Resilient Farming Systems: Introduction

Resilient Farming Systems Series: RegenerEat is a systems thinking approach to food sovereignity.

The aim of this series is to look at how farms are tackling the mounting ecological, socio-political and economic pressures the Earth is facing.

Investigating the future of farming by looking at farms and practitioners putting in the work towards a resilient, regenerated landscape and ecology. Observing how small farmers and landworkers are adapting to the changes the future will bring. How do we make our farms resilient to these changes to ensure food security and sovreignity? Can we change our perspective as a species to one integrated as opposed to above?

Agricultural resilience is about equipping farmers to absorb and recover from shocks and stresses to their agricultural production and livelihoods. Some shocks are short-term, others long-term. Some come suddenly while others are predictable. Some are more acute while others slowly erode farmers’ ability to work the land.

As farmers and land workers find themselves increasingly on the front lines of global climate change, drought and biodiversity loss, sustainability is not enough. Farming will have to adapt and evolve to help meet the myriad challenges our society is facing.

Farming as industrial agriculture is a part of the problem. Resilience is not simply enabling farmers to weather the changes we are going to experience in coming years, it is also mitigating those changes by altering farming practices before its too late.

The good news is that we can restore healthy soil biota and rebuild soil organic matter through regenerative agriculture. Using farming methods that sequester carbon, store and retain water in the land for longer, provide healthy food for our children and children’s children, and provide bio-diverse habitat for wildlife on a planet not facing catastrophic climate change.

Systems thinking draws together all aspects of an issue and enables a holistic approach to improving the situation in its entirity. Making food production resilient is about creating a food system that is in balance, that is a part of the planet's natural functions. Before we grew food, food just grew. The more we allow nature to take over, the less we have to interfere.

Feeding the ever increasing billions has become about the profit that can be made in justifying intensification. Its not about making sure everyone gets fed.

RegenerEat is making sure people get fed. It is educating, enabling and encouraging people to reconnect with the sources of their food as a way of becoming better connected to the natural world, with the hope that we can save it, before it is too late.