Does Regenerative Agriculture Improve Public Health?

Can changing how we grow food improve people’s health—not just plants’?

That question has moved from the margins of agriculture into the center of public debate. Advocates of regenerative agriculture argue that healthier soils produce healthier crops, reduce pollution, strengthen rural economies, and may even lower the burden of chronic disease. Skeptics counter that many of these claims move faster than the scientific evidence.

Recently, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sat down with Indiana farmer Rick Clark, one of the country’s most prominent advocates for regenerative agriculture. During the conversation, Clark described his transition from conventional farming to a system built around cover crops, no-till farming, diverse crop rotations, and dramatically reduced synthetic inputs. He also made ambitious claims about profitability, soil biology, food quality, and human health.

For public health professionals, this conversation is worth paying attention to—not because every claim is necessarily correct, but because agriculture sits at the intersection of many of today’s biggest health challenges. Farming practices influence water quality, air pollution, occupational exposures, climate resilience, nutrition, food security, and the environmental conditions that shape population health.

At This Week in Public Health, our role is neither to endorse nor dismiss emerging ideas. Instead, we ask a simple question:

What does the evidence actually say?

Throughout the transcript below, we’ve added commentary highlighting where current research strongly supports the discussion, where important nuances are missing, and where scientific uncertainty remains. Some of Clark’s observations—particularly regarding soil conservation and erosion control—are backed by decades of research. Other claims, including links between regenerative farming and improved human nutrition or reduced chronic disease, remain active areas of investigation.

The result is a conversation that is both hopeful and complicated. As with many public health questions, the most interesting answers lie somewhere between enthusiasm and skepticism.

Let’s take a closer look. As always, our comments are greened out.

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Rick Clark: But I’m pretty confident that we could go just about anywhere in the United States and reduce inputs by 30% tomorrow and not see a change in profitability.

Secretary Kennedy: Hey everybody. It’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Here. You’re HHS secretary and welcome to the Secretary Kennedy podcast. I’m here with an old friend who’s actually been on my old podcast. Rick Clark, who is a farmer from Indiana and one of the leaders of one of the great visionary voices of regenerative agriculture. And Rick runs a 6,500 acre farm, soybeans, corn, sheep.

Rick Clark: Sheep, cattle,

Secretary Kennedy: Wheat,

Rick Clark: Peas. Yes.

Secretary Kennedy: Wheat. His story is extraordinary. It’s really a parable for what could happen in our country because he began as a very, very conventional, chemically intensive agriculture farmer. And his journey is instructive to anybody who is interested in transitioning. And he’s taught hundreds and hundreds of other farmers how to do what he did. And I wanted to have him in because it’s so exciting always for me to talk to you because there’s so much hope for the future in your story. And will you talk about what your journey was?

Rick Clark: Yeah. First of all, I mean, first of all, I want to say I’m honored. Thank you for taking the time. This is important. This is valuable and this is how we move the needle. So thank you. Yeah. I’m a fifth generation farmer from West Central Indiana. I think my ancestors would be really proud of me of what we’ve accomplished. We’ve been on this journey probably for about 18 years now. And when we started, it didn’t have a name and all I cared about was being conservation minded and being a good steward to the land. And one thing led to another. The one thing that really set me off and got me in this direction was erosion. We had a field that’s about as flat as this table right here. We tilled the field. We had a one inch rain event and the soil… Oh no, it wasn’t soil.

One of the strongest scientific points in this discussion concerns soil conservation. Numerous studies have shown that no-till farming and cover crops can substantially reduce soil erosion, improve water infiltration, increase soil organic matter over time, and decrease nutrient runoff into nearby waterways. Those environmental benefits are among the best-supported aspects of regenerative agriculture. However, the magnitude of those benefits varies by climate, soil type, crop rotation, and management practices rather than occurring uniformly across every farm.

It was dirt then. The dirt moved from the field to the ditch and onto the road. And that’s when I said, “Enough. We got to stop.” And that’s when I really started researching, came up with the no-till, came up with the cover crops through the research. It’s amazing when you stop and think about the people that you meet on the journey and why do you meet certain people at certain times. And this is one of those stories. I met a lady from Wisconsin that taught me and 30 or 40 other farmers how to use the roller crimper to its fullest advantage. And when I learned how to use that roller crimper, the way she taught us to use it, it was Dr. Aaron Silva from the University of Wisconsin. That was my gateway to eliminating the chemistry because we didn’t need it any longer. We had a way to grow cover crop, roll them down with the roller crimper, suppress weeds and grow cash crops in that.

And that was the moment that it’s like, wow, we can do this. And that’s what got

Secretary Kennedy: Me. And so for people who are not farmers in the audience, a cover crop is usually a grassy crop that you plant before you plant the commercial crop –

Rick Clark: A cash crop.That

Secretary Kennedy: Is correct. Cash crop.

Rick Clark: That’s correct. It’s usually a plant and we call it the nickname’s a cocktail. So it’s a planned cocktail of species of multiple families of plants. That is correct.

Secretary Kennedy: It’s grass is made.

Rick Clark: Grass is in there.

Secretary Kennedy: It’s very, very tall grass that could be four or five feet high.

Rick Clark: That’s right. That’s right. Cereal rye, Italian rye grass, things like that. Brassicas, we have legumes in there.

Secretary Kennedy: And then when you cut those down, you cut them down at the time that you’re planting. So instead of planting on soil, you’re planting through a mat, a thick mat of grass. And that keeps the soil in place.

Rick Clark: Right. And it armors

Secretary Kennedy: The

Rick Clark: Soil.

Secretary Kennedy: And it armors the soil and it holds the moisture in the soil. That’s

Rick Clark: Right.

Secretary Kennedy: So you don’t get erosion.

Rick Clark: It builds resilience.

Secretary Kennedy: And it also means the weeds have a hard time growing.

Rick Clark: That’s right. That’s exactly right. Yeah. Everything you said is spot on. And it’s

Secretary Kennedy: Just like – So what month do you plant the cover crop? The

Rick Clark: Cover crop, it depends. If we’re going to have… The management practices are a little bit more intensive than the traditional conventional because I’ve got to kind of plan for two or three years out. So if I’m going to have corn in this field right here next year, I need to have probably a cereal grain growing in that field now. And then when we get to harvest in July and that cereal grain comes off, we will then have time to plant the cover crop that I need to raise the corn in the following year because I’m going to have different species for a cocktail to go to corn than I will for a species of a cocktail to go to soybeans. So it makes a difference when, but for the most part, following a cereal grain is August. The rest of the time it’s when you harvest the corn or the soybeans, which is going to be October for the most part.

Cover crops can suppress weeds by physically blocking sunlight and competing for resources, allowing some farmers to reduce herbicide use. However, they rarely eliminate weed management entirely. Many regenerative systems still rely on targeted herbicide applications, particularly during the transition period or when managing difficult perennial weeds.

And that’s when cereal rye goes in heavy. When you live in a state that gets cold and freezes, you’re limited to only a few species of plants that you can plant after a certain date of the year because it won’t do any good to plant them because they’re going to die in just a few weeks. Cereal rye is one of those plants that you’re talking about. It’s in the grass family, it’ll get six feet tall and we can roll that down, create a mat, suppress it, and then grow the cash crop.

Secretary Kennedy: So now you’ve just admitted that this is more work than just spraying chemicals.

Rick Clark: It’s a litle bit more work. Yeah. It’s just

Secretary Kennedy: An

Rick Clark: Easy

Secretary Kennedy: But. We’re not looking for more work. So what is the advantage in doing this? The advantage – Let’s just talk money.

Rick Clark: Yeah, let’s talk money. The advantage is real. When you leave the mindset that you have to maximize yield, that’s number one. You’ve got to leave that mindset because in this system at the beginning especially, you’re not going to be winning the state fair contest for yield. Okay? But where you’re going to shine is the reduction of inputs that you’re paying for upfront and all that risk. I mean, when a farmer in the Midwest goes out to farm, a conventional farmer that’s buying all these inputs, they usually have everything planted by Mother’s Day. So they have risked all of that money that they borrowed at the bank to buy those inputs is now at risk by May 10th. And now it’s up to the next of the growing season is all up to mother nature. Are we going to rain? Is it going to be good enough?

Are the weeds going to stay at bay? Do we have to spray again? Do we have enough fertilizer put on? All of these things they’re worrying about. I don’t have any input costs going in any of this except the cover crop we planted last fall. So the risk to reward is the simple fact of I don’t have all of those inputs purchased and lying out there at risk of what mother nature’s going to give to us.

One of the more compelling arguments for regenerative agriculture is economic rather than purely environmental. Several recent studies suggest that while yields may initially decline during transition, lower fertilizer, pesticide, and fuel costs can improve overall profitability for some farms. That said, economic outcomes vary considerably depending on local conditions, commodity prices, weather, and the farmer’s experience with regenerative management.

Secretary Kennedy: Okay.

Rick Clark: So we’re saving $2 million.

Secretary Kennedy: Okay. I want you to just go through the inputs. If you can remember the way that that was stacked.

Rick Clark: Yeah. I mean, when you start looking down the way to save money, diesel fuel.

Secretary Kennedy: Per acre, how much are you paying for diesel fuel? Let’s go through a per acre for each of these inputs. Oh,

Rick Clark: That’s going to be a tough one for me per

Secretary Kennedy: Acre. Okay. Well, you do. Do it for your 6,500 acres.

Rick Clark: Yeah. Yeah.

Secretary Kennedy: How much are you spending for diesel fuel and then go through each of the other inputs? Yeah.

Rick Clark: We are spending right now roughly 20,000 gallons at 40. We’re spending about $80,000 for 65,000 acres. So if you want to do that math, it’s a little more than a dollar per acre on the fuel and that is where we are now. That’s the savings. When we used to be here, we would double that number. So we would be closer to 350 to $4 an acre per fuel. Okay. Well, just

Secretary Kennedy: Talk about the cost of the whole farm.

Rick Clark: Let’s

Secretary Kennedy: Go through each of

Rick Clark: These. So right now the fuel, the nitrogen, the synthetic nitrogen, the map, the DAP, the potash, the lime and the chemistry is about $2.4 million of savings that we are not having the right of check for. And we’re saving that money in our pocket. We’re not putting those acids and those caustic items on our ground.

Clark’s reported savings reflect his own 6,500-acre operation and shouldn’t be viewed as typical for every farm. Large reductions in fertilizer and chemical costs have been documented in regenerative systems, but the scale of savings depends heavily on farm size, prior input use, regional fertilizer prices, and the extent to which a farmer successfully transitions to alternative management practices.

Secretary Kennedy: Which are destroying the microbiome.

Rick Clark: It’s destroying the microbiome and then as a result of that is creating food that’s not nutritious. So we then once you stop applying the salts and the acids and the chemicals and the insecticides and stop killing the microbial biome and the benefit of the microbial biome, you then create a healthy environment for now your cash crop to grow in. People say to me all the time, how can you raise non – GMO corn and not have any insecticide? Once you stop killing the beneficial species that prey on the rootworm that’s going to affect that corn plant without insecticide, you don’t need the insecticide because the beneficial is there to keep the balance. See, that’s the problem. Every farm… No, I can’t say every farm. Most of the farms across the Midwest are out of balance, meaning they are 90% bacterial microbial biome and eight or nine or 10% fungal.

You can’t do that. If you want to promote and build soil health, you need to switch from bacterial up here, fungal down here to this. You’ve got to get it into balance. And that’s what you can see happen to these soils immediately with a soil test. You don’t need fancy expensive equipment to validate that what we’re doing is correct.

Iowa does report relatively high cancer incidence compared with many other states. However, attributing that pattern primarily to agricultural chemical exposure would go beyond the available evidence. Cancer rates are influenced by numerous factors—including smoking history, aging populations, occupational exposures, screening practices, and environmental risks. Researchers continue to study potential links between specific pesticides and certain cancers, but no single explanation accounts for statewide cancer patterns.

Secretary Kennedy: So most farmers say no farmer wants the inputs. They don’t want them. And a lot of that’s tough that’s poison. Iowa now has the highest cancer rate in the country and so the farmers don’t want them and they’re expensive, but they say to transition to a regenerative farm or even organic farm takes years and I cannot afford to do it because I am living year to year.

