Reforming Agriculture From The Ground Up

American agriculture is at an inflection point. Despite producing an abundance of food, most U.S. farm households lose money on farming in a typical year and rely on off-farm jobs to stay afloat; the USDA estimates median farm income was negative in both 2023 and 2024. At the same time, biodiversity warnings are flashing red. Recent assessments find more than one-fifth of North America’s pollinators—and roughly a third of its native bees—face elevated extinction risk, jeopardizing the ecological services our food system depends on. “If we wipe out our pollinators,” says Elizabeth Whitlow, founding executive director and now board member of the Regenerative Organic Alliance (ROA), “we’re going to be pretty hungry.”

Whitlow helped launch the Regenerative Organic Certified® (ROC™) standard in 2018 to tackle these intertwined crises—soil degradation, animal welfare concerns, and farmworker precarity—without pretending that any single silver bullet exists. “The goals of the program,” she explains, “are to increase soil organic matter over time, sequester carbon in the soil, ensure ethical, humane treatment of animals, and provide fair conditions for farmers and farmworkers.” ROC’s point of departure is deliberate: “We always require organic as our baseline… we’re building on 40 years of stakeholder input to arrive at an agreed upon federal standard for organic.” That baseline matters because “regenerative” remains undefined in many markets; ROC attempts to anchor the term in measurable practices through third party accredited audits rather than romance or fluffy marketing copy. Industry adoption is no longer fringe: ROA and independent reports put certified or enrolled acreage above 18 million and climbing, with hundreds of brands bringing ROC ingredients into food, textiles, and personal care.

A core differentiator, Whitlow argues, is that ROC “thinks about the humans and every living being in a very systemic, holistic way.” The standard is a hybrid of practices and outcomes rather than being purely practice based, and is context specific, not prescriptive: “Keeping the soil covered is proven… but we don’t tell farmers exactly how to do it,” acknowledging that soils, microclimates, and cultural practices vary from quinoa fields in Bolivia to rice paddies in California.

If ROC’s principles sound like they may be cumbersome to implement, Whitlow insists the mechanics are straightforward. “We certify the farms and license the brands,” and support farms by bundling organic and regenerative audits where possible to eliminate duplication and cut time and cost. Fees are intentionally modest for producers to the tune of $250 annually for any farm with gross sales under $1mm, she says, with brands “paving the way” with license fees to support the program rather than “taking it out of the farmer’s back.” The more difficult work starts after harvest. “Supply webs are very complex,” she notes. “You’re bringing cacao from Sierra Leone to Europe, making powder, then a bar. Traceability is essential to keep the claim pure—and it’s very different for body care versus textiles versus food.” For multi-ingredient products, ROC generally follows organic labeling rules—e.g., 95%+ content for a front-of-pack “organic” claim—though categories such as wine and textiles require deeper, sometimes region-specific controls.

Yet ask why farmers don’t simply switch, and Whitlow returns to incentives. “Crop insurance drives planting decisions,” rewarding a narrow set of row crops and reinforcing the infrastructure around them—elevators, feed mills, genetics. Academic and journalistic analyses bear that out: subsidy design, premium ratings, and insurer business models often steer acres toward corn and soy, making diversification riskier on paper even when local markets would support it. “It’s a vicious circle of big-ag interests,” Whitlow says, “and we need policy that supports small, diversified systems and infrastructure.”

Despite headwinds, she sees momentum. Federal funds to support transition back to organic, clawed back after earlier cuts, are helping producers experiment. “Farmers look over each other’s fences,” Whitlow says. “When they see the benefits, they change their tune.” That peer effect aligns with the data: more operations are pursuing “on-ramps” to regenerative organic as ROA rolls out programs aimed at scaling credibly without diluting standards. The proof is always in the pudding! When farmers see their organic and regenerative neighbors prospering more and spending less on expensive inputs, they become more interested and willing to implement previously dismissed methods/solutions.

Whitlow’s advice when I asked her what’s actionable now is disarmingly simple. “When was the last time you pulled a carrot out of the ground? Ate a warm cherry tomato off the vine?” Reconnecting with seasonality builds the feedback loop that modern supply chains severed. For households, that means joining a CSA, buying ROC and certified organic when possible, and cooking with what the region grows now. The north star, she says, is humility: “What we do to the soil, we do to ourselves.”