What regenerative agriculture can do

Nearly a third of the world's soils are now moderately to severely degraded, and more than half of the world's agricultural land has lost some of its productive capacity. For smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, who grow much of the world's food on plots often smaller than two hectares, that degradation lands hardest. Decades of nutrient depletion, erosion, and stretched or absent fertiliser have pushed yields down at the very moment more food is needed.

Regenerative agriculture offers a way back. Instead of treating soil as a medium to be fed with external inputs, it works to rebuild the living system underneath the crop, so that the soil holds more water, cycles more nutrients, and stores more carbon on its own. The evidence from low-income countries, where the need is greatest, is where the case becomes most convincing.

What regenerative agriculture actually is

Regenerative agriculture is a way of managing land that aims to restore soil health, biodiversity, and resilience, not merely hold current output steady. It rests on a handful of connected practices, most of which African farmers already recognise in some form:

minimising tillage, so the soil structure and the life within it are left intact
keeping the soil covered, through mulch and cover crops
building soil carbon, with compost, green manures, animal manures, and biochar
diversifying crops, through rotations and mixed cropping in place of monoculture
integrating livestock, so manure returns to the soil and animals graze crop residues
adding trees, through agroforestry and silvo-pasture

None of these works as a silver bullet on its own. The gains come from combining several of them, adapted to the specific soil, climate, and circumstances of the farm. There is no single recipe, which is both the challenge and the strength of the approach.

The evidence from low-income countries

The most cited body of evidence comes from a review of 286 sustainable-agriculture projects across 57 low-income countries, covering 37 million hectares and 12.6 million farms. On average, crop yields rose by 79% after farmers adopted resource-conserving practices, and every crop type showed gains in water-use efficiency. Where only crop diversification was introduced, yields were still 20 to 60% higher than monoculture under the same conditions.

Africa stands out within that picture. The same body of work found African projects achieving yield increases of up to 116%, and later regional analysis puts the potential as high as 170% in some African contexts. These are not laboratory figures. Businesses running regenerative programmes across Sub-Saharan Africa, reaching over 100,000 farmers, have reported yield increases ranging from 68% to 300%: Olam recorded an 80% rise in cotton lint yields through mulching and crop rotations, Touton lifted yields by 68% through an agroforestry programme built on shade trees, and farmers in a Nespresso programme who fully adopted regenerative practices such as pruning and rejuvenation reached 300% increases.

The gains extend well beyond yield. In the Sahel, farmer-managed natural regeneration has been linked to crop production increases of 35 to 170%, with millet in Senegal rising from around 300 to 770 kg per hectare. In Malawi, climate-smart agroforestry lifted maize from about 320 to 550 kg per hectare. Regional modelling suggests that if half of Sub-Saharan Africa's cropland were managed regeneratively, the annual savings to farmers could reach around USD 17 billion by 2040, supporting as many as 5 million jobs, while soil could store an additional 4.4 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent.

Why healthy soil is the engine

The reason these practices work is that they rebuild the soil's own capacity. As organic matter rises, the soil holds more water: a 1% increase in soil organic matter can store an additional 150 cubic metres of water per hectare, which is what lets crops ride out a dry spell. Keeping the soil covered and undisturbed cuts erosion sharply and keeps carbon in the ground instead of releasing it to the atmosphere. No-till and reduced-till systems have been shown to cut organic-carbon losses by around half compared with conventional tillage.

Diversity does the rest of the work above ground. A varied rotation with cover crops smothers weeds and breaks pest cycles, which reduces the need for herbicides and pesticides. Integrating livestock returns manure to the soil and turns crop residues and weeds into a resource. Trees add a further layer, holding soil, providing shade, and giving farmers a second income from fruit, nuts, or timber alongside their crops.

The barriers that hold farmers back

The benefits are real, but the transition is not automatic, and it is honest to say so. In the first years, while soil biology and structure recover, yields can dip before they climb, which is a hard ask for a farmer with no financial cushion. Regenerative farming also demands knowledge, of ecology, of local conditions, of how practices combine, and extension services in many low-income countries are thin. Access to finance, secure land tenure, and reliable markets are often missing, and women and youth face tighter constraints still on credit and land.

There is also no standard way to measure outcomes yet, which makes it harder to reward farmers for the carbon they store or the soil they rebuild. These are not reasons to hold back. They are the agenda: the things that policy, finance, and extension need to fix for regenerative agriculture to reach the farmers who would benefit most.

Where Ethiopia fits

Ethiopia shows both the scale of the problem and the direction of travel. An estimated 41% of the country's cultivated land is affected by soil acidity, alongside widespread nutrient depletion, and soil degradation is estimated to cost the national economy between USD 1 billion and USD 4.3 billion a year. In response, the government has launched a Fertilizer and Soil Health Roadmap and set up a national platform to commercialise regenerative and agroecological practices.

Energy sits alongside soil as an enabler. Reliable, affordable power, increasingly from renewable sources, lets farmers add value to what they grow, from processing to storage, and productive use of renewable energy is emerging as a practical partner to regenerative practices on the ground. The combination, healthy soil and clean energy, is where the transformation of rural food systems becomes possible.

How to start

The most useful advice from the field is also the simplest. Start with one practice that fits your farm, prove it on a small area, and build from there. Cover cropping is widely regarded as the most accessible entry point, asking the least of a farmer while improving the soil from the first season. Compost and manure rebuild organic matter with resources most farms already have. A rotation that includes a legume fixes nitrogen and cuts fertiliser costs.

Regenerative agriculture is not a single technology to be bought and installed. It is a way of farming that works with the land, not against it, and its greatest promise is for exactly those farmers, on small and degraded plots in low-income countries, who have the most to gain from soil that is alive again. A fuller account of the practices and the global evidence behind them is available in the complete guide to regenerative agriculture.