The principles of regenerative ag have become widely understood and accepted across all types of agricultural ecosystems. While the concepts have been refined over the years, these principles can be traced back to the 1980s when Bob Rodale, son of J.I. Rodale, founder of the Rodale Institute, outlined an approach to agriculture that went beyond sustainability and was focused on improvement of the soil. During the subsequent decades, these principles became known as the soil health or soil care principles. Many organizations add a sixth or seventh principle, but those additions don’t deal with soil care, they deal with the implementations of the five principles.
Soil Care Principle No. 1
Soil Armor
If we go back to before man’s involvement of the management or manipulation of the soils, God’s design always had the soils covered with living plants and/or their residues. Soil is the skin of the earth, which is a living, breathing ecosystem. Just as man’s skin does not want to be left naked and exposed to the elements, neither does the soil. Keeping the soil covered with residues and living roots protects the soil from wind, rain, and other forces that want to degrade it.
Soil Care Principle No. 2
Minimize Disturbance
When it comes to the soils, there are three types of disturbance. The physical side of the soils, which tells if we have sand, silt, or clay, or a combination of types. When we use or don’t use tillage, that impacts the physical component of disturbance.
The chemical aspect of the soils includes carbon, oxygen, manganese, iron, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, copper, nitrogen, zinc, phosphorus, potassium, etc. If we use additional nutrients, it throws the chemical side out of balance because functioning soils want to have a ratio of each nutrient to carbon and by adding them to the soil, the ratios become unbalanced, and soil functions suffer.
The biological side of the soil includes bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes and many other microorganisms yet to be discovered. Biological disturbance not only happens when physical and/or chemical disturbances happen, but also when we apply “cides,” such as fungicides, herbicides, nematicides, insecticides, etc., as everything within or on the soil must be processed through the biological life in the soils.
Soil Care Principle No. 3
Maintain Living Roots
Life within the soil survives and thrives by consuming carbon molecules. Photosynthetic processing brings CO2 gas from the atmosphere into the ecosystem below the soil surface. Diversity of living roots allows for different communities within our soils to thrive/survive off the carbon molecule that was sequestered by different plants.
Soil Care Principle No. 4
Maximize Biodiversity
Diversity within the cropping systems helps to keep the soil biology fed year-round. While a challenge, it would be ideal to have diversity all the time, rather than a rotation of monocultures. While preferable to straight monoculture, maintaining diversity at all times will keep the array of biological families functioning.
Soil Care Principle No. 5
Integrate Livestock
Before man’s involvement in soil management, ruminating animals abounded throughout the earth’s landscapes. The ruminant contains many of the soil organisms that keep the biological component warm in the wintertime and cool in the summertime, moist during the dry periods and aerated during the wet times. So, the ruminating animals should be looked at as biological distributors. All livestock gently massages the skin of the earth with their foot/hoof action. All livestock causes the plants, when injured, to cast more carbon into the soil from the atmosphere. Livestock are the first component in breaking down high-residue materials, so the carbon-to-nitrogen ratios become friendlier to the below-the-ground livestock.
