







































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 5 (1): 23-30 January 2022 

 

COMMENTARY 

Framework For a Collective Definition of 
Regenerative Agriculture in India 

Shannon B. Olsson, Minhaj Ameen, Saransh Bajpai***, Ravikanth 
Gudasalamani****, Chirag Gajjar*****, Srajesh Gupta+, Søren Hvilshøj++, 
Jyotsna Krishnakumar+++, Crispino Lobo++++, Rohan Mukherjee+++++, 

Abhayraj Naik, Ajay Raghavan##, Hansika Singh###, Kesavan 
Subaharan#### 

Abstract: The concept of regenerative agriculture has received increasing attention 
worldwide as a method to restore and conserve natural resources while maintaining 
crop productivity. However, there remains a lack of consensus as to what 
conditions define regenerative agriculture, making it difficult for decision-makers, 

 
 Global Director, the echo network; Special Scientific Envoy to India, Danish Academy of 
Technical Sciences, Copenhagen, Denmark; Associate Professor, National Centre for 
Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India. 
shannon@echonetwork.in  
 CEO, National Coalition for Natural Farming. minhajameen@gmail.com  
*** Senior Manager, Climate Program, World Resources Institute India. 
Saransh.Bajpai@wri.org  
**** Senior Fellow, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bangalore, 
India. gravikanth@atree.org  
***** Individual Expert. chirag8315@gmail.com  
+ Programme Associate, National Coalition for Natural Farming. Srajeshg792@gmail.com  
++ Global Division Director, Water Resources. Rambøll. SRHS@ramboll.com  
+++ Director, Community Well Being Programme, Keystone Foundation. jyotsna@keystone-
foundation.org  
++++ Managing Trustee, Watershed Organisation Trust; Executive Director, Sampada Trust. 
cslobo1@gmail.com  
+++++ Programme Coordinator, Keystone Foundation. rohan@keystone-foundation.org  
 Co-founder, Initiative for Climate Action & Visiting Faculty, Azim Premji University, 
Bengaluru. abhayraj@actionclimate.org  
## Initiative for Climate Action. ajay@actionclimate.org  
### Principal Strategist, Forum for the Future & Community, Member, Initiative for Climate 
Action. h.singh@forumforthefuture.org  
#### Principal Scientist, ICAR - National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources, 
Bengaluru. Kesavan.Subaharan@icar.gov.in  
Copyright © Olsson, Ameen, Bajpai, Gudasalamani, Gajjar, Gupta, Hvilshøj, Krishnakumar, 
Lobo, Mukerjee, Naik, Raghavan, Singh and Subaharan 2022. Released under Creative 
Commons Attribution © NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the 
author.  
Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of  Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  
ISSN: 2581–6152 (print); 2581–6101 (web) 
DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v5i1.662  

mailto:shannon@echonetwork.in
mailto:minhajameen@gmail.com
mailto:Saransh.Bajpai@wri.org
mailto:gravikanth@atree.org
mailto:chirag8315@gmail.com
mailto:Srajeshg792@gmail.com
mailto:SRHS@ramboll.com
mailto:jyotsna@keystone-foundation.org
mailto:jyotsna@keystone-foundation.org
mailto:cslobo1@gmail.com
mailto:rohan@keystone-foundation.org
mailto:abhayraj@actionclimate.org
mailto:ajay@actionclimate.org
mailto:h.singh@forumforthefuture.org
mailto:Kesavan.Subaharan@icar.gov.in
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v5i1.662


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [24] 

 

researchers, the agricultural sector, and the public to adopt regenerative agriculture 
practices. Here, we present the initial process to create a unified, cross-sectoral 
definition for regenerative agriculture in India that considers the viewpoints of 
multiple stakeholders and addresses the current challenges faced by the Indian 
agricultural sector. To this end, we compiled interactions with individuals from 
across India to identify the most pressing concerns for India’s human and 
environmental ecosystems. We conducted over 30 hours of workshops to discuss 
these concerns with 50 experts from five sectors and four countries. We summarize 
these discussions and propose a common framework to collaboratively develop 
region-specific techniques that employ existing and supplementary resources to 
generate evidence for regenerative agriculture and foster conducive practices.  

