Somewhere along the way, the agricultural industrial complex forgot that the land is not a machine, and now it is rediscovering what farmers have known all along.
Regenerative Coffee Is the New Buzzword. But What Does It Actually Mean?
Regenerative farming, or as we and many other farmers call it, good old-fashioned farming.
Because obviously, we’re focusing on restoring and improving the health of the soil.
Obviously, we’re focused on maintaining the ecosystem in which we operate.
This is at the very ethos of what farming is
But I guess it isn’t all so obvious?
Somewhere between private equity boardrooms in Manhattan, and conversations over alternative dairy matchas in Brooklyn, Big Agriculture & friends decided to repackage and upsell what they took from us
Capitalism. It breeds such innovation, right? (eye roll)
The Unsustainable Status Quo
For decades, companies in Big Agriculture (per our legal advice, we won’t be naming names, at least not in this article) have relied on a playbook of mass production methods, saturating fields with chemicals all for the sake of shareholder value. These practices are proving fundamentally flawed.
The “Regenerative” Rebrand
As these corporations scramble to sidestep the decades of environmental damage. Public relations companies are in high demand. The solution? Spamming the words “regenerative,” “sustainable”, and “ethical” is the secret to bypassing accountability for farming practices that haven’t changed much.
Reckoning or Reputation Management?
This begs the question that is worth asking:
Is the sudden corporate embrace of regenerative agriculture a genuine day of reckoning of environmental harm, or is it just the latest masterclass in saving face?
What the Industry Calls Regenerative, Farmers Call ‘Ops Normal’
For most smallholder farmers in West Africa and all over the world, there is nothing innovative about this movement. The practices being hailed as the “future of agriculture” are the exact same methods that have been used before you and were I born.
From “Primitive” to Praised
The Traditional farmers were once told to abandon these methods and instead given chemicals to slowly poison the land. However, in a bitter twist of irony, our age-old techniques are being celebrated today by the industry. Ultimately, these buzzwords aren’t inventing a new way of farming. It is simply catching up to what has already been done.
When Traditional Becomes Trendy
Traditional farming methods didn’t survive through stubbornness; they survived because they worked on intuition and having an agrarian root for a spine. For centuries, these practices have found ways to fight droughts, pests, and shifting climates without a single shareholder. Proving that resilience is built into ecological balance.
Observation Over Data
Journals, data, studies, and research aren’t all bad, but they must work in tandem with deep intuition and daily observation. Listening to the soil in a way that today’s world never could. Farming can be an art, not always a mathematical equation.
We Are Origin. We Always Were.
WAFI’s methods have always been regenerative in nature, for more reasons than one. I mean, come on… when you come from one of the poorest regions in the world, the one and only thing you have is knowledge passed down, and with the little resources we had, we could only depend on what nature was giving us to take care of the crops. I forgot the philosopher, but if anyone recalls the name, feel free to remind us. But the belief was always.
”The greatest amount of good for the Greatest number”
It’s our moral obligation to always have the best outcome.
For the farmer
The consumer
and the land.
Now… we can’t please everyone, and it’s easier said than done. But it will always be branded in our heads.
We will save you the trouble, but we believe these terms, labels, and certifications will come and go. In fact, there are more traditional and primitive practices that are being done now that will be the next buzzwords or conversations in the industry, and it has everything to do with what’s happening to the climate (but more on that another time).
In a corporate world obsessed with quarterly yields and rapid scaling, taking a slow, deliberate approach to farming is often viewed as a limitation. But in a truly sustainable system, taking your time isn’t a flaw; it’s the entire point.