Relational values in regenerative agriculture
A systematic review and checklist for transformative potential
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 14844151 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ethan Gordon (0000-0002-8928-506X), Matías Hargreaves-Méndez (0000-0001-5989-1125), Ada P Smith (0000-0001-8315-1741), Hannah Gosnell (0000-0002-2108-945X), Jennifer Hodbod (0000-0001-8899-6583), Austin Himes (0000-0002-8470-4771), Morgan Mathisonslee (0000-0002-0615-6511), Henry Pitts (0000-0003-1359-0786), Jonathan Vivas (0009-0009-1656-3768) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 2297-2316 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Agriculture and Human Values (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0889-048X • E-ISSN: 1572-8366 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10460-025-10736-x |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 96 |
Modern agriculture has increased yields but degraded socio-ecological systems all over the world. Consequently, advocates of regenerative agriculture (RA) aim to regenerate land and transform food systems. We undertook a systematic literature review of 104 peer-reviewed articles to determine how relational values (RVs) might be contributing to RA. RVs are values that emerge from specific human-nature relationships or meaningful relationships between people that happen in nature. Cultivating these values could inspire mindset shifts that support agricultural transformations. This review was guided by our research questions: (1) to what extent have RVs been implicitly or explicitly examined across the RA literature? (2) What implications might RVs have for the transformative potential of RA? Building on prior research, we explored salient articulations of RVs – identity through relationships; good life; sense of place; care; and human connections through nature. The review highlighted the role of Indigenous knowledges in RA; sustaining conditions for RVs; and the valuing of life supporting processes in RA. Our results reflect a distinction between productivist framings of RA that primarily emphasise instrumental values and relational framings of RA that foreground RVs but embrace value pluralism. We propose this distinction is more significant to RA’s transformative potential than the process-outcomes distinction. We suggest that conceptualisations of RA are more likely to contribute to sustainability transformations if they mobilise the (often latently held) RVs evident in the RA literature. Based on these results we develop checking questions for RA advocates to reflexively assess whether key actors are engaged in relational RA
What Is Regenerative Agriculture? A Review of Scholar and Practitioner Definitions Based on Processes and Outcomes
How sustainable agriculture can address the environmental and human health harms of industrial agriculture.
Translocal empowerment in transformative social innovation networks
Why nature matters
PRISMA 2020 explanation and elaboration
Thematic Analysis
Why protect nature? Rethinking values and the environment
Fruit of the Earth and Work of Human Hands
A relational turn for sustainability science? Relational thinking, leverage points and transformations
Relational values of nature
Relational forestry
Levers and leverage points for pathways to sustainability
Relational values of nature in empirical research
‘I owe it to the animals’
Love Sustains Life
The Regenerative Lens
Transformational capacity and the influence of place and identity
Mainstreaming regenerative dynamics for sustainability
Meeting global challenges with regenerative agriculture producing food and energy
Food system narratives to end hunger
Relational values
Relational values in locally adaptive farmer-to-farmer extension
Regenerating soil, regenerating soul
Decolonizing transformations through ‘right relations’
Three perspectives on relational values of nature
Regenerative agriculture
Conceptualising variations in societal transformations towards sustainability
The co-optation of feminisms
Transformational adaptation on the farm
A genealogy of sustainable agriculture narratives
A half century of Holistic Management
Regenerative food systems and the conservation of change
Relationships of regeneration in Great Plains commodity agriculture
Regenerative agriculture and a more-than-human ethic of care
Decolonizing agriculture in the United States
Moving towards an anti-colonial definition for regenerative agriculture
Covid-19, the Anthropocene, and transformative change
Agroecological break out
Contextualising farmer perspectives on regenerative agriculture
When value conflicts are barriers
Fractal approaches to scaling transformations to sustainability
Towards a relational paradigm in sustainability research, practice, and education
A transition from agriculture to regenerative food systems
Green rebranding
Ways of (un)knowing landscapes
The promises of the Amazonian soil
Interplays between relational and instrumental values
The co-optation of regenerative agriculture
A buzzword, a “win-win”, or a signal towards the future of agriculture? A critical analysis of regenerative agriculture
Exploring mental systems within regenerative agriculture
Transformative innovation and translocal diffusion
Transforming landscapes and mindscapes through regenerative agriculture
Participatory monitoring and evaluation to enable social learning, adoption, and out-scaling of regenerative agriculture
Regeneration at a distance from the state
You can't manage what you can't measure
Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries
Why Regenerative Agriculture
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |