European Journal of Sustainable Agroecosystems

General Background: Regenerative Agriculture (RA) has developed into a leading approach applied to address long-term reductions in soil organic matter (SOM) associated with conventional crop production through tillage. A number of practices identified with RA, including reduced/no-till farming, cover cropping, integrated crop and livestock production, adaptive multi-paddock grazing, agroforestry, and organic amendments, have provided evidence of their ability to increase soil carbon pools, enhance soil structure and provide other co-benefits related to climate mitigation. Nevertheless, the evidence presented in the literature remains debatable, both with respect to strength and reliability of the impact of these methods and understanding the mechanisms through which this impact is achieved. 

Main purpose: This paper presents the results of a review of existing peer-reviewed papers published in the period from 2015 to 2025, which includes discussions on SOM and soil organic carbon (SOC) processes in RA.

The search for literature was based on the PRISMA methodology and included structured queries in Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed and Google Scholar databases, which produced 1656 entries after completion of the search process.

Significant discoveries: The adoption of cover crops leads to a significant increase in SOC levels since its impact ranges from about 7% to 15.5% in terms of increases in globally accessible SOC as well as SOC accumulation of 0.32 – 1.3 Mg C ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ depending on cover crop biomass, duration, and depth of application. The use of no-till systems results in significant layering in the topsoil SOC profile but does not always lead to steady gains over the soil profile due to the necessity of applying the bulk density correction method that varies environmental conditions. Additionally, the use of adaptive multi-paddock grazing provides good results with respect to the effectiveness of development of mineral-organic carbon associations. Both agroforestry and biochar / organic amendments show good results, but they continue to struggle with their widespread usage, though these technologies produce the biggest per hectare increases of SOC.

Observed research gaps: Certain drawbacks identified during previous research include the use of short-term experiments, geographical bias in favor of temperate, wealthier regions, uneven methods for correcting for soil depth and bulk density, lack of overall GHG budget symmetry, and poor translation of microbial mechanisms into field carbon accounting nature.

Conclusions: The results of implementation of regenerative agriculture can lead to an increase in SOC, but there is no evidence pointing to the applicability of regenerative agriculture practices in various conditions resulting in fast SOC recovery.