Healing the Soil, Healing Ourselves
A Matter of Degrees
Dr. Leah Stokes, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson
4.8 • 533 Ratings
🗓️ 19 July 2021
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Abuse of soil, the atmosphere, and communities of color have gone hand in hand. Through reclaiming ancestral connection to the soil, Black farmers are healing the entangled harms of colonization, capitalism, and White supremacy and moving agricultural climate solutions forward in the process.
In this episode, we feature an audio essay that wrestles with these themes. The essay is titled "Black Gold" by Leah Penniman, an activist, farmer, and founder of Soul Fire Farm.
As Leah puts it: "In healing our relationship with soil, we heal the climate, and we heal ourselves."
This is an excerpt from the audiobook version of All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, an anthology of essays, poetry, and art co-edited by Katharine Wilkinson and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.
The audiobook version of this essay is read by award-winning audiobook narrator Bahni Turpin.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Catherine, do I hear thunder over there? We've got a little bit of Elsa's remnants rumbling through Atlanta right now. Well, that was a big one. So climate change is happening now in the middle of our podcast with Hurricane Elsa. It is happening right now. Do not record audio in the summer in the south. It is risky business. Well, I don't know what we're |
| 0:23.6 | going to do. I think climate change is going to mess up a lot of things, not just our podcast. |
| 0:27.6 | Hey, I have heard that this is true, Leah. So we have something really special to share today, Leah. |
| 0:33.5 | We do. Our listeners probably know that last year, Catherine and our good friend, Dr. Ayanna |
| 0:39.3 | Elizabeth Johnson, co-edited this book called All We Can Save. It became a bestseller, |
| 0:45.0 | and it's an anthology of writings by women from all across the climate movement. |
| 0:50.1 | And you probably also know that among the truth, courage, and solutions that we collected in the pages of all we can save is a brilliant essay by Leah called A Field Guide for Transformation. |
| 1:05.1 | Oh, you do guide guide. |
| 1:06.7 | It was fun. I was really excited to get to participate in the book. |
| 1:10.3 | And I've gotten a lot of really cool feedback from people who've read that essay, actually. But the secret is, Catherine, I'm not the only Leah in the book, am I? You are not the only Leah. There is another really brilliant essay by Leah Peniman, who is a black creole farmer, author, |
| 1:31.8 | food justice activist, and she is the founder of Soulfire Farm, which is in New York and has |
| 1:39.2 | the mission to end racism in the food system and to reclaim ancestral connection to the land. |
| 1:46.5 | And that's what she writes about in this fabulous essay called Black Gold. |
| 1:51.1 | I really loved the essay because apart from being a climate wonk and, I don't know, |
| 1:56.4 | doing a lot of policy work and research and fun stuff like that. I'm also a really big gardener, |
| 2:03.0 | and I have become rather obsessed with soil over the last few years. And the other Leah does an |
| 2:09.5 | amazing job talking about how can you build up the soil and all the amazing practices that they're |
| 2:14.6 | using at Soulfire, as well as other women are using at other farms |
| 2:19.2 | across the country. So today on a matter of degrees, we're sharing the audiobook version of |
| 2:25.2 | Leah Peniman's essay in celebration of the publication of all we can save coming out in |
| 2:32.4 | paperback on July 20th. That's right. This book gets two |
| 2:37.1 | birthdays. That's pretty fun. And its second birthday is this week. And you can get a paperback |
... |
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