Keywords: Food Security; Sustainability; Ecosystem Services; Biodiversity; Climate 
Change 

The UN estimates that during the period 1998–2017, India suffered 
climate-related losses amounting to $80 billion (UNISDR 2018). 
Germanwatch currently places India seventh-highest in the Global Climate 
Risk Index for 2021 (Eckstein, Künzel, and Schäfer 2021). Apart from the 
damage and losses it inflicts, climate change is also causing a decline in the 
productivity of many cereal crops, especially wheat and rice, which form the 
bulk of South and East Asian diets. Meanwhile, water-use efficiency is low 
across all key crops in India. More than 50% of the country’s farmland 
grows water-intensive crops such as rice, wheat, sugarcane, and cotton. The 
Government of India (GOI) predicted in 2021 that while rainfed rice yields 
are likely to reduce by up to 2.5%, irrigated rice yields are projected to 
decrease by 7% by 2050 and 10% by 2080; wheat yields by 6–25%, and 
maize yields by 18–23% by 2100 (Rao et al. 2019; MoA&FW 2021). Further, 
a report compiled by the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI 
Aayog) in 2018 indicated that India continues to face one of the “worst 
water crises in its history” (NITI Aayog 2018). In addition, the World 
Resources Institute’s Aqueduct tool ranked India 13th for overall water 
stress in 2019 (WRI 2019). Diminishing groundwater resources demand 
better water management practices from all water-consuming sectors, 
including agriculture.  

A lack of access to water, coupled with the intensification of floods and 
droughts due to climate change, can lead to socioeconomic insecurity with 
inconsistent crop yields and low returns to farmers, a lack of storage and 
transport facilities, and limited access to markets, leading to food wastage. 
These issues can lead to a stagnation in productivity and trigger significant 
rural to urban out-migration from farming to other vocations. Women, in 
particular, face extreme disadvantages: 85% of rural women in India are 
employed in agriculture, yet they own only 13% of the land (Oxfam 2018). 



[25] Shannon B. Olsson et al.  
 

A lack of autonomy, financial distress, and feelings of hopelessness in these 
rural communities are also related to gender-based violence, which 
disproportionally impacts these same women (WHO 2005). There is an 
urgent need for strategies that empower small and marginal farmers to 
protect and regenerate their environment using science and technology 
innovations that complement and respect traditional and indigenous 
practices for improved productivity and sustained income. These strategies 
should incorporate experimental and replicable crop production and 
protection models in the Indian context to scientifically validate appropriate 
and sustainable mechanisms to improve yields and the value chain. 

The term “regenerative agriculture” has received increasing attention 
worldwide as a means to restore soil health and other natural resources 
while maintaining crop productivity (Rhodes 2017). The concept itself has 
existed since the initiation of the Rodale Institute’s “Farming Systems Trial” 
in 1981 (Rodale Institute 1981). A recent stakeholder meeting, hosted by 
several Indian organizations, identified several points of action to promote 
regenerative techniques across India, including scientific research to 
evaluate regenerative agriculture in the Indian context; analysis and 
quantification of how regenerative agriculture contributes to and benefits 
from existing national policies and support; and integration of multiple 
viewpoints (TAAS et al. 2021). A clear science-based and India-focused 
definition of regenerative agriculture is necessary for the widespread 
adoption of these efforts. 

However, there is currently no legal definition in India or the world that 
outlines or restricts what constitutes regenerative agriculture, and a recent 
review of over 200 articles and websites found a wide variety of definitions 
and usages of the term (Newton et al. 2021). Indeed, there are several 
alternative farming systems that can ensure soil health (although not 
necessarily crop productivity), including low-input sustainable agriculture, 
conservation agriculture, organic farming, natural farming, and zero-budget 
natural farming (TAAS et al. 2021). This lack of consensus in terminology 
and practice can confuse researchers and the public as to what defines 
regenerative agriculture (Newton et al. 2021). Such confusion can reduce the 
credibility of solutions and make it difficult to establish policies, funding, 
technologies, and programmes that promote their adoption (Newton et al. 
2021).  

