Relational values in regenerative agriculture: a systematic review and checklist for transformative potential

Modern agriculture has increased yields but degraded socio-ecological systems all over the world. Consequently, advocates of regenerative agriculture (RA) aim to regenerate land and transform food systems. We undertook a systematic literature review of 104 peer-reviewed articles to determine how relational values (RVs) might be contributing to RA. RVs are values that emerge from specific human-nature relationships or meaningful relationships between people that happen in nature. Cultivating these values could inspire mindset shifts that support agricultural transformations. This review was guided by our research questions: (1) to what extent have RVs been implicitly or explicitly examined across the RA literature? (2) What implications might RVs have for the transformative potential of RA? Building on prior research, we explored salient articulations of RVs – identity through relationships; good life; sense of place; care; and human connections through nature. The review highlighted the role of Indigenous knowledges in RA; sustaining conditions for RVs; and the valuing of life supporting processes in RA. Our results reflect a distinction between productivist framings of RA that primarily emphasise instrumental values and relational framings of RA that foreground RVs but embrace value pluralism. We propose this distinction is more significant to RA’s transformative potential than the process-outcomes distinction. We suggest that conceptualisations of RA are more likely to contribute to sustainability transformations if they mobilise the (often latently held) RVs evident in the RA literature. Based on these results we develop checking questions for RA advocates to reflexively assess whether key actors are engaged in relational RA.