By Tracy L. Barnett, Esperanza Project
High up in the southern sierra of Mexico’s state of Oaxaca, an innovative nonprofit business inspired by Mohandas Gandhi is helping Indigenous Zapotec families to weather the economic storm that COVID-19 has brought to the Mexican countryside.
By Nicholas Wenner, Adrian Rodrigues, Fibershed
Cooperative structures like the Carolina Textile District provide an inspirational example of the type of regional networks that could grow and flourish throughout the country.
By Rebecca Burgess, Fibershed
The novel Coronavirus disease Covid-19 is amplifying both the ways that our cultural and economic lives are durable and resilient, and the many, many ways in which we are utterly vulnerable and precarious.
By Jess Daniels, Fibershed
This is a moment when our local producers and workers are providing vital services, so how can we do our part to strengthen local systems within our fibershed, while sheltering in place? We invite you to join us by engaging with practices, key learnings, and actions so that together we can rebuild an economy rooted in right livelihoods, regional manufacturing, and material production that regenerates soil health.
By Fibershed staff, Fibershed
Right now, your dollars are a lifeline for many small businesses and workers. Who can you help stay afloat during this time? We want to share direct opportunities for those who are able to make purchases for essential needs as well as enjoyment, and we also are including resources for those already experiencing economic insecurity.
By Nicholas Wenner, Fibershed
Bast fiber plants have proven their value throughout tens of thousands of years of relationship with humans. Their cultivation can be rooted in modern agroecological methods and offers a way to meet material needs with beautiful, natural textiles with a range of properties from breathability to biodegradation.
By Simon Fairlie, The Land Magazine
In the USA, 98 percent of all garments are now imported, compared with just five percent in 1965. Fibershed is a welcome plea for a movement to relocalize textile production, similar to that which has revived demand for local foods over the last 20 years.
By Nicholas Wenner, Shannon Welsh, Sandy Fisher, Fibershed
Two groups on the West Coast, Chico Flax in the Sacramento Valley of California and Fibrevolution in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, are now leading the revitalization of the flax textile industry in the region. Groups in other regions of North America, such as the Cleveland Flax Project in the Rust Belt Fibershed, are also doing this work.
By Nicholas Wenner, Fibershed
Encouraged by the Federal legalization of hemp in 2018, Fibershed has continued research into the versatile crop this year, deepening understanding of the plant and the fiber, prototyping hemp textile production in Northern California, supporting agroecological trials, and charting a path forward for weaving hemp into the region.
By Courtney White, Resilience.org
Fibersheds put it all together into a practical, natural, and hopeful whole. It's based in the philosophy that nature still knows best, whether it involves the role of animals on the land, promoting life in the soil, keeping the ground covered with plants, building up soil carbon, generating local jobs, and using ingredients sourced from nature.
By Tyler Jenkins, Fibershed
Early in 2019, we teamed up with textile artist Katie Berman and artist and designer Courtney Lockemer on the idea of organizing an art show utilizing hemp grown from the previous year’s field trial with local artists.
By Esha Chhabra, Jess Daniels, Fibershed
Looking across the landscape, we see at least six key approaches to increasing soil carbon and so much more: integrating animals, rotating crops, building biodiversity with plantings like hedgerows, conserving soil with cover cropping, boosting soil fertility with fungal-dominated compost, and eventually finding methods for no-till cotton that do not depend on synthetic chemistry.