Creating a unified science-based definition for regenerative agriculture that 
appropriately weighs inputs from both scientific and social sectors requires 
cross-sector exchange and interdisciplinary collaboration. The echo network 
is a social innovation partnership with the specific focus of increasing 
scientific awareness, engagement, and insight regarding India’s human and 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [26] 

 

environmental ecosystems. We have developed a unique process for 
enabling multisector interactions between decision-makers, knowledge 
generators, and on-ground actors to generate effective knowledge resources 
and targeted science-based actions that can be quickly adopted in our 
communities. These efforts have already contributed to other programmes 
dedicated to ecosystem-based sustainability efforts, such as Ecosystems-
based Adaptation for Resilient Incomes (ECOBARI 2021). 

In 2019 and 2020, the echo network facilitated interactions with more than 
250 individuals from academic, industrial, governmental, non-
governmental, and philanthropic sectors, and public at large to identify the 
most pressing concerns for India’s human and environmental ecosystems. 
We used an analytical technique known as semantic network analysis 
(Drieger 2013) to summarize over 400 statements we gathered from our 
public interactions and generate networks that could be used to identify 
related themes and topics across the statements (Paranyushkin 2021). One 
of the four major clusters generated from these statements was influenced 
by agriculture and food security. Statements in this cluster were dominated 
by four major concepts relating to sustaining our water and farming 
systems. The following indicate the percent of total statements that were 
connected by the given topic sentence: 

• Improving the quality of farmer livelihoods (19%) 

• Developing sustainable agriculture practices that address food 
security (nutritional needs) and sustainable development (15%) 

• Conservation and management of water and carbon for ecosystems 
and biodiversity (13%) 

• Mitigating the impact of climate change on the health of natural 
systems for our prosperity (11%) 

We then examined structural gaps where these four clusters were not 
directly connected to each other in the network, indicating that the 
concepts in those separate clusters did not occur together in any of the 
gathered statements. The topics of conservation and management of water 
and carbon and the health of our natural systems (see topic sentences 
above) were not directly connected in any of the gathered statements and 
thus served as a potential focus area to unite clusters together 
(Paranyushkin 2021). Through this process, we identified the following 
unifying question: 

How can we improve the productivity and livelihoods of India’s agricultural sector by 
leveraging water and carbon conservation to mitigate the impact of climate change on our 
natural systems? 



[27] Shannon B. Olsson et al.  
 

This question, gleaned from our many cross-sector public exchanges, also 
broadly connects many regenerative agricultural definitions (Rhodes 2017; 
Newton et al. 2021). Therefore, we propose that understanding how science 
and technology can address this question in the Indian context can help 
establish a collective, science-based definition for regenerative agriculture in 
India. To this end, from November 2020 to July 2021, the echo network 
hosted a series of discussions with 50 experts from five sectors 
(government, academia, non-governmental organizations, philanthropy, and 
industry) and across four countries (India, United Kingdom, Denmark, and 
the USA). We conducted a total of 32 hours of workshops on this topic to 
identify ways in which science and technology can address the central 
question we identified, given the current status of Indian agriculture.  

Our experts agreed with the conclusions of another recent stakeholder 
discussion on regenerative agriculture (TAAS et al. 2021) suggesting an 
urgent need for adaptive strategies that address biodiversity-based and 
climate-resilient agriculture in regional contexts of India. Specifically, while 
there are numerous examples of such practices worldwide (Rhodes 2017; 
Newton et al. 2021), we need to better adapt and standardize solutions to 
match region-specific requirements. In addition, the experts noted that 
several existing innovations are yet to be implemented at scale in the Indian 
context and do not fully take into account users’ needs or their potential 
response to new types of institutional arrangements among suppliers, 
farmers, innovators, and other stakeholders. Though extension and 
developmental agencies are involved in transferring technologies, there 
remains a gap in transferring ecosystem-based technologies and information 
between farmers and researchers to assess crop disease, pests, and soil 
quality. This gap is exacerbated by a lack of availability of biological 
resources at scale, including, for example, manure, biomass, and botanical 
materials to develop sufficient quantities for pest control measures. There is 
also a lack of financial support and collaborative efforts between sectors 
that have created silos from the highest to the lowest levels. Further, the 
Indian public does not yet adequately recognize the importance of 
ecosystems and their inter-relationships with human welfare and well-being, 
so there remains insufficient penetration and scaling of ecosystem-based 
practices.  

