Pulse Brain · Growing Health Evidence Index
Tier 4 — Narrative / commentaryPeer-reviewed

The soil health-yield trade-off: A critical gap in assessing regenerative organic agriculture

Rodrigo Ferraz Ramos

Ecosystem Services · 2026

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Summary

This paper critically examines a recognised but underexplored tension in regenerative organic agriculture research: the potential trade-off between building soil health and sustaining adequate crop yields. Published in Ecosystem Services, it likely argues that existing assessments of regenerative systems insufficiently account for this trade-off, leaving a critical gap in how such systems are evaluated for both productivity and ecological function. The author presumably calls for more integrated methodological frameworks that can simultaneously capture soil health gains and yield performance across diverse farming contexts.

UK applicability

The conceptual and methodological critique offered in this paper is broadly applicable to UK regenerative farming debates, particularly given growing policy interest in the Sustainable Farming Incentive and questions about food security trade-offs under nature-friendly farming transitions.

Key measures

Soil health indicators; crop yield metrics (t/ha); ecosystem services valuation; regenerative practice adoption rates

Outcomes reported

The paper examines the tension between improving soil health indicators and maintaining or increasing crop yields within regenerative organic farming systems, likely identifying methodological and assessment gaps in current research frameworks.

Theme
Farming systems, soils & land use
Subject
Regenerative & organic farming systems
Study type
Narrative Review
Study design
Narrative review
Source type
Peer-reviewed study
Status
Published
Geography
Global
System type
Mixed arable/regenerative
DOI
10.1016/j.ecoser.2026.101823
Catalogue ID
NRmo3f02hq-06p

Topic tags

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