After 200,000 years of hunting and gathering, a history-defining decision was made. Starting roughly 12,000 years ago, at least seven different groups of humans independently began to settle down and begin farming. In so doing, they planted the seeds for modern civilization. This is traditionally told as a straightforward story of human progress. After humans made the switch, population growth increased, spurring innovative and creative endeavors that our ancestors couldn't even imagine. One counterintuitive strain of thought has treated this decision as 'the worst mistake in the history of the human race,' as the popular author Jared Diamond once put it. The argument largely rests on research that shows our nomadic forebears were healthier and had more leisure time than those who chose to farm. Diamond, who wrote this article in 1987, when overpopulation concerns were rampant within the American environmental movement, argued that, 'forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.'...

As Earth's temperature rises, agricultural practices will need to adapt. Droughts will likely become more frequent, and some land may no longer be arable. On top of that is the challenge of feeding an ever-growing population without expanding the production of fertilizer and other agrochemicals, which have a large carbon footprint that is contributing to the overall warming of the planet. Researchers across MIT are taking on these agricultural challenges from a variety of angles, from engineering plants that sound an alarm when they're under stress to making seeds more resilient to drought. These types of technologies, and more yet to be devised, will be essential to feed the world's population as the climate changes. 'After water, the first thing we need is food. In terms of priority, there is water, food, and then everything else. As we are trying to find new strategies to support a world of 10 billion people, it will require us to invent new ways of making food,' says Benedetto Marelli, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT....

In 2019, a survey illustrated that 80% of US consumers prefer 'regenerative' over 'sustainable' brands. Regenerative is synonymous with renewal ' it goes beyond 'doing no harm' to 'harm reversal', a critical theme when discussing the environment. While this is a multisectoral trend, regeneration is critical for agri-food systems. For instance, 34% of global agricultural land is degraded and will steadily become infertile to the point that we will not be able to grow food, fibre or feed on it. The agriculture sector is also responsible for 72% of all freshwater withdrawals, a critical resource currently under threat. The industry contributes significantly to climate change: 21% to 37% of global anthropogenic emissions can be attributed to food systems. With such challenges on hand, sector actors need to focus on regenerating agriculture and food systems, especially to feed approximately 10 billion people by 2050. Regenerative agriculture is centred on building resilient food systems by restoring soil health and enhancing natural resources such as water tables and on-farm biodiversity. Prioritizing soil regeneration ensures long-term sustainability and improves crop yields through healthier, more water-retentive soils. Additionally, regenerative agriculture can reduce agricultural emissions by optimizing input use. At the farm level, it strengthens resilience, making farms better equipped to withstand environmental challenges and, ultimately, leading to more stable incomes....

It was not until 1980s that regenerative agriculture was coined as a term. Today, regenerative viticulture ' the cultivation of grapes ' is rapidly gaining momentum as a nature-positive growing strategy. While related to sustainability and building on organic and biodynamic practices, there is no single definition of regenerative viticulture. In fact, a 2020 review of 229 articles and practitioner websites demonstrated that the main way to define regenerative agriculture is not rules-based focusing on what is allowed or not, and instead outcome-based: namely, the outcome of improving soil health including soil organic matter. With this outcome-based approach, the key aims of regenerative viticulture are drivers of soil health restoration, undoing the damage of the industrialization of past decades and adapting to and attempting to mitigate the effects of climate change. Decades ago, synthetic fertilizers revolutionized agriculture by enabling nitrogen fixing at scale with the Hagen-Bosch process. However, these fertilizers degraded soils and contributed further to greenhouse gas emissions via nitrogen leaching into waterways, destroying soil structure and its microbiomes, leading to erosion, as well as contributing to 1-2% of all energy used globally with associated greenhouse emissions. A study conducted in 2014 showed that there are only 60 years of soil remaining given the current degradation trends, as it takes 1000 years to generate 3 cm of soil....