Heal soil, heal soul: enhancing regenerative agriculture, cover cropping, and farmer and community wellbeing in four Kansas counties

Abstract

Conventional agriculture continues to contribute to soil degradation, biodiversity loss, agrichemical devastation, and emissions, especially in the U.S. corn-soybean belt. Regenerative agriculture (RA) has emerged as a social movement to remedy these degraded agroecosystems by emphasizing integrated soil health principles, especially cover crops. While pitched as good for farmers, fewer studies examined the extent to which RA is good for the health and wealth of farmers, their families, and community members. Moreover, while RA studies profess reciprocal values between the health of the soil and the health of the farmer, they are more conceptual than empirical. Therefore, I asked two questions. What was the nature of the socio-structural interrelationships between the health of soils and the health of souls – of farmers and communities – in four Kansas counties (RQ1)? How did those Kansas farmers experience transitions to regenerative agriculture principles and practices (RQ2)? To answer, I used Flora et al.’s (2016) Community Capitals Framework to understand how farmers and nonfarm community members function in the current system and while transitioning away from it. This framing informed reflexive thematic and narrative analyses of 73 interviews with Kansas farmers, agricultural experts (in extension, crop insurance, conservationism, input sales), and community leaders. I also performed descriptive (cross-sectional and longitudinal) analyses of data germane to interviewee’s experiences to better contextualize them. The socio-structural interrelations between the health of soils and farmers were complex and multifaceted. In PT – where I lived for two-thirds of my life – 22 interviewed participants expressed differing approaches to agriculture-development eco-symbiotic tensions: primary-occupation farmers couched bridging with development as parasitic and bonding with other farmers as competitive, whereas non-primary-occupation farmers and community leaders expressed commensalism and mutualism experiences with bonded and bridged networks (Chapter 2). Those same participants explained why cover crop rates increased in PT, and descriptive analyses revealed that 1997-2022 county-level trends of herbicide application rates and expenses corresponded with changes in the primary cropland type from hay(lage) to corn-soybean systems and accelerated greenhouse gas emissions (Chapter 3). Finally, 51 interviewed farmers from Harvey, McPherson, and Reno Counties experienced the transition to regenerative agriculture as a new way of seeing (Chapter 4). Transitioning farmers used the discourse of addiction to describe industrial agriculture, experienced regeneration as a recovery process from the subsidy-fueled production treadmill and underwent shifts in their identities as ‘good’ farmers away from ‘others’ (industrial farmers). Overall, interrelationships among and between six agents—farmer identity & wellbeing (soul); family & community life quality; farm-level contexts & influences; county-level & structural contexts & influences; regenerative principles in practice (soil); and overall agroecosystem vitality—ranged from literal to metaphorical and direct to indirect. Soil health encompassed all soil health principles, particularly advancing cover cropping within corn-soybean systems. Soul health involved physical, mental, spiritual, familial, and communal factors. Farm-level contexts and influences formed the most literal and direct relationships to various aspects of soil and soul health. Farmers recognized tradeoffs (e.g. ‘spray v. spade’), as well as certain values lost and gained when transitioning from industrial to regenerative agriculture, which was often difficult but more than necessary and worthwhile.