Rick Clark: Yeah, I understand

Secretary Kennedy: That. So what do you say to those farmers?

Rick Clark: You have to get the proper teaching because the crossroads that we’re at now is the teaching. I mean, if you think about the number of acres that we want to move, how many farmers that is, that’s a lot of teachers. So we’ve got to get those teachers taught. Once we teach that teacher to teach the farmer how to properly implement these six principles of soil health, they then won’t be as scared to try it because somebody ahead of them has done what they’re trying to teach them.

Secretary Kennedy: And can they make money in the first

Rick Clark: Year? They can. They can. I mean, I got to be careful, like we all do, we got to be careful what we say or what we promise, but I’m pretty confident that we could go just about anywhere in the United States and reduce inputs by 30% tomorrow and not see a change in profitability. I didn’t say yield. I said change in profitability. There’ll be more profitable. So when we think about that and now we’re at a part in the journey for me where this is all about two major things. This is all about human health and it’s all about soil health. And let me talk about human health for a minute. Here’s how I look at human health. There’s two ways to look at it. The one way is the way everybody looks at it, which is exactly right. We got to increase nutrient density of the food we’re producing and I think another thing that people don’t take, let’s take that a step further.

Clark suggests that most farms could reduce inputs by 30% without sacrificing profitability. While many agronomists believe opportunities exist to improve input efficiency, there is currently no national evidence that this benchmark can be achieved on most U.S. farms. The statement should be viewed as an informed opinion based on Clark’s experience rather than an established scientific conclusion.

If we could increase the amount of nutrient density in the food we’re producing, you don’t need to feed as much food to someone to get the amount of nutrients that we’re getting. They could get half of that. So now go somewhere like a third world country or somewhere where they really need healthy food to take anything they could get ahold of. You now just need a smaller portion to give them a bigger bag of protein and nutrients. That’s one way to look at it. The other way to look at human health is look at what the farmer has been asked to do for the last 30 years. A lot of these products have skull and crossbones on them. That’s death. It’s danger. So we have dumped the farmers into an environment where they have to use these products. I look at human health as saving the health of my team members and my family, my grandchildren, my daughters, my wife.

Whether regenerative agriculture consistently produces more nutritious food remains an active area of research. Some studies have reported higher concentrations of certain vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals in crops grown under regenerative systems, while others find little or no difference. At present, the evidence is promising but not yet conclusive enough to state that regenerative foods are uniformly more nutritious.

I mean, Bobby, when I look back at our family tree, it’s cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer, diabetes, diabetes, diabetes, diet. Why? I got a 24 year old nephew at non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It’s all coming back to what we all feel like is the answer.

Clark’s personal experience reflects concerns shared by many farming families regarding chemical exposure. Certain agricultural pesticides have been associated with increased risks of diseases such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma in occupational studies. However, family histories of cancer and diabetes result from a complex interaction of genetics, lifestyle, environmental exposures, and aging. Individual experiences cannot establish cause and effect.

Secretary Kennedy: And how is the soil on your farm now?

Rick Clark: The soil on our farm, I feel like is very… It’s tilthy. It’s alive. I think we had, I don’t know, it’s maybe been three years now. Our Indiana state soil health specialist came and she wanted to do some infiltration tests and she wanted to do some aggregate stability. And I think our water infiltration was 20 inches an hour and our earthworm counts were between 1.6 and 1.7 million earthworms per acre and aggregate stability was 10 inches deep and aggregate stability is what it sounds like it is. It’s when the soil forms aggregates on the root structures or in the profile of the soil. And as you create that aggregate stability, just envision a glass jar filled with marbles and you’ve got all that pour space in there that can now hold oxygen and water. And that’s why you want to increase that so when it rains, you get every last drop goes in and is stored in that profile.

Unlike some broader health claims, the soil measurements discussed here—including infiltration rates, earthworm populations, and aggregate stability—are standard indicators used by soil scientists to assess soil function. Improvements in these measures have been repeatedly documented in long-term studies of regenerative and conservation agriculture.

