Ohio Congressman and Democratic Party presidential candidate Tim Ryan held a meet-and-greet in Indianola Friday afternoon at the Pizza Ranch, talking with potential caucus-goers and a summer camp of foreign exchange students from China. Ryan took questions on a variety of subjects, including education, healthcare, and climate change, and tells KNIA News one of his biggest policy moves is to move away from industrial farming, towards a regenerative agriculture system.

“From my conversations with experts in the field, it won’t take long to get traditional industrial farms of the ag industry today, heavy fertilizer use, heavy pesticide use, to a regenerative ag system. To where within a year or two, those farms are already starting to make money, because they reduce the inputs that they have to put in to industrial farming.”

Regenerative Agriculture is a system of farming principles and practices that increases biodiversity, enriches soils, improves watersheds, and enhances ecosystem services. Regenerative Agriculture aims to capture carbon in soil and aboveground biomass, reversing current global trends of atmospheric accumulation.