5 Top Regenerative Practices to Introduce To Your Farm
- Lydia Noyes
- Sep 17
- 5 min read
Regenerative Agriculture Practices to Add to Your Farm
Farmers today face challenges like changing weather patterns, soil erosion, and water management—all of which can make it harder to maintain productive, profitable land. The good news is that farming doesn’t have to wear down your soil or resources. Beyond simply maintaining your land, regenerative agriculture offers tools and strategies to actively improve it with every season.
This practical, holistic approach can strengthen soil health, improve resilience to drought and pests, and set your farm up for long-term success. Even small steps can make a big difference, and it’s easier than you might think to start adding regenerative practices to your operation.
This holistic farming philosophy has the potential to restore soil health, increase resilience, and build a more sustainable future. And the good news? It’s easier than you might think to start applying regenerative agriculture practices to your own operation.
In this article, we’ll explore what regenerative agriculture is and share five practical ways you can integrate regenerative farming principles on your property.
What is Regenerative Agriculture?
The regenerative farming movement got its start in the 1980s when organic agriculture experts at the Rodale Institute coined the term to refer to holistic farming practices that prioritize building healthy soil.
The four basic principles of regenerative agriculture include the following:
Promote a biodiversity of plants and animals
Decrease tilling (or eliminate it)
Reduce the use of synthetic fertilizers and other external inputs
Graze livestock according to regenerative management standards
At its core, this agricultural approach views soil health as the foundation of a thriving planet. Regenerative farm techniques offer many ecosystem benefits, including promoting biodiversity, improving the water cycle, and sequestering carbon to combat climate change.
Five Ways to Incorporate Regenerative Principles on Your Property
Whether you manage a small market garden, a mid-sized ranch, or a large-scale farm, regenerative agriculture can be adapted to fit your operation. Here are five effective strategies to try.
1. Prioritize Crop Diversity
Biodiversity is at the heart of regenerative farming. Fields with a wide variety of crops mimic natural ecosystems, creating healthier soil and more resilient farms.
Instead of planting single-crop monocultures, experiment with:
Intercropping – Planting multiple crops together to maximize space and nutrient use.
Companion planting – Pairing crops that naturally support each other’s growth.
Crop rotation – Alternating crops by season to prevent pests and disease.
Mixing perennials and annuals – Adding different root depths to build soil structure.
2. Integrate Livestock Into Cropland
Conventional farming separates crops and animals—but regenerative farming brings them back together. Livestock grazing on cropland provides natural fertility through manure, stimulates plant growth, and improves nutrient cycling.
Ways to integrate livestock include:
Grazing sheep or goats on cover crops before tilling.
Moving cattle through pastures in rotation to avoid overgrazing.
Using poultry to clean up fields after harvest.
This integration reduces fertilizer costs, builds soil fertility, and mimics natural ecosystems where plants and animals thrive together.
Best of all, bringing animals and cropland together eliminates many of the problems associated with both by optimizing nutrient cycling between them. Manure is a primary source of pollution with conventional livestock operations, but it provides in-field fertility in a regenerative farming system.
Consider putting sheep or goats out to pasture after taking in your hay harvest or to graze on your cover crops when it’s time to till them in. Not only will these herd animals produce natural fertilizer for the fields, but their grazing can stimulate the plants to grow faster.
3. Create a Conservation Buffer
As natural habitats disappear, farms can play a critical role in restoring ecosystems. Conservation buffers—strips of land with native plants placed along field edges or waterways—help protect both farmland and surrounding environments.
Benefits of conservation buffers include:
Slowing erosion and reducing water runoff
Filtering nutrients before they reach streams and rivers
Creating habitat for pollinators, birds, and beneficial insects
Supporting biodiversity above and below ground
By turning even small parts of your farm into conservation zones, you support soil health and surrounding ecosystems.
4. Experiment with Silvopasture
Go one step further with livestock on your property by incorporating them into a silvopasture management system. This is the process of keeping grazing animals within a managed woodlot or orchard for the benefit of both.
Benefits of silvopasture include:
Shade and wind protection for livestock
Lower feed costs through natural foraging
Brush control and reduced wildfire risk
Additional income from timber, nuts, or fruit
Farmers get the benefit of managing a profitable tree operation, and the animals enjoy the shade, wind protection, and diversified diet that natural foraging allows them. Over the long run, a well-managed silvopasture builds up soil and reduces energy and expense for feeding your livestock. Continual grazing also keeps brushy growth down, so the woods stay more pleasant for people to walk in.
On my own property, I frequently graze my American Guinea hogs under apple and nut trees. This heritage pig breed thrives on pasture and makes quick work of any windfalls from the orchard. Others create silvopasture by planting perennial ryegrass within their woods to support a herd of goats.
5. Build Soil with Biochar
Wildfires are a natural ecological process, and you can reap the rewards for soil health on your property by making and using biochar.
This natural soil amendment has been used for thousands of years in the Amazon. It can enhance crop yields, enrich the soil, and improve water retention by increasing the ground’s carbon content and creating habitat space for beneficial microorganisms.
How to make and use biochar on your farm:
Pile up woody debris in a shallow pit or burn barrel, and let it burn uninhibited until the smoke thins.
Let things burn down until the wood is thoroughly charred before wetting the wood to put out the fire.
Cover/smother the burn with soil to reduce oxygen and finish the process.
Once cooled, break up the large pieces until the char fits through a garden soil sieve.
“Charge” the char with nutrients with a mix of 50:50 of grass clippings or other nutrients before covering and leaving it undisturbed for at least three months before applying to fields.
Biochar not only supports soil health but also locks carbon into the ground for centuries—making it a valuable climate-smart farming practice.
Experiment with Regenerative Farming Today
A farming business is only as strong as the foundation it’s built on. Look for ways to incorporate regenerative farming principles into your property management plan, and you’ll reap the rewards of healthier soil.
There are other ways to optimize your farm operation. Here at Farmbrite, we offer software designed to help you manage your entire agriculture business. This comprehensive management system will improve farm performance and sustainability, highlight inefficiencies to reduce wasted time and resources, and help you increase production and sales for better success in the long run.
Why Regenerative Agriculture Matters
Regenerative farming goes beyond sustainability—it’s about improving the land with every growing season. By diversifying crops, integrating livestock, protecting natural habitats, experimenting with silvopasture, and building soil with biochar, you can strengthen your farm’s resilience and contribute to global climate solutions.
At Farmbrite, we’re passionate about helping farmers adopt regenerative practices while managing their operations efficiently. Our farm management software makes it easier to track inputs, plan grazing rotations, monitor soil health, and maximize productivity—all in one place.
Additional regenerative farming resources:
Author Bio: Lydia Noyes is a freelance writer and small farmer in West Michigan. She writes about food, farming, health, and wellness topics related to the planet. When not tied to her computer, you’ll find Lydia weeding, reading, or chasing after her ever-growing flock of chickens.
Curious about how Farmbrite can help your farm with farm software? Schedule a free 30-minute demo or open a free trial to see how it can help integrate regenerative farm practices into your operation.