Designing Regenerative Food Systems: And Why We Need Them Now

“We’ve got climate change in real time now and I think farmers are also aware the weather is changing. The increase in nitrogen fertilizers has just woken up everybody to the urgency of it. So, what was a transition that was going to happen over maybe ten years has suddenly been accelerated.” ―Marina O’Connell
This book offers a unique toolkit for designing regenerative food-growing systems through tried and tested agroecological methods for transforming industrial food growing into a resilient agricultural revolution. This is a system that grows good food from healthy soil in a low-input, closed-loop system. Marina O'Connell identifies and addresses the four challenges of climate-change, mitigation and adaptation, offsetting biodiversity loss, and producing enough good food for a growing population.
Using the case study of her Huxhams Cross Farm in Devon, England, O'Connell shows how dead soil was transformed into thriving, fertile land while drawing on a toolkit comprising the methods of biodynamics, organic agriculture, agroforestry, regeneration, agroecology, and permaculture. The principles, methods, and techniques of each approach are explained concisely, with illustrative case studies of successful endeavors and follow-up resources such as film references.
Marina O'Connell concludes with the Huxhams Cross Farm case study and research evidence. She reviews the extent to which the four challenges are tackled successfully by the “toolkit,” how a resilient farming revolution can be brought about through food choices and policy that tackles barriers such as land access and the psychology of scarcity, and showing how to build farmer capacity for a resilient food-growing transition.