalances that limit their capacity for photosynthesis. Once we correct these nutritional imbalances, yields and pest resistance increase immediately as a result of the increased photosynthetic activity.