Resilience: The Triple Bottom Line

Shocks to the system might be environmental, such as natural disasters (droughts and flooding rains), social such as the death of a loved one, or economical as in a global financial crisis. Shocks can be short or long term, and the same can be said for the flow on effects, depending on the resilience of the system¹.

Resilience is interconnected to stresses on the system and the stressors that have caused that particular event. Stress itself, may not be destructive, and can be constructive, but unrecovered stresses on any system begin a process of degradation.

In regenerative agriculture an understanding that many practices applied are stressors on the system and disturb the functioning of ecosystem processes is a foundational concept. Recovery and functional progress from that applied disturbance is the associated foundation principle.

Resilience is a word that is becoming more common in agriculture circles. The dictionary definition of resilience is ‘the ability to return to its original state after being disturbed’ ².

In agricultural it relates to farmers and our natural resources being able to produce food during times of dramatic change,
but truly regenerative systems work beyond that to include an expansion of biodiversity and agroecological capacity.

So how do we make our agricultural systems more resilient? A study titled “Sustainable and secure food systems for Victoria”, suggests that we need to build better networks, increase diversity on our farms, and always be willing to learn and adapt³.

If we only focus on increasing food production, without considering the impacts (internal to the farm and externally to the area, region and even globally), we will reduce agriculture’s resilience. Diversity highlights our need to embrace a variety of production strategies: cutting edge technology and increased knowledge; organic; conventional; low input as each will contribute innovations, and new techniques to improve our agriculture systems as long as the effects are increasing the ecological functions.

Our agricultural systems are reliant on natural resources, and we need to protect those resources to protect our industry, particularly systems that enable an increase in both diversity, and the total mass of organisms existing on the farm. A key point is to aim to minimise soil disturbance and build soil carbon and water holding capacity by disturbing the soil functionality as little as possible. As we have degenerated systems, we may find that disturbance is what is needed to kick the system to change and move forward.

Beneficial farming practices can include perennial crops and pastures, No Kill Cropping, polyculture cropping, pasture/crop rotation, cover cropping, rotational grazing, seed saving, minimum till, and landscape hydrology.

In regenerative agriculture, it can be easy to think of resilience as only being relevant and applicable to the environment. However, we need to carefully consider all parts of the triple bottom line, which includes social and economic factors of regenerative agriculture. Ensure that when considering your regenerative agricultural journey, you take into account all factors with equal importance.