Why the Next Five Years Will See a Renaissance
The Emergence of Second-Tier Agriculture: Ancient Wisdom, Emerging Science, and the Reclaiming of Integrity
Caroline Grindrod · January 2026
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
— Albert Einstein
Executive Summary
Regenerative agriculture stands at a crossroads. After a decade of explosive growth in interest and investment, the movement is fracturing into two distinct streams — and the next five years will determine whether it fulfils its transformative potential or becomes yet another co-opted greenwashing term.
On one side, corporate billions flow into “regenerative” programmes that reduce the movement to a checklist of practices — cover crops, reduced tillage, input substitution — bolted onto fundamentally unchanged industrial systems. These investments, while well-intentioned, operate at what systems theorist Donella Meadows identified as “shallow leverage points” and consistently deliver disappointing results.
On the other side, a quieter revolution is emerging. Practitioners, organisations, and researchers are reconnecting regenerative agriculture to its deeper roots: the indigenous wisdom traditions that understood land as relationship; the biodynamic and holistic management lineages that brought systems thinking to farming; and now, remarkably, emerging sciences that are beginning to validate what traditional knowledge has long held true.
This paper argues that we are witnessing the birth of what might be called “second-tier” regenerative agriculture — an integral approach that transcends the practice-versus-philosophy divide, honours multiple ways of knowing, and grounds cutting-edge science in ancient wisdom. This is not a retreat from rigour but an expansion of it.
For farmers, land managers, and organisations seeking genuine transformation rather than performative sustainability, this represents both an opportunity and a choice. The surface-level version of regenerative agriculture will continue to dominate headlines and investment flows. But the deeper current — rooted in lineage, grounded in place, and illuminated by emerging science — offers something far more powerful: actual regeneration.
The Roots to Regeneration programme, launching its 2026 cohort in March, represents one pathway into this deeper work. But more importantly, this paper maps the terrain that serious practitioners must now navigate — and invites readers into a conversation about what regenerative agriculture can become when we have the courage to reclaim its integrity.
Part One: The Great Divergence
The Watering Down
In 2015, the term “regenerative agriculture” was known primarily to a dedicated community of practitioners, researchers, and visionaries. By 2025, it has become a corporate buzzword worth billions in investment commitments. Nestlé has pledged
$1.3 billion. Cargill targets 10 million acres. McDonald’s has announced $200 million for regenerative beef programmes. The growth has been extraordinary.
And yet, something has gone profoundly wrong.
When researchers at Coventry University reviewed farm-level studies of “regenerative” interventions, they found a troubling pattern: the adoption of individual practices without systems integration consistently delivers limited, often disappointing results. Cover crops alone don’t regenerate soil. Reduced tillage without livestock integration frequently fails. Input substitution maintains the same extractive logic with different products.
This isn’t a failure of regenerative agriculture — it’s a failure to understand what regenerative agriculture actually is. And this misunderstanding has been actively promoted by corporate investment patterns that prefer practices (which can be measured, certified, and controlled) over transformation (which cannot).
“When farmers, policymakers, and the public hear ‘regenerative agriculture,’ they increasingly think of cover crops, reduced tillage, and input substitution rather than systems transformation. This conflation is not accidental — it serves the interests of those who wish to appear supportive of change while maintaining industrial agriculture dominance.”
— Roots of Nature White Paper, 2025
The Levels Framework: My Interpretation
To understand what’s happening, we need a framework for distinguishing between different approaches to regenerative agriculture. The Terra Genesis Levels Framework, developed by Ethan Soloviev and Gregory Landua, provides a starting point. What follows is my interpretation of these levels, informed by nearly three decades of working with farms across more than 500,000 acres. Others may characterise these levels differently — this is how I have seen them play out in practice:
Level 1 — Functional/Practice Adoption:
In my experience, this looks like individual techniques implemented without changing the underlying system. Cover crops added to conventional rotations. Reduced tillage without addressing soil biology. “Regenerative” inputs substituted for synthetic ones. This is where I see the vast majority of corporate investment flowing — and where results consistently disappoint.
Level 2 — Systems Design:
What I observe at this level is whole-farm integration where practices work together synergistically. Livestock integrated with cropping.
Biodiversity built into the system architecture. Nutrient cycles closed. Water managed holistically. The farm begins to function as an organism rather than a factory.
Level 3 — Worldview Transformation:
At this level, I see the farmer’s relationship with the land fundamentally change. From extractive management to participatory relationship. From controlling nature to working with natural processes. From maximising output to optimising health. The farm becomes an expression of values, not just a production unit.
Level 4 — Paradigm Evolution:
In the farms I’ve worked with that reach this level, the operation becomes embedded in larger patterns of bioregional regeneration, cultural renewal, and systemic change. Agriculture reconnects to community, to place, to ancestry, to the more-than-human world. The transformation extends beyond the farm gate into the culture itself.
