Farmooly supports all family farms — and celebrates those exploring practices that build healthier soil, cleaner water, and more resilient food systems for generations to come.
Regenerative agriculture is a set of farming practices focused on improving soil health, water quality, and long-term land vitality — so farms can thrive for generations.
Regenerative agriculture works with natural systems to build organic matter in the soil, improve water absorption, and create conditions where crops and livestock thrive without relying heavily on external inputs. Farms practicing these methods often find their land becomes more productive, more resilient to drought, and more cost-effective over time.
It's not a single certification or a rigid standard — it's a direction and a set of tools. Some practices are easy first steps that any farm can try. Others are multi-year transitions. Every farm's path looks different, and that's perfectly okay.
Food grown in living, healthy soil tends to carry richer nutrients and flavor. That's a benefit for farmers, for the people eating the food, and for the land itself.
Our Farms, Our Land, Our Health — it all starts in the soil.
Tap any practice to dive deep — including how it works, why it matters, and curated resources: podcasts, peer-reviewed studies, books, and organizations leading the way. These are also the practices producers can highlight on their Farmooly profile.
Planting off-season crops to protect and enrich soil between growing seasons.
Cover crops are plants grown primarily to benefit the soil rather than for harvest. Planted during fallow periods — after a cash crop is harvested and before the next one is planted — they protect bare soil from erosion, feed soil microbiota, suppress weeds, and can fix significant amounts of nitrogen from the air directly into the root zone.
Species selection depends on your climate, cash crop rotation, and goals. Legumes (clover, vetch, field peas) fix nitrogen. Grasses (rye, oats, sorghum-sudan) build biomass and suppress weeds. Brassicas (radishes, turnips) break up compaction with deep taproots. Diverse mixes outperform monoculture cover crops in most systems.
Preserving soil structure by reducing or eliminating tillage — protecting fungi, microbes, and carbon.
Tillage destroys the physical structure of soil — shattering aggregates that took years to form, severing mycorrhizal fungal networks, and releasing stored carbon into the atmosphere. Reducing tillage allows soil to rebuild its architecture: stable aggregates hold water and nutrients, fungal networks connect plants to minerals they couldn't access alone, and earthworm populations explode.
No-till isn't a single technique — it's a spectrum. Strip-till, zone-till, and roller-crimper systems all reduce disturbance significantly while maintaining workability. Even reducing tillage passes from four to one can measurably improve soil health within 2–3 seasons.
Moving livestock through pasture in planned rotations to restore grasslands and build soil carbon.
Holistic Planned Grazing, developed by Allan Savory and refined over 50 years across multiple continents, uses livestock as a tool to mimic the natural behavior of wild herds — high density, short duration, long rest. This approach reverses desertification, builds soil carbon at rates rivaling planted forests, and dramatically improves both pasture productivity and animal performance.
The key insight: grasslands and grazers co-evolved. Grasslands need disturbance and animal impact — the problem isn't too many animals, it's wrong timing and distribution. Properly planned grazing, followed by adequate rest periods (often 60–120 days), allows deep root systems to rebuild and organic matter to accumulate.
Raising animals on living pasture produces healthier food and healthier land.
Grass-fed and pasture-raised production is both a land stewardship practice and a nutritional distinction. Animals raised on living pasture — rather than confined in feedlots on grain — produce meat, dairy, and eggs with measurably different nutritional profiles: higher omega-3 fatty acids, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), vitamins A and E, and antioxidants.
For beef specifically, 100% grass-fed (no grain finishing) is the highest standard — animals spend their entire lives on pasture. "Grass-finished" indicates no grain in the final phase. Pasture-raised is the broader category for poultry and pork, where animals have meaningful outdoor access to forage.
Building the living ecosystem underground that makes everything above possible.
A tablespoon of healthy soil contains more living organisms than there are people on Earth. Bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, and arthropods form a complex food web that converts organic matter into plant-available nutrients — a process no synthetic fertilizer can replicate. Composting is how farms feed and rebuild this community.
Hot composting (thermophilic) reaches 130–160°F, killing pathogens and weed seeds while accelerating decomposition. Vermicomposting uses worms to produce concentrated castings rich in plant-available nutrients and beneficial microbes. Compost tea and extracts can be used to inoculate soil and foliar surfaces with beneficial biology.
Integrating trees with crops and livestock for resilience, carbon, and biodiversity.
Agroforestry is the deliberate integration of trees into farming systems. The five major types recognized by the USDA National Agroforestry Center are: windbreaks, riparian buffers, alley cropping, silvopasture, and forest farming. Each offers different combinations of productivity, protection, and ecological function.
