Four 'Alternative Future Scenarios' for Regenerative Agriculture
This series of articles aims to illustrate four different (and intentionally provocative) potential futures for regenerative agriculture.
Divergent possible futures of regenerative agriculture
Regenerative agriculture1 is commonly defined as a context-specific approach to agriculture that builds soil health, sequesters carbon, and supports biodiversity and the water cycle by treating farms like diverse ecosystems. However, it can also mean many other things to different people; this article explores those nuanced meanings and what – or who – may or may not be included in different conceptions of the term.
The idea has gained much traction in the so-called Global North in the past 5-10 years.2 However, it’s hardly new and is heavily inspired by global indigenous and traditional agricultural practices. For those less familiar with the topic, I would recommend some resources here, here and here.
Everyone working in regenerative agriculture has their own vision for how the future food system could or should look. These are often based on implicit assumptions and biases, consciously or not, and disagreements on critical issues can result in some radically different imagined ‘regenerative’ futures. Some topics that people working within the space might disagree upon include:
How high should the bar be for what counts as regenerative or not? Who gets to decide?
What is the long-term role of multinational corporations in the food system? Are they ideal catalysts for transformation due to their size and power within the existing system, or are they preventing transformative, just and equitable change?
What is a globalised food system's role compared to a local or bioregional one?
How prominent are equity and justice in the definition of ‘regenerative’?
How do technological solutions like cell-cultured meat and vertical farming fit within a regenerative food system?
What is the role of human labour vs automation and tech?
How might AI and other transformative technologies impact the sector, if at all?
What should be the role of different finance mechanisms: Public vs Private vs Alternative Finance (Decentralised Finance (DeFi) and Regenerative Finance (ReFi)3)
How to ensure both accessibility and affordability of nutrient-dense food for consumers while guaranteeing fair wages for farmers and all other supply chain actors?
Should agriculture be intensified to reduce its total land footprint and make more room for nature (land sparing), or should agriculture be better for nature (land sharing)? How do we ensure that sufficient ecosystem restoration can also occur?
On Futures Thinking
Futures thinking is an approach to exploring what the future of a particular topic could look like that is grounded in evidence and based on signals, trends and drivers of the future from today. 'Alternative Future Scenarios’ is one technique used to imagine four archetypal possibilities for the future: growth, constraint, collapse, and transformation.
I was grateful and humbled to receive a scholarship for the Institute for the Future's (IFTF) 'Alternative Futures Scenario Building' training earlier this year. This series of articles builds on what I learned from that course.
It is not an attempt to make predictions of the food system's future that are one hundred percent accurate. Instead, it aims to illustrate four different (and intentionally provocative) futures that explore how the many tensions described above could manifest.
Perhaps what will happen in the future will involve some elements of these scenarios and things I've missed entirely. But, as IFTF often states: "It's better to be surprised about a scenario than blindsided by the future".
Four future scenarios for Regenerative Agriculture in the UK by 2040
The following four scenarios explore the future of regenerative agriculture in the United Kingdom in 2040. All scenarios need grounding in a specific geographic context, and this is the one I am most familiar with.
None of these scenarios would happen in a vacuum. As William Gibson said, ‘All imagined futures lacking recognition of anthropogenic climate change will increasingly seem absurdly shortsighted.’ This is increasingly also true for other trends like AI.
As you read through these four scenarios, please reflect on the following questions:
Which of these scenarios is most likely? Any of them? None of them? Some combination of two or more?
If these scenarios seem unrealistic, ask yourself why? Do you think things will remain predictable in an era of AI and ecological collapse? Would your 2019 self have predicted that a global pandemic killing nearly 7 million people or a war in Europe would occur in the next few years? As Jim Dator says: “any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous.”
What does your preferred future for regenerative agriculture look like?
Who might be the winners and losers in that particular future?
What might the unintended consequences be?
How do we collectively achieve a truly regenerative food system that works for all?
Growth Scenario
Collapse Scenario
Constraint Scenario
Transformation Scenario
In this series, I’m using the terms ‘regenerative agriculture’ and ‘agroecology’ somewhat interchangeably, which may or may not be acceptable depending on who you ask. They share plentiful common features - though agroecology tends to place equity, justice and grassroots political activism at its heart in a way that more corporate versions of regenerative agriculture don’t. This article explores their differences in more detail.