In my experience, Level 1 interventions deliver minimal, often disappointing results. Level 2 and above deliver exponential improvements — in soil carbon, in biodiversity, in profitability, in resilience, and in farmer wellbeing. The research literature supports this pattern, though the specific numbers vary by context. Drawing on various studies and my own observations, the contrast is stark:
- Level 1 carbon sequestration: typically 1-6 tonnes CO2 equivalent per hectare per year
- Level 2+ carbon sequestration: can reach 15-41 tonnes CO2 equivalent per hectare per year in well-designed systems
- I’ve seen Level 2+ farms achieving profitability improvements of 50-200% while simultaneously delivering environmental outcomes
Yet corporate investment overwhelmingly funds Level 1 approaches. Why? In my analysis, it’s because Level 1 is controllable. It fits into existing supply chain structures. It can be verified by third-party auditors. It doesn’t require corporations to change their own paradigms, power structures, or procurement practices.
This is not conspiracy — it’s systems dynamics. Organisations naturally gravitate toward interventions at leverage points that don’t threaten their own existence. As Donella Meadows observed, the most powerful leverage points in systems are paradigms and goals — precisely the levels that corporate “regenerative” programmes tend to avoid.
The Coming Bifurcation
We predict that the next five years will see a formal divergence in the regenerative agriculture movement. Two distinct streams will emerge:
“Regenerative Practices”
— The corporate-compatible version. Certified, measured, reported. Focused on individual interventions. Driven by supply chain requirements and carbon credit markets. Well-funded but limited in impact. This stream will dominate public discourse and investment flows.
“Regenerative Agriculture Systems”
— The practitioner-led version. Rooted in lineage and place. Focused on whole-system transformation. Driven by farmer agency and ecological outcomes. Underfunded relative to its potential but delivering genuine regeneration.
This divergence is not necessarily problematic — indeed, it may be necessary. “Regenerative practices” provides an entry point for conventional farmers and risk-averse corporations. Some practitioners who begin with practices will deepen into systems over time. The danger lies in conflating the two, allowing the shallow version to define and limit what regeneration can mean.
The critical task for the next five years is not to defeat the corporate version of regenerative agriculture — that battle is lost before it begins. The task is to clearly articulate what the deeper version involves, why it matters, and how to access it. We must create spaces, programmes, and communities where genuine transformation can occur, even as the mainstream moves in a different direction.
Part Two: The Re-Rooting
Reclaiming the Lineages
Regenerative agriculture didn’t emerge from corporate boardrooms or academic institutions. It grew from practitioners working the land, often drawing on wisdom traditions far older than industrial agriculture. To understand where regenerative agriculture must go, we must remember where it came from.
Indigenous Wisdom
Every landscape on Earth carries the imprint of indigenous land management. In Australia, Aboriginal fire practices shaped ecosystems for 65,000 years. In the Americas, indigenous agroforestry created the “black earth” (terra preta) soils that remain fertile after centuries. In Africa, traditional pastoralism maintained the savannah ecosystems that supported wildlife abundance inconceivable today.
This isn’t romantic primitivism — it’s documented science. Indigenous land management practices consistently maintained or enhanced biodiversity, built soil carbon, cycled nutrients, and supported human communities for millennia. The industrial agriculture experiment, by contrast, is barely 150 years old and has already triggered mass extinction, soil degradation, and climate destabilisation.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Potawatomi botanist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass, articulates the indigenous worldview: land is not a resource to be exploited but a community of beings with whom we are in relationship. Reciprocity, not extraction, governs exchange. The question is not “how much can we take?” but “how do we give back?”
“In the indigenous worldview, a healthy landscape is understood to be full of non-human persons, all of whom have their own needs, perspectives, and agencies. The job of the human is not to manage or control, but to participate respectfully in a community that extends far beyond our species.”
The UK’s Indigenous Roots
In the United Kingdom, we are witnessing a growing movement to reconnect with our own indigenous heritage. This is not about claiming equivalence with colonised peoples or appropriating others’ traditions. It is about recognising that these islands, too, carry ancient wisdom — encoded in Celtic languages, in seasonal festivals, in place names, in folk practices that persisted despite centuries of suppression.
The concept of “rooting to place” — becoming indigenous to where we are — offers a pathway for settler-descended peoples to develop the kind of relationship with land that indigenous cultures have maintained. This is a multi-generational project, not a weekend workshop. It requires learning the names of plants, understanding the water cycles, knowing the history of the land beneath our feet, and gradually developing what might be called ecological intimacy.
For regenerative agriculture in the UK, this means moving beyond imported American models toward approaches rooted in our own landscapes, climates, and cultural traditions. The Lake District fells are not the Great Plains. Welsh uplands are not Australian rangelands. Scottish crofting traditions carry wisdom specific to these places that no imported methodology can replace.
