Is the Regenerative Feedstock Rule a Breakthrough for Soil Health or Business as Usual?
Do the words “regenerative” and “biofuels” go together? According to the USDA, they do. On June 29, 2026, the USDA’s Energy and Environmental Policy Office released the final “Technical Guidelines for the Production of Regenerative Agricultural Biofuel Feedstocks,” which “establishes guidelines for quantifying, reporting, and verifying the carbon intensity (CI) associated with the production of regenerative biofuel feedstock commodity crops grown in the United States.”
If implemented as described in the final rule, the program will reward farmers who use regenerative practices by giving tax credits to ethanol or other biofuels plants, which will then pass the savings on to farmers by paying higher prices for grain. Additional steps must be taken by the Internal Revenue Service and Department of Energy before farmers can start collecting money from the program.
The regenerative feedstock rule will require farmers to keep records of their nutrient management and tillage practices, then use a computer model to calculate whether those practices qualify as “low-carbon agriculture.” The biggest change between the final rule and the interim version is that the phrase “climate-smart” has been replaced with “low-carbon.”
Which practices qualify as “low-carbon”? Reduced tillage, no-till, cover crops, and lower applications of nitrogen, mostly. Carbon credits for using these practices are calculated using a model, not by making any on-field measurements of soil carbon or soil health indicators. Farmers must sell their crops directly to a biofuel plant to qualify for higher prices.
Not surprisingly, most of the favorable comments on the rule are from biofuel and commodity crop trade organizations. “Biofuels production will now be the single biggest driver of regenerative ag practices that will improve water quality throughout rural America,” the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association predicts.
However, it’s not clear that the new guidelines will actually do much to improve soil health. According to AgWeb, Iowa farmer Mitchell Hora “calculates that could mean $40 per acre with no practice change required.” In other words, farmers who are selling to ethanol plants may be able to get a little more for their crops—without changing anything about their management practices.
Reducing tillage and nitrogen fertilizer use is certainly commendable, but eco-farmers should be concerned about how freely the USDA and trade organizations are using the word “regenerative” to apply to business-as-usual conventional agriculture. There is no mention in this rule of soil biology, soil aggregation, reducing pesticide use, increasing diversity, integrating crops and livestock, or many other practices eco-farmers associate with the term “regenerative.”
If this is a harbinger of what the USDA’s proposed regenerative certification standards might look like, it’s very possible that they may mean nothing at all. Farmers who actually care about regenerating degraded soils will either have to fight for more stricter definitions of regenerative or use words that truly reflect eco-agriculture’s goals—like organic.
