Welcome to the Regenerative Organic Hub’s Benchmarking Library! Benchmarking is the process of setting initial reference points for your farm and understanding the impact of farm management decisions. Benchmarking allows farmers to identify effective land management practices and make on-farm decisions that will regenerate their soil.
There are many reasons to establish a benchmark on your farm, but the goal is usually the same: it is to measure progress in key areas like carbon sequestration, water retention, and soil fertility. In a regenerative organic setting, benchmarks enable farmers to collaborate and share their stories on what works best, creating a community-driven model of continuous improvement.
Explore one of our curated step-by-step learning journeys, or scroll below to browse or search for benchmarking tools to support you wherever you are on your regenerative organic journey!
Learning Journeys
Our learning journeys are curated collections of educational content, designed to help you acquire knowledge and skills on a specific topic. To use the learning journeys to their full benefit, please follow along the steps detailed in each learning journey.
Start a learning journey and dive deeper into one of these regenerative organic topics:
Every tool in the Benchmarking Library below involves the discussion of one or more of the ecological processes. Below is a legend of icons to help you discover how each tool relates to the unique processes that are key characteristics of regenerative organic agriculture.
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Cover Crop, Cropping/Rotations, Mineral/Nutrient Cycle, Water Cycle
This guide to measuring and interpreting ground cover percentage provides the details of the tools required and the steps to follow for assessing ground cover in your own fields.
"The Soil Organic Matter Indicator combines two separate indicator models - the Soil Organic Carbon Change Indicator and the Relative Soil Organic Carbon Indicator – to assess how organic carbon levels in Canadian agricultural soils are changing over time."
"This review presents recent developments in different destructive and nondestructive Brix measurement techniques focused on fruits, vegetables, and beverages."
"The 2020 Prairie Cover Crop Survey was developed to provide information to farmers, agronomists, researchers, policy makers, and government organizations that will play an important role in the future of cover crops for the Canadian Prairies."
"The soil health analysis report presents measured values/results, interpretive
ratings/scores, constraints and suggestions identified by soil health indicators."
"The Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) Soil Health and Land Management Pillar requires soil testing, both lab tests and field tests, every three years. This document provides guidance on the
requirements for those tests. Although soil testing is required, certification decisions will not be based on soil testing improvements or results."
