Soil health management practices in regenerative agriculture benefit soil invertebrates and the broader food web in ways that have direct animal welfare significance.
Soil health practices have animal welfare implications for the billions of invertebrates living in agricultural soils. Conventional tillage physically destroys soil invertebrate communities, killing earthworms and other organisms directly and disrupting the habitat structure that supports them. No-till agriculture, cover cropping, and reduced soil disturbance maintain living soil communities that support the welfare of invertebrates whose sentience is uncertain but cannot be dismissed at scale. The aggregate welfare significance of soil invertebrate populations across agricultural landscapes is potentially enormous given the numbers involved. Regenerative agriculture practices that improve soil health may provide welfare benefits at a scale rarely recognized in welfare discussions.