Reflections on the Regenerative Agriculture Report: Bioeconomical balances and the potential of biotechnology

Abstract

The policy report published by the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) introduces a new concept, ‘Regenerative Agriculture’, but but does not provide an exact definition for the term. The roots of the ideological concept lie in the French Enlightenment period, when food supplies of local communities were not a real concern. Nowadays, agriculture struggles to keep up with the population explosion. The EASAC position paper sets ecological farming and large-scale agriculture against each other despite the fact that their common aim is to supply the world population with high quality food and industrial raw materials. The comments in the present paper aim to provide a more nuanced approach to some of the ideas discussed in the EASAC report, with special emphasis on the fact that, although the report formulates noble aims, it does not present concrete suggestions on how they could be achieved economically.