Regenerative farming has quickly become one of agriculture’s trendiest concepts. It has long featured in conference programmes and industry reports, and it’s now making its way onto product packaging and restaurant menus up and down the UK.

Yet for a term that is so fashionable, it remains surprisingly hard to define, with no agreed-upon meaning – legal or otherwise.

According to Mark Brooking, chief impact officer at dairy co-op First Milk, that’s precisely the point. “Rather than a fixed set of rules”, regenerative farming is “a principles-based approach farmers adapt to their own systems”, he says. “It’s about improving soil function (see box, p34), water infiltration and nutrient cycling so farms become more resilient, productive and less reliant on external inputs.”