Regenerate Earth

Ryland Engelhart co-founder at Kiss the Ground and Josh Whiton, founder of MakeSoil say YES! Soil is a living organism and there is a strong connection between soil, human, and planetary health.

Living Soil, Unbroken Ground, The Regenerative Secret, Farmers Footprint from Kiss the Ground, the Savory Institute and more.

Watch the interview with Ryland and Josh below!

• Hear about Kiss the Ground’s soil advocacy, farmland, and business programs as well as films, books and educational resources.
• Learn how your food choices as well as community action can transform your health and spirit while healing the planet.
• Discover how you can be part of a citizen soil movement that elevates your consciousness by the simple yet profound act of making soil together.
• Join us in discovering fresh perspectives and the weaving together of regenerative solutions.

A few key insights in the conversation:

1. Truly seeing ourselves as an integral part of nature’s living systems, designing our lives in a harmony with nature and structuring a new story mythology.
2. As a keystone species, humans can catalyze a beautification, renewal and enhancement for the carrying capacity of mother nature.
3.   Becoming stewards of the land through regenerative agricultural practices.
4. Building resilient community.
5. Discovering pathways in becoming a soil maker, carbon farmer, soil advocate and educator.
6. Re-patterning our neurology to recognize living systems.

Facts: The world will run out of top soil in 60 years. Our soils support 95% of all food production, and by 2060, our soils will be asked to give us as much food as we have consumed in the last 500 years. Soil filters our water. Soil is one of our most cost-effective reservoirs for sequestering carbon. When cared for properly, soil  has the potential to sequester much of the carbon dioxide that humans have emitted into the atmosphere.

Soil is our foundation for biodiversity. Millions of tones of food and waste accumulate in our landfills each year that could turned into nourishing life-giving soil. Learn how we can “sequester” (store) carbon from our atmosphere, where it is harmful, and pull it back into the earth, where it belongs, through regenerative agriculture, composting, and other land management practices.

Industrial farming systems effectively “mine” soils, decarbonizing them. In the process, it destroys forests and releases 44–57 percent of all climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide). 467 billion tones of carbon has been released from the soil into the atmosphere, and we urgently need to return that carbon to the soil and start replenishing the humus in order to reverse the impact.

We can potentially draw a critical mass of 200–250 billion tons of carbon from the earth’s atmosphere over the next 25 years.

• Organic and biodynamic farming  methods are superior to conventional farming, sequestering 12.8% and 9.4% more carbon per acre respectively than conventional farming
• Biodynamic farming provides superior crops both in volume and increased density of nutrients. Biodynamic farms are also completely self-sustaining. This self-sustainability is what sets biodynamic farms apart from organic farms
• Agricultural fertilizer, especially the nitrogen component, is the greatest contributor to air pollution in much of the U.S., China and Russia; excess fertilizer runoff is also one of the largest contributors to groundwater and ocean pollution
• Conventional agriculture, due to its heavy use of potable water for irrigation, is also a primary cause of water scarcity around the world, as aquifers once thought to be inexhaustible are being drained faster than they can refill
• One-third of Earth’s soil is acutely degraded as a result of tilling and heavy chemical use, which remove carbon from the soil and destroy the microbial balance in the soil responsible for plant nutrition and growth

Be part of the solution by joining with scientists, farmers, ranchers, activists, and policy makers in a global movement toward a new type of agriculture called “regenerative farming” that increases soil life, stores water and sequesters CO2.

Regeneration International: Education. Network Building. Policy Work. Mission: To promote, facilitate and accelerate the global transition to regenerative food, farming and land management for the purpose of restoring climate stability, ending world hunger and rebuilding deteriorated social, ecological and economic systems. Check out the Regeneration International HUB.  Each year, RI brings a delegation to the U.N. Climate Summit to raise awareness about the links between soil and climate. RI also engages in farmer training, through partnerships with Via Organica and its teaching farm and the Main Street Project’s regenerative poultry project.

