Regenerative Agriculture, Series 3: Maintain Living Roots in the Soil Year-Round

The third principle of Regenerative Agriculture is all about the importance of maintaining living roots in the soil year-round.  As I’ve mentioned in the first two blogs on regenerative agriculture, the time and effort you take into improving the health of your soil will continue to benefit you in the years to come.  Maintaining living roots year-round has several benefits that aren’t seasonally limited. 

An article written by Daisy Wood on Agricapture CO2 states, “Living plants photosynthesize energy from the sun into chemically bound energy which is then transferred into plant root systems and the soil ecosystem. When soil does not contain living roots, it continues to metabolize organic matter, releasing carbon as CO2, which then passes into the atmosphere. Maintaining living roots is therefore important to maintain soil carbon sequestration.”

There are several benefits to this principle.  When you leave roots in place for longer periods, they grow deeper, build up organic matter, and reduce the risk of soil erosion.  These plants can also absorb residual nutrients such as nitrogen.  They then can hold these nutrients to be passed onto the next plant. 

Another benefit to living roots in the soil is that the fluid emitted from these roots provides energy for the base of the food web.  This means enhanced supply of nutrients, increased nitrogen fixation, and increased stress tolerance. 

According to the Noble Research Institute, “Increasing plant diversity creates an enabling environment and catalyst for a diverse underground community. In nature, grasses, legumes, forbs, and woody species all work together in a native, diverse rangeland setting. The complex interactions of roots and other living organisms within the soil impact soil dynamic properties, affect carbon sequestration, and enable nutrient availability for plant productivity. Managing for increased diversity can also be applied to grazing animals, wildlife, and other organisms above and below the soil.”

The soil is alive and needs our help to return to a more natural state.  Over the years, our soil has become severely degraded due to intensive farming and natural processes. These circumstances can lead to disruptions in the food chain, as well as food insecurity.  It's up to us, to take better care of the soil to replenish its nutrients so that it can provide a healthy and powerful soil ecosystem, which in return can provide a better harvest.

It’s pretty amazing to think about how complex and diverse the soil beneath our feet really is!  It’s like an underground community, working together and using local resources to create a healthy atmosphere.  We can learn a lot from nature and how to better care for it by using Regenerative Agriculture methods.  Nature has already provided the tools, we just have to take the time and effort to help nurture her along the way.