Regenerative Agriculture through the lens of International Law
“Secure Soil, Save Life” (1) is a report for international legal experts and legislators - no emotional manifesto for regenerative agriculture. Which is precisely what makes what is inside it remarkable: read carefully, and between the definitions of international law you find an explicit call for managed grazing as a key tool for saving our soils.
To illustrate, I can let the report speak for itself:
The State of Soil in Europe, Germany, and the World
On Europe (page 31):
In the European Union, 60-70% of soils are degraded as a direct result of unsustainable management practices and have lost significant capacity to provide ecological functions for various forms of life. These degraded soils are classified as “unhealthy”, affected by erosion, loss of organic carbon, compaction, salinisation, and contamination (EC, 2020(2) ).
On Germany (page 32):
In Germany, at least 20% of the agricultural land is suffering from severe soil erosion. This severe erosion affects the most fertile topsoil and is primarily driven by over-intensive agriculture, including the use of heavy machinery, inadequate soil cover during off-seasons, and cultivation methods that increase vulnerability to heavy rainfall (Seeger, 2023). In addition, according to [a 2024 study], the conversion of grassland to cropland in Germany has resulted in long-term soil degradation: […](Emde et al. 2024 (3) ).
Very alarming - and conditions in other countries and on other continents are no better. Australia starts out most encouragingly, only to then describe that while current methods are already very good, historical practices still leave a large legacy of soil destruction.
In other words: nowhere is good, but some farmers are already deploying the right techniques - actively building soil, or at least not actively destroying it. In a pattern that is worth tracing regionally through this report.
Grazing, or Regenerative Agriculture
Following the status report comes a chapter on ways to significantly improve soil quality. It is a short chapter - but given that the document is primarily a framework for status reporting and international legal regulation proposals (not an agricultural policy document), that is understandable.
From this chapter (page 35, emphasis mine):
Protecting and Revitalising Soil via Regenerative Agriculture
The alarming environmental and agricultural trends described above can be effectively counteracted through established on-ground interventions, with regenerative agriculture serving as a primary strategy. Regenerative agriculture is a holistic approach to farming that seeks not only to maintain but actively improve soil health and the environment, contrasting with conventional practices that can lead to degradation. Its core principles focus on disturbing the soil as little as possible through minimal or no-tillage methods, which helps preserve soil structure, organic matter, and the microbial life crucial for nutrient cycling. A second key strategy is maintaining a permanent ground cover using cover crops or crop residue. This protects the soil from erosion, regulates temperature, and feeds the soil biota. Furthermore, regenerative practices emphasize crop rotation and diversity, which disrupts pest and disease cycles, and includes the integration of livestock in a managed grazing system to naturally fertilize and stimulate microbial activity in the soil (Khangura et al., 2023) (4) .
Directly followed by the outlook - what follows when regenerative agriculture is deployed at scale:
By focusing on these soil-building practices, regenerative agriculture offers a powerful solution for reversing the widespread issue of soil degradation. It effectively revitalizes exhausted soil by increasing its organic matter content, which is directly linked to better soil structure, fertility, and carbon storage potential. This increase in soil health leads to a more robust agroecosystem, one that requires fewer synthetic inputs like fertilizers and pesticides over time, reducing costs and environmental impact. Crucially, these techniques enhance the soil’s ability to sequester carbon, improve water infiltration and retention, and boost biodiversity. Ultimately, embracing regenerative methods is a shift from an extractive agricultural model to a restorative one, ensuring the long-term viability of food production while contributing to climate change mitigation and ecosystem repair (Montgomery et al. 2022) (5) .
What Do We Make of This?
The great advantage of grazing livestock is soil building - in high quality. Conventional agriculture - particularly large-scale monoculture farming - is not good for the soil.
Eating plant-based calories from industrial monocultures (wheat, soy, rapeseed, sugar, …) is often presented as the “more ethical” diet. The report challenges that claim: monocultures destroy soil - an asset international law recognises as worth protecting. Grazing builds it back. The ethical imperative to minimise harm therefore argues for the animal on the pasture.
The report describes that building 2.5 cm of topsoil can take 500 years. What is not in the report - but documented elsewhere (6) - is that soils worldwide are a far more significant carbon store than forests.
Also, soil burns less well. Win-Win!
The big question is whether we can afford to keep feeding humanity from vast monocultures that decimate biodiversity (pesticides, herbicides, mechanical tillage), or whether we should - or must - harness the ecosystem services of animals, ruminants in particular, to undo the damage already done as quickly as possible.
I’ll pursue the connection to animal ethics elsewhere. What the report makes clear here: the question “what should I eat?” cannot be answered without asking what production does to the soil. And that applies equally to industrial feed-crop farming and the vegan pasta plate - while genuine managed grazing protects the soil without ever requiring a plough to break the earth or a drop of pesticide to be applied.
Even the international legal thinkers cannot get around the biology of the ruminant when they want to save the world from starvation.