Kiss the Ground is an education and advocacy nonprofit advancing initiatives across four distinct programs: Advocacy, Farmland, Education, and Media. In addition to our program work, we bring impact projects to life—convening key players in the regenerative agricultural movement and catalyzing collaboration, action, and innovation. Everything we do as an organization is aimed towards achieving our overarching mission: inspiring participation in global regeneration, starting with soil.

Savory Institute  Our mission is the large-scale regeneration of the world’s grasslands through Holistic Management to address the global issues of desertification, climate change, and food and water insecurity. The Savory Network strategy seeks to influence the management of 1 billion hectares by 2025 through the establishment of 100 Hubs.

Soil4Climate is a global movement made up of heroes like you who are championing soil as a climate solution. We communicate the science, policy, and practices of restoring soil to capture carbon, replenish water tables, produce healthy food, reverse desertification, mitigate conflict in dryland areas, and, in general, provide promise for a bountiful and life affirming future.

The Cornucopia Institute, through research and investigations on agricultural and food issues, provides needed information to family farmers, consumers and other stakeholders in the good food movement and to the media. We support economic justice for the family-scale farming community – partnered with consumers – backing ecologically produced local, organic and authentic food.

Make Soil is a global movement and online platform where communities can make soil together. Redefining composting as making soil, Soil Makers can easily and safely post their Soil Sites to our online map, invite their neighbors and friends, and collaborate in this beautiful, regenerative act. Anyone with food waste, anywhere in the world, can use MakeSoil to find Soil Makers near them or start a Soil Site themselves. Together, we can address the food waste crisis, regenerate the planet, and reconnect with the earth and each other.

 Organic Consumer Association  Mission: To protect consumers’ right to safe, healthful food and other consumer products, a just food and farming system and an environment rich in biodiversity and free of pollutants.

 Ecosystem Restoration Camps  is a non-profit organisation founded by a movement of people who wanted an action-based solution to address accelerating climate change. The camps are a practical, hands on way to restore land degraded by humans. Our mission is to work with local communities and build camps that transform degraded landscapes into lush, abundant, life-giving ecosystems.  We are committed to preserving our planet for future generations.

Regenesis Group is a world leader in the field of regenerative development—an approach to land use, community development, and the built environment that has defined the leading edge of sustainability practice for more than two decades. Those looking to advance the field of sustainability have taken up a powerful challenge. Aiming beyond the goal to do less harm, these pioneers are committed to proving that human activity can be a source of health and regeneration, rather than destruction and degradation. Living up to this promise will require humans to step up and develop a firm grasp of the complex working of natural systems in order to harmonize and evolve with nature.

RegenAG is a community-based family enterprise providing farmers, professional organizations, and communities with education and training to learn from the world’s most innovative and effective regenerative agriculture practitioners in a wide range of fields. Their on-farm consulting and extension services teach farmers the knowledge and skills to significantly reduce inputs and effectively manage and monitor farm fertility though beneficial microbe capture and reproduction, water cycle repair, soil building, and other holistic management strategies. RegenAg also holds courses, workshops, and field days to showcase the success and trials of farmers who have adopted regenerative strategies on their farm.

Rodale Institute is known for pioneering and continually advocating for the use of regenerative agricultural practices. Founded in 1947 in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, by J.I. Rodale, the Institute has transformed 333 acres of formerly degraded farmland into highly fertile and productive land growing a variety of organic crops. The farm forms the basis for Rodale’s research, education, and outreach, and it is home to the longest-running comparative study of organic and chemical agriculture, started in 1981.

Soil Capital is “a company committed to scaling and sustaining regenerative agriculture through market-based solutions.” Using proven farming processes and adapted technology, they focus on maximizing farm profitability through increased soil health, resilience, and the natural productivity of the farm ecosystem as a whole. Through partnerships with experienced farmers who demonstrate resource-efficient and sustainable operations, Soil Capital assists other farmers in transitioning from conventional to regenerative agricultural practices. In doing so, Soil Capital seeks to scale and replicate holistic and healthy agricultural projects worldwide.

