Understanding the outcomes of regenerative agriculture on the small water cycle

The transformational promise of regenerative agriculture to address and mitigate many of the current global crises such as soil health destruction, biodiversity collapse, diminishing food security, climate change and ecosystem degradation offers a promising avenue to investigate in relation to the restoration of functional water cycling and landscape hydration. This project aims to better understand how water moves through agricultural systems and how agroecological practices might alter those flows.

About this project

The proposed outcomes of restoring or improving the small water cycle on farm, include greater drought resilience and less need for irrigation, increased plant and crop growth, reduced risk of erosion, groundwater and spring/aquifer recharge, steadier stream flows, less run-off, improved water quality, regulation of the local and global climate, and climate change mitigation. To what extent regenerative agricultural practices can deliver these outcomes is both highly site and context specific and not well understood. 

This is particularly relevant in Australia, where agriculture accounts for 55% of land use, and 74% of the country’s total water consumption. Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth and its farmers are not unfamiliar with water scarcity and unpredictable rainfall patterns. Australia exports 70% of its agricultural products and contributes significantly to global food security. As a nation Australia faces the twin challenges of producing more food to address a growing global population, alongside the impacts of climate change and associated increasing water scarcity. Climate change is predicted to both increase rainfall variability and decrease the amount of rainfall, as well as increase air temperatures and evaporative loss. 

If it is possible to restore the small water cycle on Australian farms using low energy requiring regenerative agricultural practices this presents a significant opportunity to stabilise water security and increase water quality and quantity to surface groundwaters as well as aquifers, whilst concomitantly contributing to the restoration of soils and biodiversity. 

The research intends to utilise mixed methodologies including comparative case studies of farms that are both regenerative and conventional to quantify the impact of different practices, as well as controlled field experiments to assess the outcomes of different regenerative practices. Methods will include in-field sampling and laboratory analyses to measure different parameters pertaining to water infiltration, soil water holding capacity, water quality and quantity.

Expected outcomes

If regenerative agriculture can achieve the water outcomes it claims to, then it offers a promise of mitigating and reversing many of the crises we currently face in Australia and globally. Outcomes of different practices need to be monitored and assessed in context for adaptive management to be ongoing and effective. This project aims to fill a current gap in the research of the real-life water outcomes of regenerative agriculture in Australia. By increasing the focus on local water dynamics and gaining a clear understanding of how water cycles through the landscape as well as the human impact on and relationship to the small water cycle, this research seeks to ultimately improve how freshwater is managed and allocated across diverse interests.