From the Soil Up: Regenerating the Economy
Not everything at DLD this year was on the growing US-European economic and technological divide. There were many speeches on the environment including from heavyweights like Kate Raworth. And I had the opportunity to catch up with my favorite advocate of regenerative agriculture, the managing partner at Acton Capital, Jan-Gisbert Schultze. According to Schultze, today's deepest problem is our spiritual disconnection from nature. We've lost 50% of our soil carbon, he notes, and with it the fertility that sustains us. We can save ourselves, he says, from the soil up — by embracing regenerative agricultural practices that prioritize local community activation and sustainable farming. Schultze is putting this into practice at Lake Constance, Germany's largest lake, where his Regenerate Forum is working to transform an entire county into what he calls a "climate landscape" — retraining farmers, rebuilding soil, and relocalizing the food system.
Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
Lewis H. Ziska: How Rising CO2 Is Turning Life on Earth Into a Bad Science Fiction Movie
Amit Chaudhuri on Post-Realist Fiction: Why Realism Is No Longer an Adequate Novelistic Form for Describing the World
Phyllis Vine: Why the Next Major Civil Rights Movement Is Mental Health Activism
Kate Beaton on Why Ducks, Her Coming-Of-Age Memoir, Isn't Quite As "Desolate" or "Dismal" As Some Critics Have Suggested
Matthew Stewart: Why the 9.9% Is Running Our World and How the 91.1% Need to Fight Back Against This Aristocracy
Mark LeVine on We'll Play Till We Die: The Role of Revolutionary Music in the Muslim World
Sarah Kendzior: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Simultaneously Complacent and Paranoid
Kathryn and Ross Petras on Brains, Breasts, Bowels, and Bladders: A History of the World Through Body Parts
David Enrich: How Complicit Is Big Law in the Crimes and Misdemeanors of American Capitalism?
Joe Pompeo: What a Scandalous Double Murder in September 1922 Tells Us About America's Current Obsession With "Trume Crime"
Nicholas Kardaras: How Social Media Is Driving Our Mental Crisis and How Reading Plato Can Help Cure it
David Ambroz on Something All Americans Should Agree On: No Homeless Children and More Foster Kids in College Than in Jail
Lisa Genova: How Writers Can Use Both Memory and Forgetting to Improve Their Work