Webinar recording – Beneath the surface: exploring best practices for soil regeneration and carbon farming

On 5th March, Innovation Forum and Bayer Crop Science hosted a webinar exploring the best practices for soil regeneration

At the root of some of the most urgent challenges facing agriculture today is the global threat to soil health. Challenges such as soil erosion, compaction, salinization and water retention are compounded by the impacts of the evolving climate crisis, threatening the resilience of global food systems.    

Maximising soil health can lock in carbon to mitigate climate change and provide various benefits to growers and ecosystems - such as soil resilience, improving profitability, biodiversity, crop yield and nutrition.  

As land stewards, farmers can regenerate soils through the adoption of carbon farming practices. But what are the correct practices to ensure maximum carbon sequestration, emissions reduction and regenerative outcomes? And how can we ensure the significant value-chain support needed to enable this?  

In this webinar, our panel drew on case studies to identify practical and impactful farmer-centric solutions for building the relationship between healthy soils, regenerative agriculture, and climate-resilient food systems at scale.  

They discussed:

• The practices, such as cover cropping, crop rotation and no-till, which can help to restore soil organic matter and sequester and/or reduce carbon.  
• The importance of taking a nuanced and context-specific approach to applying sustainable practices.   
• The technology and data tools available to develop, nurture and maintain healthy soils   
• The role of different value-chain actors in supporting continued innovation and scale 

The panel:

• Florence Braye-Rigel, EMEA Carbon Farming Agronomic Lead, Bayer Crop Science 
• Paul Luu, Executive Secretary, The International “4 per 1,000” Initiative 
• Antoine Bedel, Forage and Service Plants Expert, RAGT 
• Andrew Williamson, Farmer 
• Moderator: Toby Webb, founder, Innovation Forum