Getting Beyond the Buzzwords
At her Sow a Heart Farm in Fillmore, Mollie Englehart—farmer, vegan chef and mother of four—strolls around some of her 17 acres near the fast-flowing Sespe River and shows off her farm’s innovations in regenerative organic farming with a casual open-handed gesture.
Sturdy cornstalks, already eight and nine feet tall in early July, shoot up between rows of avocado saplings, shading and protecting the fast-growing and delicate leaves of the shrubby young trees from the blazing afternoon sun. Running rampant on the ground between the corn and the trees are vigorous squash vines with enormous and spiky leaves, which deter weeds, protect the soil and discourage pests. Not far away can be found a rectangular pen made of livestock panel, which can be used as a small mobile corral in which to keep sheep focused on eating weeds.
THE ENGINE OF REGENERATIVE FARMING
Englehart’s belief in animal integration is essential here, because while well-established “organic” certification rules prohibit chemical pesticides or fertilizers, the newer “regenerative” certification standards call for increasing the amount of organic matter and microbiology in soil, in part by discouraging tilling or plowing.
Around the corner and closer to the river are a few cows in a corral, one of which comes over to affectionately muzzle Englehart’s hand when she stops nearby.
“This is Una,” Englehart says. “She was my first cow. I have a longstanding relationship with all my cows. They are also the engine of this farm.” She is speaking of the manure produced by animals and used to bring fertility to the land.
Englehart links the health of the soil to human health, pointing out an overlapping connection between the microbiology of the soil and the microbiome in the human gut.
“This kind of farm—with a few cows, a few goats, a few sheep and a wide diversity of crops—sounds like an antiquated idea,” she says, “but it’s regenerative organic agriculture and it’s the kind of farming that we’re trying to get back to. I haven’t bought any inputs to this farm in three years. I only buy hay, to feed the cows and to make compost.”
A NATURE-BASED CLIMATE SOLUTION
In 2019, Englehart agreed to be one of the first farms in Ventura County to pursue a Regenerative Organic Certificate (ROC), along with the famous Apricot Lane Farms in Moorpark (which was featured in the popular 2018 documentary film The Biggest Little Farm). Englehart is a believer in the power and promise of organically grown foods. When the Regenerative Organic Certification standards were first rolled out in a pilot program in 2019, she worked with long-time organic and regenerative farmer Phil McGrath, of McGrath Farms in Camarillo, and Regenerative Organic Alliance (ROA) representatives to go for a certification. She looked at the process as useful research for her soil work as a board member for the Kiss the Ground, a regenerative advocacy and documentary group based in Los Angeles.
“Kiss the Ground is in the forefront of soil health, and some of the work they have done—with cotton farmers, for instance, in Texas—has been amazing,” she says. “They used testing as part of an education program for farmers, in which the soil was tested for microbiology, and for more humus and more soil carbon content over time, using cover crops and no tilling. It’s less about the inputs to the land and more about the practices.”
Yet because a Regenerative Organic Certification is intended to build the underlying health of the soil, it’s not as straightforward to measure and regulate as checking for the chemical inputs prohibited in organic growing, she says.
David White, a biologist who co-founded a small nonprofit in Ojai in 2002, the Center for Regenerative Agriculture, explains why it’s more difficult to measure regenerative than organic growing practices.
“Regenerative agriculture is a nature-based climate solution,” he says. “The plants are taking carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it into the soil. So they’re sequestering carbon, and the double whammy is that sequestering carbon in soil increases soil health. So, because you can put a number to the soil carbon content, it sounds as if it would be easy to send a sample to be tested for its soil carbon content, but in fact it’s a little confusing. Carbon can be in living or non-living forms, for one, and soil carbon content can vary a lot depending on where you sample it; and the first thing that laboratory testing routinely does is to dry soil samples out completely, which means the microbiology dies—and ultimately that’s what you’re trying to measure, the health of the soil.”
Elizabeth Whitlow is the executive director of the Regenerative Organic Alliance (ROA), which includes Dr. Bronner soaps, long-time organic advocates Rodale Institute, and Patagonia. It was through ROA that Ventura County regenerative organic farms were first certified. Like White, Whitlow also believes that regenerative agriculture is not as easy to regulate or test as organic. She thinks that’s especially true when it comes to practices involving farm animals such as cows and chickens.
“It’s all about traceability, with animal welfare,” Whitlow says. This means strictly tracking organic inputs and organically fed versus non-organically fed animals. She adds that some of existing industrial factory practices allow for painful “modifications” to farm animals, such as cutting the tails off pigs, or trimming chicken beaks. (Regenerative organic certification for farm animals, by contrast, requires that they be ensured the “Five Freedoms,” as defined by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, including “freedom from pain, injury, or disease.”)