Soils, Food, and Healthy Communities is a participatory, farmer-led organization which uses local indigenous knowledge and agroecological methods to improve food security, nutrition, and soils in Malawi. Their Malawi Farmer-to-Farmer Agroecology project uses farmer-to-farmer teaching about agroecological farming methods to sustainably manage soils, improve agricultural and dietary diversity, and improve incomes of 6,000 farming households in central and northern Malawi. Through the use of grains and perennial legumes, farmers fix nitrogen, nutrients, and organic matter directly into the soil, improving soil fertility and enhancing environmental and food security.

Soil Foodweb Institute(SFI) provides expert analysis and advice to empower primary producers to take control of maintaining the health of their soil. SFI analyzes soil micro-organism activity and creates management plans tailored to farmers’ specific soils to achieve a sustainable, productive, and low-input farming system. SFI Laboratories have extended across the globe, providing services to thousands of farmers to improve the health and productivity of their soils.

Terra Genesis International is a regenerative design consultancy that includes engineers, permaculture design experts, agro-ecologists, foresters, carbon scientists, and financial analysts. They help large-scale agriculture and business clients that use natural ingredients in their products to redesign their supply chains and incorporate agricultural practices that regenerate soil, increase biodiversity, and boost business.

The Carbon Underground (TCU) acts as an umbrella organization connecting academia, businesses, organizations, schools, governments, and the general public, communicating and educating about the power of healthy soil to combat climate change. TCU coordinates a globally interconnected set of research groups working to demonstrate the impact of sustainable agriculture, land management, and regenerative enterprises as principal tools for sequestering carbon. Through their focus areas of corporate impact, education and training, policy, and communications, TCU aims to facilitate the widespread transition of farms, ranches, and grasslands from industrial into regenerative enterprises.

The Ecological Farming Association (EcoFarm) is a nonprofit organization that connects farmers, ranchers, distributors, retailers, activists, and researchers for education, alliance building, and advocacy. They run an annual Ecological Farming Conference that features more than 70 workshops, intensives, exhibitions, and special events including seed swaps, film screenings, and organic culinary fare. EcoFarm also offers a free mentoring program for apprentices and beginning farmers as well as a range of online farmer resources. EcoFarm is a broad network of grassroots leadership and has facilitated an exchange of knowledge for more than 60,000 people across the United States.

The Land Institute focuses on developing perennial grains, pulses, and oilseed crops. Their crops are grown in “ecologically intensified polycultures” that mimic the diversity of natural ecosystems. The Land Institute breeds new perennial crops and develops ways to productively grow these crops in diverse polyculture mixtures. Led by a team of ecologists and plant breeders that partner with multiple organizations worldwide, The Land Institute works to develop an agricultural system that can produce ample food while minimizing or eliminating the negative impacts of industrial agriculture.

The Timbaktu Collective works to protect, manage, and restore degraded ecosystems in rural Indian village communities. The Collective works in 172 villages within the Anantapur district, reaching and serving approximately 21,000 marginalized families. Their work in ecology includes the restoration of wastelands through planting locally adapted indigenous varieties of trees, reviving traditional water-harvesting structures to conserve water, and rejuvenating soil health through organic farming practices.

The Traditional Native American Farmers Association (TNAFA) holds an annual Indigenous Sustainable Food Systems Design Course (ISFSDC), providing training in ecological design, natural farming, and earth restoration. ISFSDC is a holistic indigenous approach based on traditional knowledge and practices. These practices help improve air and water quality, ecosystems, nutrition, and community health. TNAFA also holds workshops and training on seed saving, beekeeping, and growing medicinal herbs to enhance biodiversity and increase seed and crop vitality.

Please check back – we are compiling a list of more educational resources and organizations doing great work!