Field Notes
Farming

Regenerative Coffee, Explained

Organic is about what you don’t put on the land. Regenerative is about leaving it better than you found it.

August 20, 20262 min readBy Bump Coffee

The short version

Regenerative farming is about rebuilding the soil, not just avoiding chemicals.
On coffee farms: shade trees, cover crops, composting coffee pulp, and not tearing up the ground.
“Regenerative” by itself means nothing legally. Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) is the audited version.
ROC starts with USDA Organic, then adds soil health, animal welfare and fairness for farmers and workers.

Organic is mostly a list of things a farm doesn’t do: no synthetic pesticides and no synthetic fertilizer.

Regenerative is a list of things a farm does so the land improves over time.

What it looks like on a coffee farm

Shade and agroforestry. Coffee under a mix of trees, sometimes fruit or timber the farmer can sell too. Roots hold the hillside together. Leaves fall and feed the soil.
Cover crops. Keep the ground covered so the rain doesn’t wash it down the mountain.
Compost from the farm itself. Coffee pulp, the fruit around the bean, piles up every harvest. Composted, it goes back to the plants as fertilizer.
Leave the dirt alone. Less tilling keeps the soil structure, and everything living in it, intact.
Treat people right. Farmers and pickers are part of the system, not an afterthought.

The word vs. the sticker

“Regenerative” by itself isn’t regulated, so anyone can use it. That’s why the Regenerative Organic Alliance created Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC). Announced in 2017, open for certification in 2020.

Three legs:

Soil health and land management
Animal welfare
Farmer and worker fairness

USDA Organic is the floor, so every ROC coffee is organic first. Then ROC stacks more on top and audits everybody in the chain, farm to importer to roaster, every year. Still new in coffee, so you won’t see it on many bags yet.

Why you should care

Coffee is a long game. A plant takes three or four years to give a real harvest and can go for decades. Healthy soil holds water through dry spells, feeds the plant steady, and makes the farm more resilient to bad weather, which is becoming more common (see How Weather and Climate Affect Coffee). Farms building soil now are better positioned to keep growing good coffee for decades.