As the buzz in the fashion sector around ‘regenerative agriculture’ continues to grow, we take another look at what this actually means, how it’s defined, what practices it includes, what is different from existing production systems and how is it implemented.
Just under a year ago in May 2020, Vogue suggested that “regenerative” was better than all other approaches to agriculture that are merely “less bad”, but as usual, things are not that simple. In fact, the practices it listed as ‘regenerative’ would have been labelled “organic” or “sustainable” not too long ago.
There is no single definition of what regenerative is, and those trying to capture the term may not understand it, or the need to use it in locally suitable ways, matching solutions to problems as they are found rather than as they are defined in a standard’s implementation manual.
