We’ve written about reproductive agriculture before in Mindbodygreen, but for those unfamiliar with the concept, regenerative agriculture is a holistic, sustainable method of farming that aims to restore soil nutrients during the farming process – as well as sustainable. The world around it, including conservation and rehabilitation systems.
Large-scale commercial farming is characterized by large single crop fields, over-cultivation and the use of pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertilizers. These efforts erode the soil, resulting in degraded land, a significantly degraded planet’s biome, and reduced quality of output. It has a serious environmental impact on a wide scale.
To neutralize a very important part of that ecosystem, soil microorganisms (or we call them, the planet’s microbiome.) As our sustainability editor Emma Lowe writes, are “small microorganisms that support plant growth and clean up. The process environment. A handful of soils. There are far more creatures than humans that have ever survived, and they all take out carbon from the atmosphere and help keep it in the ground. ” By reducing their diversity, we run the risk of losing this advantage.
Indeed, a report by the Rodel Institute, a non-profit organic farming research organization, suggests that if all of our land was able to be farmed or managed with soil health in mind, it could prevent all annual CO2 emissions produced by humans and then some . The situation is even more dire when you consider research on the opposite side of the spectrum: previous research has shown that if we do not change this, most of the world’s topsoil will be depleted in the next 60 years.
Therefore, there is an urgent need for regenerative cultivation.
According to Alex McIntosh, CEO and co-founder of skin care brand Thrive Natural Skincare, their main goal is to identify areas of erosion caused by mainstream agriculture, use regenerative practices to revitalize it, and create better skin care products in the process. McIntosh shared with me that the guiding principle of his life and brand is “keep it better than you found it”, a very short way of describing regenerative agriculture.
But I think it’s somewhat better understood when imagining. While in Costa Rica, Mario Garcia Cuesada, the founding director of Thrive’s regenerative activities, worked through it. Garcia Cuesada is a field botanist who has been at the brand for almost 10 years, and works with farmers, creating the best practices and helping them regenerate supply chains by helping them locate new locations. Costa Rican soil and farmland is something he knows like the back of his hand.
He showed us a cooperative farm in Kopekuna, Lemon, one of the Trive’s partnership farms that grows Juanilama, a local botanical that they use in their various products among other crops. It’s a women-led co-op, whose members come from nearby communities. The farm has a “nursery” section where they nurture young plants and experiment with new growing methods, as well as a nearby field where most of the actual crop grows. On our bumpy soaking trip — it’s a rainforest above all — we walked through the gorgeous nursery.
In addition to the Macintosh, Garcia Cuesada walks us through a vibrant ecosystem filled with frogs, insects and other living creatures (including themselves). The land was full of fallen leaves and cut tree bark. The sky was protected by tall trees, providing shade from the midday sun, as well as providing nutrients when the leaves fall to feed the topsoil. Below us, the roots carry contacts between different collections of nutrients, precious carbon and botanicals.
This method is replicated in the adjacent larger crop fields, where farmers are able to reap the annual growth and harvest of the juanilama tree-even in the dry season. They recreate the elements of a rainforest’s most favorable environment, such as using covered crops, dropping dead leaves so that their residues can pump nutrients into the soil, and using compact plants as a “living fence” around the crop for plant diversity. Compared to abandoned commercial farms, there is an ecosystem here. And with the ecological community, the Juanillam plant develops.
Once collected, the plant goes to the co-operation’s own distillation machine where it turns into an essential oil. Here, they convert a raw material into liquid gold – while the farm can make money from raw botanicals, they increase their profits by being able to turn it into a more valuable resource like oil or extract. Land resources are not only mined by an outside company, it is celebrated by the growing community.
When I asked the group what their favorite essential oils were, the president of the co-operation smiled, smiled, and spoke with Garcia Quesada (who was translating). The rest of the co-members laughed when they heard his answer. “It’s like asking my favorite child,” Garcia Quesada translated for me.