Editorial: Continuous living cover: Adaptive strategies for putting regenerative agriculture into practice

Authors: REILLY, EVELYN - University Of Minnesota; CONWAY-ANDERSON, ASHLEY - University Of Missouri; Franco, Jose; JUNGERS, JACOB - University Of Minnesota; MOORE, ERIC - University Of North Carolina-Wilmington; WILLIAMS, CAROL - University Of Wisconsin

Submitted to: Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/9/2023
Publication Date: 12/5/2023
Citation: Reilly, E., Conway-Anderson, A., Franco Jr, J.G., Jungers, J., Moore, E.B., Williams, C. 2023. Editorial: Continuous living cover: Adaptive strategies for putting regenerative agriculture into practice. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2023.1320870.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2023.1320870

Interpretive Summary: Conventional management systems that currently dominate the agricultural landscape primarily focus on crop yield as the primary metric of productivity . In addition, for many farmers, farm programs and insurance factors limit them to plant a narrow range of commodity crops, which in turn exposes them to risks associated with significant market and climate events. The result is crop production systems that are dominated by landscape scale monocultures of annual crops that leads to a decline in soil and water quality, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and loss of biodiversity. The Continuous Living Cover (CLC) approach, or practices that provide greater ground cover and year-round living plants and roots, is broad enough to allow for great flexibility in implementation across landscapes and situational contexts, but specific enough to outline actual practices that can form a strategy to achieve large-scale environmental goals of healthy soil, water, air, and communities. While some CLC crops apply more narrowly to specific environmental conditions, the foundational concepts are nearly universal. Continuous Living Cover provides a way to frame our efforts and a pathway to the broad goals of regenerative agriculture. Presenting cutting-edge research and aggregating key findings from the existing body of work will help inform a broader audience of the potential benefits of these strategies, make them more accessible, and strengthen the concept of CLC in the fields of agriculture and agroecology.

Technical Abstract: Continuous Living Cover (CLC) refers to agricultural systems in which there are living plants and roots in the ground throughout the entire year. This can take many forms, from winter cover crops sown between annuals to agroforestry practices to perennial forage or grain production. The core of the CLC approach is field and farm-level implementation on a broad scale that translates to landscape-scale transformation: from months of bare soil and non-productivity to continuous coverage and longer periods of growth. Management that integrates CLC strategies can offset the undesirable impacts of conventional agriculture and demonstrate how agriculture can be a solution to sustaining our natural resource base, while providing new opportunities for farmers, developing more diverse, responsible, and nutritious supply chains, and improving the vitality of rural communities. In this editorial, we explicitly define CLC, provide an underlying theory of CLC and its history, examples of how it works well, challenges, and its foundational science by summarizing cutting-edge research that spans from the biophysical to the social, economic, and policy. We provide an aggregation of key findings from the existing body of work that will help inform a broader audience of the potential benefits of these strategies, make them more accessible, and strengthen the concept of CLC in the fields of agriculture and agroecology.