Regenerating Soil
Websites
- Lawn to Garden: A comprehensive guide to the sheet mulch process
This website explains best practices for improving the soil through gardening, including not only getting started with sheet mulching, but also planting and maintenance. Lots of helpful information and videos, although in WV we’re not eligible for the rebates discussed here.
- Regenerative Agriculture and the soil carbon solution For access to a 2020 white paper from Rodale Institute.
- An up-to-date website based on the book Drawdown:The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Composed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken that offers research results on key levers for drawing down CO2. Links to an important publication by the group called Farming Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis.
- Biodiversity for a Livable Climate; Restoring Ecosystems to Reverse Global Warming: Through education, policy and outreach, Bio4Climate promotes the power of the natural world to stabilize the climate and to restore biodiversity to ecosystems worldwide. The website offers extensive videos and a compendium of resources on this topic based on researched presentations from scientists and practitioners around the world.
- Kiss the Ground offers excellent introductory videos on the importance of soil regeneration, as well as classes for farmers and those who want to share the soil story.
- Chatting with a Sustainable Farming Giant. Excellent podcast interview with highly successful farmer Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, who describes how to be a “partner in the healing” of the land and whose goal is “to make obsolete the whole factory farming system”.
- Watershed Approach Step One - Grow A Living Soil Sponge: Issues in supporting the development of healthy soil.
- Soil Sponge: Healthy Soil Helpful PowerPoint to help us understand the basics of soil regeneration and the harm caused by current practices.
Books
- Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard, by Doug Tallamy. (Timber Press, 2020.) Learn how to use your lawn space to provide for wildlife and foster biodiversity, by planting natives to create conservation corridors. See also the companion website Homegrown National Park.
- The Reindeer Chronicles: And Other Inspiring Stories of Working with Nature to Heal the Earth, by Judith Schwartz. (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2020.) Schwartz introduces us to people around the world who are restoring degraded lands at any scale, in any climate, and often at minimal cost, by embracing an understanding of how a given landscape “works” and allying with nature’s inherent inclination to heal.
- Kiss the Ground: How the Food You Eat Can Reverse Climate Change, Heal Your Body & Ultimately Save Our World, by Josh Tickell. Enliven Books: 2017. Discover the hidden power soil has to reverse climate change, and how a regenerative farming diet not only delivers us better health and wellness, but also rebuilds our most precious resource--the very ground that feeds us.
- Braiding Sweetgrass : Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Penguin: 2013. An inspired weaving of indigenous knowledge, plant science, and personal narrative from a distinguished professor of science and a Native American.
- Cows Save the Planet and Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth, by Judith D. Schwartz, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013. The author takes us on a journey beneath our feet and around the world and shows us the pivotal role that soil can play in restoring our planet.
- Water in Plain Sight: Hope for a Thirsty World, by Judith D. Schwartz. St. Martin's Press, 2016.
- Restoration Agriculture; Real-World Permaculture for Farmers, by Mark Shepard. Acres, 2013.
Movie(s)
- Kiss the Ground (movie) 2020. Using compelling graphics and visuals, along with striking NASA and NOAA footage, the film artfully illustrates how, by drawing down atmospheric carbon, soil is the missing piece of the climate puzzle.
