Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
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.
Nathanael Siemens wants to bring regenerative and organic cotton to the San Joaquin Valley. He spends his mornings just walking the fields, trying to figure out what to do next, how to overcome the challenges that he faces daily from weed control to irrigation to simply getting a hold of enough seeds.
If we look at the whole board, we can see numerous opportunities to work together — across economic sectors, geographic locations, and local-to-national scales — to reduce emissions, create carbon sinks, restore healthy ecosystems, create jobs and local economic benefits, improve human wellbeing, and stop global warming.
People around the world are hard at work creating diverse, living versions of the farms of the future. As a way of life, it would be nice to think that it could really catch on, and one day be accessible to most of us.
My overriding (and underlying) point is that Agriculture and Land Use (/abuse) are fundamental to everything else and they are not given a fraction of the attention they deserve
Alison is equally dedicated to breeding preservation, quality wool production, pasture management, community building, agricultural education, and being a business owner. She manages to attend to each priority with grace and aplomb.
The idea behind regenerative farming is simple and ancient: The mother soil, which nurtures the harvest, in turn has to be nurtured and protected.
Front man for the sustainable/regenerative farming movement, Joel Salatin, returns to the podcast this week.
Right at the crook of California, nestled between state lines like a secret, is a valley: and in that valley, at her own intersection of worlds, stands a woman.
Since we live in an era of big problems, we tend to spend our time thinking of big solutions. Thinking big, however, can have a paralyzing effect on taking action.
Why GMO? How many people could all the empty yards in a suburban block feed if they were put to use growing food?
Natural farming, permaculture, regenerative agriculture, agroecology – there are many versions of sustainable agriculture, but the common thread they all tackle is the need to take better care of our soil and the environments in which we grow food.
