Regenerative Agriculture

Regenerative agriculture is an approach to managing our food, fiber and fuel production systems with an intention to improve upon our environments by rehabilitating ecological systems.

How: Regenerative agriculture seeks to achieve 5 overarching agroecological outcomes: Climate mitigation, soil restoration, biodiversity enhancement, water resource protection, and socio-economic viability, through promoting diverse management practices that can be adapted to different cropping systems and environments. These outcomes are achieved by integrating six core management principles: Minimizing soil disturbance, maximize crop diversity, keep the soil covered, maintain living roots in the ground, integrate animals, and understand the context of your farm operation.

Introducing our new Regenerative Agriculture Farm Advisor; Sara Rosenberg!

We are very excited to introduce the Regenerative Agriculture Farm Advisor, Sara Rosenberg, who will be based in Mariposa and covering Merced and Stanislaus counties. Sara graduated from the University of California Davis with a master’s in International Agriculture Development and a PhD in Horticulture and Agronomy. Her disciplinary focuses are agroecology, sustainable nutrient management, and extension research and methodology. Her past research centers on understanding the implications of diversification (with a focus on crop rotations and cover crops), for California rice systems. Her master’s program thesis implemented a county wide assessment to learn from rice growers about their experiences with crop rotations and understand barriers to adoption, opportunities, and required resources for successful implementation. Furthermore, this two-year study engaged grower communities to help develop future research goals she undertook in her PhD. Her doctorates research explored how different summer crop rotations affect multiple sustainability factors including soil health, crop yields, weeds, input use, and economics. She also assessed different cover crop species performance in rice environments and their carbon and nitrogen contributions.

Prior to her PhD, she worked for more than three years in the Peace Corps as an Agriculture Advisor. She worked closely with small holder farmers in West Africa implementing conservation agriculture programs and increasing agriculture resilience in both annual crops and tree crops, mainly in the cashew forestry sector. Beyond this, she has more than eight years of experience working on farms throughout California and ran her own small, diversified farm for the last two years in Woodland.

She is passionate about community lead development and using participatory research as a powerful tool for developing sustainable solutions. Her aim is to develop programming that will support a wide range of farm types, including commercial and small-scale, organic and conventional, annual crops, tree and vine crops, and livestock production systems. Programmatic goals include developing a robust research program aimed at assessing farm sustainability impact across agronomic, ecological, social, and economic factors; developing collaborative projects to support farmers in overcoming barriers to adoption of regenerative practices and builds upon their capacity to further sustainability goals, and develop and promote tested integrative management practices that increase climate resilience and ecosystem sustainability across diverse farming environments.