Campaign Aims to Curb Misuse of 'Regenerative' in Agriculture

As recent evi­dence indi­cates the increas­ing pop­u­lar­ity of organic and sus­tain­able food among United States con­sumers, advo­cates are con­cerned about the mis­use of lan­guage such as ​“regen­er­a­tive agri­cul­ture.”

To that end, the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF) has launched a new ini­tia­tive to help organic farm­ers edu­cate con­sumers about what regen­er­a­tive agri­cul­ture entails.

“We cre­ated the Organic is Regenerative Toolkit to help peo­ple under­stand how organic man­age­ment prac­tices are regen­er­a­tive and to pro­vide resources for peo­ple to com­mu­ni­cate those mes­sages to their audi­ences,” said Elizabeth Tobey, OFRF’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­trac­tor.

Regenerative farm­ing prac­tices include cover crop­ping, crop rota­tions and increas­ing bio­di­ver­sity, which are the back­bone of organic sys­tems.

“Regenerative agri­cul­ture is a newish buzz­word, and because it does not have a legal def­i­n­i­tion, it is vul­ner­a­ble to green­wash­ing,” Tobey said. ​“Big Ag com­pa­nies are already begin­ning to co-opt the term and use it to refer to con­ven­tional agri­cul­ture that may have adopted one con­ser­va­tion prac­tice, such as reduced tillage.”

While OFRF noted that any shift toward con­ser­va­tion prac­tices in con­ven­tional agri­cul­ture is wel­come, the orga­ni­za­tion is uneasy about the lib­eral use of the term ​“regen­er­a­tive.”

“Calling it regen­er­a­tive misses the holis­tic, sys­tems-based point of a truly regen­er­a­tive sys­tem,” Tobey said. ​“Because organic is a fed­er­ally reg­u­lated term, with a legal def­i­n­i­tion, it holds pro­duc­ers account­able and is a label con­sumers can trust.”

Tobey empha­sized the need for a legal def­i­n­i­tion of ​“regen­er­a­tive agri­cul­ture,” espe­cially when pol­i­cy­mak­ers are begin­ning to under­stand agriculture’s impact on cli­mate change and mit­i­ga­tion.

According to OFRF, it is crit­i­cal to sup­port organic farm­ers who have fol­lowed cli­mate-friendly agri­cul­ture in a way that cares for peo­ple and the planet for decades.

California’s olive farm­ers are among those pro­mot­ing organic and sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, espe­cially as global demand for organic olive oil is expected to rise sub­stan­tially.

Allied Market Research shows that the global organic olive oil mar­ket was val­ued at $933 mil­lion in 2021 and is set to rise to $2.2 bil­lion by 2031. According to Polaris Market Research, the total olive oil mar­ket was val­ued at $14 bil­lion in 2021.

“We are quite aware that there is a sig­nif­i­cant and grow­ing mar­ket for organic olive oil within the United States, and we are eager to see more organic olive orchards planted in California to meet this demand,” said Samantha Dorsey, the pres­i­dent of McEvoy Ranch.

“Olives have a com­pelling envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity story, and there is a real and mea­sured pos­i­tive impact on pub­lic health when peo­ple eat more extra vir­gin olive oil,” she added.

For organic farm­ers and advo­cates, OFRF is try­ing to make it eas­ier to artic­u­late the ben­e­fits of organic farm­ing sys­tems and their regen­er­a­tive impact.

According to the foun­da­tion, organic farm­ers must pro­mote their role in sup­port­ing a resilient planet, build­ing healthy com­mu­ni­ties and pro­mot­ing trans­parency.

OFRF also instructs pro­duc­ers to demon­strate the eco­nomic ben­e­fits of organic farm­ing by pro­mot­ing the health and safety of farm work­ers, local com­mu­ni­ties and ani­mals.

Tobey added that farm­ers also must empha­size that the ​‘organic’ label is third-party cer­ti­fied and uses best prac­tices that con­tinue to improve.

“Established olive orchards are huge car­bon sinks since they are a per­ma­nent crop,” Dorsey said. ​“At McEvoy Ranch, we run a no-till farm­ing oper­a­tion which fur­ther enhances soil health and car­bon seques­tra­tion.”

