“Nature has her own religion. Gospel of the Land.” — Pearl Jam
We all struggle, one way or another, to improve upon our lives, to strengthen our relationships and communities, to nurture our children and to make positive contributions to better the planet. Life, as we know it, is full of choices. Everyday, we decide — if we’re conscious — how to organize our day so that we can look back on it knowing we’ve done our best to further positivity.
So it is that here at Indian Ridge Farm we’ve been thinking a lot about Regenerative Agriculture and how it fits into the larger realm of our society and into our ability to continue making positive change. The farm continues to evolve after 20 years of commercial operation. We continue to grow in dedication, commitment and passion for improving our soils, our ecosystem, our natural habitats, our hydrology, our immediate farm community and our grasslands. In the process, we're also sequestering carbon, and addressing the challenges of climate change.
Regenerative Agriculture essentially seeks to make amends for the damage to the environment created by our Industrial Agriculture model. The principles of Regenerative Agriculture is exactly what we’ve been doing here on the farm during the last 20 years. Instead of fighting Mother Nature, trying to modify Mother Nature, trying to compete and “outsmart” Mother Nature we strive to join her. Regenerative Agriculture implies being in synch with nature and working with nature, not against her.
Incorporating livestock into our farm organism improves the soil, which improves the nutrient-density of the plants and grasses, which augments carbons sequestration, which helps reverse the trend toward rapid climate change: that’s the regenerative way!
These are trying times. We face serious challenges as a human race to survive the harm we’ve wrought. There are solutions. Regenerative Agriculture, and the choice you make to support farms that are vying for sustainability and resiliency is how you can make a huge difference in your own lives and by at the same time improving the environmental health of Planet Earth, our home.
We say, be a part of the agricultural solution, not the problem. Industrial agriculture got us into this mess and Regenerative Agriculture will get us out of it. That’s the paradox in this whole discussion: agriculture is both the problem and the solution.
