Giving Compass' Take:

• Restauranteurs in California are exploring how promoting regenerative agriculture can combat the threat of global warming. 

• How can donors identify opportunities to invest in regenerative farming or support restaurants that do?

• Learn why regenerative agriculture should include pesticide reduction. 

Anthony Myint vividly recalls the moment he encountered the idea that would shift his life’s path. In 2014, the San Francisco chef and his wife and business partner, Karen Leibowitz, visited California carbon ranching pioneer John Wick at Nicasio Native Grass Ranch in Marin County.

"He had a bunch of whiteboards out and he was just wrapping up a talk with some U.N. people," Myint recalls. Wick had been working on the Marin Carbon Project, the now well-known collaboration with University of California, Berkeley scientist Wendee Silver that examined whether several "carbon farming" practices — such as managed grazing and adding a thin layer of compost to the land — could in fact pull greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Wick talked about the difference between durable carbon — deposited and locked into the ground for up to centuries by plant roots and decaying and dead microorganisms — and carbon that routinely circulates from above to below ground. Hearing of the work the couple was doing helping restaurants offset their greenhouse gas emissions, Myint recalls, Wick "told us we weren’t thinking big enough."

Atmospheric carbon wasn’t just something to avoid emitting, or to pay others to scrub from one’s environmental footprint, Myint and Leibowitz now understood: Farming itself could regenerate the land.

That day, Myint and Leibowitz joined a much larger movement to bring regenerative agriculture to the mainstream and help farmers, chefs and eaters understand the value of healthy soil. "We’re in the midst of a massive cultural change in response to global warming, and farming and healthy soil are probably the most practical and biggest solutions we have," says Myint.

Read the full article about restaurants and regenerative agriculture by Nancy Matsumoto at GreenBiz.