Regenerative Agriculture
When it comes to responding to current challenges facing agriculture, it’s all hands on deck — and farmers can play a big role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions through a variety of farming practices that improve soil health and water quality.
What's at stake?
Industrial agriculture practices, such as frequent tilling and leaving the soil bare, cause erosion, harming soil health and surrounding water quality. They also release carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to extreme weather.
By adopting regenerative farming practices — such as conservation tillage, diversifying crops, crop rotation, and planting cover crops — farmers not only keep greenhouse gases in the ground but also make their lands more productive and resilient to dangerous flooding, drought, and storms. This can help farms’ bottom lines in an era of economic challenges to agriculture.
In addition, healthy soils rich in organic matter reduce the need for fertilizers that can run off and pollute nearby streams and drinking water supplies.
What we're doing
We work to connect farms, food, and people to ensure that everyone has access to healthy food and working farms can remain environmentally and financially viable. Complementing our work in farmland conservation and building on our efforts to make the Hudson Valley more resilient to extreme weather, we’ve ramped up our collaboration with farmers and land trust partners to encourage the use of conservation tillage and other regenerative agricultural techniques.
Scenic Hudson helps farmers adopt regenerative agriculture practices through the Regenerative Agriculture Demonstration Areas (RADA) in the ecologically important watersheds of the Roeliff Jansen Kill and Rondout Valley. We work with partners such as Cornell, Glynwood, and the USDA to co-host field days on practices like using biochar or cover crops, and provide technical services to participating farms to integrate those practices on their farms. In many instances, we also provide financial resources to help farmers implement regenerative projects.
We are advocating for the unique concerns of Northeastern farmers and asking for more resources for small and mid-sized farms in the U.S. Farm Bill.
We worked to author and pass the Soil Health and Climate Resiliency Act, signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul in 2021. This bill takes the visionary step of defining healthy soils and promoting the practices that create them. The soil health and climate-resilient farming initiatives established by the bill are essential to resilient farms and securing the economic viability of agriculture.
We helped found the Northeast Carbon Alliance (NECA) in 2019 to advance the rapid implementation of natural climate solutions from mountaintop to ocean floor. Through its combination of science, policy, and practical implementation, NECA engaged many partners in a vital dialogue and action agenda focused on nature itself as the most powerful climate solution. While NECA has since sunsetted, Scenic Hudson will continue to connect farmers with the financial and technical resources they need, ranging from farmland conservation to direct investments to help farmers dig deep into soil health and other regenerative practices.
Finally, we are working with the many stakeholders who participated in the Hudson Valley Carbon Farming Pilot Study, focused on 20 Hudson Valley farms that adopted regenerative farming and documented their findings. In late 2024, farmers, County Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCDs), and policymakers — including NYS Department of Agriculture and Markets Commissioner Richard Ball — gathered on a dairy farm in Dutchess County to share lessons learned from this pilot. The farming community throughout New York is eager to apply practices that improve soil health, water quality, climate adaptation, and resilience. In turn, this is driving farmer demands for funding and technical support that relies on additional state investment in programs such as New York State’s Climate Resilient Farming Program and in the county’s Soil and Water Conservation Districts. We are grateful for the support and partnership of Assemblymembers Didi Barrett and Donna Lupardo and Senator Michelle Hinchey for their critical work on the Soil Health and Climate Resiliency Act and broader advocacy for Hudson Valley farmers and regenerative agriculture
Learn more about this type of farming and how we’re supporting it in our report, The Climate-Resilient Agriculture Initiative: Cultivating Climate Solutions in the Hudson Valley.
