Regenerative agriculture refers to a suite of principles, practices, or outcomes which seek to improve soil health, biodiversity, climate, ecosystem function, and socioeconomic outcomes. However, recent reviews highlight wide heterogeneity in how it is defined. This impedes our ability to understand what regenerative agriculture is and has left the movement open to strategic repurposing by diverse stakeholders. Furthermore, the conceptual franchising of the regenerative agriculture debate by Western culture has omitted discussions surrounding social justice, relational values, and the contribution of Indigenous and local knowledge that does not align with Western-centric producer-consumer frameworks. This is a continuation of injustice by creating barriers to representation and participation, and its confrontation will ultimately be necessary for regenerative agriculture to achieve its transformative potential. This article demonstrates that the farming techniques associated with the regenerative agriculture movement today have been practiced for centuries, and in some cases millennia, by Indigenous and local communities around the world. We propose that current Western academic attempts to define regenerative agriculture have resulted in long lists of practices, principles, and outcomes which fall short of describing the whole, because they lack the relational values component that is so integral to these Indigenous and local knowledge systems. We take an urgently needed, Indigenous-informed approach to defining regenerative agriculture, which confronts current epistemic injustice and prioritizes sociocultural and relational values. Finally, we propose an anti-colonial definition that draws on diverse knowledge systems including Indigenous ecophilosophies and published scientific analyses.

Sequestration and storage of organic carbon (C) in soil is an essential component of climate change mitigation and fundamental in promoting the health and climate resilience of soils. Sources of available soil C data are increasing, which complicates efforts to consolidate the data in forms that can be readily used by stakeholders. Spatial and temporal gaps in data availability also limit the quantification of changes in soil C through space and time. Improved coordination among producers and users of soil C data would provide data compatibility at the spatial and temporal resolution required for C monitoring, accounting, and verification of policy implementation. These challenges can be addressed by forming regional-scale networks to coordinate the collection and use of soil C data by promoting consistency in methods, collecting new data to fill critical gaps, integrating existing data from multiple sources, and providing data interpretation to stakeholders in readily usable forms. Forming networks in regions such as the Northeastern United States would require close coordination with existing programs that are involved in collecting or aggregating soil C within that region. Network formation could be accomplished by (1) producing a planning document, (2) designing a network structure tailored to the region, and (3) acquiring the institutional support to establish and operate the network. Increasing the availability and usage of soil C data through regional networks would support the development of climate change solutions and increased ecosystem services through land management efforts that increase soil C storage.

Modifications to continuous corn production systems can reduce environmental impacts and soil degradation, yet the social viability of these modifications is linked to the degree to which they also influence yields and crop quality. In this study, we focus on forage production systems and evaluate how yields, crop quality, soil health indicators, and associated ecosystem services are influenced by corn-hay rotation treatments, cover cropping, and tillage reduction in silage production using a unique 10-year dataset from Borderview Research Farm in Vermont, United States. Physical, chemical, and biological soil health indicators were monitored annually alongside yields and crop quality in a randomized complete block design experiment. We use a mixed model analysis of variance approach to demonstrate significant influences of time and treatments on yields, crop quality and soil health parameters (at p < 0.05). The winter rye cover crop treatment had no significant influence in this study. No-till significantly increased aggregate stability and had no significant effect on other metrics. When cover crop and no-till were combined, they significantly increased soil organic matter content, respiration and aggregate stability. The cover crop, no-till, and no-till cover crop combination treatments had no significant effect on yields or forage quality, suggesting these conservation practices can be adopted without sacrificing yields. Our study also found that corn-hay rotations can significantly increase soil organic matter, respiration, aggregate stability, and crude protein content compared to continuous corn, but they can negatively influence active carbon, total dry matter yield and digestibility . The length of rotation influences the degree to which corn-hay rotations maintain or reduce yields when compared to continuous corn. Shorter rotations of perennial forages (4 years of hay, 6 years of corn) can sustain dry matter yields that are not significantly different from continuous corn, but longer perennial forage rotations (8 years of hay, 2 years of corn) will significantly reduce overall dry matter yields. Among the treatments, no-till in combination with cover cropping in corn silage fields, and a rotation of 4 years of hay to 6 years of corn are likely to achieve the greatest overall benefits in forage production systems.