Silvopasture — the integration of trees, forage, and livestock on the same land — has the highest documented carbon sequestration potential of any agricultural practice: estimates range from 1 to over 10 tons of CO₂ per acre per year depending on tree species, density, and age. Shaded livestock experience less heat stress, show improved gains, and the trees provide additional income through timber, nuts, or fruit.
Building natural pest and disease resistance through biodiversity and soil health.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) uses biological, cultural, and mechanical controls first — turning to chemical interventions only when necessary, at the minimum effective rate. Regenerative IPM goes further: building soil biology that produces natural antibiotic compounds, establishing habitat corridors for beneficial insects, and diversifying crop rotations to break pest and disease cycles.
Healthy soil produces healthy plants. Plants grown in biologically active soil rich in minerals produce stronger cell walls and more secondary metabolites — the chemical compounds that are simultaneously plant defenses and what makes food taste rich and nutritious. Pest pressure is often a symptom of soil stress, not a random occurrence.
Keeping rainfall on the land longer — reducing drought vulnerability and runoff.
Water follows gravity — and on conventional farms, it leaves the land quickly, taking topsoil and nutrients with it. Regenerative water management starts with the observation that the best investment a farm can make is slowing water down, spreading it out, and sinking it into the landscape. This reduces drought vulnerability, cuts irrigation costs, and recharges aquifers.
Keyline Design, developed by P.A. Yeomans in Australia in the 1950s, uses contour analysis to identify the optimal lines for water harvesting — creating small channels, ponds, and tillage patterns that distribute water across a landscape rather than concentrating it in valleys. The Keyline plow subsoils along these contours, creating channels for water infiltration without inverting the topsoil. Modern practitioners combine Keyline principles with swales, French drains, and strategic tree placement.
Preserving seed diversity and food sovereignty while meeting consumer demand.
Genetic diversity in crop varieties is the foundation of food system resilience. Heirloom varieties — open-pollinated seeds that have been selected and saved over generations — often carry flavor profiles, disease resistance characteristics, and nutritional profiles that modern commercial hybrids have lost in the pursuit of yield and uniformity. Many heirlooms are also adapted to specific regional climates, giving local farmers a natural advantage.
Non-GMO covers a broader category: any crop not produced through genetic engineering. This includes conventional hybrids as well as open-pollinated and heirloom varieties. Buyers on Farmooly increasingly search specifically for non-GMO and heirloom options — and are willing to pay meaningful premiums for them.
The legal standard for no synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers — with verified third-party audit.
USDA Organic Certification is the most recognized and legally enforced standard in U.S. agriculture. It prohibits synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers; requires no GMOs; mandates land has been free of prohibited substances for 3 years; and requires annual third-party inspection and audit. Organic certification gives buyers documented assurance of production methods.
The 3-year transition period is the hardest: farmers bear the cost of organic production without the premium pricing. USDA's Transitional Organic certification and cost-share programs help bridge this gap. Many Farmooly buyers are also receptive to "Grown with organic practices — uncertified" claims with transparency about the reasons.
A holistic approach treating the farm as a living organism, integrating celestial rhythms and biological preparations.
Biodynamic agriculture, developed by Rudolf Steiner in the 1920s, is one of the oldest organic farming movements. It views the farm as a self-sustaining organism and integrates soil health, plant and animal health, and cosmological rhythms into a unified management approach. Biodynamic farmers use nine specific herbal preparations — fermented plant and mineral materials — applied in homeopathic doses to soil, compost, and crops to stimulate biological activity.
Demeter International is the certification body. Demeter Biodynamic certification is more rigorous than USDA Organic: it requires a minimum of 10% farm acreage in biodiversity areas, prohibits all synthetic inputs, requires a minimum of one livestock unit per hectare (to close nutrient cycles on-farm), and mandates use of biodynamic preparations. Demeter-certified products carry a significant price premium in specialty markets.
Growing multiple species together to build resilience, reduce pest pressure, and improve yields.
Monocultures — single-species fields grown year after year — are biologically fragile. A single pest, disease, or weather event can devastate them. Polycultures and diverse rotations build ecological resilience: each species creates a slightly different niche, supports different beneficial organisms, and responds differently to stressors. The result is a farm that handles surprises better.
At the simplest level, crop rotation — changing what's planted in each field each year — breaks pest and disease cycles and builds diverse organic matter profiles. At the more complex level, companion planting (the "Three Sisters" corn-bean-squash system, or tomato-basil intercropping), intercropping, and diverse pollinator-supporting border plantings create a mini-ecosystem within the farm.