GETTING BEYOND THE BUZZWORDS
Whitlow adds that because “regenerative” has become a buzzword that appeals to consumers and growers alike, huge producers such as Walmart and others have declared themselves to be adherents of regeneration without clearly defining it.
In 2020, Walmart announced that it was planning to devote 50 million acres towards regenerative growth. CEO Doug McMillon declared, “We want to go beyond sustainability to become a regenerative company dedicated to placing nature and humanity at the center of our business practices. Restore, renew, replenish,” he said, mentioning “aspirational goals to achieve 100% renewable energy, zero waste and a more sustainable supply chain.”
But as Whitlow points out, the vague claim of regenerative agriculture that Walmart has put forward is problematic in that it doesn’t require an organic certification as a prerequisite, raising questions about the seriousness of their commitment to clean foods and soil health.
“What does that even mean?” she wonders. “We’re mindful not to dilute this really potent term that gets people’s attention. I think what really drives that interest is so much angst around climate change. People want to have something hopeful to grab on to, something that they can buy that feels right, something that’s grown in a way that’s healthy and speaks to their values.”
At Sow a Heart Farm and at her vegan restaurants, Mollie Englehart has built a business around growing and preparing healthy, organically and regeneratively grown foods, (see our story here) but admits that she has become frustrated with the way agriculture is inspected.
“I’m not a fan of the current certifications,” she says. “I think they are not designed for the small farmer who grows diverse crops. I grow over 300 things. As a farmer I’m accustomed to organic regulations and as a chef I’m accustomed to health inspections in restaurants, but in the ROC there’s also an equity component, and so you have your organic inspection and your ROC inspection, and then you have to spend a whole separate day going over handbook and wage statements, looking for any discrepancies.”
Englehart is not alone. At Apricot Lane Farms in Moorpark, the farming couple in charge, John and Molly Chester, also chose to pursue a regenerative organic certification as part of the pilot program in 2019, but in time instead went for a different certification, for biodynamic agriculture. Like the regenerative organic standard, biodynamic farming requires organic certification as a prerequisite, but offers an alternative model that incorporates animal husbandry and includes spiritual elements.
Whitlow admits it was painful for her, as executive director of the ROC program, when Apricot Lane Farms decided to pull out of the regenerative organic certification.
“I was disappointed,” she says. “But Apricot Lane Farms’ involvement in our pilot program helped inform edits, inspire updates and ultimately evolve the certification framework into the current version. This is the high bar of certifications and it’s an intensive process, especially with so many different types of workers.”
For Englehart, the labor audit part became a central issue.
“Because I own several farms and restaurants, I have an office staff,” she says. “But I could not comply with the requirements of the ROC on a farm of this size without it.”
Englehart stresses that she still believes that—as with organic standards—inspections are necessary to maintain standards in regenerative and organic agriculture.
“We need guardrails,” she says. “I think farmers are innovating faster than the regulators can keep up with, which is a weird situation, but we still need certifications because we don’t trust each other.”
Whitlow, who says she spent more than 25 years in the field of organic agriculture before coming to the Regenerative Organic Alliance, recognizes that the inspection process can be a challenge. She argues that good record-keeping has benefits for the grower that can be realized over time, and also that it’s important to ensure that farm laborers, many of whom are undocumented at first, have to be protected from harassment or exploitation by contractors or farmers.
“For these reasons, we require labor contracts, and we need to see paychecks, and if the farmer provides housing, we need to inspect it,” Whitlow says. “Sometimes it’s awkward. I once inspected some farm labor housing and I filed a complaint about a dairy operator, because the housing was near stores of grain, and [the farm laborers’] houses were overrun with rats.” ROC requirements are that housing must meet local rental conditions ensuring a reasonable level of comfort, including sanitation, safety, ventilation and more.
At the Sow a Heart ranch in Fillmore, Englehart—who says she lost millions of dollars at her restaurants during the pandemic—has reluctantly decided to pull up stakes in Ventura County and move to Texas with her family to start over. She plans to open a “farm stay” business with her husband, featuring about two dozen Tiny Homes for accommodations, a brewery and a small restaurant for visitors. She will remain organic, and perhaps pursue a biodynamic certificate, but doubts she will return to regenerative organic certification.
Yet she remains as adamant as ever about the importance of soil health—in agriculture and in life.
“25% of the life of this planet lives in the top eight inches of soil,” she points out. “We must value that top eight inches of life in the soil as much as we value the polar bears on the ice caps or the tigers in the jungle, because that life in the soil may have a bigger impact than these larger species. It’s time for mankind to rebuild that life that we’ve been steadily destroying.”
Editor’s Note: The ROA, the certifying agency for Regenerative Organic Certification, recently announced a huge milestone achievement after less than five years: There is now one million acres of certified regenerative organic agricultural land globally. For perspective, after 32 years, only 3.6 million acres of land in the U.S. is USDA Certified Organic. For more information, click here.