Wilderculture CIC, working across five UK bioregions — the West Highlands and Islands, the Lake District Fells, the Scottish Southern Uplands, the Welsh Uplands, and the North Pennines — is developing place-based approaches to regeneration that honour local heritage while integrating contemporary science. The goal is not preservation of the past but the evolution of living traditions.
Biodynamic Agriculture
Rudolf Steiner’s Agriculture Course of 1924 predates the organic movement, the sustainability movement, and the regenerative agriculture movement by decades.
Whatever one makes of Steiner’s esoteric cosmology, biodynamics introduced several ideas that remain revolutionary:
- The farm as organism — a self-contained, self-sustaining living system
- Integration of livestock as essential to farm health
- Attention to subtle forces, rhythms, and relationships beyond material inputs
- The farmer’s consciousness as a genuine input into the agricultural system
A century of practice has demonstrated that biodynamic farms consistently outperform conventional systems on soil health, biodiversity, and food quality metrics — even when controlled for organic practices alone. The DOK trial in Switzerland, running since 1978, shows biodynamic plots maintaining stable humus content while all other treatments declined.
We explore the biodynamic lineage in depth in our companion briefing note, “The Biodynamic Lineage: Emerging Science and Ancient Wisdom.” What matters here is recognising biodynamics as a living tradition — a lineage of practitioners, researchers, and teachers who have been doing regenerative agriculture for a hundred years before the term existed.
Holistic Management
Allan Savory’s development of Holistic Management beginning in the 1960s brought explicit systems thinking to land management. The holistic context — articulating what matters most before making decisions — provides a decision-making framework that naturally leads toward regenerative outcomes.
Holistic Planned Grazing challenged fundamental assumptions about livestock and land degradation, demonstrating that properly managed grazing can reverse desertification, build soil carbon, and restore ecosystem function. The Savory
Institute’s database now tracks millions of hectares under holistic management worldwide.
Like biodynamics, holistic management represents a lineage — a community of practice with accumulated wisdom, tested approaches, and mentorship traditions. This is not information to be downloaded but a way of thinking to be cultivated through practice and guidance.
Other Lineages
The regenerative agriculture tent includes many other lineages, each contributing essential perspectives:
- Permaculture — Design science for permanent human settlements in harmony with natural systems
- Agroecology — Scientific study of ecological processes in agricultural systems, often aligned with social justice movements
- Keyline Design — P.A. Yeomans’ water management approach for landscape regeneration
- Korean Natural Farming — Indigenous microorganism cultivation and natural farming inputs
- Syntropic Agriculture — Ernst Götsch’s successional agroforestry approach
- Regenerative Leadership — The emerging field of developing regenerative mindset and culture within organisations
Each lineage offers distinctive gifts. For practitioners, the question becomes: which lineage will you root yourself in? Superficial sampling across traditions — taking a bit of biodynamics here, some holistic management there — produces exactly the diluted, surface-level approach that fails. What’s needed is deep engagement with a coherent tradition.
This is why the ROOTED framework, while drawing on the wisdom of multiple traditions, is itself an emerging lineage — a complete, coherent whole that practitioners can deeply engage with over years. It transcends and includes aspects of other lineages, but it is not a pick-and-mix buffet. It is a rigorous pathway with its own integrity, its own community of practice, and its own developmental journey.
Second-Tier Agriculture
Developmental psychology, particularly as articulated through Spiral Dynamics and Integral Theory, provides a framework for understanding the evolution of human consciousness through predictable stages. Without reducing complex human beings to colour codes, this framework offers insight into why different approaches to regenerative agriculture exist and how they might be integrated.
“First-tier” stages of development are characterised by the conviction that their worldview is the correct one. Traditional farmers may see regenerative agriculture as hippie nonsense. Conventional agronomists may dismiss indigenous wisdom as unscientific. Green environmentalists may reject anything involving livestock or human intervention.
“Second-tier” development represents a fundamental shift: the recognition that all previous stages contain partial truths, that development itself is ongoing, and that complex challenges require the integration of multiple perspectives. Second-tier thinkers can work with traditional, modern, and postmodern approaches as the situation requires.
Second-tier regenerative agriculture transcends the culture wars that plague the movement. It can honour indigenous wisdom without romanticising pre-agricultural lifeways. It can apply rigorous science without reducing life to mechanism. It can work with corporate supply chains without being captured by corporate logic. It can hold apparent contradictions in creative tension rather than false resolution.
This is not centrism or compromise — it is integration at a higher level of complexity. The capacity to operate from this level is rare but developable. It requires what developmental psychologists call “vertical development” — not merely acquiring new information (horizontal development) but transforming the structures through which we make meaning.
