story and photo by Matt Milkovich

Michigan organic apple grower Kyle Rasch at Third Leaf Farm in Greenville. Rasch thinks regenerative agriculture’s time has come, so he invited John Kempf, a leader in the regenerative space, to speak to growers at the Great Lakes Fruit, Vegetable and Farm Market EXPO in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in December. (Matt Milkovich/Good Fruit Grower)
Michigan organic apple grower Kyle Rasch at Third Leaf Farm in Greenville. Rasch thinks regenerative agriculture’s time has come, so he invited John Kempf, a leader in the regenerative space, to speak to growers at the Great Lakes Fruit, Vegetable and Farm Market EXPO in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in December. (Matt Milkovich/Good Fruit Grower)

After spending decades on the margins of mainstream farming, regenerative agriculture appears to be having its moment in the sun and is moving toward the center of the agricultural conversation.

Case in point: John Kempf will give three talks at the 2024 Great Lakes Fruit, Vegetable and Farm Market EXPO in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in December, including the keynote: “The Untapped Bounty of Regenerative Agriculture.”

Kempf, an Amish fruit and vegetable grower from Ohio, is the founder of consulting and supply company Advancing Eco Agriculture and host of the Regenerative Agriculture podcast. He said the growing interest in regenerative farming practices is a “result of dissatisfaction with what used to be called sustainable agriculture.”

“There’s a growing recognition that it’s not enough to just sustain where we are,” Kempf said. “We need to regenerate and improve the health of our soil and the quality of our food.”

Organic apple grower Kyle Rasch, owner of Third Leaf Farm in Greenville, Michigan, also thinks regenerative agriculture’s time has come. Conventional farming has relied on nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium fertilizers for more than half a century, and while those are great for boosting yields, they’re not as great at boosting plant health. 

“There are a lot of things we missed in that transition,” Rasch said. “Soil and plant health metrics are starting to come back into the conversation.”

A member of the Michigan State Horticultural Society’s board of directors, Rasch helps coordinate the educational sessions for the Great Lakes EXPO, and he was instrumental in getting Kempf on the EXPO agenda. 

Kempf “speaks eloquently on a broad range of topics, from marketing to basic agricultural principles,” Rasch said, adding that he has a hopeful message for farmers, emphasizing solutions rather than lingering on problems. 

“Regenerative agriculture” doesn’t have a formal definition yet, but both Kempf and Rasch expect that to change — similar to what happened with organic farming a few decades ago. Big food companies are starting to make regenerative commitments. There are verification programs for farmers who want to meet regenerative standards. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “Climate Smart” concept has similar goals, Kempf said.

Regenerative agriculture’s original impetus focused on improving soil health, but the movement’s goals have expanded. 

“Regenerative agriculture’s fundamental purpose is to grow healthy food,” Kempf said. 

There’s a great deal of scientific research supporting the use of individual tools, such as cover crops and biocontrols, used in regenerative management practices, but regenerative agriculture emphasizes integrating those tools into a greater whole. Data backing up such “whole-system integration” isn’t in the scientific literature, but it is found in the experiences of farmers using regenerative management practices, Kempf said.

“There’s a need for more systems research to evaluate the use of these principles,” he said, and “an opportunity for researchers to analyze the success of leading growers who’ve done this.”

Growers who use regenerative practices report healthier plants with greater resistance to diseases and insects, as well as firmer fruit and higher packouts, Kempf said. 

“Many of our recommendations do not involve adding more nutrients, but changes in timing,” he said. “The majority of disease and fruit quality problems are the result of nutrients applied in excess or at the wrong time.” 

In one of his EXPO talks, “Managing Nutrition for Fruit Quality and Pest Resistance,” Kempf will explain the benefits of sap analysis as a plant nutrition monitoring tool. Plant sap is more responsive than tissue is to nutrient absorption, so sap analysis can reveal nutrient imbalances a few weeks sooner, thus giving earlier predictions of pest and disease problems, he said.

In his orchard, Rasch uses sap analysis and other practices he learned from Kempf. He also buys nutritional products from Kempf’s company, Advancing Eco Agriculture.

“We’re constantly monitoring our trees to get them as healthy as they can be to defend themselves,” Rasch said. “They’ve built up resistance to everything except the pests that eat the apple directly.”

Kempf doesn’t advocate abandoning pesticides overnight. 

“We use nutrient management, biocontrols, cover crops and other things we know have a positive influence, and gradually reduce pesticide applications once we’ve earned the right to do so,” he said. 

Years ago, Kempf predicted that high-value specialty crop growers would lead the way in adopting regenerative agriculture practices, but commodity crop growers actually adopted them first, mostly as a result of economic duress. Now that fruit and vegetable growers are starting to feel similar economic pressures, they’re finally showing more interest in a new farming paradigm, he said. 

Rasch said regenerative agriculture is good for a farm’s environmental and financial health.

“Organic matter is a bank,” he said. “You can make profits, but there are also long-term landscape benefits.”