What's so important about soil?
Ask most people what makes food “good for you”, and they'll talk about what's on the label. Nutrition facts, ingredient lists, a little green leaf icon.
Farmers, scientists, and brand leaders working in regenerative organic agriculture will tell you the real answer starts underground, in the dirt that most of us never think twice about. This was a huge theme at Together We ROC™ The Midwest and left us wanting to learn more.
What is healthy soil?
Turns out, this is a pretty complicated question about a complicated system.
Healthy soil isn't just dirt that happens to grow things. It's a living system, and its health depends on a few things working together. Physically, it needs good structure so water and air can move through it and roots can grow deep. Chemically, it needs the right balance of nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium available for plants to use. And biologically, it needs to be full of life: bacteria, fungi, and microorganisms that break down organic matter, cycle nutrients, and team up with plant roots to help them pull in water and minerals they couldn't reach alone (Feliziani et al.).
Dr. Erin Silva, who was the first organic researcher recruited to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, put it simply at the conference in June,
"Soil supports all the life around us."
When any one part of that system breaks down, whether it is the compacted structure, stripped-out nutrients, or a dead microbial community, everything that depends on it suffers too, starting with the plants growing in it and ending with the food on your plate.
So, what's happening to the soil?
Soil hasn't received the same attention as many other environmental systems being impacted by human development and climate change, even though researchers point to familiar culprits behind its decline. Heavy plowing, synthetic fertilizers, and growing the same crop year after year all wear soil down and kill off the microbial life that keeps it healthy.
From soil just blowing away across the highways in New Mexico, to top soil in the upper Midwest washing down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, the structure and biological composition of soil throughout the US is in danger.
The ABCs of ROc farming practices & soil
Regenerative organic farming isn't one technique. It's a handful of practices working together.
Worth noting: these practices go beyond what basic organic certification requires. Christopher Gergen, CEO of the Regenerative Organic Alliance, points out that "you can be organic and actually not even use soil at all. You can be hydroponic and organic." Regenerative organic certification exists specifically to close that gap. It requires farms to actively build soil health, not just skip synthetic chemicals.
ROC farming practices & the evidence that supports It
A major 2025 review looked at 24 separate studies and found that regenerative organic farming genuinely improved soil's ability to do its job most of the time: holding water, cycling nutrients, supporting plant life. It also found a real benefit for biodiversity, which matters beyond the farm gate too.
Silva connects the dots directly: "We know biodiversity, organic promotes pollinators, it promotes beneficial insects." She's also seen the flip side, noting that biodiversity loss shows up in unexpected places, including "increases in tick-borne diseases."
Some of the most detailed evidence on this comes from Silva's own research. She runs the Wisconsin Integrated Cropping Systems Trial, an experiment at UW-Madison's Arlington research station that has compared conventional, organic, and grass-based farming systems side by side since 1989, making it one of the longest-running trials of its kind anywhere.
Digging into the trial's soil data reveals an important nuance. After tracking real soil samples for 20 years, researchers found that almost every system in the study, including the organic ones, lost some soil carbon over time. Only one held onto it: rotationally grazed pasture. What made the difference wasn't skipping chemicals or skipping the plow on its own. It was keeping living roots in the ground, year-round. That's the same idea Brian Randall described at Gwenyn Hill: "deep rooting perennial crops." Decades of Wisconsin data back him up. It's not any single practice that rebuilds soil.
The upside adds up in other ways too. In one California study, water soaked into regeneratively managed soil six times faster than into conventionally farmed soil, a big deal for drought resilience.
What's the controversy around no-till?
No-till sounds like an easy win: less digging up the soil should mean less erosion. But it comes with a catch. As Silva explains it, "the problem is to do that system, we need to use herbicides." That trade-off has real consequences. She points to widespread groundwater contamination in the corn belt, which researchers have linked to disease clusters including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and Parkinson's.
There's also a quieter problem: no-till doesn't automatically deliver healthier soil on its own. A 2025 study of dairy farms across five major U.S. dairy regions, including Wisconsin, found that reduced-tillage fields didn't reliably beat conventionally tilled ones, while grazed pastures beat row crops every time. Researchers pointed to heavy farm equipment and freeze-thaw cycles as likely reasons why. It lines up with what the Wisconsin trial found too: cutting back on tillage helps, but it's not a stand-in for the rest of the system.
