Diving deeper into regenerative agriculture

It’s been four weeks since our project's first kick-off, and so far, I’ve focused on our project theme, regenerative agriculture. Since this is a group’s self-directed research project, I feel this journey has been one of the most transformative so far, in my academic journey. This opportunity has given me the experience to work with one of the most brilliant, intelligent, and committed people. In this blog, I’d like to share my reflections on my experience in this project until today. There are key highlights on team dynamics, managing client relationships, research work, and the realizations I’ve found along the way.

This is my first time to be involved in a group’s research consulting project on regenerative agriculture. Coming from an accounting and finance background, agriculture is not something familiar to me, but all I know about agriculture is it’s closely related to my daily life. It provides me with the most basic needs to survive, nutritious foods. On the other hand, it’s been more than decades since food insecurity has been a growing concern in various parts of the world. This concern has given the opportunity for most people to look for solutions in finding the most effective way to protect us from food insecurity and still being kind to our earth, which is the ultimate source of for agriculture.

Despite for the past decades it has been a growing concern, I just recently heard about regenerative agriculture. And apparently, also my fellow team members. During this opportunity, we had time to explore and gain more understanding on what regenerative agriculture is. The first step that we took is to identify the key stakeholders involved in regenerative agriculture. This way we were able to grasp the ecosystem of how this works. We have identified key four stakeholders which are the farmers, corporations, scientific community, and the high-level government and non-governmental regulatory bodies. 

We did individual research on each stakeholder, and we consolidated what we’ve found. It was mind-blowing by how the interconnectedness and so many things happening inside the system. We looked at how the supply - which represents by the farmers’ community, and the demand - which represents by the corporations in this case, play the roles in creating the market. Meanwhile, the governmental and non-governmental bodies take a role in governing the system - laying out relevant regulations that to ensure fair wages, labor rights & protections, equal rights for the people, and whatnot. Ultimately, it is without a doubt that this matter also heavily driven by the scientific part. How what they do in regenerative agriculture affects the soil health, how it affects the water conservations, how it can also feed us - the human and the animals and also giving it back to the earth giving all of these living things the nutrients they need in a continuous production system. I deeply believe in yin and yang, after living in Bali for the last 5 years, it has deeply grown in me that the ultimate goal to live is to harmoniously co-exist and co-habitate with the other complex living things in this living systems. And again, by going deeper understanding on how regenerative systems works, how they really embody feedback loops system, truly reflecting my belief.

In this opportunity, I also had a chance to chat with one of the organizer of regenerative agriculture in Bali. He partnered with the Bali locals to manage a local forest located in Bedugul. Their crops are vanilla and coffee. He shared how building regenerative agriculture in Bali requires more than just skills in forest planning and management, but also community builder. It’s critically important to empower the indigenous community who live nearby the forest - since they are the protectors of the forest and at the same time work with it. It is also important to ensure they are fairly paid. One of the biggest challenges is access to initial investment in transitioning to regenerative agriculture. Since it indeed requires high upfront cost, and most of the local farmers do not have access to that. He helped them in securing this initial investment through private investment and angel investors. Additionally, one of the concerns is also the marketability access of the product. How the crops can compete in the market and how to get a good prices for them. These findings has helped us to have the frame of the current challenges and also creating investment opportunities for our client in a way to achieve higher adoption of regenerative agriculture in the US.