Dorsey empha­sized that extra vir­gin and vir­gin olive oils are phys­i­cally extracted, leav­ing far fewer unde­sir­able by-prod­ucts behind.

McEvoy Ranch com­posts all pumice from the milling oper­a­tion and applies it in the organic orchards. Furthermore, olive oil does not require a cold chain for trans­port, which keeps the trans­porta­tion car­bon foot­print small.

While envi­ron­men­tally friendly olive oil pro­duc­tion starts in the groves, the process con­tin­ues in other activ­i­ties such as bot­tling and select­ing pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als.

“Indirect emis­sions from goods and ser­vices are the largest source of green­house gases in a sup­ply chain,” accord­ing to California Olive Ranch’s 2023 impact report.

COR is the United States’ largest olive oil pro­ducer, with almost three mil­lion trees under cul­ti­va­tion. According to COR’s find­ings, for every liter of olive oil pro­duced from their California orchards, ​“our trees and soil are esti­mated to have cap­tured more car­bon from the air than we emit­ted to grow, har­vest and pro­duce that oil.”

The COR report said the com­pany decreases emis­sions asso­ci­ated with pack­ag­ing by bot­tling with alu­minum bot­tles, pack­ag­ing in bag-in-box con­tain­ers and plan­ning to tran­si­tion more pack­ag­ing cases to 100 per­cent recy­cled mate­ri­als.

While good envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship is top of mind for an increas­ing num­ber of California pro­duc­ers, they remain aware that the pri­mary func­tion of bot­tling and pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als is to pro­tect olive oil from oxy­gen and light.

“McEvoy Ranch has been work­ing with the same glass bot­tle com­pany for over 25 years now,” Dorsey said. ​“We have a strong work­ing rela­tion­ship with this bot­tle com­pany because of its dual com­mit­ment to qual­ity and sus­tain­abil­ity.”

“Our olive oil bot­tles con­tain over 75 per­cent recy­cled mate­r­ial,” she added. ​“Our part­ner glass company’s sus­tain­able cer­ti­fi­ca­tions have been earned due to its sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments in sus­tain­able tech­nolo­gies in energy pro­duc­tion, car­bon diox­ide emis­sion reduc­tion, water man­age­ment and raw mate­r­ial use reduc­tion.”

From a social sus­tain­abil­ity stand­point, Dorsey noted that the olive indus­try helps sta­bi­lize the California work­force, employ­ing farm work­ers for the November and December har­vest when not much other work is avail­able.

She also high­lighted how olive grow­ers con­tribute to health. ​“We are pro­duc­ing one of the health­i­est plant-based fats you can eat,” she said. ​“It is a monoun­sat­u­rated fat filled with phe­nols and other healthy com­pounds that reduce inflam­ma­tion and pro­mote good cho­les­terol.”

Explaining the ben­e­fits of organic farm­ing for olive oil pro­duc­tion can be chal­leng­ing, but Tobey hopes the OFRF’s ini­tia­tive will help.

“We are excited to share the toolkit with farm­ers as we know farm­ers who have been using organic meth­ods for years,” Tobey said. ​“Now because Big Ag is start­ing to hype up regen­er­a­tive, these farm­ers are see­ing their cus­tomers get con­fused, cus­tomers ask­ing, ​‘are you regen­er­a­tive?’”

Despite the long tra­di­tion of organic agri­cul­ture, farm­ers and researchers agree that many con­sumers and pol­icy-mak­ers do not fully under­stand what organic means.

“It is impor­tant for con­sumers and jour­nal­ists to know that being cer­ti­fied organic is a seri­ous com­mit­ment from the farmer, and the annual inspec­tions are rig­or­ous, tough and thought­ful,” Dorsey said. ​“We are com­mit­ted to keep­ing it this way so that the term ​‘organic’ is not diluted and can be trusted.“

“California’s agri­cul­tural indus­try has an enor­mous oppor­tu­nity to con­tribute to build­ing a sus­tain­able future and mit­i­gat­ing the neg­a­tive effects of cli­mate change,” she added. ​“Being cer­ti­fied organic is one piece of this solu­tion and an impor­tant step towards cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able, sta­ble food sys­tem.”