Resistance as regeneration: the resurgence of more-than-human regenerative farming worlds

This article examines how regenerative farmers resist agricultural extractivism by rejecting normalised practices and fostering alternative modes of organising their farms. We suggest that the transformative processes that farmers undergo are examples of resistance through regeneration, built on the resurgence of diverse more-than-human relations on farms. The study draws on 20 in-depth interviews with practitioners engaged with regenerative farming. Previous research in the field of regenerative agriculture has suggested that practitioners drastically change their relation to nonhumans, such as animals, plants and microbes as they learn to work with soil in regenerative ways. In this paper, we seek to show how these emerging farming worlds are forms of resurgence that challenge extractivism by activating reciprocal relations with other-than-human beings. Thus, the resistance to extractivism enacted through regenerative farming is an outcome and a practice of deep reciprocity and more-than-human mutuality. Our examination shows how farmers working towards regeneration challenge extractivism, as their day-to-day relations become deeply embedded in the ecological processes in place and more intentionally entangled with the life-giving features of the Earth. The paper discusses how these locally constituted practical transformations also relate to questions about other forms of inequality, oppression or access to land.