Year: 2026 | Month: June | Volume 13 | Issue 1
Beyond Yield: Integrating Ecosystem Services and Digital Regenerative Agriculture for Sustainable Food Systems
Prithusayak Mondal1*
Amrita Kumar Sarkar2
Jayashree Dey Sarkar3
4
Riti Chatterjee5
Gunja Kumari1
Deb Prasad Ray6 and Tarun Paul7
DOI:10.30954/2347-9655.01.2026.16
Abstract:
Agriculture is increasingly challenged by climate change, land degradation, biodiversity loss, and declining ecosystem resilience, exposing the limitations of productivity-centric farming systems. Conservation Agriculture (CA) has provided a robust framework for resource conservation through minimum soil disturbance, permanent soil cover, and crop diversification. More recently, Regenerative Agriculture (RA) has emerged as an outcome-oriented approach that seeks to restore ecosystem functions, enhance biodiversity, and strengthen climate resilience. However, the relationship between CA and RA remains conceptually unresolved. Here, we argue that ecosystem services provide the missing link between these two frameworks. Moving beyond yield as the dominant indicator of success, we propose that soil carbon dynamics, biodiversity conservation, water regulation, nutrient cycling, and pollination support should serve as core metrics for evaluating agricultural sustainability. We further highlight the emergence of Digital Regenerative Agriculture, in which artificial intelligence, remote sensing, sensor networks, and digital soil monitoring enable the quantification and optimization of ecosystem outcomes at unprecedented scales. Despite growing enthusiasm, significant challenges remain, including inconsistent definitions, uncertain carbon sequestration estimates, regional variability, adoption constraints, and the risk of greenwashing. We contend that the future of sustainable agriculture lies not in choosing between conservation and regenerative paradigms, but in integrating both within ecosystem-service-based and digitally enabled management frameworks. Such a transition may represent a fundamental shift toward resilient, measurable, and climate-adaptive food systems. Ecosystem-service assessment coupled with digital regenerative agriculture provides a new framework for evaluating agricultural sustainability.
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