Regenerative agriculture and soil carbon sequestration: Mechanisms, evidence, and future prospects

Abstract

Regenerative agriculture (RA) has emerged as a transformative approach to sustainable land management, offering significant potential for soil carbon sequestration (SCS) while enhancing ecosystem resilience (Keenor et al., 2025a; Understanding soil carbon sequestration, 2025). Despite growing adoption, the mechanisms, quantitative evidence, and scalability of carbon sequestration through RA practices remain subjects of active scientific inquiry. This review synthesizes current mechanistic understanding and empirical evidence regarding RA's capacity to sequester soil carbon, examines regional variability in sequestration rates, and identifies future research priorities and policy implications. RA offers a scalable, nature-based solution for climate mitigation, with potential to sequester up to 23 Gt CO₂ by 2050 (Strauss, 2024). However, realizing this potential requires context-specific implementation, long-term commitment (>10 years), and integration with climate policy frameworks. Future research must address carbon saturation dynamics, permanence under climate change, and socio-economic barriers to adoption.