Regenerative Farming Emerges as Land Pressures Rise in Dade

The future of farming in Dade County feels more urgent with each new subdivision and housing development that pushes farther into what was once farmland. In a county where agriculture is still a defining part of our landscape, many people are asking what comes next if the ground beneath our feet keeps changing hands and changing uses.

My conversation with Stephen Bontekoe, executive director of Limestone Valley RC&D, put a name to one response some farmers and conservationists are championing: regenerative agriculture. It’s not just a concept, Bontekoe said, but a way of managing land that actually puts more back into the system than it takes out. “It’s about building systems that are not extractionary while still producing food and fiber,” he told me.

He boiled it down to one thing: soil. “At the core of all agriculture is soil. Healthy soil is more resilient soil, and when soil is resilient the farm is more resilient as well.”

That emphasis on soil health isn’t just Bontekoe’s. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, part of the federal conservation framework, describes regenerative agriculture as a conservation management approach that focuses on soil health, water resources and biodiversity while aiming to improve the productivity and prosperity of farms and communities. USDA defines soil health as the continued capacity of soil to function as a vital ecosystem that sustains plants, animals and humans. USDA doesn’t literally have a federal rulebook definition of “regenerative,” but it channels these goals through existing conservation programs and a major new pilot initiative that encourages producers to adopt multiple soil health practices together rather than one at a time.

In Dade County, there were 180 farms reporting a total of 31,350 acres of farmland–according to the most recent 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture–with an average farm size of about 174 acres. That land includes roughly 6,259 acres of cropland and more than 5,100 acres of pastureland. Livestock and livestock products make up nearly all of the county’s agricultural sales. 

Those numbers matter because they show how much land, and what kind of land, residents stand to lose if farming continues to be pushed to the fringes. Bontekoe said farmland is disappearing at a concerning rate, with productive acres converted into housing and industry. Dade’s proximity to Chattanooga and relatively affordable land values make it especially attractive to developers. Unlike some counties with formal land-use protections, Dade has limited buffers against that conversion, leaving family farms and working land more vulnerable.

Bontekoe calls regenerative agriculture economically practical for the realities local producers face. “It costs less to care for what you have and to improve what you have through natural processes,” he said. “Regenerative agriculture is economically more practical than extraction-based agriculture because it keeps the farm positive on resources and production instead of borrowing from one to create the other.”

This includes practices like reducing tillage, planting cover crops, diversifying rotations and managing grazing in ways that build soil organic matter and lower long-term input costs. Bontekoe and others point to these practices not as perfect solutions, but as tools farmers can use to make their land more productive and resilient as economic and environmental pressures grow.

For a rural county with its share of farms, the stakes are clear. Every acre that walks away from production today is one less field feeding people and one more patch of grass or driveway that does not.

“Dade County needs regenerative farmers,” Bontekoe said. “Development will continue to reduce available food producing land and increase taxes. Regenerative farming helps improve the land while improving production and keeping costs low.”

As northwest Georgia continues to change, how we farm and how we value farming could determine not just how much land is left, but how strong and productive that land will remain for future generations.