THE IMPACT OF REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE IN PROVISIONING ECOSYSTEM SERVICES: AN EXAMPLE IN SOUTHEAST SPAIN

Recently, regenerative agriculture has been considered as a means to further develop sustainable management practices, though its application has been limited. Despite efforts in legislation framework through rural development programmes, European’s Common Agricultural Policy or Green Deal to enhance sustainable agricultural management practices, regenerative agriculture continues to be a residual practice among farmers, although the interest on it is slightly growing. These efforts act as a driving force to kick-start the implementation of sustainable practices, but must be proven feasible by stakeholders in rural societies. The objective of this work is to evaluate the impact of several sustainable agricultural scenarios in rainfed almond crops within a regenerative framework on a range of ecosystems services (ES). The evaluation was based on long- and medium-term data bases of field and laboratory monitoring of soils and vegetation in rainfed almond crops of SE Spain and stakeholders’ interviews. A Multicriteria Analysis (MCA) was conducted to evaluate the different land management scenarios integrating different type of indicators of soil quality, nutrient availability, and carbon sequestration of different groups of ES. The evaluation included stakeholders’ participation, views and financial profitability. Three land management scenarios were analyzed: (i) conventional, (ii) natural cover crops and (iii) seeded cover crops. The results offer the performance of three management scenarios on different ecosystem services and economic sustainability, considering different distributions of weights according to stakeholders’ perspective. Sustainability, acceptance and stability of the scenarios were achieved and provided an integrated view of impacts that could help in decision making.