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What is Regenerative Agriculture?
Regenerative agriculture promotes biodiversity through farm management, thus generating nourishing food, strong communities, and resilient ecosystems. ​
Regenerative Practices
Regenerative producers use management practices that work alongside nature,
rather than against it.
Regenerative Outcomes
The success of regenerative agriculture is best measured by its outcomes, rather than a rigid checklist of practices. Primary outcomes include:
increased nutrient content in food
Nourishing Food
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improved mental and physical health
Strong
Communities
increased resilience of rural communities
improved farm profitiability
greater community connectivity
improved soil health and productivity
decreased environmental pollution
Resilient Ecosystems
improved water cycling & reversed desertification
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increased carbon capture & storage
enhanced ecosystem services
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What We Measure
It's More Than Soil Health
Healthy soil is the foundation of all life, but it doesn’t stop there.
When we study a farm, we’re not just looking at the soil — we’re measuring life in all its forms. From naming the bacteria and fungi living belowground to counting the insects, birds, and plants above it, we’re capturing how the whole system works together.
These biodiversity measurements are key indicators of soil health and the ecosystem’s health as a whole.
We study:
Soil
Microbial activity, organic matter, and carbon storage.
Water
Water infiltration, holding capacity, wet aggregate stability
Leaf tissue analysis/Brix levels, nutrient density/diversity of yield, yield/biomass
Plants
Insects
Ground dwelling and airborne insects and invertebrates (abundance, species richness and diversity, functional groups, pest abundance)
Birds
Bird abundance, species richness, diversity, and habitat use
Pests
Plant pathogens and insect pests
Nutrition
Crop nutrient analyses
Economics
Yields, input costs, and overall profitability
This systems-level approach is what makes our research different. By studying biodiversity, we can see how every form of life is connected, and how these connections shape the health of the entire farm.
Regenerative Scoring System
Practices are representative of the management system that drives regenerative outcomes. Ecdysis Foundation has developed the only data-backed scoring system to define and validate regenerative outcomes based on eight management questions.
EXAMPLES OF ECDYSIS REGENERATIVE SCORING
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Our definition of regenerative agriculture is based on a scoring system (0-8) derived from eight questions. These questions pertain to specific regenerative practices that are proxies of regenerative management philosophy. ​Each score is a measurement of the outcomes, which are verified through sampling and data.