The 50/40/10 framework that shapes our work at Roots to Regeneration — 50% mindset transformation, 40% systems design, 10% practices — is explicitly designed to support vertical development. We work on the inner dimensions of agriculture because we understand that outer transformation follows inner transformation, not the reverse.
Bioregionalism as Antidote
If corporate “regenerative agriculture” represents globalised approaches applied at scale, bioregionalism offers the opposite: deeply local approaches rooted in the particularity of place. The bioregional perspective asks not “how do we transform global food systems?” but “how do we belong to and care for this watershed, this ecosystem, this community?”
Bioregionalism isn’t anti-global — it recognises that the global is made of locals, and that genuine sustainability emerges from the accumulated wisdom of place-based communities, not from top-down schemes imposed by distant institutions.
Key bioregional principles include:
- Boundaries defined by watersheds, ecosystems, and cultural affinity rather than arbitrary political divisions
- Governance scaled to ecological reality — neither too centralised nor too fragmented
- Economy oriented toward meeting local needs with local resources before engaging in trade
- Culture rooted in stories, traditions, and practices that connect community to place
- Agriculture as land stewardship rather than industrial production
The regenerative agriculture movement increasingly recognises that transformation must happen bioregion by bioregion. Generic solutions imposed at scale reproduce the problems of industrial agriculture with different practices. Place-based solutions developed through relationship with specific landscapes create genuine regeneration.
This doesn’t mean rejecting knowledge from elsewhere. A farmer in Cumbria can learn from Australian graziers, Zimbabwean pastoralists, and Brazilian agroforesters — but must ultimately develop practices suited to Cumbrian soils, climate, markets, and culture. The learning is horizontal (from diverse sources) while the application is vertical (rooted in place).
Part Three: The Science Catches Up
For decades, practitioners of traditional and holistic agriculture have reported phenomena that mainstream science couldn’t explain — let alone validate.
Biodynamic farmers spoke of “vitality” in crops that didn’t show up in nutritional analysis. Indigenous practitioners described plants as communicating in ways that seemed metaphorical at best. Holistic managers observed that the farmer’s mindset affected outcomes in ways that couldn’t be reduced to technique.
Remarkably, emerging science is beginning to provide frameworks for understanding these phenomena. We are witnessing a convergence between ancient wisdom and cutting-edge research that may represent one of the most significant intellectual developments of our time.
“Science operates with a significant time lag, essentially playing catch-up with phenomena that practitioners have observed for generations. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence — it is often evidence of measurement limitations.”
Structured Water and the Fourth Phase
Dr. Gerald Pollack at the University of Washington has documented what he calls the “fourth phase” of water — beyond solid, liquid, and gas. When water contacts hydrophilic surfaces, it forms an “exclusion zone” (EZ) with radically different properties:
- Different molecular structure (H3O2 rather than H2O)
- Hexagonal crystalline organisation
- Negative charge separation from bulk water, creating a natural battery
- Ability to store energy from incident light, especially infrared
- Enhanced biological activity
The implications for agriculture are profound. Pollack’s research shows that vortexing is “a very powerful way of increasing [water] structure.” This immediately recalls the biodynamic practice of stirring preparations for an hour, alternating direction to create vortex and counter-vortex patterns — a practice dismissed as mystical nonsense that may have mechanistic significance.
Agricultural research on structured or magnetised water reports remarkable results: winter wheat yield increases of 28%, corn 17%, cucumber 32%, tomato 32%.
Irrigation with magnetised water increased leaf fresh weight by 22%, root fresh weight by 47%, and water use efficiency by 22%.
We don’t yet fully understand the mechanisms. But the phenomenon is increasingly documented by legitimate researchers. The biodynamic farmer stirring preparations for an hour may not be engaging in symbolic ritual but in water structuring with real biological effects.
Biophotons and Coherence
All living organisms emit ultra-weak photons — biophotons — as part of normal metabolism. Research shows that biophoton emission is “very sensitive to the biological characteristics of the system under examination” and has been “successfully applied to medical diagnostics, agriculture and ecology.”
Most significantly, researchers have developed Fluorescence Excitation Spectroscopy (FES) to measure the “delayed luminescence” of biological samples — including food produced under different farming systems. A study comparing milk from biodynamic, organic, and conventional farms found that FES parameters discriminated up to 86% of samples — and that “FES-results may be linked with qualities different to the FA [fatty acid] profile.”
In other words: biodynamic products have measurable differences that don’t show up in conventional nutritional analysis but do appear in light emission patterns. The “vitality” that practitioners describe may be measurable as biophoton coherence — a dimension of food quality that we’ve simply never thought to measure.