Supporting the insects that pollinate one third of all food humans eat.
About one-third of the food humans eat depends on pollination by bees, butterflies, moths, flies, and other insects. Wild bee populations provide pollination services worth over $3,000 per acre annually on many crops — at zero cost, when farms maintain the habitat to support them. Managed honeybee colonies are in steep decline due to pesticide exposure, disease, and habitat loss. Native bee species, which are often more effective pollinators, are similarly threatened.
Pollinator-friendly farming means three things: providing habitat (flowering plants in bloom throughout the season), reducing pesticide toxicity (especially neonicotinoids), and maintaining nesting sites (undisturbed soil patches, brush piles, hollow stems). Even a 5% reduction in tillage intensity measurably improves ground-nesting bee populations.
Measuring, building, and monetizing soil carbon as a new farm revenue stream.
Carbon farming refers to practices specifically chosen and managed to maximize the amount of carbon captured from the atmosphere and stored in soil organic matter. These include cover crops, no-till, compost applications, agroforestry, and holistic grazing — essentially the full toolkit of regenerative agriculture, optimized for carbon sequestration as a measurable outcome.
Voluntary carbon markets allow farmers to sell carbon credits for verified sequestration. A single carbon credit typically represents one metric ton of CO₂ equivalent sequestered or avoided. At $10–$50 per credit (current market range), a farm sequestering 1–3 tons of carbon per acre annually has a meaningful new revenue stream layered on top of food sales. Verification typically requires soil sampling, monitoring, and third-party auditing.
These resources cover regenerative agriculture across all of the above practices and belong in every farmer's library.
Farmooly welcomes all family farms. Regen ag isn't an on-off switch — it's a direction. Many traditional farmers are already doing things that qualify, and the ones who aren't yet are still valued partners in feeding their communities.
You don't have to change everything. Try a cover crop on one field, or reduce tillage passes on a test plot. Small experiments teach you more than any textbook can.
Every piece of land is different. What works in one region may need adapting for another. Regenerative farming rewards observation and patience — and Farmooly's community can help.
Buyers who understand regenerative practices know it takes time and costs more to do right. Your story of transition and care is something they want to hear — and pay a premium for.
If you're already practicing regen ag, Farmooly gives you the platform to show it. Searchable badges and a farm story bring you the buyers who are actively seeking what you grow.
Farmooly doesn't require regenerative certification to join. We celebrate all family farms — and we're excited to grow alongside the ones exploring what's next.
If you're a farmer or rancher practicing regenerative agriculture, Farmooly gives you the platform to tell that story — and connect with buyers who are actively seeking it.
Your vendor profile displays searchable badges for every practice you follow — visible to every shopper and wholesale buyer on the platform:
Cover Crops · No-Till · Rotational Grazing · Grass-Fed · Pasture-Raised · Composting · Agroforestry · Silvopasture · Chemical-Free · Low-Spray / IPM · Water Conservation · Non-GMO · Heirloom Varieties · USDA Certified Organic · Transitional Organic · Biodynamic · Diverse Crop Rotation · Bee-Friendly · Pollinator Habitat · Carbon Farming
Restaurants, schools, hospitals, and institutional buyers increasingly have sustainability goals. Farmooly lets them filter specifically for regenerative producers when sourcing.
Your farm profile has space to share your regenerative journey — what you're doing, why it matters, and what's changed on your land. Shoppers who know your story buy more and stay loyal.
Buyers who understand regenerative agriculture know it costs more to grow food this way — and they're willing to pay the premium. Farmooly connects you to that informed buyer base.
Connect with other farmers on the platform, share what's working, and build a network — whether you're fully regen, transitioning, or just starting to explore.
Access Farmooly's wholesale marketplace to sell to restaurants, food co-ops, and institutions that specifically seek out regeneratively grown food at volume.
Healthy soil is the foundation of everything. It's what makes family farms possible — and what allows them to keep producing food that's genuinely nourishing, season after season, generation after generation.
Regenerative practices have the potential to improve farm profitability, reduce input costs over time, and build land that's more resilient to weather and market swings. That's good for farmers first — and good for the communities and ecosystems that depend on them.
We believe the future of food is local, connected, and rooted in land that's cared for with intention. That's the world Farmooly is helping to build — one farm, one market, one meal at a time.
Our Farms. Our Land. Our Health.
Get resources on regenerative agriculture, updates from local farms, and ways to get involved — delivered to your inbox. No spam, ever.
Whether you're a farmer, a food lover, or just curious — there's a place for you here.
Or download the Farmooly app to start buying and selling local food today.