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Placing regenerative farming on environmental educators’ horizons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2020

Edgar A. Burns Open the ORCID record for Edgar A. Burns [Opens in a new window]
Edgar A. Burns*
Affiliation:
School of Social Science, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand Hawke’s Bay Regional Council Chair of Integrated Catchment management, Napier, New Zealand
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Regenerative farming offers the promise of rapid carbon sequestration at global scale. Also called regenerative agriculture, it is largely absent in social science environmental discussions. Learning and teaching about regenerative farming has been left outside educational channels at many levels until now. Pastoral farmers themselves have been at the forefront of a renewal movement educating other land users how to farm beyond conventional Western modern systems. Regenerative farming challenges ‘industrial’ or ‘capitalist farming’ models that continue to degrade natural systems across the world’s pasturelands. This article describes ground-up learning processes and value propositions of farmers involved in regenerative farming. They see it as a solution to the normative shift in recent decades positioning farmers as ‘bad guys’: reducing biodiversity, degrading land systems by erosion and excess fertilisers, over-using water catchments and lowering water quality for urban communities. Understanding the claims and potential of regenerative farming enables environmental educators to be more specific in identifying potential strengths, without neglecting academic evaluation and critique to bear on this strategic climate innovation.

Keywords

carbon sequestrationagroecologyholistic agricultureenvironmental sociologyregenerative agricultureregenerative farmingsoil renewalwater catchments
Type
Article
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 29 - 39
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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