Plant Electrical Signaling
Research published in The Plant Cell (2022) demonstrated that plants communicate through electrical signals:
- “A foliar electrical signal induced by wounding or high light stress can be transmitted to a neighboring plant that is in direct contact”
- “Such signals can also induce responses even if the neighboring plant is from a different plant species”
- Electrical signals “function as a communication link between transmitter and receiver plants that are organized as a network (community) of plants”
Underground, the picture is equally remarkable. Plants communicate through electrical signal transmission between roots through soil. Scientists at Washington State University are studying “electric signals that bounce between plants and the underworld community of microbes that sustain them.”
If plants form electrical networks and communicate through bioelectric signaling, then the biodynamic concept of the “farm as organism” takes on new meaning.
Practices that enhance electrical coherence, reduce interference, or support signaling networks would have real effects on farm health — effects invisible to conventional measurement approaches.
Quantum Biology
Perhaps most remarkably, quantum biology is demonstrating that living systems utilise quantum phenomena for fundamental processes:
- “In plants and algae, the efficiency of converting photons into electrons can reach 100%”
- Natural photosynthesis achieves “almost perfect quantum efficiency in its initial energy storage step”
- Plants may use “quantum phenomena, including coherence and entanglement, for complex biological functions”
- “Quantum mechanisms offer new strategies for enhancing plant resilience and agricultural sustainability”
The implications are staggering. If plants operate at quantum efficiency levels — levels that make our best solar panels look primitive — and if quantum effects play functional roles in plant biology, then we’re dealing with a level of sophistication in living systems that our agricultural science has barely begun to comprehend.
This doesn’t validate every mystical claim ever made about agriculture. But it does establish that living systems operate through mechanisms far more subtle than bulk chemistry. It opens conceptual space for effects that conventional analysis would miss entirely.
Sound, Frequency, and Vibration
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” Tesla’s aphorism finds support in plant biology research:
- Sound waves at 0.1-1 kHz significantly increased yields: sweet pepper 30%, cucumber 37%, tomato 13%
- Sound exposure improved flavonoid yields: alfalfa 200% at 250 Hz, broccoli sprouts 35% at 800 Hz
- “The roots of Zea mays bend toward sound at frequencies of 100-300 Hz”
- Evening primrose increases nectar sweetness by 20% in response to pollinator wing-beat frequencies
Plants are not passive organisms waiting to be acted upon. They sense their environment through multiple modalities — including sound — and respond in sophisticated ways. The acoustic environment of the farm matters. The “green music” of diverse ecosystems — birdsong, insect sounds, flowing water — may be genuinely functional, not merely aesthetic.
Infrared Communication
Brand new research (December 2025) published in Science reveals that plants use infrared radiation for communication:
- “Plant-generated thermal infrared radiation serves as a pollination signal”
- Cycads — representing a 275-million-year-old lineage — heat their reproductive structures in circadian patterns to attract pollinators
- “Infrared is among the earliest pollination signals” — predating colour-based communication
If plants have been communicating through infrared for 275 million years, what else are they “saying” that we haven’t learned to hear? This research opens vast new dimensions for understanding plant-environment-pollinator interactions.
The Power of Intention
One of the most common dismissals of holistic and traditional agriculture is that any observed effects are “just placebo” — implying that practitioner belief, rather than the practices themselves, accounts for outcomes. But placebo research itself offers a remarkable reframe.
Placebo effects are increasingly documented as real biological phenomena, not merely subjective experience:
- “Placebo effects are beneficial effects attributable to brain-mind responses to context rather than specific actions of drugs”
- They are “mediated by diverse processes — including learning, expectations and social cognition”
- Crucially: Placebo responses have been increasing over time — from near-zero in the 1980s to approximately 70% in some clinical trials by 2010
Rather than dismissing “placebo” as a confounding variable, we might consider it a mechanism. The farmer’s relationship with the land — attention, intention, ritual, reverence — may not be merely psychological preparation for work. It may be genuine input into the biological system.
If intention affects biological outcomes (as placebo research suggests), and if attention shapes reality at subtle levels (as quantum physics implies), then the traditional farmer’s consciousness is not peripheral to agricultural practice — it is central.
The emerging science doesn’t prove that every traditional practice works for the reasons practitioners believe. But it establishes that living systems operate through mechanisms far more subtle than industrial agriculture assumes — and that phenomena dismissed as “mystical” may have mechanistic explanations we’re only beginning to understand.
Part Four: An Integral Lineage
The ROOTED Framework: An Emerging Lineage
Over nearly three decades of practice, I have developed the ROOTED framework — a set of universal, fractal archetypes that offer doorways for regenerating any system. This framework now underpins my consultancy work at Roots of Nature, the Roots to Regeneration training programme, and Wilderculture’s bioregional development.
ROOTED is itself an emerging lineage — not a superficial sampling of other traditions, but a complete, coherent whole that transcends and includes the wisdom of indigenous knowledge, biodynamics, holistic management, permaculture, and other established lineages while offering its own distinctive pathway. Practitioners can engage with ROOTED as deeply as they would any other lineage, developing mastery over years through the R2R programme and ongoing fellowship.
