Renewing Earth

A Global Adventure to Meet the Farmers, Activists, and Indigenous PeopleGrowing the Roots of a Regenerative FutureThere’s no denying it: we treat our planet like dirt. Humanity’s impact has become a geologic force changing the climate and threatening oceans, glaciers, and the lands that feed us.Living in rural Indiana, author Kelsey Timmerman witnesses first hand the damage modern industrial agriculture has done to our land and our communities. He’s afraid to let his kids swim in the nearby pond filled with farm runoff. There are times, after chicken manure has been spread on the surrounding fields, that it’s hard to breathe.Timmerman recognizes that farming – the occupation of his family heritage -- is the source of these and other problems. But he also suspects it doesn’t have to be that way. In Renewing Earth Timmerman travels across the United States and around the world to meet farmers and activists who employ practices and philosophies that acknowledge the human role in complicated agricultural systems and have found ways to alleviate it. Over and over again he finds farmers who see agriculture as not the problem but the solution, one that builds soil, promotes ecological diversity, provides people with meaningful lives and livelihoods, and sequesters Carbon—maybe even enough to combat climate change.Timmerman takes readers along on his global adventure -- onto melting glaciers in Patagonia, into the Amazon, and down forgotten rivers. He protects a herd of cattle from lions alongside the Maasai warriors of Kenya, sees firsthand how chocolate could save the rainforest in Brazil, and meets American farmers who’ve rejected the agrochemical industry for an approach inspired by that of ancient and Indigenous peoples.  By weaving the local with the global, Timmmerman shows readers how the way they live, their eating habits and relationship with nature connect to issues of environmental and social justice. Our hunger, and the agriculture required to alleviate it, can be a gift that connects us to chloroplasts, lions, mycorrhizal fungi, our fellow humans around the block and the world, and it is our responsibility to play an active part in a regenerative – not destructive -- future.