It’s already been a month since I returned from my visit to Minnesota, where I took a closer look at the state of regenerative agriculture in the bread basket. Since then, I’ve been trying to understand the transition to practices such as cover cropping, reduced tilling and planting perennial crops and how we could speed it up to advance soil carbon sequestration and other environmental benefits.

Impactful work is already happening regarding carbon market programs and other financial conservation incentives. But low adoption rates demonstrate that these efforts aren’t enough for a large-scale transition to regenerative practices to succeed.

From my conversations with farmers in Minnesota and many other practitioners over the past months, three pockets of work ask for more attention: independent and data-driven technical assistance, program alignment and standardization and supply chain infrastructure for crop diversification. Why are these issues critical?

Convincing farmers of the benefits of regenerative practices is one of the biggest riddles to solve in this space. Whose advice do they trust and what evidence do they need to take the leap?

Traditionally, many farmers will revert to their "trusted adviser" for farm management decisions — often a farmer cooperative or input company consultant. Many will also trust their neighbors or other peers and seek recommendations from agricultural extension agents from local universities or conservation agencies. But advice from an evidence-based source with the farmer’s best interest in mind rather than their own agenda of selling certain inputs and services or enrolling them into programs can be hard to come by.

Data isn’t the only thing that needs to be aggregated and standardized. The sprawling landscape of regenerative programs and carbon market providers could also use some organization.

Many farmers I talked to were overwhelmed trying to understand the landscape and figuring out which program would benefit them most. In many cases, this leads to choice paralysis and initial interest doesn’t translate into enrollment. On the other hand, program managers observe that farmers ready to adopt practice changes are delaying the transition, assuming that the roaring buzz they observe will lead to increased prices in the coming years. For example, a farmer who might be ready to plant cover crops this year and get a payout from a carbon market provider for the practice change might wait to plant until next year, assuming that the carbon payment will be higher then.

Crop diversification is a less talked about aspect of the regenerative transition since its contribution to carbon sequestration and other environmental improvements is less direct. But many commodity farmers are interested in moving away from the standard corn and soy crops used for animal feed and ethanol production, growing some human-grade food instead.

Read the full article about regenerative agriculture by Theresa Lieb at GreenBiz.