Enhancing production, resilience, and ecosystem health in Northern regenerative agricultural systems

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Northern environments contain some of the richest natural resource bases in Canada, but the climate and landscapes present unique challenges for agricultural production. The extended daylight hours necessitate a short but intensive growing season, and the substantial variability in topography, soils, and precipitation means that crops must be managed differently than counterparts to the south. Large monoculture cropping systems whose productivity is maintained through frequent tillage, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides are more difficult to sustain in Northern environments. Thus, many farmers in Alberta's North have developed a regenerative, reduced input model of production that promotes soil health, biodiversity and sustainability while maintaining profitable production. However, to enhance adoption and economic viability of regenerative agriculture (RA), more research is required to determine the impacts of management decisions on productivity, resource-use efficiency, and ecosystem health. Our main objective is to develop a collaborative, farmer-driven research and extension program to evaluate the effect of RA practices on ecosystem health and production in Northern integrated livestock and crop production systems. RA farms are complex, adaptive, and span a diversity of environments, cultures, and values. As such, it is imperative that research process is guided by the insight of practitioners across local, indigenous and western scientific knowledge systems to foster productive knowledge sharing and innovation. After detailed consultations with RA practitioners, we will develop our research program around the of the most pressing needs of growers and land stewards using on-farm participatory approaches. We will investigate the influence of common RA practices such as cover crop management and grazing strategies on biodiversity, profitability, and animal and pollinator health. This program also contains a substantial extension and outreach development component. The development of extension and knowledge exchange infrastructure is essential to ensure research results are effectively transferred and applied to benefit the end user. The outcomes of this research and extension program will provide growers with the knowledge needed to optimize RA practices, become world leaders in the production of regeneratively farmed goods, while conserving our unique natural resource base in Northern Canada in an era of changing climate.