Rather than prescribing practices, ROOTED provides lenses through which practitioners can understand and work with the patterns underlying all regenerative transformation. The framework integrates several interconnected elements:
- Twelve Regenerative Design Principles — universal patterns that guide system design across contexts
- Four Elemental Conditions — working with the fundamental forces that shape all living systems
- The Regenerative Context — mapping the social, environmental, and economic dimensions through which transformation occurs
- Nested Holons — understanding how wholes exist within wholes, from individual to farm to organisation to food system to climate system, enabling practitioners to define their context and work effectively at appropriate scales
This nested holarchy represents emergence itself — how complexity builds, how systems transcend and include what came before, how the Spiral Dynamics principle of developmental evolution applies to agricultural transformation. The framework draws on Celtic traditions (the triskele representing the power of three) alongside contemporary systems thinking, honouring heritage while enabling innovation.
What makes ROOTED distinctive is its fractal nature: the same patterns apply whether you’re designing a grazing cell, a whole farm, a bioregion, or a food system. This universality — grounded in how living systems actually organise — distinguishes it from practice-based approaches that work at one scale but fail when context changes.
50/40/10: A Different Emphasis
Most regenerative agriculture programmes focus almost exclusively on practices — the 10%. They teach techniques, protocols, and methods. These are valuable, but they’re the least powerful lever for change — and critically, when practices are adopted without the mindset and design work, they’re almost certainly the wrong practices for that place.
Our 50/40/10 model inverts this emphasis:
50% Mindset Transformation:
Inner development, worldview evolution, relationship transformation. This is where the real leverage lies. A farmer who has undergone genuine mindset transformation will naturally make decisions that lead toward regeneration. A farmer who hasn’t will implement practices that don’t work — and conclude that regenerative agriculture is overhyped.
40% Systems Design:
Whole-farm integration, landscape-scale thinking, ecosystem function. The architecture within which practices operate. This is where the unique context of each place — its soils, climate, ecology, culture, economy, and people — gets translated into a coherent design. Get this right and the appropriate practices become obvious; get this wrong and even excellent practices underperform because they’re solving the wrong problems.
10% Practices:
The specific techniques, interventions, and methods — but here’s the critical insight: these must be chosen to fit the design that has been created for that unique context by someone with a systems mindset. Only then will they be the appropriate practices for that place and its people. Only then do they stand a chance of actually achieving regenerative outcomes. Practices copied from elsewhere, however successful in their original context, will likely fail when applied without this foundation.
This is why corporate ‘regenerative agriculture’ programmes consistently disappoint. They start with practices — cover crops, reduced tillage, rotational grazing — and try to scale them across diverse contexts. But a practice that regenerates soil in Kansas may degrade soil in Kent. A grazing system designed for the Great Plains makes no sense in Welsh uplands. The practice isn’t wrong; it’s wrongly applied.
The 50/40/10 model ensures practices emerge from understanding rather than imitation. The mindset work develops the capacity to see systems. The design work translates that seeing into place-appropriate architecture. The practices then become the specific tools that serve the design — chosen because they fit, not because they worked somewhere else.
Rooting to Place
The deepest level of regenerative agriculture involves what we call “rooting to place” — developing the kind of intimate, multi-generational relationship with landscape that indigenous peoples have maintained and that industrial agriculture has systematically destroyed. Rooting to place is not a technique but a process — one that unfolds over years and decades. It involves:
- Learning the names of beings — plants, animals, fungi, landforms — in your place
- Understanding the water — where it comes from, where it goes, what it does
- Knowing the history — human and more-than-human — of your landscape
- Participating in seasonal cycles — not merely observing but genuinely participating
- Developing relationships with non-human beings as genuine subjects, not mere objects
- Contributing to the cultural and ecological inheritance you will leave
This is the work of becoming indigenous to where we are — not in the sense of claiming indigenous identity, but in the sense of developing the kind of rooted relationship with place that allows genuine stewardship.
For most practitioners, rooting to place begins with humility: acknowledging how little we know about the places where we live and work. From this acknowledgment, curiosity can emerge. From curiosity, relationship. From relationship, belonging.
From belonging, stewardship that transcends technique.
Part Five: The Next Five Years
What I Predict
Based on current trajectories and my experience — directly supporting the transition of over 100,000 acres and training farmers with influence over a further 500,000 — I offer the following predictions for regenerative agriculture over the next five years:
- Formal divergence between “regenerative practices” and “regenerative systems”: The split we’ve described will become explicit. Certification schemes, investment categories, and policy frameworks will begin distinguishing between practice-level and systems-level approaches. This is healthy — clarity serves everyone.
- Growing disillusionment with corporate regenerative programmes: As Level 1 investments fail to deliver promised outcomes, organisations will face a choice: deepen into genuine systems transformation or retreat into conventional greenwashing. Some will choose the former; many will choose the latter.
