| dc.description.abstract | The U.S. agriculture industry has seen decades of changes through both technological and cultural innovations. Regenerative agriculture has become the topic at the center of today’s changes within the industry. Regenerative agriculture, very similar to the soil health movement, includes a range of practices with the intention of improving the condition and rigor of the soil. The primary regenerative practices, reduced or no-till and cover cropping, have picked up momentum lately with even the Biden administration focusing upon them. While the assertions made by supporters of these movements sounded hopeful, there remained a need for an economic analysis within regions of Texas specifically.
The first objective of this study was to determine if regenerative practices increased yields and/or reduced yield risk enough to offset potentially higher production costs. The secondary objective was to determine whether these impacts were different for farms in different production regions of Texas.
Farms throughout four regions of Texas were modeled, with the focus of the study built into each simulation. Each regenerative practice was run through the models, and compared to each farm’s conventional base practices. For two of the representative farms, no-till practices resulted in a higher net present value on average than conventional operations for this five-year analysis. However, for the other two farms conventional practices resulted in the highest average net present value. One constant result throughout the analysis of all four farms was the cover cropping scenario receiving the lowest mean net present value.
The models were created to economically assess the effects of transition to regenerative practices. These may be helpful to Texas producers debating on transitioning from conventional practices themselves. Texas farm operations may also benefit from the use of this model as it is updated to make decisions on transitioning in the future as well. | |
