It’s common to see farmers dive into regenerative agriculture with excitement, only to experience a sharp drop in yields, profits, or both. This isn’t because regenerative agriculture doesn’t work—it’s often due to skipping foundational agronomic principles too soon.
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The general problem we see is that when farmers transition to regenerative agriculture, a yield drop occurs in the first 1 to 3 years potentially leading to farmers discarding the ideal of regenerative agriculture. This can be seen below with the drop in productivity. However when farmers stick with regenerative agriculture over time, soil health and biology improve to the point where productivity recovers and can overtake the production before the transition. However the trouble is getting to this point without going bankrupt.
Why So Many Regenerative Farmers Lose Money in Their First Year
Many farmers reduce their nutrition inputs in their first year thinking they’ll maintain the same yields. The reality? Yields crash. Why? Because most soils aren’t biologically or nutritionally ready to fully support crops without help.
While free-living microbes and the rhizophagy cycle can supply nutrition, they rarely cover the full crop demand—especially early in the transition. For example, wheat exports around 23 kg of nitrogen per tonne produced. When targeting 4.5 t/ha, that’s 180 kg N/ha required. Halving that without improving efficiency or supplementation means you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Phosphorus, potassium, and trace elements like manganese also play crucial roles. If these aren’t present in sufficient amounts—or even exist at all in your parent soil material—biology alone won’t fix it. Manganese, for example, is often deficient and must be added either through soil or foliar applications.
The point is: you must still meet the crop’s nutritional needs while improving soil function. This ensures you maintain yields and profitability, buying you time for soil and biology to catch up.
Biology Doesn’t Fix ALL Problems
Although biology is VERY important and can supply large amounts of nutrition, the idea that biology will supply 100% of nutrition is incorrect. Some parent materials are naturally deficient in some minerals. For example, look at the snippet from the Albrecht Soil Test With Totals below. Here you’ll see that the total component of the soil does not contain managanese. This means regardless the amount of biology, managanese won’t be available because there is none in the total component. This my be different if the soil type changes in the lower parts if the profile but until the roots get to that depth, it will likely cause a deficiency. Therefore, managanese needs to be applied either as a foliar or to the soil.
The ESR framework: Efficiency → Substitution → Redesign
To transition without compromising yields or going broke, use this structured approach (taught by Joel Williams):
Efficiency: First, optimise what you’re already doing. Improve the efficiency of fertilisers using humic substances, split applications, foliar nutrition, and seed treatments. This can reduce nitrogen loss and improve uptake, meaning you use less but get more.
Substitution: Begin replacing harsh inputs with more biologically friendly options—biofertilisers, biostimulants, organic products, and biological disease suppressors like Trichoderma.
Redesign: Once your system is stable and efficient, start integrating bigger changes—diverse cover crops, intercropping, crop rotations, livestock, and reduced tillage. These redesign elements enhance biological resilience without sacrificing performance.
Get Started In Regen Ag With Agresol
If you’re looking to transition to regenerative agriculture and don’t want to drop in yields, come have a chat with us to see how we could help with your transition. You can get started with a FREE Regenerative Consult HERE.
