
While regenerative agriculture can (and should) look different for every operation, the business case and value proposition for replicating and growing its adoption is increasingly garnering interest from a diversity of groups within and beyond the food system. Many now acknowledge its potential to help address several sustainability crises by sequestering carbon, supporting climatic, environmental and economic health and creating employment and business opportunities. However, scaling the practice continues to face many obstacles. Phase 2 of our Regenerative Agriculture Lab (RAL) aims to convene ~25 committed producers, industry leaders, food distributors and retailers, academics, policymakers and innovative thinkers in general to work together to learn and take action on initiatives that respond to the question:
How might we grow Alberta's regenerative agriculture system in a way that preserves its integrity, while maximizing the positive social, environmental, and economic impacts for communities?
In Alberta, regenerative agriculture is primarily a grassroots movement of small-to-medium operations trying to grow their foothold in a sector where just the economics can keep many from transitioning to regenerative practices as well as diminish the attractiveness for younger generations. Even as new levels of collaboration with large-scale food companies and companies in other industries present new opportunities to mainstream the field, skepticism remains about potential greenwashing and fragmentation persists across the sector about what must define “good” as regenerative scales and what will ultimately define “value”. With so many economic and environmental benefits at stake, this is the right time and place to forge a collective path forward.
The Regenerative Agriculture Lab aims to respond to the timely opportunity to…
For more information, please contact Shiana at syounger @ stettlerlearning.com.