Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming

A powerful movement is happening in farming today—farmers are reconnecting with their roots to fight climate change. Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian American farmers are reviving their ancestors’ methods of growing food—techniques long suppressed by the industrial food system. These farmers are restoring native prairies, nurturing beneficial fungi, and enriching soil health. While feeding their communities and revitalizing cultural ties to land, they are steadily stitching ecosystems back together and repairing the natural carbon cycle. This is truly regenerative agriculture – not merely a set of technical tricks for storing CO2 in the ground, but a holistic approach that values diversity in both plants and people. Cultivating this kind of regenerative farming requires a reckoning with the discriminatory agricultural history of the United States. Ultimately, it also requires dismantling power structures that have blocked many farmers of color from owning land or building wealth.

Please join Island Press for the launch of the new book Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming. This event will feature UC Irvine postdoctoral fellow and agroecologist Dr. Aidee Guzman, who is featured in the book, as well as the book’s author, UC Santa Barbara Environmental Studies professor Liz Carlisle. Ricardo Salvador, Director of the Food & Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, will moderate the conversation.