Regenerative organic threads the needle differently, leaning on cover crops, rotation, and perennial roots to protect soil instead of leaning on herbicides. No single hero practice. Just the whole system, working together.
How does the soil affect our food?
Weaker soil means weaker food. And that’s not bias or opinion: it shows up in the research.
A 2025 review of the science found that crops grown in healthier, regenerative soil consistently have more vitamin C, zinc, iron, and other nutrients than crops grown conventionally, along with fewer chemical residues.
Even specific antioxidants, like the lycopene in tomatoes or the quercetin in apples, both linked to lower inflammation, show up in higher amounts when the soil underneath is doing better. Same fruit, same vegetable, genuinely different nutrition, depending on what's happening six inches under it.
The trade-offs, and why we need your help to increase demand
Here's the honest part: regenerative organic farming can produce less food, at least while a farm is making the switch. Research puts that gap at around 24% on average, though that gap shrinks the longer a farm sticks with it.
Over time in the Wisconsin trial, organic forage crops kept pace with conventional ones, organic grain came in at around 90% of conventional yields, and organic and pasture-based farms were consistently profitable systems However, initial transition losses can make the switch difficult for farmers, making proven demand essential.
Sandy Syburg, who runs White Oak Farm and became the first Regenerative Organic Certified farmer in Wisconsin, explains that those soil health gains don't always necessarily relate to any immediate economic benefit. Farmers will sometimes take that risk, but at the end of the day it can be too high of risk if there isn’t sufficient demand. That’s where we as consumers come in. The only way the trade-off works long-term is if there's real consumer demand for it.
Buying power may not be the only lever forever. Newmark points to another path that could exist in the future: paying farmers directly for the carbon their soil captures, not just for the crops they grow.
As she put it at Together We ROC® The Midwest, regenerative agriculture is a chance to "give farmers the ability to make money to farm their carbon in addition to farming their produce." It's a second way to close the gap while consumer demand keeps building.
But for now, what you buy is the most direct thing you control.
According to Gergen the best hope for regenerative organic to grow at the pace it needs to, is for brands and shoppers to create enough demand that farmers can justify making the switch. It's the reason we offer regenerative organic juices, smoothies, and eggs. Every regenerative organic product you choose, ours or anyone else's, is a vote that tells the next farmer it's worth it.
So next time you're standing in the aisle deciding between two nearly identical cartons, remember: you're not just picking breakfast. You're picking healthy, biodiverse soil.
SOURCES
Feliziani, G., Bordoni, L., & Gabbianelli, R. (2025). Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Human Health: The Interconnection Between Soil, Food Quality, and Nutrition. Antioxidants, 14(5), 530. https://doi.org/10.3390/antiox14050530
Colombi, G., Martani, E., & Fornara, D. (2025). Regenerative organic agriculture and soil ecosystem service delivery: A literature review. Ecosystem Services, 73, 101721. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2025.101721
Wisconsin Integrated Cropping systems trial: https://wicst.wisc.edu/
Posner, J.L., Baldock, J.O., & Hedtcke, J.L. (2008). Organic and conventional production systems in the Wisconsin Integrated Cropping Systems Trials: I. Productivity 1990-2002. Agronomy Journal, 100, 253–260.
Chavas, J.-P., Posner, J.L., & Hedtcke, J.L. (2009). Organic and conventional production systems in the Wisconsin Integrated Cropping Systems Trial: II. Economic and risk analysis 1993–2006. Agronomy Journal, 101, 288–295.
Sanford, G.R., Posner, J.L., Jackson, R.D., Kucharik, C.J., & Hedtcke, J.L. (2012). Soil carbon lost from Mollisols of the North Central U.S.A. with 20 years of agricultural best management practices. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 162, 68–76.
Hsiao, C.-J., et al. (2025). Management practices and soil health: Insights from dairy farms in the United States. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 396, 109969. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2025.109969
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