Organic or Regenerative? The Difference (and why farmers roll their eyes at the debate)

This question comes up a lot: “Is regenerative just organic with better marketing?”

And honestly… I get it. If you’re standing in the grocery aisle staring at two labels that both sound like they’re trying to save the planet, it can feel like one of them is just the other one wearing a nicer jacket.

At Grow and with our service dApp Kohima, we get asked this all the time. And I’ll admit, even before I got into this world, I was confused too. The terms get tossed around like they’re interchangeable, and from the outside they sound like they’re promising the same thing.

What clarified it for me wasn’t another definition. It was talking with the farmers we design and implement projects with.

Because farmers don’t experience “organic” and “regenerative” as abstract concepts. They experience them as constraints, trade-offs, and results… across seasons, markets, and weather that does not care about your branding strategy.

Here’s the cleanest way I can put it:

Organic is process-based. Regenerative is outcome-based.

Organic: the rulebook

Organic farming is built around clear, strict standards (often legally defined and certified). It’s largely focused on what you avoid:

synthetic pesticides and fertilisers

GMOs

a long list of prohibited inputs and practices

That matters, because it creates a shared baseline. It makes certain shortcuts simply off limits.

And it shapes real on-farm decisions: more rotations, biological fertility, composts, and ecological pest management. Organic is, in many ways, a commitment to guardrails.

Regenerative: the “is this actually working?” test

Regenerative agriculture starts from a different question:

Is the land getting better?

It’s a holistic approach aimed at actively improving soil health, biodiversity, water function, and ecosystem resilience, while also strengthening long-term farm viability (which, by the way, is what supply chains say they want when they talk about “security”).

Regenerative often uses organic principles, but it doesn’t have one universal definition or certification that applies everywhere. That flexibility can be brilliant across different contexts and crops.

It’s also why “regenerative” can be easier to misuse or greenwash. Because if there isn’t a shared standard, anyone can slap the label on and hope nobody asks for receipts.

The metaphor that makes it click

Organic is the rulebook. Regenerative is the scoreboard.

The rulebook tells you what you can’t do.

The scoreboard tells you what’s changing.

So instead of only asking, “What inputs did you avoid?”, regenerative asks, “What’s improving over time?”

Things like:

soil cover and living roots

infiltration and water holding

soil organic matter trends

biodiversity indicators

resilience in droughts, floods, and weird seasons that used to be rare and are now just… Tuesday

In other words: are you building a system that gets stronger year after year?

Where people get tangled: the overlap

This is the bit that confuses everyone, because it’s true:

Many regenerative farms incorporate organic practices.

Many organic farms become deeply regenerative when they add or deepen soil-building methods like cover cropping, reduced tillage/no-till where appropriate, diversified rotations, and habitat for biodiversity.

So the real question isn’t “organic or regenerative.”

It’s this:

What are you measuring to prove improvement… and what guardrails are you using to prevent harm along the way?

Because if you’ve got rules but no results, you’re just compliant.

And if you’ve got big promises but no proof, you’re just… marketing.

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