Desertification: Arid and semi-arid regions are fragile ecosystems, and when natural vegetation (such as grasslands and shrub-lands) decreases and eventually dies out, the process is known as desertification. Desertified ecosystems are hard to restore effectively due to traditionally low rainfall. 

Ecosystem Restoration: When humans intervene to assist the recovery of an ecosystem or habitat that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed, it is known as ecosystem restoration. This “intervention” can include restoring natural resources like water, vegetation, and wildlife to an area, or implementing initiatives to mitigate climate change. 

Soil Health: Healthy soil—a teaspoon of which contains up to 6 million microorganism—is key for several essential land, water and air ecosystem processes including water capture, pollination, climate resiliency, increased biodiversity and carbon sequestration. Plants that flourish in healthy soil have better flavor and nutrition. 

Organic Agriculture: A farming system that restricts the use of synthetic pesticides, fertilizers, and genetically modified organisms in favor of natural biological processes and mechanical methods. The USDA has formal standards that farmers must comply with in order to become certified organic.

Sustainable Agriculture: The term “sustainable” has evolved in meaning over time. Today it largely means practices that maintain the ecological status quo without doing further harm to the environment and thus compromising future generations. The ability to continue important functions indefinitely without a decline in quality. This includes avoiding the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain ecological balance. 

Regenerative Agriculture: A more holistic approach that goes beyond “sustainability,” regenerative agriculture seeks to restore and improve systems so that the land that thrives in the face of change and positive ecological gains are made every year. This includes using agricultural and grazing practices in alignment with natural systems that rebuild soil organic matter and restore degraded soil biodiversity. This process also moves carbon from the atmosphere back into our soils (carbon drawdown). Indigenous cultures have been interacting with nature in a similar way for thousands of years but modern regenerative agriculture can make additional successful use of new sciences and observations to improve upon this foundation.

Climate Resilient Agriculture (or Climate Smart Agriculture): A multi-pronged approach to managing landscapes so they are less vulnerable and more resilient or adaptable to climate change. This model also aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In order for CRA to be effective, it must be able to contribute to broader economic growth, food production and poverty reduction. 

Water Smart Agriculture: With the goal of reversing desertification and making soil more resilient in the face of future droughts, this approach to agriculture focuses on improving water management. By effectively harvesting, storing, and using water—and minimizing impacts to downstream sites and waterways—this model reduces evaporation, thus replenishing soil with organic matter and rich microbial life forms, making it a more fertile source of nutrition for plants. The Rodale Institute estimates that well managed regenerative organic fields can recharge groundwater supplies up to 20 percent. 

Carbon Drawdown: A milestone in reversing climate change and eventually reducing global average temperatures, carbon drawdown is the process of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and locking it away for decades or centuries in plants, soils, oceans, rocks, saline aquifers, depleted oil wells, or other long-lived products. The ultimate goal is to reach climate drawdown, which refers to the future point in time when levels of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline. 

Carbon Negative: When a company nets less than zero carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gasses, or offsets more carbon than what it contributes to the environment. Ideally this is achieved through carbon insetting, avoidance, or sequestration within the value chain itself. 

Carbon Insetting: Instead of buying carbon offsetting credits from external markets, carbon insetting is when a company offsets carbon via projects that take place within their own value chain. When this happens, the company is taking direct responsibility for their emissions and improving sustainable management practices directly at the source.

Cultivated Agaves: Agaves planted by humans in rows in tilled soil. 

Semi-wild or Semi-cultivated: Wild agave varieties that humans grow from seed then plant in a natural environment. These plants are then left alone to flourish.  

Wild Agaves: Plants that grow naturally in the ecosystem without human assistance or intervention.

Agavesse Agaves: Agaves that have been grown from seed or harvested as pups and then planted in a key-line water capture berm system within desertified/degraded land to jumpstart ecosystem and soil restoration. Agavesse agaves are as close to wild agaves as you can get.

Circular Economy: As an alternative to linear economies (where raw materials are transformed into products then discarded as waste), a circular economy is a closed-loop approach where materials are less resource intensive, use of materials is reduced, and goods are shared, reused, upcycled, refurbished, or recycled into something new instead of wasted. The goal is to reduce the consumption of finite material resources. Many view this system as “cradle-to-cradle” vs. “cradle-to-grave.”

Zero-Waste: Part of a cradle-to-cradle economy, zero-waste is a whole systems approach to repurposing and reusing materials. The goal is to prevent trash from entering the environment. 

Biocultural Heritage: The interconnected relationship between Indigenous people (and their biological and cultural traditions, practices, and knowledge) and the natural environment. Biocultural heritage reflects the ancestral rights of Indigenous peoples over the biodiversity they have conserved for generations, plus the responsibility to continue to conserve biodiversity for future generations.

Text by Sophia Trapp