‘If there’s no fertility, there are no farms’: Why big food is exploring regenerative agriculture | CNN Business

Global agriculture and the food supply chain account for nearly a third of total global greenhouse gas emissions, with farms responsible for almost half of those emissions. At the same time, agriculture is one of the sectors most threatened by climate change, with rising temperatures set to devastate food crops around the world. “It’s never been so apparent that our food system needs fixing,” said Chuck de Liedekerke, CEO and co-founder of Soil Capital, a Belgian company that pays farmers to reduce their carbon emissions and improve soil quality through regenerative agriculture practices that focus on restoring land. “For centuries now, we’ve actually been depleting the natural fertility of our soils,” he said. “If you can invest, through regenerative practices, in the fertility of those soils then you can make your whole system more resilient.” Soil can lock away the carbon absorbed by plants. The carbon stored in soil is “one of the biggest drivers of fertility,” said de Liedekerke, and it increases water retention, which can make crops more drought resistant. But when fields are worked with heavy machinery, their soils leach carbon back into the air. The farm