Digging Into Regenerative Farming in the Berkshires

Originally published on BerkshireEdge.com, March 20, 2024. By Leslee Bassman.

April Hill in South Egremont, a 100-plus-acre farm owned by Greenagers, uses hand tools only, no mechanized equipment, so the soil structure stays intact, Farm Director Sarah Monteiro explained. The practice is the focus of “Common Ground,” a documentary screening in Lenox on March 22, part of the Berkshire International Film Festival’s Environmental Film Focus series.

Jim Schultz, co-farmer at Lanesborough’s Red Shirt Farm, owns 10 acres and leases another three to farm. Together with partner Sarah French, he uses methods that produce two or three rounds of crops from each bed during the growing season, with the farm’s vegetables consuming only two acres. The product of Schultz’s 13 total acres feeds 150 families in Red Shirt’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, supports two farmers’ markets, and supplies commodities to restaurants.

Schultz credits the large amount of food produced to “the regenerative techniques we are using,” including a “no-till” process, meaning the soil isn’t turned, plowed, or cultivated, and using compost and mulch as cover. He calls conventional methods “invasive,” with the goal for his farm’s environment being to mimic nature. Although Red Shirt isn’t certified organic, the farm’s soil is void of chemicals and pesticides. “Our goal is to nourish our community and to feed people the best possible food for as long as possible,” Schultz said.

To Schultz, intentional grazing, bringing animals back onto the growing soil, works. He said he has seen the regenerative practice increase fertility and improve soil structure even though logic indicates an opposite result by risking a trampling of the soil. At Red Shirt, he employs chickens, turkeys, and pigs for this purpose. “Regenerative principles are to have as much diversity [in crops] as possible, keep the soil covered at all times, reintroduce animals into the system, and minimize soil disturbance,” Schultz said.

Schultz sees a downside to the regenerative label catching on: it can become the new “greenwashing.” “That’s the downside to regenerative, as a word and as a concept, that there’s no standard for it,” he said, comparing the vagueness to how “organic” gets diluted when applied to hydroponic operations that use chemical fluids. He agrees regenerative farming is more labor intensive, but has found a hidden benefit through Red Shirt’s Roots Rising youth program. “When Roots Rising comes here, the kids who have never farmed before, the most common [phrases] they use to describe their experiences is ‘This is so satisfying,’” he said. “It’s authentic. You are out in nature. You are out in the sunshine. You’re working with people. You’re working with your hands, and there’s no better work.”

The article, part of a broader look at regenerative practices across the region, also featured Farm Director Sarah Monteiro of April Hill, Roots Rising Farm Manager Lauren Piotrowski, and Berkshire Grown’s Martha Suquet, each weighing in on what “regenerative” means and doesn’t mean as the term spreads. Schultz’s take: “I do think that the way forward is by every community having a number of small farms, keeping food local, minimizing distribution costs [and] the carbon miles that come with our food system, and having more farms farming this [regenerative] way.”