- Renaissance of traditional and indigenous approaches: Practitioners and researchers will increasingly look to lineages with proven track records. Biodynamics, holistic management, indigenous land management, and other traditional approaches will gain credibility as their decades (or millennia) of demonstrated success contrast with the failures of technocratic interventions.
- Emergence of bioregional networks: Place-based approaches will coalesce into networks operating at bioregional scale. These networks will develop local knowledge, support practitioner communities, and demonstrate alternatives to globalised food systems. Policy will begin recognising bioregional governance as appropriate scale for agricultural transformation.
- Scientific validation of “subtle” phenomena: Research on structured water, biophotons, plant signaling, and related fields will increasingly enter mainstream scientific discourse. The gap between traditional knowledge and scientific understanding will narrow — not through science “proving” tradition right, but through both contributing to expanded understanding.
- Growing demand for deep training programmes: Farmers and organisations seeking genuine transformation will become more discerning consumers of regenerative education. Weekend workshops and online courses will be recognised as insufficient for the kind of development required. Long-form programmes with strong practitioner communities will become the gold standard.
- UK-specific renaissance: The United Kingdom will see particular growth in place-based, heritage-rooted regenerative agriculture. Celtic wisdom traditions, local food sovereignty movements, and landscape-scale restoration projects will converge into a distinctive UK regenerative identity. Brexit’s disruption of industrial agricultural support will, paradoxically, create space for this emergence.
What I Recommend
For farmers and land managers:
- Commit to deep engagement with a regenerative lineage — whether ROOTED, biodynamics, holistic management, or another established tradition — not surface-level sampling
- Join or form practitioner communities — transformation is relational, not individual
- Invest in inner development alongside outer technique
- Develop rooting to place practices regardless of farm tenure
- Be skeptical of quick fixes and practice-focused programmes
- Engage with emerging science with curiosity, not credulity
For organisations investing in regenerative agriculture:
- Distinguish clearly between practice-level and systems-level approaches in strategy and reporting
- Fund long-term systems transformation, not short-term practice adoption
- Partner with organisations operating at Level 2+ rather than creating new Level 1 programmes
- Invest in internal regenerative capacity — your organisation needs to transform, not just your supply chain
- Support research on phenomena that conventional metrics miss
- Take bioregional approaches seriously as alternatives to globalised supply chain thinking
For policymakers:
- Design policy to support systems transformation, not practice compliance
- Recognise bioregional governance as appropriate scale for agricultural transformation
- Fund research on traditional and indigenous agricultural approaches
- Support practitioner networks and mentorship infrastructure
- Create space for experimentation outside conventional agricultural frameworks
- Resist pressure to reduce regenerative agriculture to measurable practices
Conclusion: An Invitation
We stand at a remarkable moment. The industrial agricultural paradigm that has dominated for a century is visibly failing — ecologically, economically, and spiritually. The alternatives that seemed marginal a generation ago are demonstrating their viability at scale. And emerging science is beginning to validate what traditional practitioners have known all along.
The question is not whether transformation will happen, but what kind of transformation — and who will lead it.
Corporate “regenerative agriculture” offers one pathway: safe, measurable, incremental, controllable. This pathway may bring improvements at the margins while maintaining the fundamental structures that created our crises.
The re-rooted regenerative agriculture we’ve described offers another pathway: challenging, holistic, transformational, wild. This pathway requires more of practitioners — more inner work, more systems thinking, more relationship, more humility. But it offers genuine regeneration, not merely slowed degradation.
“Mysticism and science will eventually prove each other right.”
I believe this. Not as wishful thinking but as emerging reality. The science is catching up. The traditional knowledge is being rediscovered. The practitioners who hold both are developing approaches adequate to our moment.
The Roots to Regeneration programme represents the primary pathway into deep engagement with the ROOTED lineage. Beginning in March 2026, our new cohort will spend two years developing the mindset, systems understanding, and practices required for genuine regenerative transformation — followed by ongoing fellowship that supports continued emergence and mastery. Applications close January 31st, with final bursary places held until February 18th.
But our programme is only one pathway among many. The invitation is broader: to take regenerative agriculture seriously, in all its depth and challenge and promise. To resist the dilution that corporate capture brings. To root in lineage while reaching toward emerging understanding. To develop ourselves as we develop our land.
The next five years will determine whether “regenerative agriculture” becomes another captured term — like “sustainable” and “natural” before it — or whether it retains its transformative power.
The outcome depends on practitioners, organisations, and communities making a choice: the shallow path or the deep one. The safe investment or the genuine transformation. The practices without transformation, or the transformation that makes practices meaningful.
I know which path I’m on. I invite you to join me.
