Everyone’s talking about regenerative agriculture. Brands large and small—from Allbirds and Patagonia to Maggie Marilyn and Richard Malone—are partnering with regenerative cotton farms and peppering words like “soil health” and “carbon sequestration” into fashion week chats. Even Gucci’s CEO Marco Bizzarri mentioned regenerative agriculture in his Copenhagen Fashion Summit keynote, citing it as a priority in Gucci’s mission to achieve net-zero carbon emissions.
Maybe fashion is rallying around regenerative ag, as it’s come to be known, because it’s so different from the other sustainability trends and buzzwords we’ve encountered. It has virtually no downsides or compromises, and it isn’t just “less bad” than conventional farming. It’s categorically good, and it’s good for every living thing involved: the farmers, the plants, the animals, the soil, the micro-organisms in the soil, and, eventually, the consumer. As Eileen Fisher put it in a recent Vogue interview: “This is one of the places where we can make a positive impact. Rather than just pollute less or do less harm, we can actually revive the earth through the process of making clothes.”
In short, a farm becomes regenerative when its soil can “draw down” and absorb carbon, which regenerates the land and reduces the excess of carbon in the atmosphere. At present, the earth’s carbon balance is dangerously lopsided: The soil needs more of it (as carbon helps soil store water and feed plants), while the atmosphere has roughly 109 billion tons too much, which has led to global warming, rising sea levels, extreme weather events… the list goes on. Conventional agriculture methods like deep tilling, mono-cropping, and pesticides can lead to stripped, depleted soil, which can’t draw down carbon or support biodiversity. Regenerative farms, on the other hand, omit pesticides and strategically arrange plants so they can grow, flourish, and support each other: Cover crops are used to provide shade for smaller ones; animals may be brought in to graze and fertilize the soil; and “pollinator strips” are planted to attract bees and butterflies. It’s often said that regenerative farming mimics nature, with a vast array of species living as they normally would.