Framework For a Collective Definition of Regenerative Agriculture in India

The concept of regenerative agriculture has received increasing attention worldwide as a method to restore and conserve natural resources while maintaining crop productivity. However, there remains a lack of consensus as to what conditions define regenerative agriculture, making it difficult for decision-makers, researchers, the agricultural sector, and the public to adopt regenerative agriculture practices. Here, we present the initial process to create a unified, cross-sectoral definition for regenerative agriculture in India that considers the viewpoints of multiple stakeholders and addresses the current challenges faced by the Indian agricultural sector. To this end, we compiled interactions with individuals from across India to identify the most pressing concerns for India’s human and environmental ecosystems. We conducted over 30 hours of workshops to discuss these concerns with 50 experts from five sectors and four countries. We summarize these discussions and propose a common framework to collaboratively develop region-specific techniques that employ existing and supplementary resources to generate evidence for regenerative agriculture and foster conducive practices.