There is, therefore, a need to galvanize interactions between like-minded 
institutions and communities to create regenerative agriculture solutions 
that all stakeholders can adopt. We need human-centred design approaches 
to address institutional challenges such as the need for new and innovative 
financing mechanisms, re-imagination of extension services, and 
technological innovation for scaling regenerative agriculture through 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [28] 

 

suppliers and practices. We recommend gathering a set of cross-sector 
stakeholders and communities to compile the information necessary for 
implementing regenerative agriculture techniques; crowdsourcing existing 
work through as broad a process as possible; establishing deep-dives into 
specific efforts to understand context and potential; and executing 
convenings between similar efforts. We can then use this information to 
develop a holistic data system that provides accurate weather and climate 
forecasting and modelling; efficient delivery of crop advisories; ecosystem-
based technologies; and implementation protocols and impact assessments 
for use by farmers, community organizations, and governments for crop 
productivity and protection. 

Using this cross-sector data platform, existing innovations in agricultural 
institutions, financing mechanisms, and service delivery (Rhodes 2017; 
TAAS et al. 2021) can then be synergized with traditional systems and 
knowledge to validate, adapt, and scale regenerative agriculture across India. 
In parallel, long–term data collection through sustained research efforts in 
strategic agroecological zones should account for the future impacts of 
climate change on agriculture. Such research should also explore the 
efficacy of ecosystem-based, climate-resilient, and agroecology-based 
practices concerning yields, crop health management, nutrition intensity, 
soil conservation, climate change mitigation, and ecosystem services. This 
cross-zone approach can then be used to develop context and region-
specific standards. These standards must be accompanied by measures that 
build adaptive capacities and overall resilience to economic and climatic 
shocks to ensure farmer buy-in, thereby avoiding delays in adopting 
alternative approaches due to inappropriate methods. Such measures would 
necessarily include significantly improving the efficiency and productivity of 
natural resource use (such as water, soil, and biomass); regenerating 
ecosystems; conserving local biodiversity; and facilitating remunerative 
returns to farming investments with appropriate incentives that align 
consumer demand and preferences. Through these efforts, we can provide 
farmers and rural communities with timely and accurate forecasts together 
with customized farm management advisories (on areas such as crop, 
livestock, soil, and land management), to enable them to reduce weather-
induced risks and mitigate the impacts of climate change [see, e.g., 
FarmPrecise (WOTR 2021)]. This process can, in turn, help us understand 
how we can promote and stimulate the implementation of science-based 
standards in different scenarios in India at scale through the massive 
deployment of digital technologies. It is important to note that as we 
leverage the transformative powers of digitalization and technology, we 
must maintain contextual specificity and sensitivity to respect and 



[29] Shannon B. Olsson et al.  
 

complement any traditional systems that might already be profoundly 
regenerative. Thus, this human- and ecosystems-centred approach should 
include the community knowledge, history, and culture of that particular 
agro-climate.  

In summary, rather than articulating a concrete definition of regenerative 
agriculture immediately, we propose that regenerative agriculture in the 
Indian context must be understood as an adaptive farming process that 
combines science-based, climate-resilient, and agroecology-focused 
practices with the community knowledge, history, and culture of each 
particular agro-climatic zone. We, therefore, propose to work as cross-
sector consortia across several communities, governments, institutes, and 
organizations to share ideas, data, field sites, conversations, and planning 
that will lead to solutions and standards adapted and shaped for the specific 
needs of the region where they will be implemented. We hope that this 
process will serve as a template for developing trust, value, and 
responsibility for our ecosystems across India and the world and inspire 
similar efforts to tackle sustainability issues through a collective process of 
co–creation and co-ownership among all stakeholders.  

 

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