I've safely landed back in North America, and wanted to give you a quick reminder that if you want the tools to make lasting change in the resilience of your farm, community, or region now's the time to sign up for my six-week, live participatory online course, Regenerating the Soil Carbon Sponge for Flood, Drought, and Wildfire Resilience. It starts on Tuesday, February 26, 2019 (tomorrow!). Financial assistance is available for those who need it. Classes are recorded if you need to miss some.
No matter where you live, this course offers an entirely new way of seeing and working with the land around you: whether it is your urban backyard, a small farm, or a large ranch.
If you join us, you will learn a step-by-step blueprint for improving soil health, public health, and resilience to extreme weather events, while helping to cool the climate. This is the strategy I was invited to present on World Soil Day at the United Nations last year, and the one I'm outlining as a lead author of the "Future Directions" chapter for the upcoming UN-FAO technical manual on soil carbon management.
Most importantly, this course provides a tremendous opportunity to build working relationships with people around the world who share your goals of land regeneration.
My teaching style is to find and convey "the simplicity beyond complexity." I want people who study with me to have a clear scientific understanding of soil biology's role in the carbon, water, and nutrient cycles--framed in ways that are easy to remember, and easy to pass along. I do this through hands-on demonstrations, photographs, videos, interesting discussions, and activities that you can use to teach others. In particular, I will show how we can create conditions so that nature's biological workforce--plants, animals, fungi, and other microbes--can rebuild the natural "soil sponge" infrastructure that all life on land depends on for food, water, and safety.
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WHY AM I DOING THIS?
My aim is to bring together a group that can effectively change the direction the world is going, over the next three years--by helping people understand that soil is the basic infrastructure that makes all life on land possible, and that we can address many of our major challenges through regeneration of healthy soil.
Thanks to the last four courses, we now have a growing international community of deeply motivated people from all walks of life who are beginning to collaborate in their work towards land-based strategies for community and climate resilience.
This is an emergent, grass-roots strategy--offering solid principles, and bringing people into a shared language--and trusting the collaborations that come out of our work together, (rather than trying to control or manage them.) This is what is needed for true change. By working together, I know we can continue to build communities of people around the world who will lead and inspire soil health initiatives in their own neighborhoods and regions, in their own ways, by demonstrating that simple changes in land management can literally change everything around us.
Will you join us?
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“If you want to learn how to make your farm more resilient to droughts and floods, then here is your chance! Didi is fantastic at explaining how to fix our broken water cycle.”
— Gail Fuller, Kansas Farmer and Field School Organizer
“I recommend this class to anyone interested in learning more about soil health.”
— Kristin Ohlson, author of The Soil Will Save Us
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I'll be explaining why these five soil samples, all of the same soil type, behave so differently when it rains. Why do some fall apart and erode, while others stay together? Why does rain soak in to some--refilling the local water table with abundant clean water--while it runs off the surface of the others, taking soil (and any pollutants in the soil) with it?
Imagine if all the soil in the landscape around you was as absorbent, healthy and functional as the sample on the far left. What would be different? Simple inexpensive changes in management make the difference between devastation and resilience. We can build resilience in just a few years. Or we can continue to watch our landscapes fail from flood, drought, wildfires, algae blooms, and economic collapse.
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Six-Week Course Details:
Participants will gather on Zoom Video Conferencing (by computer or phone) from 12:00 - 2:00 PM EST (New York, USA) on the following Tuesdays:
- February 26
- March 5
- March 12
- March 26
- April 2
- April 9
(Please note: There is no formal class on March 19th.) If these dates or times don't work for you, please complete this online form so we can let you know if we offer it again.
Extra discussion time for an hour after each class from 2:00 -3:00 Eastern. This is a great way to develop connections with people working on regenerative projects around the world, learn from each other's wisdom, experiences and resources; and dive into more detail on specific questions.
Classes will be recorded and made available to course participants if you need to miss a class. There will also be recommended reading, videos, and journal-writing exercises between classes.
The course costs $375 (or three monthly payments of $125).
Scholarships: A few spots in every course are reserved for participants who need to pay less. Contact us if this is you. We are particularly interested in saving spots for farmers and current and emerging leaders from the Global South.
Please respond to this email with any questions about this course, or if you would like to participate but cannot afford the full price.
We have a sweet group coming together for this course, I hope you will be part of it.
Didi
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“Didi Pershouse is an awesome teacher and I highly recommend studying with her if you're interested in regeneration and what this means for building resilience to drought, fire, floods.”
— Rebecca Burgess, Founder, Fibershed
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February 27, 2019 in Randolph, Vermont, Bethany Church, 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM: "Soil Health and Human Health."
March 28-31, 2019 in Montreal, Canada: Living Soils Symposium.
April 11, 2019 workshop in Greenwich, NY 10 am - 4 pm. Farm location TBD. Sponsored by the Agricultural Stewardship Association (www.agstewardship.org)
June 18-20, 2019 in Poitiers, France: Food Security and Climate Change: 4p1000 new tangible initiative for the soil."
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