We evaluated how the spatial resolution of environmental variables (n = 47) altered their ability to predict soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks (0-30 cm depth) using training data from Gridded Soil Survey GeographicgSSURGO and SoilGrids databases. Training and validation subsamples (1,629) were selected using a conditioned Latin hypercube sampling (cLHS) design based on environmental variables in Vermont, U.S. The predictive relationships between environmental variables and SOC stock (t C ha-1) were developed using machine learning algorithms. The algorithms were trained (70 %) and evaluated (30 %) using a random subset of database subsamples, respectively, with an additional evaluation step using local, independent SOC reference data (n = 272). The Random Forest (RF) algorithm outperformed other algorithms at all spatial resolutions in estimating SOC stocks. As spatial resolution increased, model performance with the gSSURGO database increased (R2 = 0.33-0.62 and RMSE = 42.42-34.92), while no such trend was observed for the SoilGrids database. The best SOC stock model prediction using the SoilGrids database was achieved with a 10 m resolution (R2 = 0.54 and RMSE = 4.67). Evaluation of modeled results using the external, or independent, reference data showed a significant decrease compared to the internal validation in prediction accuracy (R2 = 0.11-0.14 for gSSURGO and, R2 = -0.19 for SoilGrids). The gSSURGO database showed that soil maps (including suborders, drainage classes, temperature, and moisture) and geology/landform maps had a greater influence than other environmental variables at all spatial resolution scales. In contrast, climatic- and DEM-related variables were more significant for the SoilGrids database. Our study suggested that the origin of the SOC stock database and the sampling scheme largely affects the importance of environmental variables assigned in the machine learning algorithm. Our results confirmed that the variable and data sources, model type, and combination of environmental variables significantly influenced prediction accuracy. In conclusion, DSM products should be re-evaluated with local references when used for spatial extents that are different from those for which they were initially designed.

This article explores the role of farmer networks in building the adaptive capacity of small and diversified farmers in the Northeastern United States. Previous research suggests that farmers' networks are the backbone of practical agricultural knowledge systems in the United States, serving as a critical venue where growers exchange and negotiate new ideas. Drawing upon empirical evidence from a regional survey on climate resilience and a series of focus groups conducted in collaboration with 9 farmer organizations from Pennsylvania to Eastern Canadian provinces, this article examines how the emergence of new ideas and agroecological innovations are influenced by geography, network affiliation, and perceived agency. First, we use regression analysis to identify factors that influence the use of no-till on diversified vegetable and berry farms, which is an emerging innovation in this community. Our analysis shows that geography may not be a significant driver of adoption among the population we sampled, which contrasts with previous research on explanatory factors, yet affiliation with certain farmer networks was significant in predicting the use or intended use of the practice. This quantitative analysis is complemented by qualitative data from a series of focus groups in which farmers identify the characteristics of certain networks which support them in addressing new challenges. Farmers identified that networks support them in learning about new ideas, accessing resources, and engaging in creative problem-solving, through facilitation of spaces for exchange with peers and experts and being responsive to their emerging needs.

: As agricultural conservation priorities evolve to address new complex social-eco-logical problems and emerging social priorities, new conservation incentive program participation and success can be enhanced by incorporating local stakeholder preferences into program design. Our research explores how farmers incorporate ecosystem services into management decisions, their willingness to participate in payment for ecosystem services programs, and factors beyond compensation level that would influence participation. We conducted three focus groups with 24 participants between January of 2019 and May of 2019 in Vermont. Our study revealed that a strong, intrinsic stewardship ethic motivates farmers to enhance ecosystem service provisioning from their farms, though financial pressures often limit decision-making. These results suggest that programs with sufficient levels of payment may attract participation, at least among some types of farmers, to enhance ecosystem services from farms in Vermont. However, farmers may be deterred from participating by perceived unfairness and distrust of the government based on previous experiences with regulations and conservation incentive structures. Farmers also expressed distrust of information about ecosystem services supply that conflicts with their perceptions of agroecosystem functioning, unless delivered by trusted individuals from the extension system. The delivery of context-spe-cific information on how management changes impact ecosystem service performance from trusted sources could enhance farmers’ decisions, and would aptly complement payments. Additionally, farmers expressed a desire to see a program that both achieves additionality and rewards farms who have been stewards, goals that are potentially at odds. Our findings offer important insights for policy makers and program administrators who need to understand factors that will influence farmers’ willingness to participate in payment for ecosystem service programs and other conservation practice adoption initiatives, in Vermont and elsewhere.

Healthy soils are the foundation of our food system and support broad environmental goals, including improved water quality and carbon sequestration. Increasingly, we appreciate that aspects of soil health such as fertility for plants, suppression of disease, and cycling of nutrients are linked to the functional diversity of soil microbial communities. The impact of functional capacity is influenced by farm management, which varies with farm size. Small to medium-size farms, with gross sales of less than $250,00 per year, make up 89% of farms in the United States, despite often being ignored in policy decisions. They are often more integrated into local food systems than larger farms, have greater investment in long-term sustainability due to their tendency to be passed from farmers to children, and are more reliant on soil health than larger farms. We describe a research framework to advance understanding of the soil microbiome and its role in soil health, environmental outcomes, and agricultural sustainability on small and medium farms. Our perspective elevates four research priorities to link the benefits of healthy soil microbiomes from the microscale to the macroscale. We hope this approach will lead to practical applications to enable success in the context of ongoing environmental and economic challenges that affect the agricultural landscape.

