Agriculture’s potential as a nature-based climate solution is gaining attention in the U.S. and globally. With good reason: As a report from U.S. Farmers & Ranchers in Action (USFRA) pointed out last year, U.S. agriculture is poised to halve its GHG emissions in the next 5 years using only existing practices and technology. With innovation, U.S. agriculture can be carbon positive by 2035, offsetting not only its own emissions but those of other industries as well, enabling a transition to a net zero economy.
Along with the buzz can come confusion, as a number of terms in sustainable ag conversations are in use to describe agriculture’s role as a climate champion: “climate-smart,” “regenerative,” “sustainable,” “stewardship,” “eco-friendly” and “green.”
The truth is, there are some important distinctions among these terms, which this article aims to distill. Using common vocabulary makes it much easier to share — and work toward — the same goals.
That’s why the words in USFRA’s Decade of Ag vision were thoughtfully and collaboratively chosen to sum up what we believe is the food and agriculture sector’s shared goal: A resilient, restorative, economically viable and climate-smart agricultural system that produces abundant and nutritious food, natural fiber and clean energy for a sustainable, vibrant and prosperous America.
In any lexicon about sustainable ag, the first term to clarify is climate change, which first appeared in a 1956 research paper by Gilbert N. Plass, and evolved from the term global warming, which was popular in the national and international conversation in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Abundant research has indicated a warming trend inside the earth’s atmosphere. This concern is the rationale for adopting agricultural practices aimed at reducing greenhouse gases.
Climate-smart agriculture is defined by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as an approach that helps to guide actions needed to transform and reorient agricultural systems to effectively support development and ensure food security in a changing climate.
Climate-smart agriculture aims to tackle three main objectives: 1) sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes, 2) adapting and building resilience to climate change and 3) reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions where possible.
Climate-smart agriculture has five focus areas: carbon neutrality, soil health, biodiversity, water quality and quantity; and plant/livestock diversity. This means it’s an umbrella concept for taking into consideration specific climate threats for a given region, crop, farm or ranch, and determining methods to respond with environmental objectives in mind.
As a broad term that allows for different ways to increase environmental, social and economic stability, climate-smart agriculture is the one USFRA uses most often, as our mission is centered around the role all farmers and ranchers can play in providing climate solutions and forging the sustainable food systems of the future.
Climate-smart agriculture practices vary depending on farm and ranch conditions and needs, but they can include no- or reduced-tillage, planting cover crops, crop rotation, compost and manure application, range and grazing management, rotational grazing, plant and animal shading, anerobic digestion, vermiculture, ecosystem-specific animal and plant breeding, the integration of crops and livestock, integrated pest management, crop nutrient management, precision agriculture (meaning observing, measuring and responding to crop needs with precise use of nutrients, fertilizer and pest control just where needed), drop-nozzle pivot irrigation, drip irrigation, use of soil amendments and crop scouting, and more.
While often “climate-smart” and “regenerative” are used interchangeably, they’re not synonymous, and methods generally regarded as regenerative are a subcategory of climate-smart.
Regenerative agriculture is not a uniformly defined or regulated term. Generally speaking, it’s a concept used to define a suite of practices focused on soil health, and it represents a body of knowledge that is continually advancing to support farmers. “Regenerative” is sometimes used a noun to describe certain practice standards.
A June 2015 meeting in Costa Rica is oft-cited as a key moment in gaining alignment and increasing popularity around a common goal to reverse global warming and end world hunger by facilitating and accelerating the global transition to regenerative agriculture and land management.
The definition-of-terms that arose from this meeting, detailed here, describes a suite of practices that contribute to building healthy soil; increasing water percolation, water retention and clean and safe water runoff; increasing biodiversity and ecosystem health and resiliency; and inverting the carbon emissions of agriculture so that the agriculture sector instead sequesters carbon.
The use of “regenerative” and later “regenerative organic,” to describe agricultural systems was made popular by the Rodale Institute as early as the 1980s. Robert Rodale coined the term ‘regenerative organic’ to describe a holistic approach to farming that encourages continuous innovation and improvement of environmental, social, and economic measures.
Many food companies, clothing companies have defined their own regenerative agriculture initiatives using this approach. There’s also growing awareness that many of the practices should be attributed to Native Americans and indigenous people around the world, who long protected local ecosystems and preserved biodiversity through largely similar land management and farming practices. More on the discussion about unattributed appropriation is here.
Sometimes, but not always, the term regenerative is associated with organic farming, which applies to 1% of U.S. farmland and is defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as a production system that is managed to respond to site-specific conditions by integrating cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Farmers who want to call their products organic need to have them certified as such by the USDA. And a growing minority of farmers practice regenerative organic farming, explicitly tying the two sets of practices together.
This is codified by the new Regenerative Organic Certified™ standard, managed by the Regenerative Organic Alliance, which goes beyond addressing soil health alone. Its holistic approach evaluates soil health and land management, animal welfare and social fairness.
Carbon Farming is another term that refers generally to the consideration of how and where agricultural land can pull more carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in the soil; in other words, it’s climate-smart agriculture that focuses squarely on the reduction of carbon emissions in production.
With variance around the term regenerative ag, USFRA uses the word restorative more often, as in our Decade of Ag vision language that cites a resilient, restorative, economically viable and climate-smart agricultural system. This language was crafted within 16 vision working group sessions and finalized at the 2020 Honor the Harvest Forum, a meeting of more than 200 leaders from the U.S. food and agricultural sector. Alignment around the word restorative was to define human acts (as opposed to natural acts) to work with nature and on lands to continue to fulfill the potential to provide climate solutions.
Use of the terms “sustainable” and “sustainability” has increased in recent years, focusing on whether a product or process can be maintained over time at a certain rate or level, and whether it avoids or decreases the depletion of natural resources. The Brundtland Report, published in 1987 by the United Nations (UN) World Commission on Environment and Development, coined the term “sustainable development” and defined it as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
From the UN perspective, sustainability has three pillars: economic, social, and environmental. Because of its broad meaning as a way to understand and tackle global challenges, it is the chosen terminology of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 goals set by the UN in 2015.
In the agricultural sphere, the concept of sustainable systems has been in vogue for the better part of 25 years and adheres closely to the definition set forth in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as to “bear weight for a long period… give strength… or nourishment… bear up against… maintain or keep (as in sound).” One early moment for the agricultural community in considering this concept was the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, the causes of which included not only severe drought but also wind erosion of prairies due to farming methods not suited for dry land soil.
In working toward sustainability of agricultural land, the concept of stewardship is key to farmers and ranchers as an ethic that embodies the responsible planning and management of resources. Stewarding land means taking care of it – and this generally carries an implication of service and being committed to and proud of leaving the land better for the next generation. It’s a term related to husbandry, which means taking care of, cultivating and breeding crops and animals, with a secondary OED definition around the management and conservation of resources. Farmers and ranchers often call themselves stewards of the land, considering their close connection to the lands they care for over time.
Green and greener have become part of colloquial everyday language to refer to almost anything from agriculture to architecture to fashion that benefits or has less impact on the environment. For most consumers, green is synonymous with environmentally friendly and eco-conscious. Eco-friendly is more precise, meaning that something does not harm the planet. The word “friendly” can be misleading, though, since just about any type of product or process has some kind of negative impact on the environment. And both green and eco-friendly have been used in greenwashing: that is, when a company deceptively puts eco-friendly claims on its product packaging.
As farmers and ranchers use various climate-smart practices and add new ones based on the needs of their unique operations, it’s important that we are all — literally — on the same page with our shared vocabulary.