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

Summary

A powerful movement is happening in farming—farmers are reconnecting with their roots to fight climate change.

In Healing Grounds, Liz Carlisle tells the stories of Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian American farmers who 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 the true 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 will require reckoning with our nation's agricultural history—a history marked by discrimination and displacement. And it will ultimately require dismantling power structures that have blocked many farmers of color from owning land or building wealth.

By coming together to restore these farmlands, we can not only heal our planet, we can heal our communities.