The co-creation of knowledge is gaining recognition and use within the science, practice, and movement of agroecology. Knowledge co-creation fosters participatory learning and development, which differs from passive knowledge sharing. This approach can bridge the real and perceived gaps across diverse forms of knowledge, including what is often distinguished as farmers’ traditional, Indigenous, tacit, or local knowledge and experts’ scientific, western, or generalizable knowledge. Formal academic documentation of processes and outcomes related to knowledge co-creation is limited; therefore, we bring in examples of published research, drawing from fields of agroecology, participatory action research, and science and technology studies, along with a firsthand farmer perspective on co-creation. Combined, these frameworks offer insight into the potential benefits of knowledge co-creation in agroecology. Many of these challenges, such as navigating power dynamics, may be addressed through mindful research and community practices, including strong communication and transparent expectations and goals. Co-creation processes have traditionally and continually taken place between farmers and throughout communities without academic acknowledgment and/or interpretation of such. We reinstate the invaluable role of farmer-centered inquiry, understanding, and application, which offer benefits to individual farmers and their extended communities of practice and research, in addition to holding spiritual and cultural significance. The co-creation of knowledge in agroecology presents a compelling, adaptive approach and outcome for the increasingly complex challenges facing farmers and the agrifood system.

Farmers and policy makers pursue management practices that enhance water quality, increase landscape flood resiliency, and mitigate agriculture's contribution to climate change, all while remaining economically viable. This study presents a holistic assessment of how two practices influence the supply of these ecosystem services-the use of an aerator prior to manure application in haylands, and the stacked use of manure injection, cover crops, and reduced tillage in corn silage production. Field data are contextualized by semi-structured interviews that identify influences on adoption. Causal loop diagrams then illustrate feedbacks from ecosystem services onto decision making. In our study, unseen nutrient pathways are the least understood, but potentially the most important in determining the impact of a practice on ecosystem services supply. Subsurface runoff accounted for 64% to 92% of measured hydrologic phosphorus export. Average soil surface greenhouse gas flux constituted 38% to 73% of all contributions to the equivalent CO2 footprint of practices, sometimes outweighing carbon sequestration. Farmers identified interest in better understanding unseen nutrient pathways, expressed intrinsic stewardship motivations, but highlighted financial considerations as dominating decision making. Our analysis elevates the importance of financial supports for conservation, and the need for comprehensive understandings of agroecosystem performance that include hard-to-measure pathways.

It has been widely argued that agroecological science, which originally developed as the application of ecological principles to agricultural systems, should engage with the social and political issues that affect production agriculture, and incorporate knowledge from a variety of sources. In this paper, we use techniques from network science and bibliometrics to evaluate the degree to which this transformation has taken place. By creating networks based on over 3,000 agroecology papers and the roughly 160,000 references they cite, we distinguish the sub-fields ("research fronts") that made up agroecology in three time intervals: 1982-2004, 2005-2013, and 2014-2018. We also identify the main disciplines from which the research fronts in 2014-2018 drew their supporting knowledge. We suggest that, very broadly, themes in agroecological research include: Ecosystem services; (agro)biodiversity; approaches to agricultural intensification; tropical agroecosystems (particularly coffee); pest and weed management; organic agriculture; cropping systems; system transitions, modeling, and design; climate change adaptation; food sovereignty; education; and the nature and purpose of agroecology itself. Some research fronts mainly cite papers in natural science fields such as ecology, environmental science, agriculture, and entomology. However, others draw upon work in social science areas including development studies, environmental studies, and anthropology. The analysis presented in this paper demonstrates that agroecology has indeed evolved to possess many of the characteristics of an "ecology of [the entire] food system." We anticipate that this work will also be of use to those wishing to gain an overview of the field or identify key papers, knowledge gaps, and potential collaborations.

A research team at UVM, led by Dr. Carol Adair and Dr. Heather Darby, is evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of four different tillage approaches (conventional, strip, vertical, and no till) and two different methods of manure application (broadcast and injection). The goal is to determine the practices best suited for reducing greenhouse gas emission, improving carbon storage and limiting nitrogen losses. The team measures carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions from the treatments every two weeks or more frequently after events (large rainfall, manure application) using a measuring device called photoacoustic multigas monitor.