Why is sustainable not enough in the world of agriculture? What will it take to produce nutrient dense food on healthy soil? Regenerative agriculture is a systems approach to restoring the health of our food system. Over the course of the last four decades a growing number of farmers and ranchers have risked, stumbled and learned how to build healthy soil and healthy profits for their farms by going against the conventional wisdom. Along the way they discovered that healthy soil is the basis for a healthy ecosystem and potentially a healthy planet. We’ll explore the component parts of regenerative agriculture and discuss why whole-system-thinking is the best way to feed the world.

I will share powerful and inspiring stories, illustrated with colorful photos, of how creating native plant habitat has positively impacted the mental, physical, and spiritual health of our Quaker family. The presentation also describes how songbird, pollinator, and wildlife populations have dramatically increased in response to the introduction of native plants onto the property. My goal is to motivate others to plant butterfly gardens and larger native plant habitats to confront the extinction crisis. Loss of biodiversity can be reversed by the actions of ordinary people. Handouts will be provided for participants that explain how to plan, plant, and maintain publicly acceptable native plant butterfly gardens and habitats.

About Jim: Jim was born on an Iowa farm in 1946 near Oskaloosa to Quaker parents. In 1970 while in graduate school, he read a Sierra Club book – A Moment in the Sun . This new awareness of environmental issues was a turning point. Soon after accepting a position teaching Biology at Newton High School (NHS) in Newton, Iowa in 1972, Jim visited an incredibly beautiful virgin prairie that was plowed a year later. Soon he planted a prairie garden in his backyard and began to manage the NHS prairie. Jim has been married to Kathy Kessler for over 50 years. They have 2 sons and 7 grandchildren. In 1998, they bought 30 acres south of Grinnell and restored prairie, oak savanna, wetland, and woodland habitats. In 2017, they donated most of the property to the Bur Oak Land Trust in Iowa City. During the past 8 years, Jim has shared over 100 native planting presentations and workshops with audiences in Iowa and in other states. He taught Biology at NHS from 1972 – 2005 and Environmental Biology at Iowa Valley Community College from 2005 – 2020. Jim and Kathy are members of Grinnell Friends Church in Grinnell, Iowa.

The bad news is coming fast now–nearly on a daily basis it seems we’re hearing of another climate-related disaster, another breakdown in Earth’s and Life’s support system–the web seems to be unraveling…How not to become paralyzed by despair? What does Friends’ Faith and Practice, and specifically our Testimonies, have to offer us for both understanding and addressing these many challenges which face us? How may we come to live in Right Relationship with the Living World, respecting and supporting the inherent integrity of the Earth community?! The content will be largely experiential, and also include a brief presentation, and opportunities for reflection and worship-sharing. Be prepared to sit outside for about 20 minutes, although indoor options will also be available.

• Sweet Home Monteverde film screening and facilitated discussion with Robin Truesdale and/or Bill Adler, filmmakers
• Angelic Troublemaking: Beyond Bystander Training: explores anti-racism/decolonization work with emphasis on local concerns and means of accompaniment
• Climate Equity/Climate Justice in Our Community: identifies specific local social justice and equity concerns. Participants identify actions to address concerns
• Discerning Earthcare Leadings: listening and sharing experiences to reach individual and group decisions on Earthcare actions
• Earthcare audits: baseline assessment of individual or community activities and discernment for further action
• Equality or Equity? What is Our Testimony?: examines Friends’ equality testimony, the concepts of equity and justice, and the relationship of these to Earthcare
• Permaculture is Not Just Agriculture: introduces permaculture design and domains and ways to bring these practices into Earthcare
• Project Drawdown, Introduction and more: presents information on actions that “drawdown” carbon emissions and ways to promote drawdown choices as individuals and communities
• Quakers and Climate Collapse: shares and builds on a Woodbrooke course led by Jackie Carpenter from 2021 Fifth Month (May), including review of the latest science, worship sharing, and discernment
• Racial Wealth Gap Simulation: an exercise that helps “…people understand the connections among racial [in]equity, hunger, poverty, and wealth”
• Transportation, migration, and climate: explores access and mobility issues from the local to global perspective and the impacts of climate change
• Underwater Homeowners Association: shares local actions that can be undertaken by communities experiencing sea level rise.
• Water: Sea Level Rise, Flooding, and Water Quality explores local, national, and global water issues and potential impacts.
• Frontline/Waterline Communities: Displacement and Gentrification and Why Quakers Should Care drills down to the county or community level on the impacts of climate-induced displacement

