A century of conventional farming has left our planet with sick soil. Once fertile farmlands are now dusty and degraded, accelerating food insecurity, biodiversity loss, and climate change. David Montgomery has devoted decades to investigating this damage. ReGen, his manifesto, lays out practical and productive solutions to recover the health of our land through soil-building regenerative agriculture.

Drawing on the work of farmers, historians, and researchers, he forcefully articulates the power of combining cover cropping, no or low tillage, and crop diversity to rebuild soil health. The combination allows farmers to greatly reduce or eliminate synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use, and can help address a number of today’s most pressing problems. Along the way, he takes apart common myths around conventional farming, animal agriculture, and plant-based diets. Charting a course for action, Montgomery lays out ten policy recommendations—from subsidizing young farmers to establishing a national network of demonstration farms—to safeguard the future of our food supply.

ReGen shows us how reforming the way we see and treat the land can address critically underappreciated and yet eminently solvable problems to restore the health of our land and secure civilization’s agricultural foundation—and a healthy future for our society and ourselves.

Montgomery recently took time to answer seven questions from Porchlight, and that conversation (conducted via email) is below. 

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Porchlight Book Company: Writing a book is no small undertaking. What compelled you to write this one?

David Montgomery: As a geologist I never thought I’d be writing about soils and agriculture. But over the course of several books, from Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations to What Your Food Ate, I dove into how farming practices undermined soil fertility, and thus whole societies, time and again in the past and how the way farming practices treat the soil shapes the nutritional value of our food. ReGen is the culmination of 20 years of research and visiting regenerative farmers around the world who restored fertility and profitability to their farms while growing more healthful food for all us non-farmers to eat. I wanted to synthesize what I’d learned along this intellectual journey in a short-ish book that while rooted in rigorous science told the story in an engaging manner for anyone interested in the future of farming, food, and health.

PBC: What is one unanswered question you encountered as you wrote the book that you are most interested in answering now?

DM: After writing these books I’m convinced that regenerative farming that minimizes or avoids both physical and chemical disturbance of the soil (and soil life) can restore productivity to degraded land and deliver a number of additional benefits, from enhancing farm profitability, to reducing fertilizer, diesel, and pesticide use, and thereby decreasing off-farm agrochemical pollution of waterways, to increasing soil organic matter, supporting on-farm biodiversity, and delivering more healthful diets to consumers. The biggest outstanding question(s) for me is two-fold—just how much could these changes save society over the long run in reduced health care costs and environmental damage, and whether we will actually have the political will to support a soil-health revolution to reshape agriculture and provide a sustainable foundation for civilization going forward.

PBC: If there is only one thing a reader takes away from reading this book, what would you hope it to be?

DM: The key thing I would hope readers take away from ReGen is that we CAN reshape agriculture such that we restore and maintain soil health as a consequence of farming practices instead of soil health being a casualty of now-conventional practices. A more sustainable future for farming is achievable, practical, and economical but it will take rethinking how we see—and treat—the soil.

PBC: One of the great things about books is that they tend to lead readers to other books. What book[s] related to this topic would you recommend people read after (or perhaps even before) reading your book?

DM: For readers interested in further insight into the connection between farming and ranching practices and human health I’d recommend Fred Provenza’s Nourishment.

PBC: What is your favorite book? 

DM: My favorite book is still The Lord of the Rings. I read the trilogy over a weekend as a teenager and still love it.

PBC: What are you reading now?

DM: Bill Graham Presents, the autobiography of the San Francisco rock promoter who shaped the music scene of the 1960s and 1970s in the Bay Area. It’s a fun read about the time and place I grew up.

PBC: Do you have any future projects in the works that we can look forward to?

DM: I’m starting in on a book about how geology shaped human evolution—it’s a bit of a shift from soils and agriculture, but its super interesting and I’m enjoying digging into a new direction.

About the Author

David R. Montgomery is a professor of Earth and space sciences at the University of Washington. He studies the evolution of topography and the influence of geomorphological processes on ecological systems and human societies. He received a BS from Stanford University (1984, geology) and a PhD from UC Berkeley (1991, geomorphology). His field studies have included projects in the Philippines, eastern Tibet, South America, California, and the Pacific Northwest of North America. He is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and has received many awards throughout his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship and the Vega Medal. His books Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon, and The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood have all won the Washington State Book Award in General Nonfiction. Montgomery’s Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life was a finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing. He also coauthored with Anne Biklé The Hidden Half of Nature and, most recently, What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health. His books have been translated into ten languages. He is also a coauthor of the new textbook Essentials of Physical Geography with W. W. Norton.