Roots to Regeneration
Professional Root Cohort — March 2026
Applications close: 31st January 2026 Final bursary places available until: 18th February 2026
References
Systems Theory and Levels
Meadows, D.H. (1999). Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System. The Sustainability Institute.
Soloviev, E.R., Landua, G. (2016). Levels of Regenerative Agriculture. Terra Genesis International.
Gosnell, H., Gill, N., Voyer, M. (2019). Transformational adaptation on the farm: Processes of change and persistence in transitions to ‘climate-smart’ regenerative agriculture. Global Environmental Change, 59, 101965.
Mann, C., et al. (2019). Systems thinking and the nexus approach: Pathways for sustainability. Land Use Policy, 89, 104217.
Regenerative Agriculture Evidence
Mäder, P., et al. (2002). Soil fertility and biodiversity in organic farming. Science, 296(5573), 1694-1697.
Fließbach, A., et al. (2007). Soil organic matter and biological soil quality indicators after 21 years of organic and conventional farming. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 118(1-4), 273-284.
Reganold, J.P., et al. (1993). Soil quality and financial performance of biodynamic and conventional farms in New Zealand. Science, 260(5106), 344-349.
LaCanne, C.E., Lundgren, J.G. (2018). Regenerative agriculture: merging farming and natural resource conservation profitably. PeerJ, 6, e4428.
Indigenous Knowledge
Kimmerer, R.W. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions.
Yunkaporta, T. (2019). Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. Text Publishing.
Berkes, F. (2018). Sacred Ecology (4th ed.). Routledge.
Anderson, M.K. (2005). Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources. University of California Press.
Biodynamic Agriculture
Brock, C., et al. (2019). Research in biodynamic food and farming – a review. Open Agriculture, 4(1), 743-757.
Turinek, M., et al. (2009). Biodynamic agriculture research progress and priorities. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 24(2), 146-154.
Rigolot, C., Quantin, M. (2022). Biodynamic farming as a resource for sustainability transformations: Potential and challenges. Agricultural Systems, 200, 103424.
Holistic Management
Savory, A., Butterfield, J. (2016). Holistic Management: A Commonsense Revolution to Restore Our Environment (3rd ed.). Island Press.
Teague, R., et al. (2016). The role of ruminants in reducing agriculture’s carbon footprint in North America. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 71(2), 156-164.
Emerging Science
Pollack, G.H. (2013). The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid, and Vapor. Ebner and Sons Publishers.
Szechyńska-Hebda, M., et al. (2022). Aboveground plant-to-plant electrical signaling mediates network acquired acclimation. The Plant Cell, 34(8), 3047-3065.
Cao, J., et al. (2020). Quantum biology revisited. Science Advances, 6(14), eaaz4888.
Hassanien, R.H.E., et al. (2014). Advances in Effects of Sound Waves on Plants. Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 13(2), 335-348.
Valencia-Montoya, W.A., et al. (2025). Infrared radiation is an ancient pollination signal. Science, 390(6778), 1164-1170.
Stolz, P., et al. (2019). Measuring delayed luminescence by FES to evaluate special quality aspects of food samples. Open Agriculture, 4(1), 410-417.
Developmental Theory
Beck, D.E., Cowan, C.C. (1996). Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change. Blackwell Publishing.
Wilber, K. (2000). A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality. Shambhala.
Cook-Greuter, S.R. (2013). Nine Levels Of Increasing Embrace In Ego Development: A Full-Spectrum Theory Of Vertical Growth And Meaning Making. Wayland.
Bioregionalism
Sale, K. (1985). Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision. University of Georgia Press.
Thayer, R.L. (2003). LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and Practice. University of California Press.
Berg, P., Dasmann, R. (1977). Reinhabiting California. The Ecologist, 7(10), 399-401.
About the Author
Caroline Grindrod brings nearly 30 years of experience in environmental land management and regenerative agriculture. She is Director of Roots of Nature Ltd, co-founder of Roots to Regeneration CIC, co-founder of Wilderculture CIC, and Director of Primal Meats.
Her work has directly supported the transition of over 100,000 acres, with a further 500,000 acres influenced through farmers she has trained. Key partnerships have included McDonald’s UK, FAI Farms, Arla, the Environment Agency, National Trust, and four National Park Authorities.
Caroline co-delivers the annual Regenerative Grazing School with James and Helen Rebanks at their pioneering Lake District farm.
Find Out More
Visit our websites for full details on all programmes, schools, consultancy offerings and services:
- Roots of Nature — Consultancy and the ROOTED framework: rootsofnature.co.uk
- Roots to Regeneration — Two-year training programme and fellowship: rootsofnature.co.uk/roots-to-regeneration
- Wilderculture — Bioregional regeneration and Rooting to Place: wilderculture.com
Contact
info@rootsofnature.co.uk
www.rootsofnature.co.uk
Download the PDF
Get the full paper, with references, sent to your inbox.
