Regenerative Agriculture: Trade-offs and Win-Win Scenarios for Soil Carbon Sequestration and Crop Yields

The world is grappling with the dual crises of climate change and food insecurity. The global food system, responsible for nearly one-third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, plays a pivotal role in addressing these challenges. Regenerative agriculture, which includes practices like reduced tillage, cover cropping, and crop residue retention, has been proposed as a nature-based solution with the potential to sequester carbon in agricultural soils while maintaining or enhancing food production. However, the concurrent effects of regenerative agriculture on soil carbon stocks and crop yields have not been fully explored. In particular, the extent to which regenerative agriculture will lead to trade-offs between carbon sequestration and food production, and how this relationship is modulated by environmental and agronomic conditions, remains unclear.

To address this, we conducted a global meta-analysis encompassing 5,709 paired yield and soil carbon observations from 506 sites comparing conventional systems to those incorporating one or more regenerative practices. Results show that 50% of observations exhibit significant gains in crop yields or soil carbon, with 16% achieving both (win-win). In contrast, only 7.5% show losses, and just 1.5% experience a lose-lose scenario. Importantly, the magnitude of changes in soil carbon and yields is primarily influenced by agronomic factors such as the combination of regenerative practices, nitrogen application rate, and crop type, with lesser effects from soil and climate conditions. These findings indicate that regenerative agricultural practices are unlikely to harm yields or soil carbon stocks and can be optimized to maximize win-wins by tailoring adoption to favorable conditions.