EGU25-17537, updated on 15 Mar 2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-17537
EGU General Assembly 2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Evaluating effect size distribution of different regenerative agriculture practices across soil, climatic and topographical factors
Ozias Hounkpatin, Johannes Piipponen, Mika Jalava, and Matti Kummu
Ozias Hounkpatin et al.
  • Aalto University, Water and Development Research Group, Finland (ozias.hounkpatin@aalto.fi)

Many regenerative agriculture practices (RAP) such as not tillage (NT), cover crop (CC), perennials and agroforestry (AF), organic farming (OF) have potential to limit negative environmental outcomes while enhancing soil health and sustaining diverse ecosystem services. However, the magnitude by which yield responses of different RAP are influenced by inherent soil properties, climate and topographical factors are not fully understood. To elucidate such interaction, field scale experiments related to these RAP were first collected across the globe by combining multiple meta-analyses and the  yield response was extracted and then linked with global gridded soil, climate and topographical datasets. The findings showed that the RAPs were associated with an overall mean crop yield increase of 5 % with specific increase in crop yield by 48 %, 21 % and 0.28 % respectively for AF, CC and NT while a decrease of 2 % was recorded for OF. The use of RAPs had the greatest yield benefit in tropical, arid and temperate climates and when farming at mid to high elevation areas as well as in soils with low soil organic carbon. Specifically, increase in crop yield occurred consistently for AF, CC and NT in environments located in semi-arid area with aridity index between 0.20 and 0.50 and at elevation between 250 and 1000 m as well as in soils characterized by low soil organic carbon (< 5 g/kg). In addition, NT was associated with increase in crop yield especially when N input was considered in addition to cover crop and weeding in arid and tropical regions. Under the RAPs considered, cereal crops such as maize, rice and soybean resulted in significant crop yield increase especially for growing degree days within 4 000 to 10 000 degrees C. The findings shed new light on the ways in which soil characteristics, climate and topography in relation to RAPs interact to affect crop yield and such results can assist in the development of useful, fact-based recommendations for applying these practices to improve crop yields.

How to cite: Hounkpatin, O., Piipponen, J., Jalava, M., and Kummu, M.: Evaluating effect size distribution of different regenerative agriculture practices across soil, climatic and topographical factors, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-17537, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-17537, 2025.