Regenerative Agriculture
UCCE Mariposa County's Regenerative Agriculture program supports Mariposa, Merced, and Stanislaus county farmers and ranchers through applied research, extension education, and a regional Farm Advisor focused on sustainable production systems.
Regenerative agriculture is an approach to managing our food, fiber, and fuel production systems with an intention to improve upon our environments by rehabilitating ecological systems.
Goals and principles
Regenerative agriculture seeks to achieve five overarching agroecological outcomes:
- Climate mitigation
- Soil restoration
- Biodiversity enhancement
- Water resource protection
- Socio-economic viability
These outcomes are achieved by integrating six core management principles, adapted to different cropping systems and environments:
- Minimizing soil disturbance
- Maximizing crop diversity
- Keeping the soil covered
- Maintaining living roots in the ground
- Integrating animals
- Understanding the context of your farm operation
Our Farm Advisor: Sara Rosenberg
Sara Rosenberg is the Regenerative Agriculture Farm Advisor based in Mariposa and covering Merced and Stanislaus counties. Sara graduated from the University of California, Davis with a master's in International Agriculture Development and a PhD in Horticulture and Agronomy. Her disciplinary focus areas are agroecology, sustainable nutrient management, and extension research and methodology. Her past research centers on understanding the implications of diversification, with a focus on crop rotations and cover crops, for California rice systems. Her master's thesis implemented a county-wide assessment to learn from rice growers about their experiences with crop rotations and to understand barriers to adoption, opportunities, and required resources for successful implementation. That two-year study engaged grower communities to help develop future research goals she undertook in her PhD. Her doctoral research explored how different summer crop rotations affect multiple sustainability factors including soil health, crop yields, weeds, input use, and economics. She also assessed different cover crop species performance in rice environments and their carbon and nitrogen contributions.
Prior to her PhD, she worked for more than three years in the Peace Corps as an Agriculture Advisor. She worked closely with smallholder farmers in West Africa implementing conservation agriculture programs and increasing agricultural resilience in both annual crops and tree crops, mainly in the cashew forestry sector. Beyond this, she has more than eight years of experience working on farms throughout California and ran her own small, diversified farm for the last two years in Woodland.
She is passionate about community-led development and using participatory research as a powerful tool for developing sustainable solutions. Her aim is to develop programming that supports a wide range of farm types, including commercial and small-scale, organic and conventional, annual crops, tree and vine crops, and livestock production systems. Programmatic goals include developing a robust research program aimed at assessing farm sustainability impact across agronomic, ecological, social, and economic factors; developing collaborative projects that support farmers in overcoming barriers to adoption of regenerative practices and build on their capacity to further sustainability goals; and developing and promoting tested integrative management practices that increase climate resilience and ecosystem sustainability across diverse farming environments.
Questions about regenerative agriculture
For questions about regenerative agriculture programming in Mariposa, Merced, and Stanislaus counties, contact the UCCE Mariposa County office at (209) 966-2417.