I missed the Reimagining Agriculture webinar in February but was able to listen/watch it today and was pleased to see the references to organic agriculture, water usage, and the spiritual connection to land use provided by the poet, Rhona McAdam. That research on organic agriculture goes back at least 50 years was not news to me; however, when I began my university career as a professor in providing expertise in pesticide analysis in an agriculture faculty in 1971, I had to recant any respect I had for Rachel Carson and her book, Silent Spring. Happily, organic agriculture is now respectable in that faculty.
More recently, I became interested in holistic agriculture as advocated by biologist, Alan Savory and visited him and his second wife, Jody Butterfield, just south of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe in 2017. They have written extensively on the subject and have experimental plots in various parts of the world in which they use a regimen that includes grazing animals in the annual cycle. A book by them is Holistic Management – a commonsense revolution to restore our environment 3rd edn. (2016). They also have a website https://savory.global/
A very practical book on the use of regenerative agriculture was written in 2018 by North Dakota farmer, Gabe Brown, Dirt to Soil – A Family’s Journey Into Regenerative Agriculture. His story is one of converting a conventional prairie farm to a regenerative farm that in the process became organic because the prior necessity for the use of insecticides and herbicides disappeared as the farm became regenerative. He also makes use of grazing animals of various sorts in his farming regimen. Brown has spoken widely about his largely fortuitous success in conversion of his family farm to one that uses regenerative techniques.