About Beverly: Beverly is the field secretary for Earthcare, Southeastern Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, and co-clerk, QEW. She has taught several courses at the University of South Florida where she also worked as a faculty member in a research center. Her related experience includes conducting research and providing technical assistance to communities and local state and federal agencies on environmental and social justice, housing, and transportation issues. Among her publications is Making Black Communities Matter: Race, Space, and Resistance in the Urban South. She is the Transportation Research Board Equity in Transportation committee research coordinator. Beverly is an experiential workshop facilitator trained in conflict management, mediation, responses to violence, strategies on healing for trauma and Alternatives to Violence Project. Beverly is a member of Tampa Monthly Meeting and an attender of Deland Worship Group. She lives on lands once inhabited by the Timucua (Ocklawaha River Watershed) and the Tocobaga (Hillsborough Bay Watershed).

When Quaker Earthcare Witness Friends began speaking to the Religious Society of Friends, we saw our work as alerting Friends to the dangers of climate change. Today, Friends are fully aware of the impending tragedies from our failure to care for the Earth. Friends are more likely to ask us, “What can I do?” and “What can I do that will make any difference?” Mary Jo’s interactive and optimistic workshop will address those questions directly, as we consider the many gifts that Friends have to offer. We will come together as a listening community, grounded in Friend’s Testimonies, seeking guidance to support one another and our Earth.

To build our muscles as climate justice activists, we will identify stretches involving listening and connecting, engaging in conflict and repair, listening for and speaking truth, facing grief, and cultivating hope and courage.

About Pamela: Pamela Haines, an active member of her Quaker meeting in Philadelphia, is passionate about the earth, relationships, integrity, paying attention, and repair of all kinds. As a writer, workshop leader and speaker, she loves to demystify the connections between economics and daily life, challenge people to claim their power and act on their values, and call them to wonder and thanks. She has published widely on faith, money and economics, and on peace-building and right relationship. Lead author of Toward a Right Relationship with Finance; Interest, Debt, Growth and Security, she has also written a pamphlet, Waging Peace; Discipline and Practice, a book Money and Soul, a book of poetry, Alive in this World, and a new collection of essays entitled That Clear and Certain Sound; Finding Solid Ground in Perilous Times.

The dynamics and priorities of our economy are a key driver of the climate emergency, and the economy is now driven to a significant extent by the financial sector. You don’t have to be an economist to explore these connections and identify key issues and areas of opportunity.

Grow in our capacity to apply our faith values to matters of economics; gain clarity on several big ideas that can help demystify the workings of our economy—for better or for worse; and consider how our actions can support an economy that serves Earth and the common good.

Towards Right Relationship with the Living World

A half or full day or weekend retreat of spiritual deepening and discernment toward right action on behalf of our Living World. Using Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects, as experienced through a Quaker lens, we will support one another with worship, experiential and contemplative practices, evocative queries, journaling, collage, discussion, and deep listening, creating ways to support our faithfulness in our daily lives.

Did you read about the woman in Western Kenya who was the youngest of 7 children, but only gave birth to 2? A scholarship from the Friends United Meeting allowed her to finish high school. Hers is a remarkable story in a semi-nomadic, paternalistic society! With the help of education and access to contraception, people choose to have smaller families and therefore less environmental impact. In fact, the most humane and least expensive way to slow climate chaos, save species and protect the environment is with family planning and educating girls and women.

About Dick: As a senior in a Quaker high school, Dick decided that he wanted to work for peace. His path was set after he read that overpopulation could lead to armed conflict. He studied medicine then specialized in obstetrics and gynecology—the medical specialty that deals most with human fertility. He practiced OB-GYN for 40 years in Durango, Colorado. In addition to being active in the QEW Population Working Group, he writes a monthly essay on aspects of human population—available at: www.population-matters.org. He also patented a rip-stop condom.

The world population grew from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 8 billion in 2022 and we’re adding about 200,000 persons per day. Humans have invaded virtually every ecosystem on the planet and our activities are leading to rapid diminishment and extinction of species. Our ecological impact is the impact of the average person multiplied by the number of persons.

To be sustainable on this planet we must reduce both our individual impact and our numbers. QEW has multiple ‘pamphlets’ (on the website) on population concerns including sexuality, adoption, abortion, immigration, “Human reproduction is in the commons”, etc. With presentation, queries and worship-sharing we will probe these concerns.