Regenerative Agriculture
By Andy Harpenau, President. Last updated October 2026.
Farming With the Soil, Not Just the Crop
At Soil Dynamics, we look at farming differently.
Our goal is not simply to produce a crop this year. We are working to build agricultural soils that become healthier, more biologically active, more resilient and more productive over time.
That means looking beyond conventional fertility alone and thinking about the entire soil system: organic matter, biology, nutrient cycling, water infiltration, soil structure, living roots and the relationship between crops and the microorganisms beneath them.
This approach is commonly referred to as regenerative agriculture or soil-health farming.
It is not one specific recipe. It is a management philosophy built around improving the function of the soil while continuing to operate productive working farms.
What That Looks Like on Our Farms
Across our farms, we are implementing a combination of soil-health practices based on the needs of each field, crop and season.
Cover Crops
One of the most visible parts of our program is extensive use of cover crops.
Rather than leaving soil bare after harvest, we establish crops such as cereal rye, triticale, oats, radishes and other species whenever the rotation and weather allow.
Cover crops provide living roots during portions of the year when conventional fields may otherwise be dormant.
Those living roots can:
protect soil from wind and water erosion;
capture nutrients that might otherwise be lost;
improve water infiltration;
feed soil microorganisms;
add carbon to the soil;
improve soil aggregation and structure;
reduce surface crusting;
suppress weeds; and
provide additional biomass and residue.
We increasingly design our rotations around keeping living roots in the soil for as much of the year as practical.
Building Organic Matter
Nebraska agriculture has enormously productive soils, but decades of intensive crop production have reduced organic matter and soil biological activity.
We are deliberately working to rebuild that resource.
Organic matter acts like both a nutrient reservoir and a sponge. It influences nutrient availability, water-holding capacity, soil structure, microbial activity and the ability of the soil to withstand drought and heavy rainfall.
Our management program therefore looks for responsible ways to return carbon and nutrients to agricultural soils.
That can include compost, crop residues, cover-crop biomass and other appropriate organic materials that have legitimate agronomic value.
Recycling Organic Resources
Agriculture has always recycled nutrients.
Manure, crop residues and other biological materials historically returned nutrients and carbon to the land from which they originated.
Modern food and agricultural systems have separated many of those nutrient streams from the farm. Organic materials are often hauled long distances for disposal even though some may contain carbon, nutrients or other characteristics that can potentially be useful to soil.
We believe responsible agriculture should continue looking for ways to recover appropriate organic resources rather than automatically treating every residual material as something that belongs in a landfill.
That does not mean every material belongs on farmland.
Materials must be understood, characterized and managed appropriately. Agronomic value, soil conditions, crop needs, application rates and environmental protection all matter.
Our goal is to identify situations where a material can be responsibly managed as a resource rather than unnecessarily discarded as a waste.
Incorporation and Nutrient Cycling
Where appropriate, organic materials are worked into agricultural soil rather than simply left on the surface.
Incorporation places organic material in direct contact with the soil biological system and can assist decomposition and nutrient cycling while reducing surface exposure.
The cover crop is not an afterthought. Living plants become part of the nutrient-management system by capturing nutrients, building roots and converting available fertility into plant biomass.
Reducing Dependence on High-Salt Fertility
Most of our farms have already ended their dependence on conventional high-salt fertilizer programs, and the rest are working toward it.
That does not mean ignoring crop nutrition.
Quite the opposite.
We are trying to better understand how nutrients cycle through the soil and how organic matter, biological activity, cover crops and crop rotations can contribute to supplying plant needs.
We use soil information, crop performance and agronomic management to make those decisions rather than assuming that every nutrient requirement must be addressed solely through conventional synthetic fertility.
The long-term objective is a healthier soil system that becomes increasingly efficient at storing, cycling and supplying nutrients.
Crop Rotation
Regenerative agriculture also means avoiding a one-size-fits-all rotation.
Our farms include corn, soybeans, oats, wheat and a variety of cover crops.
Different plants contribute different things to the soil. Diversity in the soil is a key fertility principle for resilient farms.
Grasses can produce large root systems and carbon-rich residue. Legumes can work with soil bacteria to fix atmospheric nitrogen. Brassicas can contribute different rooting patterns. Small grains provide opportunities to establish diverse summer covers that would be difficult to fit into a conventional corn-soybean rotation.
We use crop rotation as another tool for increasing biological diversity and improving soil function.
Working With NRCS
Several of our farms are operating under soil-health contracts with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
Those programs reinforce many of the same practices we are already pursuing, including cover cropping, improved soil management, pollinator strips and practices intended to protect soil and water resources and to foster wildlife.
Our work with NRCS is part of a broader commitment to measuring progress and implementing recognized conservation practices on working agricultural land.
Why We Are Doing It
Nebraska agriculture faces several long-term challenges.
Our soils have lost organic matter. Groundwater nitrate contamination is a serious concern in many parts of the state. Farmers are dealing with increasing input costs, periods of drought, intense rainfall and growing pressure to produce more efficiently.
We do not believe the answer is simply applying more inputs every year.
We believe one part of the solution is rebuilding the biological and physical capacity of the soil itself.
A healthier soil can:
hold more water;
cycle nutrients more efficiently;
support stronger root systems;
resist erosion;
increase biological diversity;
handle weather extremes better; and
potentially reduce dependence on purchased inputs over time.
Those improvements do not happen overnight.
Regenerative agriculture is a long-term management process.
Farming as a Biological System
Perhaps the biggest difference in our approach is that we do not view soil merely as something that holds a plant upright.
Healthy soil is a living ecosystem.
A teaspoon of productive soil can contain an enormous community of bacteria, fungi and other organisms. Plants feed that biological community through their roots, and the biological community helps cycle nutrients back to the plants.
The more we learn about that relationship, the more obvious it becomes that farming should focus not only on feeding the crop but also on maintaining the system that supports the crop.
That is why practices such as cover cropping, organic-matter additions, diversified rotations and reduced disturbance can work together.
No single practice defines regenerative agriculture.
The system does.
Our Goal
Our goal is straightforward:
Produce good crops while leaving the soil in better condition than we found it.
That means continuing to experiment, measure, learn and improve.
It also means challenging the assumption that valuable organic resources should automatically become landfill waste when there may be a safe and productive agricultural use for them.
We believe Nebraska farmers and agricultural businesses can play a major role in solving problems involving soil degradation, nutrient loss and organic-waste disposal.
Our farms are where we are putting those ideas into practice.
Andy Harpenau, President
Hillside Solutions | Gretna Sanitation | Soil Dynamics