Regeneration Stories in Scarred Times: My Son, Our Planet

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Author: Jeff Biggers

Ever since my son was diagnosed with a rare ocular syndrome and retinal scarring last winter, I have found myself returning to the promise of regeneration — in our stories, our health and our ecosystems.

When it comes to our health, the potential for regenerative medicine seems to be growing. I have plowed through reams of scientific studies in stages of despair and encouragement that this growing field may hold hope for “regenerating damaged tissues and organs in the body,” according to the National Institutes of Health, “by stimulating previously irreparable organs to heal themselves.”

Regenerative medicine institutes abound in the U.S. and abroad, specializing in eye and heart diseases, tissue replacement to organs affected by cancer. Global demand for stem cells has created a multi-billion dollar market. Japan’s government recently kicked in $1.7 billion for its regenerative medicine industry.

Recent breakthroughs in stem cell research, such as last summer’s study by the Oregon Health and Science University on patient-specific embryonic stem cells and therapeutic cloning, make headlines regularly now.

But my son Massimo’s future depends not only on these huge investments in regenerative medicine; his generation needs a similar investment in regenerating our ravaged ecosystems. Facing the silent tsunamis of climate change and environmental destruction, my son’s planet is as scarred and imperiled as his sight.

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Regenerating Your Garden’s Soil

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Author: Tom Karwin

We have seen a surge of interest, recently, in soil regeneration as a substantial part of the global response to climate change.

Briefly, soil regeneration (or carbon farming) involves practices that reduce the loss of carbon from the soil and draw atmospheric carbon into the soil. These practices can counteract the disruption of nature’s carbon cycle caused by modern practices such as burning fossil fuels and pursuing “conventional” methods of commercial agriculture and livestock operations.

The greatest positive effects of carbon farming are realized when these practices are applied to hundreds of acres, but home gardeners also can combat climate change by carbon farming on their own patch of land.

Adopting these enlightened practices entitles the gardener to claim the status of Citizen of the Earth. But wait — there’s more. Carbon farming also improves the overall health of the garden, increases the retention of moisture, reduces workloads and avoids the costs of garden chemicals.

The basic idea is to support the vitality of the top few inches of the soil, where most of a plant’s roots find nutrition for the plant and where we have the microbiome, the vast population of beneficial bacteria and fungi that is essential to healthy plants.

Keep Reading in the Santa Cruz Sentinal

Where’s the Better Beef?

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Grazing Operations: The Journey to Better Beef and Its Triple Bottom-Line Benefits

NRDC believes that better beef must meet credible, independent standards of responsible production at each step to your plate. The overwhelming scientific consensus shows that the most important impacts to reduce and minimize occur on grazing and feedlot operations.

Why it matters that all beef –- from conventional to grass-fed –- is produced on well-managed grazing operations

A growing number of ranchers and farmers are improving their land management using science and the experiences of other ranchers. As a result, their ranches are more productive and local ecosystems are thriving as they support healthy soils, water quality, and plant and animal life. These leaders are demonstrating how beef producers can help conserve and restore America’s grasslands and other grazed ecosystems.

Well-managed grazing operations generate environmental AND business benefits

Well-managed grazinglands, which include both rangelands (grazed natural grasslands and other ecosystems, mostly in the western United States) and pastures (farmland planted with grass to graze livestock, mostly in the eastern United States), provide valuable ecosystem services, including:

Keep Reading on National Resources Defense Council

Fertile Health: Parallels Between Sustainable Agriculture and Sustainable Medicine

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Author: Didi Pershouse

“People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.” –Wendell Berry

In the mornings before work, I jump in the river, and walk barefoot back to my clinic, looking for wild edibles and medicinal plants along the way. I live in my clinic these days. I moved in to save money when gas prices spiked, and the economy collapsed, but it has turned into a delightful low-carbon, über-local health-care experiment. I only pay one heating bill, one phone bill, and one electricity bill. I see patients with my dog by my side while my two boys are at school. Patients walk through my kitchen on their way in and out of my small office, and sometimes, after I’ve been talking to them about the importance of the microbiome, I offer them a taste of real sauerkraut, raw milk or kefir—all brimming with good bacteria. Twice a week I offer sliding-scale, group acupuncture treatments in my living room, where the mammalian comfort of patients taking naps near each other seems to be an added bonus to the healing process. In the evenings, I teach classes on personal and community resiliency, deep self-care, and peer support for community leaders. I have spent the last seven years writing about sustainable medicine, and trying to define (and bring into practice) what a truly sustainable health-care system would look like.

This is not a simple thing. In order for people to be healthy in the long term, nearly every other aspect of life comes into play. When people thrive, you can generally look around and see that the natural environment around them has been well cared for, their relationships are solid, they have abundant, nutrient-dense food to eat, a just society to live in, and they are living in relatively peaceful times. We now also know that we rely heavily on communities of beneficial bacteria in and on our bodies for physical and emotional health, immunity and even proper development.

The microscope, the telescope, and the deep-sea camera have helped us to rediscover that we are part of a vast interdependent web of relationships, and whatever happens in one part of the system affects the whole.   This means that there is no such thing as “human health” apart from the rest of the planet, there is only health. When I use the word “medicine” I mean something much more profound and far reaching than medical care practiced by, and for, humans. The planet itself has become something like a field hospital, with new species limping in each day, and others going extinct.

Keep Reading on Post Growth