With “Regenerative” Farming, Small Growers Can Reap Big Profits for Air and Soil

By Caleigh Wells

Mollie Engelhart’s Sow a Heart Farm in Fillmore, a town northwest of Los Angeles, doesn’t look anything like the orderly farms next door. Between the avocado trees are messy mixes of peppers, garlic, broccoli and cauliflower. But everything is planted somewhere for a reason.

“Fennel is actually an insectary. So the fennel is keeping the bugs off of the kale without spraying any pesticides or anything,” Engelhart said.

Recently harvested plots are patrolled by chickens and sheep, which eat the scraps, churn the dirt and poop out fresh fertilizer. This makes for healthier food and healthier soil.

A crop that can’t be harvested on Sow a Heart Farm sometimes gets fed to the chickens. (Caleigh Wells)

Engelhart’s method of farming is some of the best carbon-capture technology around. It’s called regenerative agriculture, and it’s still far from the norm, but some farmers are using it to grow more sustainably. Environmentalists hope it will get some support in this year’s version of the farm bill — the legislation that determines the fate of farming livelihoods in the U.S. It’s reauthorized roughly every five years.