'Sustainable' Isn't Working: Why We Need To Think Regenerative

Hello all & happy 2022! If you’ve followed us for a while now you’ll probably have guessed that rather than kicking off the year with Veganuary, we are going to be encouraging Regenuary (following in @ethicalbutcher ‘s footsteps). We hope to motivate you to support local and regenerative farms, stepping away from mono-cropped plant foods and factory farmed meat.

Inspired by the book ‘For the Love of Soil‘ we want to encourage you to think about the idea of sustainability vs regeneration.

It’s become common for big businesses, especially Big Food corporations to brand themselves ‘sustainable’. Every shady company has it slapped on the label. On the surface it sounds like they’re concerned for the environment, but let’s break it down.

Sustainable literally translated means to ‘maintain the same’ and in reality it’s often degenerative and extractive systems which are being sustained.

Surely this shouldn’t be our aspiration, especially considering the rapid decline we’ve witnessed in soil, plant, animal and human health over the past century.

What businesses should be striving for (and increasing numbers of smaller organisations are stepping up) is to be regenerative.

The term regenerate in relation to our food systems speaks to restoring the soil, increasing biodiversity, sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, growing smaller family run businesses that care, enhancing the soils water holding capacity as well as improving the health and nutrient density of plants, animals and humans. We must start working in harmony with our planet and giving back.

The change in mindset required was captured beautifully by Aldo Leopold when he said ‘We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.’

Anyone involved in food production needs to be striving for this and consumers have the ability to steer the hand of organisations by demanding food is produced in this way.

Every time we buy food, we vote with our money. If as a population at large we decided to stop buying factory farmed meat and mono-cropped fruits and vegetables then they’d stop being produced.

Are you going to join us and be part of the REgeneration?