Indigenous farming practices are the trendy new agricultural craze sweeping both sides of the political aisle. The fight is over how to define them.

California farming regulators like “regenerative agriculture” for its potential to boost soil health, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration. President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has name-checked it as part of his argument that conventional production methods are making Americans sick.

But as California contemplates steering more state funding toward it, a definition has proven elusive. The state Board of Food and Agriculture voted … to postpone adopting a draft definition….

“We want to be careful of what we’re setting out in the first definition,” California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary Karen Ross said at the meeting.

The challenge: Making the definition broad enough to get people on board, but narrow enough so that it actually means something.

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