"Regenerative agriculture" refers to the practice of using farming to not only grow crops but to restore soil and ecosystem health as well. A new study from Dartmouth College indicates that farmers are increasingly adopting these practices to decrease their dependence on agrochemical companies, Phys.org reported.
Although farmers can earn money through carbon credits by doing regenerative agriculture, the study's authors were somewhat surprised to learn that this was not what was moving the needle for them.
Instead, the farmers were more motivated by a desire to "get off that treadmill of high-input, high yield commodity agriculture," Susanne Freidberg, a professor of geography at Dartmouth and the study's co-lead author, said.
"When farmers talk about the return on investment on regenerative agriculture, they're talking about more than just money," Professor Freidberg added.
Carbon credits — a commodified practice in which polluting companies pay money to people or entities who help the environment to theoretically make up for all the pollution — are a controversial concept.
Critics have called them a "license to pollute" for big companies that are destroying our environment with their products. They have also called instead for laws to be changed to prevent those companies from polluting in the first place or to make it too costly for them to do so profitably.
The reasons that the farmers who were interviewed for the study gave for being out on carbon credits, however, were actually much simpler than that: too much paperwork and not enough money.
The reasons that they had turned toward regenerative farming anyway were equally as simple: it's good for the land that they rely on to make their livings.
In even more heartening news, the study showed that farmers who had turned toward regenerative agriculture also increased their solidarity and cooperation with others in their field. "Farmers who viewed regenerative agriculture as a way to gain more personal freedom also saw that this freedom depended on the support of other farmers," Freidberg said.
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