Compare a pile of flour to a loaf of bread and you will begin to see the difference between dirt and healthy soil. How do you move from flour to bread or dirt to soil? Add microbes.
There is plenty of life (including that metaphor) in the conversation between Designers of Paradise host Erik van Lennep and educator, writer, entrepreneur, and advocate Didi Pershouse. Pershouse recounts her journey from providing Chinese herbal medicine for individuals to a focus on climate change, soil, and hydrology for the planet.
She describes how a focus on high quality foods connected her to microbes in the food system and eventually to the notion of peak oil. A visit to Cuba provided insights into public health and “un-industrializing” agriculture leading her to ask what a resilient health care system would look like.
Now she has worked with Walter Jenhe to illustrate the concept of the “soil carbon sponge” and written a teacher’s manual, “Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function” as well as a book, “The Ecology of Care: Medicine, Agriculture, Money, and the Quiet Power of Human and Microbial Communities.”
During the interview she explains how soil can support a cross-partisan conversation and commitment, describes some of her work with the UN and their support for nature based solutions, and an upcoming trip to India.
Finally, she explains the role of water in climate change and offers hope for how improving land transpiration might reverse the global warming we’ve experienced.
References & resources from the conversation include:
- Weston Price
- “Peak oil” and Richard Heinberg
- Walter Jehne
- Transition Towns (also see Erik’s interview with Rob Hopkins)
- Thetford, VT
- Hurricane Irene
- Cows Save the Planet (also see Erik’s interview with author Judith Schwartz)
- Peter Donovan (25’ video)
- Farmer Field School, FAO
- India’s Zero Budget natural farming initiative
- Rehydrate California
- USDA’s Southern Plains Climate Hub
Podcast: Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS