Recyclable, Renewable, Or Regenerative? Commercial Citizens Of Competitive Countries Don’t Want You To Discern & Discriminate!

Are you surprised to read “sustainable agriculture vs regenerative agriculture”? You should be! SA versus RA, yes. Today, The Modern 3 Rs, as I see them, are Recyclable, Renewable and Regenerative – and no, they are not compatible or parallel at all. One addresses Climate Change, the others do not. 
(Images: top from researchgate.net, bottom from m.facebook.com)

To give you an idea, when I search
for “renewable energy” Google gives me 273,000,000 results;
for “renewable resources” Google gives me 16,400,000 results;
for “regenerative energy” Google gives me 176,000 results; and
for “regenerative resources” Google gives me 51,800 results.

Those differing numbers of search results give you the idea that those terms are as different as morning, noon, and evening!

Essentially, it is between renewable and regenerative processes – and there’s a whale of a difference!

Now you see why I have been interested in differentiating “renewable” from “regenerative” – in my search for countrywide (and countrywise) solution to Climate Change, I see only “Regenerative Agriculture” and not Renewable Agriculture or even Sustainable Agriculture.

Renewable Agriculture and Sustainable Agriculture people do not talk about Climate Change – because Sustainable Agriculture does not prevent the generation of greenhouse gases (GHGs), which generate Climate Change. Same story with Renewable Agriculture – what is renewable is not necessarily harmless to the environment.

“Sustainable Or Regenerative?” is the question the ethical butcher asks (09 Nov 2021, ethicalbutcher.co.uk):

A very simple definition for sustainable is something that is able to be maintained at a certain rate or level.

The problem we have now is that every business and everybody want to be sustainable in our consumption; we all want to be carry on as we are, consuming what we enjoy but in a way that doesn't negatively impact the ability to continue in the future.

By definition, anything that relies on a finite resource is not sustainable; a good example of this is fossil fuels usage as once they are used they cannot be re-used, we can reformulate burnt petroleum back into more petroleum. However, it could be argued that aluminum is sustainable as it can be recycled indefinitely, as long as we can sustainably produce the energy to do so – it quickly gets complicated.

Since we're involved in food production, let's now look at how the term sustainable is applied to the things we eat.

Intensive factory farming could be called sustainable; the sheds could be powered by renewable electricity and the animals fed grains which we could, in theory produce indefinitely. This type of farming is sometimes called 'sustainable intensification' which really stretches the definition of the term to its limits.

Most agriculture is not sustainable…

… sustainable practices seek to maintain systems without degrading them. Regenerative practices recognize how natural systems are currently impacted and apply techniques to restore systems…

Regenerative means able to or tending to regenerate – to regrow or be renewed or restored, especially after being damaged or lost. The act or process of regenerating… this is what our planet desperately needs.

Need this agriculturist say more?!@517