Regenerative agriculture has no single agreed definition. Across scientific journals, farm certification schemes, and corporate sourcing programs, the term is used to mean different—sometimes conflicting—things. Most of those definitions describe practices: reduced tillage, cover crops, integrated livestock. A smaller and growing group describes outcomes: healthier soil, more biodiversity, stored carbon. That distinction is not academic. The practice-based definitions that dominate the market are the main reason regenerative results look inconsistent, and outcome-based definitions are where the field is now moving.
How many definitions of regenerative agriculture are there?
There is no legal or regulatory definition of regenerative agriculture anywhere in the world. The Food and Agriculture Organization describes it only as a set of holistic farming systems, and states plainly that no widely accepted definition exists.
The scholarly picture is just as scattered. A 2020 review in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems by Newton and colleagues examined 229 journal articles and 25 practitioner websites that used the term. Only about half of the articles—51 percent—defined or even described what they meant by it. Among those that did, soil health was the most common goal, appearing in 41 percent of journal definitions and 86 percent of practitioner ones. After that, agreement fell away quickly.
A separate 2020 review in Global Food Security by Schreefel and colleagues at Wageningen University screened 28 studies and reached the same conclusion: a clear scientific definition was lacking. The authors converged on soil conservation as the one shared anchor and proposed a provisional definition built around it. Two independent reviews, two different methods, one finding—the term travels without a fixed meaning.
Practices or outcomes: what a definition actually measures
The most useful way to sort these competing definitions is to ask what they measure. Practice-based definitions list methods a farm must use or avoid—no synthetic fertilizer, cover crops between cash crops, livestock returned to cropland. Outcome-based definitions list results a farm must achieve—rising soil organic matter, more species, less nutrient runoff—and stay silent on how.
This mirrors a distinction farmers already know from organic certification, which is largely process-based: it governs which inputs are allowed, not what the soil or water actually does. Newton's review made the parallel directly, noting that a certified process is not always a good proxy for its result.
Why practice-based definitions produce inconsistent results
A practice is a bet on an outcome, not a guarantee of one. The same method can regenerate one field and do almost nothing on another, because soils differ in where they start.
Soil carbon is the clearest case. Researchers have long shown that soil organic carbon eventually saturates: past a certain point, a field stores little additional carbon no matter what practice is applied. Work by Stewart and colleagues in 2007 and by Smith in 2014 established this ceiling. So a cover-crop program that sequesters carbon rapidly on degraded land may add almost none on soil already near saturation—yet both farms performed the identical "regenerative" practice. Define regeneration by the practice, and both count. Define it by the outcome, and only one does.
Consider the numbers a farmer can actually work with. A 2018 study in PeerJ by LaCanne and Lundgren compared regenerative and conventional corn across the Northern Plains of the United States, 40 fields per system. Regenerative fields produced 29 percent less grain—but earned 78 percent more profit. The reason was input cost: conventional operations spent 32 percent of gross income on seed and fertilizer, while regenerative operations spent 12 percent. Profit tracked soil organic matter, not yield.
Put that on one hectare. A field grossing 1,000 US dollars per hectare that cuts input spend from about 32 percent to about 12 percent of gross keeps roughly 200 US dollars per hectare more—enough to absorb a meaningful yield dip and still come out ahead. But nothing about the words "used cover crops" tells you whether a given field lands there. The practice is consistent; the outcome is not. When definitions certify the practice, the inconsistency shows up downstream, in results that scatter from farm to farm.
Where is regenerative agriculture heading?
Toward definitions built on measured outcomes rather than prescribed practices. Three developments point the same way.
The Savory Institute's Ecological Outcome Verified program, formalized in 2019, was an early outcome-based certification: farmers must demonstrate improvement in soil health and biodiversity over time, and can lose certification if the metrics stop improving. Adoption of a practice earns nothing on its own.
The clearest signal came in September 2023, when the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform launched its Regenerating Together framework, now backed by more than 40 agrifood companies including Nestlé, Louis Dreyfus Company, McCain Foods, and Diageo. It defines regenerative agriculture as an outcome-based farming approach and is deliberately not prescriptive about methods: farmers choose their own practices, provided those practices improve performance against prioritized outcomes such as soil health, water, biodiversity, and climate.
Corporate programs sit mid-transition. When PepsiCo first pledged in 2021 to reach seven million acres by 2030—later raised to 10 million acres in May 2025—it committed to five outcomes: soil health, emissions, watershed health, biodiversity, and farmer livelihoods. Yet it still reports progress mainly by counting acres and farmers engaged, a practice proxy standing in for outcomes not yet measured at scale. Even Regenerative Organic Certified illustrates the split: its stated objectives are outcome-oriented, but the standards used to verify compliance remain largely process-based.
What outcome-based definitions ask of agronomists
An outcome-based definition moves the work from prescription to measurement. It is no longer enough to advise a practice; the practice has to be tied to a baseline and a demonstrated change—soil sampling, verification, and honest attention to where each field starts.
That is precisely where a skilled advisor becomes indispensable. Translating a buyer's outcome targets into practices that fit a specific soil, climate, and cropping system—and setting up the measurement that proves it worked—is judgment no checklist replaces. It depends on knowing the field's actual starting point, because that starting point decides whether a practice will move an outcome at all. Valora Earth assembles site-specific soil, weather, and crop data so an advisor can set that baseline and match practices to real local conditions, rather than to a generic list.
The definition you use is not a labeling choice. It determines whether a season of work is judged by what was done, or by what changed.
Frequently asked questions
Is regenerative agriculture the same as organic? No. Organic is a legally defined, process-based certification that bars most synthetic inputs. Regenerative agriculture has no legal definition and many versions permit synthetic inputs, focusing instead on outcomes such as soil health and biodiversity. A farm can be one, both, or neither, depending on the standard applied.
Does regenerative agriculture reduce yields? Sometimes. A 2018 PeerJ study of Northern Plains corn found 29 percent lower grain yields on regenerative fields, yet 78 percent higher profit because input costs fell sharply. Yield effects vary by crop, soil, and transition stage. Yield and profit do not always move in the same direction.
Why does the definition matter for farmers? Because payment and certification increasingly depend on it. Practice-based schemes pay for adopting methods; outcome-based schemes pay for measured results. Knowing which type a buyer uses tells you what you must document—the practices you performed, or the improvements you can demonstrate in soil, water, or biodiversity.