Now when you have that armor on the soil that you talked about earlier, you are now building resilience to whatever the wrath of mother nature wants to give us. Now we got to be careful because I can only take so much wrath. I mean, we’ve been in a weather environment in the last three years where we are getting these little mini micro grouts. I don’t know what the term for it is. We’ll go eight, nine weeks with no rain and 92, 93, 94 degrees and it will suck the life out of everything. Now our conventional neighbors, they’re wilting up pretty quick. We can hang with them for several weeks, but I can’t take that kind of just coming right at you. So we have to be careful sometimes how we… Is our system resilient? Yes, it is, but it can only handle so much just like you and I can. We’re going to handle so much.

Research generally supports the idea that healthier soils with greater organic matter retain water more effectively and can improve resilience during moderate droughts and heavy rainfall. Clark also appropriately acknowledges an important limitation: no farming system can fully overcome prolonged extreme weather events, which are becoming more common as the climate changes.

Secretary Kennedy: Yeah. I mean, a lot of this system was created by the federal government. It wasn’t created by the farmers. The farmers want markets. They don’t want federal handouts. They don’t want inputs. We’ve created a system for them that has locked them into this model, this paradigm. What can we do in the federal government to change that?

Rick Clark: Well, you’ve already started. You and Secretary Rollins have started with the regenerative rollout, 700 a million and I think it’s with some other add-ons, it’s up to a billion dollar. That’s the start. And I couldn’t believe the number of people that you said had signed up for that.

Secretary Kennedy: 13,000 applicants who want to do what you’ve done transition.

Rick Clark: That right there tells you you’re doing the right thing. You didn’t have enough money for the need.

Secretary Kennedy: You don’t have enough money.

Rick Clark: Yeah. That tells you you’re doing it right. So there’s number one, get some more money allocated across all the agencies. But I really, when I think of this as… Now you got to remember, I haven’t taken crop insurance now for seven years. I don’t need to. I believe in our system, I believe what it can give back. We don’t need that crop insurance. So I’m a little outdated on what the current rules are, but I think we need to get down to the level of RMA and we need to create the changes there because the farmers are scared to death to try something because Mr. Kennedy, I can’t try that because if I try that, it’s going to knock me out of being able to take multipayro crop insurance. And for one, I don’t want that risk. And for two, almost every financial lender has a line item on their agreement, “You’re going to take crop insurance or we’re not going to give you the loan this year.” So it’s just the old adage of being on the treadmill and can’t get off.

That’s where we are. So I like the approach of going through RMA, changing rules, making it easier for the farmers to implement these practices and they won’t get discounted or kicked out of the multipayal crop insurance. I’d love to see that all go away someday. I don’t know if that ever will happen. And again, and another thing I like to talk about if I could throw this in, I think too many times we look at things as all or noth. If we can’t get every farmer to do this, it’s not going to be a success. I don’t agree with that. If you were to move the needle on 30% of the acres in the United States, it’s roughly 270, 250, 270 million acres. And I’m going to tell you right now, we’ve helped teach a lot of people. We’ve done a lot of consulting. I’ve never had one person say, “I wish I never would have done that.”

Crop insurance has become one of the central policy debates surrounding regenerative agriculture. Many farmers argue that existing insurance rules can unintentionally discourage experimentation with alternative farming practices. Policymakers across multiple administrations have explored reforms aimed at reducing those barriers, although significant changes remain under discussion.

But almost every one of them says, “Why didn’t we do that 10 years ago?” We just got to show them the tools and how do we do this properly.

Secretary Kennedy: Well, thank you very much, Rick Clark. Thank you. It’s been a joy as always to be.

Rick Clark: Thank you. Appreciate it. Produced by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Rick Clark presents one of the most optimistic visions of regenerative agriculture. Many of his observations about soil conservation, erosion reduction, water infiltration, and lower input costs align with a growing body of scientific evidence. Other claims, including broad improvements in human nutrition, cancer prevention, or nationwide profitability gains, remain areas of active research rather than settled science.

For public health professionals, perhaps the most important takeaway is that agriculture should not be viewed simply as food production. Farming practices influence environmental quality, water resources, occupational health, climate resilience, and ultimately population health. As regenerative agriculture continues to expand, careful evaluation, not ideology, will be essential to understanding where these approaches deliver the greatest benefits and where important questions remain.