Why could regenerative agriculture be a solution? The “Chianti Classico model”

Abstract

Industrial agriculture delivers cheap food at high cost in terms of degraded land, water resources, biodiversity and rural societies. It exacerbates floods and droughts, and creates enormous greenhouse gas emissions. There is an alternative: regenerative agriculture that mimics natural ecosystems, holding to four rules: no bare soil, no tillage, a diverse crop rotation and a rough landscape that includes woods and wetlands. Subsidising regenerative farming is politically feasible whereas, probably, taxing land degradation is not. Farmers may be encouraged to adopt regenerative farming through small changes to the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) whereby farmers could form Landcare Groups which would develop a regenerative farming brand – analogous to a protected name such as Chianti Classico. They could then sell their brand to a regional Sustainable Farming Panel and, if authenticated, it could receive a subsidy under the CAP.